QUOTE(Maximum_Joe @ Mar 19 2019, 23:57)

No it most certainly did not. People upvote whatever is most visible, especially in the earliest images. This was the case back then just as much as today.
I've actually noticed that happening more and more
recently, but even then it's usually limited to image sets. In doujinshis and mangas, tags are usually still sorted the old way, though it has become less and less strongly pronounced as time went by, probably precisely because the numbers are no longer visible.
But back when the numbers were still visible, at least 95% of galleries were tagged as I described. I mean, I was able to
use that system, with an accuracy that I always found amazing, for years. If a gallery looked something like this:
loli (189), furry (92), pregnant (83), bondage (52), collar (34), impregnation (27), rape (14), ahegao (7)
you could tell immediately that this was a gallery with a pregnant-furry-loli theme (loli is way higher because it is a warning tag), with some BDSM stuff, and maybe a few non-consensual or ambiguous-consent elements.
Now, everything but the loli and ahegao will be in the mysterious "dashed" category, and if you have stuff sorted alphabetically (you know, the default), the "bondage" and "collar" will be the most notable of those, even though they aren't all that important. Even when sorted by power, it's not clear where the cut-off is - is bondage still very common? Or is maybe everything after furry actually quite low? Guess I'll have to check the actual gallery, cause I can't tell from the tags.
QUOTE
Part of the reason the mod power numbers were hidden was precisely to end this kind of misunderstanding.
Well, back then the system
did work out that way, whether that was the plan or not. Honestly, this sounds a lot like "People were using this in creative, useful ways that were not intended! Let's put a stop to that!".