Ask HN: where'd my ability to downvote go?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=745206

by xelfer • 17 years ago

37 28 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I used to be able to and my karma is 131. For about a week now I've noticed that I'm back to up arrows only again. Thanks.

mixmax3• 17 years ago

I can still downvote, so presumably the threshold has been moved up a bit.

Just write a few more insightful comments or submit some good stories and you'll probably be able to downvote again.

xelfer4• 17 years ago

Thanks. Was just wondering if it was something I did wrong. If the threshold changed that's fine. :)

profquail• 17 years ago

I can still downvote as well, so that may give a slightly better idea of the new threshold value (you're in the top 25 on the leaderboard, so it's hard to predict the threshold value from your karma level).

In any case, why isn't the threshold value set dynamically? Maybe something like "if the user is within the top 70% of karma earners for the past week AND within the top 85% of karma earners all time" then allow them to downvote. This way it always adjusts to the traffic on the site and doesn't need to be manually changed unless you want to tweak the parameters a bit.

mixmax3• 17 years ago

Yeah, I spend way too much time on this site :-)

ionfish• 17 years ago

This change was noted in the recent Arc 3.1 release discussion. Based on that comment I think the threshold is now 200 karma.

http://arclanguage.org/item?id=10254

xelfer4• 17 years ago

Thanks for that.

jacquesm3• 17 years ago

63... correction 61 points to go.

It's probably a reflection of the size of HN. The more popular it gets the more people are flowing in at the bottom, to keep the place from descending into mayhem the karma thresholds can be ratcheted up.

200 still seems pretty low though.

pclark2• 17 years ago

do you mean topics or comments?

I can't downvote topics. [3446 karma]

xelfer4• 17 years ago

Comments, can anyone downvote topics? I didn't know that was even possible.

pclark2• 17 years ago

thats what I thought

araneae• 17 years ago

Given the format (that voting for topics is "saving") it wouldn't really makes sense for that to be enabled.

amelim• 17 years ago

You can always flag...

Xichekolas• 17 years ago

No, it's not possible. That is what flagging is for.

neoclassical• 17 years ago

Downvoting is pointless. It encourages mass retribution against unpopular but valid topics.

As someone else said, if a topic is broken -- spam, stupid or otherwise useless -- it should be flagged appropriately. My two cents, or probably about six cents worth 1 cent in 1987 values.

cema4• 17 years ago

Someone voted you down. I voted you back up again. At least voting up is useful! (Feels good, too.)

Seriously, while down votes are needed sometimes, I think they are overused. I often see a legitimate comment voted down because someone apparently disagrees with its contents. This is not what down votes are for.

Semiapies3• 17 years ago

This keeps coming up, and people keep linking to pg's post on saying that's exactly the intent of down-voting.

smithjchris• 17 years ago

Particularly when you go "against the grain" on here. If I dare say anything negative about LISP, Emacs, the environment or business mentality, I get shot down straight away.

Semiapies3• 17 years ago

You can't downvote topics.

Ask HN: where'd my ability to downvote go?

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