Ask HN: Why can I only downvote select comments?

7 points·socalgal2··9 comments

It's obvious that you can not downvote a reply to your own comments but, today I noticed, in a topic I had no comments in, I was only allowed to downvote about 20% of the comments. The rest presented to downvote button. The conspiracy voice in me thought I was only allowed to downvote things the staff at HN wanted downvoted.

What's the actual rule? Why were most comments off limits to downvote?

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You might enjoy this list of undocumented HN features, which includes an answer to your question:

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m...

Wasn't aware of all of those, thanks for sharing.

You can email the staff using the contact link at the bottom of the page.

I don't think HN staff would ever do that, but what was the topic?

Comments posted more than 24 hours ago cannot be downvoted.

Thanks! I think this is it. Even though it was on the front page I think I didn't realize the topic was old enough to have 24hr old comments as it was not on the front page 10hrs earlier

You can go to https://news.ycombinator.com/news and find recent posts. I like when the discussion is still small.

I can't answer the question, but I've seen it where some comments I can't downvote, but others in the same thread I can. Additionally, some I can't reply to either.

I would lean towards there being a good reason. It also doesn't particularly bother me if I can't register my displeasure. Can be a good thing to be forced not to.

This would be way easier to clarify if you’d provided context on which comments you were looking at.

The conspiracy voice in me thought maybe you know this is a benign thing and you’re just hunting for something to be outraged about.

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