[hallowtech]

Maybe you should allow downvoting for everyone then. I'm more likely to downvote a dismissive reply then I am to upvote every positive reply to overtake it. And on the mention of dismissive comments: as a frequent visitor I feel emotionally safer just reading and not posting... so if there is a karma threshold for allowing downvotes, I doubt I will ever hit it.

[kevinskii]

This is a great suggestion. Perhaps a good compromise would be to tie downvoting ability to a "number of days visited" threshold, rather than a karma threshold. Those who visit HN often but comment rarely may be particularly well qualified to judge whether a comment is constructive.

Edit: This might work best for voting ability in general, not just downvoting ability.

[ihuman]

The problem is that people would abuse the downvote button and use it as a representation of "I disagree with you" is read of "this comment adds no value to the conversation."

[olivier1664]

1- Is it really a problem for the thread? If nobody agree with my comment, is it a so wrong action to pseudo-hide my comment to next readers?

2- Why users with karma will have a better understanding of downvote than the passives old-regular-readers? Peoples who read HN every days love the high level of the comments here, let them have produce some feed back. Note that I just defend my interest: I'm not good at creating comment with value (so I do not comment a lot), but I feel confident to reconise good comments from bad comments.

[UnoriginalGuy]

Even with the current restrictions people still use it quite extensively as a "I disagree" button.

[mintplant]

Interesting. The "reply" link is hidden for some comments - but not others - such as this one, yet I am able to bypass it by modifying the "reply" URL. Is this something new, or simply something I hadn't noticed before?

[UnoriginalGuy]

Just click "link" above the post and the reply box appears.

[mintplant]

Right. Hm. I wonder why it does that.

[brudgers]

To slow down deeply nested short responses because they tend to contribute little to the overall discussion.

This thread is an example of why the delay is implemented, and this comment is an example of low value comments.

[UnoriginalGuy]

Save space. If it had to have a "reply" button after every reply in a large comment block it would not be able to fit very many comments on the page.

They really should scrap the reply link entirely and move it next to the "flag" button e.g. | reply

[jessaustin]

And the karma limit is intended to ensure that the people who take this quite expected action have good taste.

[jiggy2011]

Or sign up shill accounts to repeatedly downvote people they don't like.

[cpeterso]

Disallow both up and down vote buttons for the top comment. The top few comments will rise together, taking turns having vote buttons or not.