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.
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.
> 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.
A bit offtopic but seeing your karma, I remembered that sometime ago I had made a website which finds how many words a person has written on hackernews and leaderboard stats around it.
I got curious so I checked it with your account and you are globally #23 in that you have written most words and you have written 1,822,427 words which is like 6+ games of thrones (if one GOT has around 300k words)
I also just saw that you have been on hackernews since feb 2007
Your hackernews account is older than me as I was born in 2008 ;)
I am curious how did you find hackernews and what you made stick to the platform for so long and are you perhaps some user number x of hackernews itself like say user number 230 of hackernews, I would be curious to find this data if you might know.
I do wonder if there are any tips in general life that you have for a person like me and I would love to hear your answers!