I am actually surprised at how much the removal of karma from comments affected my feelings about hacker news.
I like to imagine myself as pretty laid-back and uncompetitive but once comments were removed, suddenly my motivation for posting and reading just seemed to vanish.
Maybe that's a good thing. Perhaps it will produce fewer comments but ones that people are more "honestly" motivated to make.
I think it gives the site a feel more like MetaFilter. Exactly as you say, your impetus to post is stripped of the karma motivation, and becomes more purely affected by actually wanting to make a contribution.
I like to imagine myself as pretty laid-back and uncompetitive but once comments were removed, suddenly my motivation for posting and reading just seemed to vanish.
Maybe that's a good thing. Perhaps it will produce fewer comments but ones that people are more "honestly" motivated to make.
We shall see...