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Comment by gravitycop | Hacker News Reader

I have downvote arrows on comments, but at some point they ceased to affect the score.

It's part of karma-grump protection. One's downvotes do not count, unless he upvotes first and at least as many times. If you run across something you want to downvote, first find something else to upvote. If you want to rack up downvote ammo to spare, upvote often. For example, if you upvote 10 times in a row, you will have 10 downvotes available. After that, your downvotes will no longer count, unless and until you do more upvoting.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39301

I'm considering adding an additional layer of protection against grumps: to only allow users as many downvotes as they've made upvotes. That way each user's net contribution to the global karma would be at least neutral.

View on HN

Thanks for pointing this out. I suspect there may be something genuinely broken with my downvoting, though, because despite having only upvoted for a good while, my downvotes continue to not count.

Alternatively, HN is keeping a backlog of my uncounted downvotes, and counting them in order as I make more upvotes. Thus, as long as there's a backlog, any new downvote I make will initially not count.

Personally, I think the >=0 net karma rule goes too far. I've tended to downvote more than I upvote because I drift towards policing behavior (not "grumpness": not all people who downvote more than they upvote can be classified as grumps, which is a highly subjective notion anyway), and generally have high standards for what I consider worthy of an upvote. Social moderation systems have to account for the variety of sociological roles. Not to mention, the net karma of the site may be negative, but a >=0 rule will never allow this state to be represented.

It is also impossible to determine what my net karma contribution is, and thus that the >=0 rule is even in effect. Net karma contribution should appear on a user's profile page, or at the top menu bar. I shouldn't be expected to track my karma contribution manually.

because despite having only upvoted for a good while, my downvotes continue to not count. [...] I drift towards policing behavior

If you have downvoted a single user many times in a row, you might have triggered an anti-karma-bombing feature. http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+karma+... I would email pg at this site to inquire, and be ready to apologize if an apology seemed called for. Good luck.

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