Perhaps more importantly, it seriously skews the karma that accrues to responses---those that are above the fold will continue to get upvotes while those below the fold get none, so the disparity grows.
I've seen this effect on other sites; one gaming site[0] shows two views of the comment list, "recent" and "top-voted" (both with a "more" button that few people seem to click)---the "recent" comments rarely get more than two or three votes before scrolling off, while the difference between the lowest upvote count in the "top-voted" count and the next-highest comment can be in the hundreds or thousands once a game has been up for more than a day or two.
Comments
Perhaps more importantly, it seriously skews the karma that accrues to responses---those that are above the fold will continue to get upvotes while those below the fold get none, so the disparity grows.
I've seen this effect on other sites; one gaming site[0] shows two views of the comment list, "recent" and "top-voted" (both with a "more" button that few people seem to click)---the "recent" comments rarely get more than two or three votes before scrolling off, while the difference between the lowest upvote count in the "top-voted" count and the next-highest comment can be in the hundreds or thousands once a game has been up for more than a day or two.
[0]Kongregate.com, if anyone's curious.