By that metric, I think the choice is pretty clear. The quality of the discussion has gone up since the scores haven't been displayed. In an ideal world we could all be adults, and there would not be people trying to score points through fights (I would make semantic case for "arguments" being good, "fights" being bad), but that has not been the case as the community has gotten larger and larger.

While you are telling that, I also get the impression after thought that yes, less aggressive or provocative comments have happened since the points are not displayed anymore. It's just a totally subjective impression, of course.