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Are you sure your votes don't count? Your average comment score is way over the threshold, and your account hasn't been flagged for any kind of abuse. There a

by pg 17y ago

Are you sure your votes don't count? Your average comment score is way over the threshold, and your account hasn't been flagged for any kind of abuse. There are other reasons individual votes may sometimes be ignored (e.g. apparent karma bombing, or voting rings) but if you upvote a randomly chosen comment, it should work. Let me know if it doesn't.

tptacek 17y ago
I've never seen an upvote fail. It's only downvotes. I know that sometimes, if I downvote, nothing happens, I reload the page, nothing happens, but if I click through to the direct link for the comment the vote has taken effect --- in other words, I know to check for that. What I'm seeing is, most of my downvotes don't count. (Finding a random comment to downvote is more effort than I want to spend on this problem).
- pg 17y ago
  Ah, I see what's going on. If more than a certain percentage of your votes are downvotes (currently the threshold is 65%) the downarrow stops working till downvotes drop below that threshold.
  - elblanco 17y ago
    That's amazing to me that somebody can have more than 65% of their votes be downvotes.
    - tptacek 17y ago
      It shouldn't be. I mostly downvote. (I comment more than I downvote, though). Input to the site is input to the site. If it's well-intentioned, it should be helpful. I assume the 65% rule was put in place to handle abusive semiautomated voting.
      - elblanco 17y ago
        > I assume the 65% rule was put in place to handle abusive semiautomated voting. I'm not sure I understand how that's materially different than what you are doing? So the vast majority of the time when you do go to vote on a comment, it's a downvote? I know that you didn't get a karma in the mid-20k's by having people do that to you -- perhaps they should have. As this discussion is revealing, the system has artificially capped you at 65% but by your own admission it would be some significant percentage higher than that? I'm not sure which adjective I could use to describe such malevolent behavior...."shocking" comes to mind, but so does "abusive". I mean, I'm sitting here stunned. This means that you click the little down arrow at a rate almost 2x the rate you click the little up arrow. And that's only because the system has capped you to that "low" of a downvote rate. Given your druthers it would be higher. Or to put that into perspective, that's ~15 thousand points of your current karma score if this site gave you a point for every vote you doled out. So that I can not loose all faith in humanity, I have to ask this honest question: Do the things people have to say around here either not make an impression on you so you don't bother voting ever, and when you do it's only out of some kind of indignant revulsion and you've only voted some trivial number of times, like 3 times total? (Please say yes). and people seem to not comprehend my bitching about the downvote hoards on HN
        tptacek 17y ago
        I didn't even read this comment, but I'm going to re-clarify anyways. When I see something overtly bad: a troll, something irretrievably wrong from a technical perspective, or an over-the-line personal attack with no redeeming content, I'll reliably downvote it. Otherwise, I don't vote. I'd rather reply to something than vote it down anonymously, and if you're going to reply, downvoting the parent is counterproductive; it effectively asks the site to bury your comment along with the parent. I'm sure I routinely downvote things out of pique just like everybody else, and I'm sure I occasionally upvote things too. Those events cancel each other out. Meanwhile, I'm still reliably downvoting bad stuff. Hence, 65%. To be honest, I don't really care what you think of how I use the site. I just want to speak up in defense of the idea that up/down percentages don't matter. Like short sales, downvotes contribute to the efficiency of the site, just like upvotes do. PS: Now I have read it, and I'm glad I didn't before I wrote the comment above. Come off it. If you want to know how I got to ridiculous levels of karma --- besides commenting a lot --- I'll tell you: once you get to a certain level of karma (which we'll treat as a proxy for all sorts of other reputation effects on HN), it becomes self-reinforcing. You and I could make the exact same comment and I will reliably get voted higher than you, because fewer people expect "good" comments from you. So, go ahead and downvote me as much as you'd like. You'd actually be making my comment scores more accurate.
abstractbill 17y ago
I have definitely experienced some kind of caching behavior in the past: Load a page, vote something up, reload the page and my vote has not counted. But then reload the page some time later (without voting again), and now my vote is counted.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Or someone else voted it up too... Hard to tell the difference.
  - abstractbill 17y ago
    No, I mean I've had the experience where I've voted something up (making the arrows disappear), then reloaded the page, and the arrows are back again.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      That may have been a case of being a little bit too quick on the draw on your end. If you look at the status bar of your brower, your vote has only registered with the server when it says 'done' again. If you refresh before then you may cancel the vote altogether.

