

Ask HN: What determines whether the down-mod is enabled? - asciilifeform

It seems quite arbitrary: definitely not based on the age of the comment/post. Just how does it work? Apologies if this is covered in an FAQ somewhere.
======
pg

        (def canvote (user i dir)
          (and user
               (news-type i)
               (live i)
               (or (is dir 'up) (> i!score lowest-score*))
               (no ((votes user) i!id))
               (or (is dir 'up)
                   (and (acomment i)
                        (> (karma user) downvote-threshold*)
                        (no (aand i!parent (author user (item it))))))))

~~~
alexkearns
@pg

Can I make a suggestion: down voting a comment should cost the down voter a
karma point, as well as the person who wrote the comment. This would ensure
that people would think twice about down voting, and only down vote items that
they really did not like.

I suggest this because I have seen many innocuous short comments - some
attempts at humor - being downvoted to -10 or so. This seems somewhat unfair
on the commenter.

~~~
TomOfTTB
I upvoted you because I don't think you deserve to lose points for this post
and someone else had already down voted you. That said this is like the
stupidest idea I've ever heard.

I'm no fan of the down vote but it exists to allow the community to weed out
undesirable comments. So those people who use it are at least trying to
perform a service to the community. To penalized them for that is ridiculous.

------
rms
You can't downmod root comments on a story you submit or replies to your
comments. You can't downmod comments older than 24 hours. You need a certain
amount of karma before you can ever downmod comments, and no one can ever
downmod stories.

