The highly voted comments still float to the top of the page don't they? When I was only reading the highly voted commetns I started to feel like I was only getting the popular opinion, especially so when it came to touchy topics. If HN does decide to turn the count back on I'd love an option to turn it back off in my own profile.
Highly voted comments don't always stand up when the discussion gets into deep threads. I remember seeing a few threads with 20+ comments and one really insightful response in the middle changing the flow of the discussion.
I feel it is now difficult to have an idea of this kind of "flow" at a glance.
I'd love an option too show or hide the count. Or perhaps show the count when hovering or touching a link for a few seconds.
The issue with this is we have no way to compare replies. I don't actually care how nodes on the same level of the tree compare to each other, I only care about how they compare to their children replies (ie: counter arguments).
