While the rating for an entirely identical comment seems about as scientific a test as one could hope for, perhaps at least some of the fall-off in points is a penalty for literally copying old comments?<p>(Also, any one comment could fall through the cracks; the best comments can sometimes, by pure chance, fail to catch initial attention and fall out of view, without it necessarily reflecting anything but who was awake and browsing then—there&#x27;s definitely a &quot;rich get richer&quot; effect in any system that promotes highly ranked content.  For example, it would be interesting to know what times of day these two comments were posted.)