

Why can't I down mod? - doki_pen

I have 160 karma.  I can't find the rules anywhere.
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wglb
I think that nowadays it needs to be 200.

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slater
i'm at 250 and can't downmod.

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doki_pen
I think there is also a time limit. Like 200 karma in the last yr or
something.

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tokenadult
What's the hurry?

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apotheon
Maybe it's just curiosity.

I've discovered I can downmod some comments (though I haven't yet), and not
others. That gets me thinking about things like "What are the rules? At what
point do I get the ability to downmod articles? Is it all relative to the
karma other users have?"

. . . but it's just idle curiosity (for me, at least). The only time I've
honestly, earnestly wished I had the power to downmod submissions was when the
front page was full of the most banal possible Erlang articles, to the point
that even good Erlang articles couldn't get to the front page. The rest of the
time, the fact I lack the ability to downmod submissions just makes the place
feel a lot more laid-back than other places, even while the fact I know the HN
members with the most activity over the longest time can downmod submissions
makes me feel better about the ability of the community to police itself than
places that only allow upvotes for _everyone_.

I think, if I were to implement something like this, I'd probably try grading
on the curve. Maybe the tenth percentile would be able to downmod comments,
and the second percentile would be able to downmod submissions -- or vice
versa. Maybe I'd make comment downmodding a privilege based on relative karma,
and submission downmodding a percentil cut-off. I'm not sure. I'd want
something that grew organically with the community, though, rather than
eventually being 98% of the community because most people have been there long
enough to have 200 points and the remainder are newbies and lurkers.

edit: That ended up being much longer than I expected (thanks to rambling off
into speculation about what I'd do with a new discussion Webapp).

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nostrademons
You never get the ability to downmod articles. I've got 8000+ karma and still
can't.

I believe that you can't downmod comments that are on a thread that you've
responded to. This is to prevent pile-ons, where debates get so heated that
people just downmod all opposing POVs that they don't agree with. Similarly,
you can't downmod comments that are more than a day old from the user page, to
prevent people from downmodding all comments of a person they don't like.

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DrJokepu
I wonder if there's any provision against first downvoting then replying - I'd
rather not downvote someone just to the this and I couldn't find any trace of
that in the source code. But then again, my Lisp-fu is far from perfect, I
might have missed it.

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apotheon
Actually, I appear to have the ability to downvote both this comment of yours
(which is in discussion following my comment above about "curiosity") and the
comment just before my "curiosity" comment, so I don't think the "can't
downvote something in a subthread to which you've replied" hypothesis holds
much water. It seems, however, that I can't downvote the immediate response to
my comment by the guy with 8000+ karma. This may mean that immediately
following responses and/or people with 8000+ karma aren't within range of my
downvote capabilities.

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nostrademons
It's probably immediate responses. I can't downvote either yours or DrJokepu's
responses, but I can downvote this comment.

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apotheon
Excellent! I think we've figured out the mechanism for prohibiting comment
downvotes.

. . . unless it's more complex than it at first seems. I don't really have the
LISP Fu yet to figure it out from the source.

