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Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

They dont matter to you or to anyone else aside from the person that you upvote.

They see it.

And it matters for them, as does the same if you flag a post because if youre flagged (like I often am when I post with emotions) -- they will get a "you're posting too fast" alert which prevents them from posting too quickly (although the cooldown for this punishment is BS too long @ dang ;-) )

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Though HN is prolly one of the best forums n the internet, if youre into this type of content...

Reddit, funded by YC, can go fuck itself over the literal censor cancelling bs it has gone through ever since receiving all that investment by [country we love with money but hate with words]

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I don't see an option to flag, should I?

I was under the assumption that upvotes were how everything was ranked here, why have it if it truly doesn't matter?

also; how do I downvote?

Flags and downvotes show up once you have enough karma (people have given you enough upvotes on your submissions and comments). You will see the down arrow below the up arrow once you get to that point, submissions don't get downvoted. "Flag" for submissions are on the comment page for the submission and underneath the submission title for the list pages (the main page, new page, etc.). "Flag" for comments is visible when you click the timestamp on a comment or the "reply" link (this provides a bit of friction, which is good for flagging as it's a more serious thing than downvoting).

I believe that every new account is shown a banner to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

(The answer to that question is FAQ #5)

They matter in that they influence position on the page (via an algorithm that takes other things into account).

They matter (emothionally) in that it is somewhat rewarding to get an indication that someone else appreciated your submission or comment and it hurts to have your contribution rejected when it was given in good faith.

They don't matter because it's all fake internet points and nobody lives or dies by this.

Downvoting ability comes when you get enough fake internet points. The system works fairly well, although personally I think too much stuff fails to get flagged (or occasionally gets the flagging reverted by the admins) that is already more than adequately described on mainstream news sites.

Anyway, welcome to the party.

Ranking comes from the value of your comment alone, it is not tied to any number others can tacitly agree to

However the feedback you get as a dopamine input is that you can see (and only you can) how many people agree with your sentiment.

However this is a broken metric ; I rarely upvote any story or comment... so there are toons of comments and posts that many people agree with / like but they simply, as do I, not click on the arrows irrespective....

I do click up when I appreciate something, but its rare...

Also, I do not know if this is still true ; one used to have a min of 400 positive comment karma before the downvote arrow was unlocked...

The only thing outstanding as BS is the cool-down for "youre posting too fast" @dang

;-)

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