I don't know if it's a good idea or not. I guess the only way to find out is to test it out! I'm all up to give it a trial run for a couple of months and re-discuss it later. I've actually been wondering how comments are sorted in Hubski. Is it some kind of mix between how many votes the comment has and how recent it is? Are the number of replies taken into account? I'm pretty curious about how the current system is set up, is it explained in an older post somewhere? Are you thinking of implementing it as an option or will everyone's comments change to that? If I'll have to rank the people by myself, i'm guessing if I want to opt out I just put everyone on neutral. If it's some automatic feature like b_b suggested, the question whether to make this an option or implement it on everybody comes up. Anyways, thanks for asking for our opinion :) I think everybody wiil agree it's nice to feel we have a say in the matter!
Currently comments sort based on time, and the number of votes. This would not change that. Using this rating mechanism would only bias the sort for the users that you rated something other than neutral. So, if you didn't use the mechanism, you would see no change from the current sort. I've been considering that the bias won't change the score of the comment, but the gravity on it. All things being equal, newer comments sort higher. This would cause the comments of a user that you rated 'poor' to fall faster, and the comments of a user you rated 'good' to fall more slowly.