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Ask HN: Downvoting threshold

6 points by flixic ↗ HN
From the FAQ:

  Why don't I see down arrows?
  There are no down arrows on submissions. They only appear on comments after users reach a certain karma threshold.
Does anyone know what this threshold is?

6 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 26.1 ms ] thread
Mz
Last I heard, it had been raised to 500. However, I am not the most active member so that may not be current info.
kingofspain
It appeared for me around the time I hit 500. Since then I only used it once and it didn't feel anywhere near as maniacal as I'd hoped.
brudgers
The ability to downvote may feel like a milestone, but flagging has far more impact on the overall quality of the feed. In addition, there's always the question of what difference will the ability to downvote make to the quality of your comments?

A couple of years ago it went from 200 to 500. I was about at 180 at the time. The net result was that I kept searching for better material to submit and trying to improve my writing.

To put it another way, everyone is one good submission or ten good comments away from the threshold the day they create an account.

JoachimSchipper
> To put it another way, everyone is one good submission or ten good comments away from the threshold the day they create an account.

That's a bit too optimistic. My best comment has 36 points, yours has 58; your best submission has an impressive-yet-insufficient 291 points. 500 points is doable, but it's not trivial.

brudgers
You're assuming my comments and submissions are good on an absolute scale. I'm not. A lot of well timed snark helped me get to 500. Back when comment scores were visible, a well considered snarky comment on a rising new submission would tend to collect upvotes, and I would seek them out. That's much harder to do these days because snark is much less popular and thus more frequently downvoted.

My point wasn't that it is trivial, but rather that 200 points or 500 points or 1000 points is obtainable and that the better one's contributions are, the more easily realistic karma goals may be met. Three hundred points seemed like a lot at the time, for a short time, then it was just another number - and I've probably lost that many points via downvotes.