There are other effects as well, status of the commenter included. People are more likely to read longer comments if the author is known to make good comments. I guess that this effect is weaker for shorter comments where the evaluation of actual content is easier. So, low status karma maximisers should write a lot of brief comments, and as they reach high status, they should swap to longer “walls of text”.
It is not a well-controlled experiment—but ciphergoth’s top-level comment, which is later than prase’s, has already gotten more votes than prase’s. This would suggest that the delay was not an overwhelmingly strong effect.
(Actually, MrHen’s comment likewise, and MrHen’s is not short.)
There are other effects as well, status of the commenter included. People are more likely to read longer comments if the author is known to make good comments. I guess that this effect is weaker for shorter comments where the evaluation of actual content is easier. So, low status karma maximisers should write a lot of brief comments, and as they reach high status, they should swap to longer “walls of text”.