
Ask HN: If a HN user downvotes all comments by another user, is that punished? - jawns
The scenario I&#x27;m describing is not just downvoting another user&#x27;s comments in a particular thread.<p>What I mean is that if User A monitors all comments posted by User B across multiple stories and consistently downvotes them (e.g. in retribution for a perceived slight), does HN have a way of detecting that kind of behavior, and if so, is it treated as abusive?
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dang
Yes. Here are pg comments about this from 11+ years ago:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Apg%20karma%20bombing&sort=byDate&type=comment)

The code is more complicated now, though, and I fear that some abusive cases
squeak through. If you notice places where you think this is happening, please
send them to hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it.

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arethuza
I think you can only downvote fairly recent comments and there is a rate limit
on how frequently you can comment so even if someone did do that the damage
would appear to be fairly low.

On a positive note it looks like you can always upvote comments no matter how
old they are.

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AnimalMuppet
You can only downvote in the first 24 hours. You can only downvote if you have
over 500 karma. Most users with over 500 karma have better things to do than
monitor someone else every 24 hours.

Could it happen? Sure. Should the site disallow it? Probably, though if it
doesn't actually happen it seems a waste to write the code to prevent it.

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jawns
It would be hard for the affected user to know this is happening, so it seems
as if the only way to know whether it happens is to write the code first.

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AnimalMuppet
Depends on how it was done. If you saw every single post that was downvotable
drop by one point, you might email dang and ask him to look at it. If you
weren't watching that closely, or if it was spread out over the day, then...
yeah, you probably wouldn't know.

