Ask HN: Where's the downvote button?

34 points by mpetkevicius ↗ HN
I've been wondering for awhile now how some comments on HN become greyed out. Is there a downvote or report button?

I'm also having a suspicion that the [-] button on the right, which I've been using to collapse threads, might be the one. Either way, I find HN's UX confusing.

19 comments

[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 60.8 ms ] thread
Yes, both. Downvote and flag.

You need x karma to see it.

The [-] collapses the subthread, nothing more.

x is actually 501.

Even past that threshold, you can't downvote responses to your own comments. That's probably a wise limitation when you think about it.

Downvoting threads is done with the "flag" button which appears at the same time. Unfortunately, as HN has grown past a certain size, there's gotten to be a critical mass of "made" high-karma censors, who flag nascent postings on a whim. The diversity of articles suffers, limited now to either the things censors like, plus a small selection of postings where teams will "unflag" (also available at 501) this price-of-admission flagging.

Running any kind of good forum is hard, and HN's moderators work really hard at it, but "strangled-in-the-crib" flagging both takes away from the value of the site and gamifies the forum to where it now takes a team to make a posting that survives. I don't have an easy solution, though it might be worth trying to limit flags to one, two, or ten per day.

Yes, exactly. I find this a major annoyance of HN, and wish it would be improved.
I have well under 501 karma, and I'm able to flag articles as well as vouch for dead ones.

I think your idea of limiting the number of flags a user has per day is a good one. I'm kind of surprised that isn't the default behavior already...

AFAIK you need 500 points to unlock "downvote" functionality.
That's a urban legend.

I have over 1,800 points, and there's no downvote to be seen.

I see no downvote on articles.

I do see downvote on some comments (not all).

The rules seem subtle.

I have 7500 karma and I have downvote for comments, but not for articles. I only can't downvotes comments that are replies to my own comments(which I think is smart and is something that reddit should copy).
The pattern I see is no downvotes to replies to YOUR comment (e.g. this one), and no downvotes once the comment is about 2 days old-ish.
There is no downvoting for articles, independent of karma, that‘s correct.
Quite consistently: no downvote button on comments more than 24 hours old; no downvote button on comments that are followups to your own comment.

Submissions don't have downvoting, but you can flag them.

I believe HN takes a holistic approach and takes other criteria into consideration. My downvote button was activated after my karma reached 500.
I have 530 and I see a downvote arrows on comments, which I don't recall seeing before.

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By the way I think that this downvote button is really a bad feature that brings negativity.

Don't like a post? Just ignore and don't upvote it!

I always liked Reddit's intended approach: downvote comments that don't add to the conversation.

Sadly, votes are too easily mapped to agree/disagree or truth/falsehood - see the "1,800 karma" comment below as a key example, where it furthers the conversation but is downvoted "because they are incorrect".

(comment deleted)
HN agrees, and so doesn't have downvoting for posts, only comments. (Posts can be flagged, which is different.)