ELI5: What does “score hidden” mean and do on reddit

Here's the original thread announcing the change in /r/modnews.

Moderators: New subreddit feature - comment scores may be hidden for a defined time period after posting

A new setting is now available near the bottom of the subreddit settings page - "Minutes to hide comment scores". If set, comments in the subreddit will have their score hidden for the specified number of minutes, after which the score will appear as normal.

For example, if set to "60", any comments less than an hour old will not show their score. Voting still behaves normally, and behavior of the page will not otherwise be affected (best/top sorting will still use the scores, comments with score less than the user's threshold will be collapsed, etc.), but the comment's actual score will not be visible until it is at least that many minutes old.

The goal of this feature is to try to reduce the initial bandwagon/snowball voting, where if a comment gets a few initial downvotes it often continues going negative, or vice versa. By hiding the score for a while after posting, the bias of seeing how other people voted on the comment should be greatly reduced.

Some other notes about how this feature works:

•The maximum for the setting is 1440 minutes (24 hours).

•Scores will remain visible to moderators (and admins).

•Scores will also be hidden for RES users, mobile users, etc. (will display as the comment having the default 1 point in mobile clients)

/r/explainlikeimfive Thread