4 ms·

I tripped this flagging threshold a while back, flagging submissions which I thought were offtopic for HN. Alas, no more "flag" links for me. Apparently, one sh

by biot 14y ago

I tripped this flagging threshold a while back, flagging submissions which I thought were offtopic for HN. Alas, no more "flag" links for me. Apparently, one shouldn't flag stories as a substitute for the fact that they can't be downvoted.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
matthewcocco 14y ago
To my knowledge, links actually can be downvoted - but only after you yourself have >500 karma.
- manojlds 14y ago
  No, links can't be downvoted. Only comments can be. At the least, I am around 700 Karma, and I can't.
  - georgemcbay 14y ago
    I'm at 7274 karma and I can't downvote links either. So either the karma limit is very high or it doesn't exist. In any case, I don't think article downvotes would serve much use, articles nobody is interested in will naturally fall off due to lack of upvotes.
    - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
      Isn't the problem that you lose some signal with the noise that way. You're not filtering out the chaff, you're skimming off the top level of grain. If a submission is poorly titled then it will appear to be chaff [rubbish] when in fact it was grain [beneficial].
- mscarborough 14y ago
  Articles cannot be downvoted at 500, or perhaps not at all. This article by a prominent community member may help the GP though: http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ
- niggler 14y ago
  Links definitely cannot be downvoted, which presents an interesting asymmetry that incentivizes spamming with links and stories I wonder if the constant reposting of articles would be stymied if the links could be downvoted.
  - jcr 14y ago
    Blog spam (adds nothing to original) and endless coverage of the same topic by everyone in the supposed "press" is still a big problem, and I'm not convinced there's much difference between the two. There's the mostly unsolvable problem of "old-news versus news-to-me" at work which can skew voting and unfairly reward reposting or posting some new regurgitation (blog-spam/press-spam). The reason why the blog/press spam exists is to take advantage of incomplete knowledge, and sadly, it works. And worse, the better the echo-chamber works, the louder the noise gets. As for giving an incentive to spam, it's a tough balancing act. Any new event is by definition, news, even if it is also promoting something. The litmus test is the voting, and HN as a whole still does fair job of up-voting interesting stories most of the time.
- jcr 14y ago
  No, after 500 karma, you can down-vote comments, but not submissions. I fairly sure there is a second karma threshold (or other gating mechanism) which gives you the ability to down-vote someone who you've replied to, or is replying to you. --I'm not sure how it works, and it's not public information, so asking for details is pointless. In essence, the second level seems to mean you're trusted to use down-votes wisely. Personally, I often up-vote people who reply to me with disagreements (even if they are too strongly worded). My reason is simple; I may never agree with them, but I DO appreciate the time they took to give me their point of view.
  - tokenadult 14y ago
    I fairly sure there is a second karma threshold (or other gating mechanism) which gives you the ability to down-vote someone who you've replied to, or is replying to you. I'd like a reality check on this statement. What have other users observed? I think the routine behavior is that users with downvote privileges on comments can downvote comments other than those that are direct replies to their own comments and submissions. But I could be mistaken. What is the general case for most users who can downvote at all? I agree with the OP that the best policy here is upvote what is good. Upvote early and often if you see good stuff. A previous thread I saw suggested flagging blogspam ruthlessly, because that supports the community guideline "Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter." http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - jcr 14y ago
      I've only seen it happen occasionally, but when it does happen, it's consistent for the occurrence, well, at least for a little while. It does not last for very long, so there's a time element involved, similar to how you get a "Can't make that vote" error if you try to up-vote something that is too old. It might be a bug caused by how caching is handled, or it might be intentional, either way, I've never actually tested to see if the odd down-vote button on a parent post actually works.
    - gala8y 14y ago

by biot 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

matthewcocco 14y ago

To my knowledge, links actually can be downvoted - but only after you yourself have >500 karma.

manojlds 14y ago
No, links can't be downvoted. Only comments can be. At the least, I am around 700 Karma, and I can't.
- georgemcbay 14y ago
  I'm at 7274 karma and I can't downvote links either. So either the karma limit is very high or it doesn't exist. In any case, I don't think article downvotes would serve much use, articles nobody is interested in will naturally fall off due to lack of upvotes.
  - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
    Isn't the problem that you lose some signal with the noise that way. You're not filtering out the chaff, you're skimming off the top level of grain. If a submission is poorly titled then it will appear to be chaff [rubbish] when in fact it was grain [beneficial].
mscarborough 14y ago
Articles cannot be downvoted at 500, or perhaps not at all. This article by a prominent community member may help the GP though: http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ
niggler 14y ago
Links definitely cannot be downvoted, which presents an interesting asymmetry that incentivizes spamming with links and stories I wonder if the constant reposting of articles would be stymied if the links could be downvoted.
- jcr 14y ago
  Blog spam (adds nothing to original) and endless coverage of the same topic by everyone in the supposed "press" is still a big problem, and I'm not convinced there's much difference between the two. There's the mostly unsolvable problem of "old-news versus news-to-me" at work which can skew voting and unfairly reward reposting or posting some new regurgitation (blog-spam/press-spam). The reason why the blog/press spam exists is to take advantage of incomplete knowledge, and sadly, it works. And worse, the better the echo-chamber works, the louder the noise gets. As for giving an incentive to spam, it's a tough balancing act. Any new event is by definition, news, even if it is also promoting something. The litmus test is the voting, and HN as a whole still does fair job of up-voting interesting stories most of the time.
jcr 14y ago
No, after 500 karma, you can down-vote comments, but not submissions. I fairly sure there is a second karma threshold (or other gating mechanism) which gives you the ability to down-vote someone who you've replied to, or is replying to you. --I'm not sure how it works, and it's not public information, so asking for details is pointless. In essence, the second level seems to mean you're trusted to use down-votes wisely. Personally, I often up-vote people who reply to me with disagreements (even if they are too strongly worded). My reason is simple; I may never agree with them, but I DO appreciate the time they took to give me their point of view.
- tokenadult 14y ago
  I fairly sure there is a second karma threshold (or other gating mechanism) which gives you the ability to down-vote someone who you've replied to, or is replying to you. I'd like a reality check on this statement. What have other users observed? I think the routine behavior is that users with downvote privileges on comments can downvote comments other than those that are direct replies to their own comments and submissions. But I could be mistaken. What is the general case for most users who can downvote at all? I agree with the OP that the best policy here is upvote what is good. Upvote early and often if you see good stuff. A previous thread I saw suggested flagging blogspam ruthlessly, because that supports the community guideline "Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter." http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - jcr 14y ago
    I've only seen it happen occasionally, but when it does happen, it's consistent for the occurrence, well, at least for a little while. It does not last for very long, so there's a time element involved, similar to how you get a "Can't make that vote" error if you try to up-vote something that is too old. It might be a bug caused by how caching is handled, or it might be intentional, either way, I've never actually tested to see if the odd down-vote button on a parent post actually works.
  - gala8y 14y ago