[semanticist]

On a slightly meta note, HN comments are weighted by the average karma score of the person leaving the comment, not just the number of up-votes that specific comment received.

So this comment being at the top could easily be down to the poster's karma/average karma.

[ColinWright]

I'm not convinced that's true, and would be interested to know your evidence. In particular, the commenter in question has no average karma, apparently not having made sufficiently recent previous contributions. Looking at the contributions made, they don't look to be the sort of thing that garners lots and lots of karma, but I only really glanced at them, so that impression could be wrong. But I doubt it.

It's impossible to tell without comment scores being displayed, but my feeling is that any ranking influence from average karma must be small, if any. I'd be interested in any concrete information, even if circumstantial.

If, however, I find that average karma does have an effect, I'm going to stop replying to individuals, stop providing information, stop correcting misapprehensions, and concentrate on only submitting populist items. That's clearly what PG would want, if that's how the ranking systems work.