

Ask HN: How do down votes work? - g0atbutt

I just realized that I now have the ability to down vote comments, but I'm not entirely sure how that happened.<p>Is it once your karma level hits a certain level? Are you ever able to down vote submissions?<p>Lastly, is there a common standard that hn readers use to determine if something should be down voted? Or is it a "relative morality" issue?<p>Thanks for helping me become a better hn citizen!
======
jacquesm
> Is it once your karma level hits a certain level?

yes, 200 points.

> Are you ever able to down vote submissions?

No, but you can 'flag' them and if enough people flag an article it will be
killed. If not enough people flag an article before it reaches 10 points it
would take an editors action to kill it.

> Lastly, is there a common standard that hn readers use to determine if
> something should be down voted?

The official line is a bit blurry, but most people try to vote based on
whether or not something contributes to the conversation rather than to
express their agreement / disagreement, but plenty of people do that too and
there are no hard rules about it. And even if there were those would not be
enforceable.

~~~
ianbishop
Once you comment in a thread, you lose your ability to downvote other
commenters.

~~~
mbrubeck
Not quite. You can still downvote any comments except ones that are immediate
descendants (i.e. direct replies) of your own comment or post.

------
NathanKP
The best way to use your new downvote powers for good is to read the HN
commenting guidelines:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

If a comment doesn't satisfy those guidelines then downvote it. Some people
also downvote comments that they disagree with, but I typically avoid that
tendency, and only downvote comments that come across as overly
negative/critical, or are completely, obviously wrong.

------
dwwoelfel
I think that your avg also has to be positive. Mine was negative, but my karma
was at 205 and I wasn't able to downvote.

------
restruct
After I got downvoting power, I found that the downvotes I checked had no
effect. Was it because I downvoted too many in a row?

------
Mz
I think you acquire the right to downvote when you hit 200 karma. (I didn't
have it at 199 and suddenly did have it at 201 -- so that's what I'm
guessing.)

There's links somewhere to guidelines. Hopefully someone more HN-savvy than I
am will pop in and supply them shortly.

