> Learn to survey, skim, and dive in. All your endeavors will be the better for it.
Then why sort comments at all? just order them in date order (or the reverse) and be done with it. Let the reader decide what is useful and what isn't.
Seems like having comments sorted in an implicit order of 'goodness' (even if there is no score) would handicap people in the development of their ability to 'survey, skim and dive in'.
You need to reword this as a top level comment and repost. Some will say that having to make such a request is proof that scores need to come back, but I'm just concerned that everyone on the "pro" comment score side will never see it.
To your point about not beings soiled by unpopular views, the truth is that unpopular views already have that font color applied to them which goes a lot further in making sure I don't ready it (with my eyes I often have to copy paste it to a text editor before I can read it comfortably). I would much prefer all comments be the same font color and being able to see the score so I can make my own decision as to whether to read it or not.
A better example would be choosing which newspapers to read based on your friend's recommendations, versus choosing by yourself. All articles from the same newspaper share a source and it already ensures some quality.
Wait, are you talking about articles on HN? Because only comments have their score hidden, you can still see how many points each article has.
My point was comparing newspapers brands/articles to HN comments, not articles, since you don't have much guidance anymore over what comments are worthwhile or not.
I wonder how these people ever managed to make it through a newspaper without scores telling them which articles are worth it.
Learn to survey, skim, and dive in. All your endeavors will be the better for it.
PS. Your method (don't read if don't like score) also ensures you won't be soiled by accidentally reading an unpopular but truthful point of view.