My experience is that I upvote less now. Which means I'm more selective about what I upvote. I am no longer affected by the polling of the community.
If this is a common change in other's voting patterns, you might see a shrinking of mid ranked comments, since there are less votes to go around.
If this is the case, I would say that the herd metality has been removed. I never stopped voting on comments that I thought were really good, just on the ones that I was on the fence about, and pushed over by their rank.
The fact that the high comments have seen a bump? Maybe people are reading more in depth, which could get them a few extra up votes? It's a possiblity.
We won't know for sure until we see some actual stats about whats going on. I don't think either side could prove the other wrong at this point.
If this is a common change in other's voting patterns, you might see a shrinking of mid ranked comments, since there are less votes to go around.
If this is the case, I would say that the herd metality has been removed. I never stopped voting on comments that I thought were really good, just on the ones that I was on the fence about, and pushed over by their rank.
The fact that the high comments have seen a bump? Maybe people are reading more in depth, which could get them a few extra up votes? It's a possiblity.
We won't know for sure until we see some actual stats about whats going on. I don't think either side could prove the other wrong at this point.