

Ask HN: Who can downvote?  How does one get that privelege? - joshontheweb

Also, does karma effect how your submissions rank?
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JoachimSchipper
You get downvoting privileges at a certain karma (since about a year ago, 500
points; this is periodically raised as the average user's karma goes up.)
Flagging ("this is spam") and the ability to make polls are also based off
karma.

Karma has no effect on the rank of your submission or the weight of your
votes. However, average per-comment karma has a (mild) effect on the ranking
of comments. Additionally, flagging has a severe effect on the ranking of
submissions (negates ~10 upvotes, sufficiently-flagged submissions go [dead]).
Flagging does not seem to change the ordering of comments, but too many flags
make a comment go [dead]. Users that (repeatedly) make comments that get
flagged [dead] tend to find themselves hellbanned.

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salman89
If the average user karma is periodically raised, and downvoting privileges
are somewhat based upon this, then over time does it become more difficult to
become an influential member?

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petervandijck
It's (by definition almost) fairly easy to become an influential member of a
group of 3. Much harder in a group of 300,000. This has little to do with how
karma etc. works.

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ashishgandhi
500 karma for down voting. Submissions are ranked on votes on the submission.

Disclaimer: That's best to my knowledge.

~~~
joshontheweb
does a vote from a high karma member count or more?

