
Ask HN: Why can I only downvote some comments? - chatmasta
Recently I noticed I can only downvote some comments. I used to be able to downvote any comment. Looks like the difference is age of the comment?<p>Is this a new development?
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danso
Off-topic but it seems that a change to upvoting has recently been
implemented:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/voteclosed?id=11923301&how=up](https://news.ycombinator.com/voteclosed?id=11923301&how=up)

We used to be able to upvote old items but now it seems there's a limit on
that too. Too bad, I always liked being able to express that I enjoyed
discovering something old in someone's record of contributions, even if no one
would notice my upvote.

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liviu-
Especially given that HN offers no support for saving items other than
upvoting.

~~~
danso
Looks like someone heard you ;)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675)

> _3\. Save and share the best stories and comments. Click on a post 's
> timestamp to go to its page, then click 'favorite' at the top. Your
> favorites are linked from your profile, and you can browse other users' from
> theirs._

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buro9
As I understand it, you cannot downvote a comment if:

1\. You have too low a karma (points, look top right)

2\. The comment is a reply to yours

3\. The comment is quite old

4\. Something vague about a mechanism that stops you stalking someone and
downvoting (spread the downvotes, don't focus them like a meanie)

5\. It's already been downvoted to nothing (you can do it, but I think it has
no effect)

Generally, upvote the positive rather than downvote the negative.

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bradleyjg
>> Generally, upvote the positive rather than downvote the negative.

The exception, at least for me, is top level comments. They have so much power
to shape the conversation that even a merely mediocre one should be downvoted.

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danjoc
HN needs comment folding. I can ignore those discussions easily on reddit by
simply folding the comment. I find down voting here to be quite arbitrary and
at times really mean spirited. It's discouraging to know that people are doing
it merely to order the posts.

~~~
SCdF
I use the Hacker News Enhancement Suite Chrome extension for exactly that. (It
also monkey with fonts and adds tagging a bunch more things, but I honestly
only care about the comment folding).

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spriggan3
Is there a place where all these rules are detailed by the way ? not that I
want to game the system , I'm working on a HN clone, and it would be
interesting to know the business logic behind comments and submissions (how
comments are sorted on an item page, how an article makes it to the homepage,
is there something manual curation ? an algorithm ? ect... ) . While looking
simple in terms of functionalities , HN is actually quite complex when it
comes to content management,moderation and curation. I mean if all this is
managed automatically.

~~~
stormbrew
The logic behind the time limit on down voting is almost certainly to prevent
people from going into someone's history to downvote everything they ever
said. Since your karma is literally the number of (upvotes-downvotes) you've
ever received, doing that to someone could remove a huge chunk of their karma.

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viraptor
You can't downvote old comments (don't know what the threshold is) and
comments that are responses to what you wrote. The time threshold seems to be
on the comment itself, rather than article - I remember seeing pages where
only half of the comments are locked.

~~~
dozzie
> (don't know what the threshold is)

Some time ago I think it was around 24 hours, but recently I noticed I can't
downvote comments older than 12? hours.

And yes, it's tied to comment, not the article.

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stormbrew
I think it's 8 hours.

~~~
mattmanser
The fixed time limit doesn't make that much sense as what often happens is
that the EU morning crowd sees the US West Coast's evening stories as the top
trending stories, with a load of comments that can no longer be down voted,
even though they are the most recent comments and barely debated.

Then again, why make it too complicated.

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herbst
I cant downvote anything and always wonder how people do that, curious to hear
answers.

~~~
vincent_s
I think you need > 500 Karma before you can downvote.

~~~
Noseshine
I think that's not sufficient, other factors like time since account creation
and possibly activity too seem to be taken into account too.

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engi_nerd
That may be true. My recollection is that the ability to downvote became
active right as I crossed the 500 karma mark, but it's possible there are
other factors.

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warmfuzzykitten
The other factors seem quite mysterious. This is the only page in which I've
seen downvote arrows in ages.

~~~
vincent_s
Looks like we have official confirmation now :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12074198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12074198)

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amelius
Imho, if an option is not available, it should be grayed out, and the reason
should be shown on hovering.

~~~
matthewmacleod
Why, out of interest?

~~~
dave5104
To prevent users from wondering what's wrong and asking questions like the
ones in this topic. It's just a good rule of thumb for UI. "Don't make me
think," as it were.

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vmateixeira
Why are people focusing on downvotes other than upvoting what's important?