by pg 17y ago

tptacek 17y ago

I've never seen an upvote fail. It's only downvotes. I know that sometimes, if I downvote, nothing happens, I reload the page, nothing happens, but if I click through to the direct link for the comment the vote has taken effect --- in other words, I know to check for that. What I'm seeing is, most of my downvotes don't count. (Finding a random comment to downvote is more effort than I want to spend on this problem).

pg 17y ago
Ah, I see what's going on. If more than a certain percentage of your votes are downvotes (currently the threshold is 65%) the downarrow stops working till downvotes drop below that threshold.
- elblanco 17y ago
  That's amazing to me that somebody can have more than 65% of their votes be downvotes.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    It shouldn't be. I mostly downvote. (I comment more than I downvote, though). Input to the site is input to the site. If it's well-intentioned, it should be helpful. I assume the 65% rule was put in place to handle abusive semiautomated voting.
    - elblanco 17y ago
      > I assume the 65% rule was put in place to handle abusive semiautomated voting. I'm not sure I understand how that's materially different than what you are doing? So the vast majority of the time when you do go to vote on a comment, it's a downvote? I know that you didn't get a karma in the mid-20k's by having people do that to you -- perhaps they should have. As this discussion is revealing, the system has artificially capped you at 65% but by your own admission it would be some significant percentage higher than that? I'm not sure which adjective I could use to describe such malevolent behavior...."shocking" comes to mind, but so does "abusive". I mean, I'm sitting here stunned. This means that you click the little down arrow at a rate almost 2x the rate you click the little up arrow. And that's only because the system has capped you to that "low" of a downvote rate. Given your druthers it would be higher. Or to put that into perspective, that's ~15 thousand points of your current karma score if this site gave you a point for every vote you doled out. So that I can not loose all faith in humanity, I have to ask this honest question: Do the things people have to say around here either not make an impression on you so you don't bother voting ever, and when you do it's only out of some kind of indignant revulsion and you've only voted some trivial number of times, like 3 times total? (Please say yes). and people seem to not comprehend my bitching about the downvote hoards on HN
      - tptacek 17y ago
        I didn't even read this comment, but I'm going to re-clarify anyways. When I see something overtly bad: a troll, something irretrievably wrong from a technical perspective, or an over-the-line personal attack with no redeeming content, I'll reliably downvote it. Otherwise, I don't vote. I'd rather reply to something than vote it down anonymously, and if you're going to reply, downvoting the parent is counterproductive; it effectively asks the site to bury your comment along with the parent. I'm sure I routinely downvote things out of pique just like everybody else, and I'm sure I occasionally upvote things too. Those events cancel each other out. Meanwhile, I'm still reliably downvoting bad stuff. Hence, 65%. To be honest, I don't really care what you think of how I use the site. I just want to speak up in defense of the idea that up/down percentages don't matter. Like short sales, downvotes contribute to the efficiency of the site, just like upvotes do. PS: Now I have read it, and I'm glad I didn't before I wrote the comment above. Come off it. If you want to know how I got to ridiculous levels of karma --- besides commenting a lot --- I'll tell you: once you get to a certain level of karma (which we'll treat as a proxy for all sorts of other reputation effects on HN), it becomes self-reinforcing. You and I could make the exact same comment and I will reliably get voted higher than you, because fewer people expect "good" comments from you. So, go ahead and downvote me as much as you'd like. You'd actually be making my comment scores more accurate.

abstractbill 17y ago

I have definitely experienced some kind of caching behavior in the past: Load a page, vote something up, reload the page and my vote has not counted. But then reload the page some time later (without voting again), and now my vote is counted.

jacquesm 17y ago
Or someone else voted it up too... Hard to tell the difference.
- abstractbill 17y ago
  No, I mean I've had the experience where I've voted something up (making the arrows disappear), then reloaded the page, and the arrows are back again.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    That may have been a case of being a little bit too quick on the draw on your end. If you look at the status bar of your brower, your vote has only registered with the server when it says 'done' again. If you refresh before then you may cancel the vote altogether.