

Ask HN: where'd my ability to downvote go? - xelfer

I used to be able to and my karma is 131. For about a week now I've noticed that I'm back to up arrows only again.
Thanks.
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ionfish
This change was noted in the recent Arc 3.1 release discussion. Based on that
comment I think the threshold is now 200 karma.

<http://arclanguage.org/item?id=10254>

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xelfer
Thanks for that.

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jacquesm
63... correction 61 points to go.

It's probably a reflection of the size of HN. The more popular it gets the
more people are flowing in at the bottom, to keep the place from descending
into mayhem the karma thresholds can be ratcheted up.

200 still seems pretty low though.

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xelfer
47 now ;)

200 doesn't seem too difficult, it just appeared strange that when I finally
got there it disappeared 2 days later.

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mixmax
I can still downvote, so presumably the threshold has been moved up a bit.

Just write a few more insightful comments or submit some good stories and
you'll probably be able to downvote again.

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profquail
I can still downvote as well, so that may give a slightly better idea of the
new threshold value (you're in the top 25 on the leaderboard, so it's hard to
predict the threshold value from your karma level).

In any case, why isn't the threshold value set dynamically? Maybe something
like "if the user is within the top 70% of karma earners for the past week AND
within the top 85% of karma earners all time" then allow them to downvote.
This way it always adjusts to the traffic on the site and doesn't need to be
manually changed unless you want to tweak the parameters a bit.

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mixmax
Yeah, I spend way too much time on this site :-)

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jacquesm
Being on HN (no matter how much time you spend here) is probably one of the
best learning experiences and ways to invest your time there is.

My daily reading list is usually just about exhausted by the time I go to bed,
if HN gets any bigger I'll have to get more selective about what I read.

So much interesting stuff gets posted here.

~~~
mixmax
True - I started programming around 1½ years ago, since it seemed like a good
skill to have. Without HN I wouldn't have come as far as I have, and would be
oblivious to a lot of core concepts such as the MVC model and recursion. So
thank you HN for teaching me stuff I didn't know before.

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pclark
do you mean topics or comments?

I can't downvote topics. [3446 karma]

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xelfer
Comments, can anyone downvote topics? I didn't know that was even possible.

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araneae
Given the format (that voting for topics is "saving") it wouldn't really makes
sense for that to be enabled.

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jacquesm
A downvote could be used to program a bayesian filter though, even if it would
not be counted.

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neoclassical
Downvoting is pointless. It encourages mass retribution against unpopular but
valid topics.

As someone else said, if a topic is broken -- spam, stupid or otherwise
useless -- it should be flagged appropriately. My two cents, or probably about
six cents worth 1 cent in 1987 values.

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cema
Someone voted you down. I voted you back up again. At least voting up is
useful! (Feels good, too.)

Seriously, while down votes are needed sometimes, I think they are overused. I
often see a legitimate comment voted down because someone apparently disagrees
with its contents. This is not what down votes are for.

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smithjchris
Particularly when you go "against the grain" on here. If I dare say anything
negative about LISP, Emacs, the environment or business mentality, I get shot
down straight away.

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anamax
Because Ghod knows that any negative comment about those topics is inherently
good and worthwhile.

In other news, "they" didn't laugh at Einstein or Newton, but they did laugh
at Bozo the Clown....

