I missed something. Why do authors no longer see the current vote value for less than 20? I understand the reason to hide it from the readers (and appreciate it), but I must have missed the why for the author. As so few votes are coming in, some stories have sat at 19 votes for months. I liked to look at them (and being a bit of an engineer, I actually tracked them to see how they changed over time).
ie: I like numbers, even random ones :)
Side note: I do not mind low votes, a vote is a vote, and appreciate that people took the time to vote (which means that they at least looked at my story :)