A helpful yet not quite profound comment of mine from last night is now my highest voted comment in 1.5 years on the site. Based on this single data point I'll attest to well-received comments scoring higher without visible scores.
People don't know if it's at +5 or +500 so they might be more likely to click the upvote on a comment that's already got plenty of karma.
Different people have different views of the purpose of karma, so having it not be visible will affect their voting in different ways. What you propose is one possible outcome, but another is that people stop upvoting at all. What's the point if there's no visible effect?
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A helpful yet not quite profound comment of mine from last night is now my highest voted comment in 1.5 years on the site. Based on this single data point I'll attest to well-received comments scoring higher without visible scores.
People don't know if it's at +5 or +500 so they might be more likely to click the upvote on a comment that's already got plenty of karma.
Different people have different views of the purpose of karma, so having it not be visible will affect their voting in different ways. What you propose is one possible outcome, but another is that people stop upvoting at all. What's the point if there's no visible effect?