if visual scores create problems, why not just obscure them, and use an algorithm to find a better relative popularity between the comments; and show a simple 3 level scale (spam/normal/popular).
If you still need more depth, add a fourth level to the scale.
I'm the same. It is nifty and a cool trick... but didn't deserve to enter the mainstream (in it's current form). But there are underlying motivations that warranted the change before it was ready for mass deployment.
One of the best ways I've found is to volunteer your time. This makes sense for a few reasons.
A. The people you are with are also likely volunteers (opensource, event/meeting organizers, etc), which means you will meet people with a favorable attitude/mindset/values. The people with the most to give are the ones with the most value.
B. You have the same interests as them.
C. Volunteers are commonly a very diverse spread of people (experience/jobs/projects/goals/etc).
D. Meeting people like this makes it easy to keep things casual, or move into a partnership type relationship.
This is a feature. Most of the people on an IRC channel are lurkers. And the channels are very quiet so that people can hear you when you do speak. Believe me, I wish they were quieter, because even as they are they tend to be too distracting for me to lurk there while working.
It does seem creepy. Our company's salespeople laugh at the programmers because we really love to gather in one physical room, then sit silently next to each other typing on laptops and communicating largely via Jabber chat and IRC, even though we are two feet away from each other. If you've never tried to concentrate on programming this seems like alien behavior, but it actually makes a lot of sense, for the same reason that it makes sense for all the Drupal devs to sit in one IRC channel but almost never speak.
If you crave more chat, join more channels in parallel.
I guess I don't actually find the 300-lurkers-who-never-talk channels much of a feature. Much prefer the ones with 15-30 or so semi-active users. There can still be large periods of not chatting, but you know who's there, and there's a decent chance that when someone does say something, it's relevant to you. There's a difference between sitting in a room of programmers quietly, and sitting in an auditorium of programmers!
Ive done this, it is amazingly productive. We had jabber server at one place, and all 10 devs were in the same room physically, as well as the chats: #dev #dev_pvt #dev_funny #dev_offtopic #bugs as well as having a dozen side conversations, and talking out loud in the room. Never too much time blocking on conversations, and easily ignorable when working on something deep, but since physical presence is happening, anything super important can trigger an "out loud" interrupt.
Generally, when somebody says "Hi", my reaction is "Oh dear, here comes the dumb question" and I cringe.
9/10 Times I'm right.
Generally I tend to /join and then just sit there for a while to discover the norms and protocols of the channel before speaking, unless I have a specific question/problem.
If I have a specific question/problem then "Just ask" is the best approach, but sadly, 9/10 times I end up fixing the problem myself, and get roped in to help solve 10 other peoples problems while I'm there!.
There's a rare occasion when you'll /join a channel and they'll greet you, but thats part of the 'norms and protocols of the channel' thing, and its usually a hallmark of a small channel, because having 500 users who come and go, if every one said 'hi' , or we greeted each and every one, $topic would never get discussed, and we'd be a 24/7 meet-and-greet channel!
I generally try and batch read HN (via rss) daily, and sometimes I feel that I am missing out on new comments (made after I finished reading and closed the tab; most commonly the new/recent posts)...would be nice to avoid bookmarking and searching for the new comments
