As I understand it, -4 is the lowest you can get (basically everyone hates your point of view), so you may have found a bug but more likely found 5 or so people who don’t like you quicker than expected!

I have seen (my) posts bounce up and down so there I suspect there is a lot of Voting going on compare to actual movement. But in the end HN is biased for positivity (as you cannot go lower than -4)

But someone with sight of codebase might have more useful comments

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john_strinlai 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

the interesting part here is that it is a submission with negative karma, not a comment.

there is no downvote button on submissions, so it doesnt make sense for it to get negative karma.

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jermaustin1 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I always assumed there WAS downvoting for a submission once you hit a certain threshold of user karma. Like flagging and other community moderating functions.

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mplanchard 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have not hit it yet, if there is one. Only options are upvoting, flagging, etc.

	▲	MBCook 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Same. Maybe flags count as -1 after enough?

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registeredcorn an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

(Open question to anyone reading this)

I've been meaning to ask for quite a while now: What exactly is "flag" supposed to indicate?

I assume it's something more specific than "dislike". I take it to mean something along the lines of, "I think this is (sneaky) spam", or "This does not fit on a technology news site, even tangentially.". Or, perhaps something broader like, "I can't describe what the problem is, but this submission/comment should be reviewed by a moderator."

It's just never been particularly clear what the intention of it is.

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benoau an hour ago | parent [-]

> The purpose of flagging is to indicate that a story does not belong on HN. Frivolous flagging—e.g. flagging a story that's clearly on-topic by the site guidelines just because one personally dislikes it—eventually gets an account's flagging privileges taken away. But there's a new 'hide' link for people to click if they'd just like not to see a story.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173809

	▲	registeredcorn an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Ah, interesting. Thanks!

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ColinWright 15 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

FWIW: I have over 135K karma and I can't downvote submissions.

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fortran77 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes there is.

	▲	2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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belthesar 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is correct. A user is permitted to downvote stories after reaching 1000 karma.

	▲	ColinWright 14 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think you are mistaken. FWIW: I have over 135K karma and I can't downvote submissions.
	▲	thunderbong 4 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Nope
	▲	john_strinlai 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		i have 2000 karma and i am not able to downvote submissions.
	▲	c22 36 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Are you able to downvote stories?
	▲	2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		[deleted]
	▲	michaelmrose an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Nope I have 10k

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fortran77 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You can downvote with 32768 or higher karma.

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neilv an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Are you making a joke, like I did about 32767, when I hit 31337? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46760058

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thunderbong 3 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nope

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tnelsond4 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's the maximum value of a signed 16 bit integer. But there's a GitHub page that explains hn lore.

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whilenot-dev an hour ago | parent [-]

What HN-lore page are you referring to? This[0] one explicitly states:

> Although submissions cannot be downvoted, [...]

[0]: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#flaggi...

	▲	tnelsond4 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I meant to reply to John who was asking where someone was getting the 32768 number from. No idea if it's true, but that's the significance of that number. Yeah that's the lore page does look like there's no downvoting submissions then and people are just trolling.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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nickpsecurity 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They come in mobs or waves, too. Historically, they show up first while the reasonable people show up later, sometimes reversing those votes. Others here have noted that phenomenon.