If you upvote important comments, the ones you dislike will fade away... so
why focusing on so much negativity?

Does it makes anyone feel better downvoting an opinion they disagree with? Why
not try to prove your point instead, adding your comment and upvoting the ones
you like the most?

~~~
vmateixeira
Again, here we go.. the invisible hand, the warrior without face.. and my
comment being downvoted...

Do people really read 1k+ comment threads? Isn't this supposed to work as a
community? If people would upvote comments they agree with wouldn't the most
voted ones be on top?

So what's wrong with what I just said?

~~~
dpark
An upvote and a downvote are just two faces of the same thing. Upvoting
everything you think adds to the conversation is functionally the same as
downvoting everything you don't think adds to the conversation. You aren't
more positive just because you prefer upvotes to downvotes. By choosing to not
use downvotes, what you're actually doing is treating neutral comments (that
neither add nor detract from the conversation) the same as comments that
actively detract. You are making your rating binary when you don't have to.

I'll be entirely honest, I downvoted your comment. The question was about why
downvotes are sometimes not available, and your comment about how it's
negative to use downvotes at all seems unhelpful. So I downvoted it. I don't
feel like that makes me negative. I also don't feel like it makes me positive
when I upvote. I'm helping the comments sort more effectively, that's all.

Also, complaining about downvotes is also a sure way to get more.

~~~
vmateixeira
Thank you for your explanation. It was helpful on understanding your motion
towards upvoting and downvoting. I upvoted it, and am now explaining you why,
because I think this is how we should justify ourselves.

I kind of agree on you downvoting my comment for being off-topic, but is it
really? I think I tried to bring something to this discussion, although not
necessarily answering the OP question. Anyway, it's up to the individual but I
think we shouldn't be that closed. Otherwise this would be solely a Q/A forum.

Regarding the downvotes, I was already aware of that, and was expecting them.
I don't care much about the 'karma' thing and am now actually thrilled to see
the outcome of this experiment. I give much more value to an answer like
yours, as I can learn with it, than the whole point system really. Thanks!

~~~
dpark
> _I upvoted it, and am now explaining you why_

Be careful with this. It's generally _not_ a good idea to explain how/why you
voted. It's really just for the person whose comment you voted on, and
detracts from the conversation for everyone else. Most people will not care
why or how any particular person voted.

> _I kind of agree on you downvoting my comment for being off-topic, but is it
> really?_

I wouldn't classify your comment as off-topic, but rather tangential and kind
of uninteresting in the context of the initial question. It mostly feels like
complaining about the voting system rather than discussion of the system.
Complaints about downvotes are also generally discouraged (per HN guidelines),
and while your initial comment was not a complaint about a specific comment
being downvoted, it is still a complain about downvotes.

On the other hand, I did not downvote your second comment, because it's
clearly relevant to the comment thread you started.

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vox_mollis
What's never discussed is HN's "voting hellban". That is, you are permitted to
upvote/downvote, but your votes don't ever actually count. This is the case
with my account, but it's never discussed or documented anywhere.

~~~
DanBC
What did dang say when you emailed HN?

I've found he's always happy to talk about this kind of stuff. The software
sometimes makes mistakes.

~~~
vox_mollis
Ok, yes, it seems nobody responds to the HN email address regarding issues
like this. They likely filter out those not as popular as you.

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dang
That's neither true nor fair. We sometimes fall behind on emails, and I had
several dozen to answer before getting to yours, which is currently next in
the queue.

Coming here to see the context before answering your email is an ironic moment
to encounter snark about us not answering emails. If you'd merely said we were
too slow, I'd fully agree.

~~~
vox_mollis
Apologies, I wasn't aware of the backlog. It wasn't intentionally snarky - if
I ran a board as popular as this, prioritizing popular accounts would be
sensible thing for me to do, so I assumed.

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SilasX
Sorry if too OT, but I thought I'd put it here:

Why not let people see the scores of replies to their comments? I can
understand hiding scores in general, sure.

But it would be nice to know how popular certain replies are, so I know if
it's worth continuing the thread. There are a lot of times when there's
exactly one comment, which isn't grayed out. I have no idea whether zero or a
hundred people think it's a good reply.

If there are multiple replies, then that indicates interest and I can reply to
the top one. But that doesn't help for the case of single replies.

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singold
In my experience when a thread gets too much chained replies you can't down
vote any more.

I suspect this is to prevent down voting wars in heavy discussions.

