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by ColinWright 4333 days ago
All this is unofficial, but based on my own observations:

You can never down-vote a submission. When you have enough karma you can:

* Down-vote comments

* Flag comments

* Flag submissions

Flags on submissions affect their ranking in a manner similar to down-voting, except that enough flags can result in a submission being deleted entirely.

2 comments

Flags never delete a submission entirely. We don't delete submissions unless users ask us to (and have a good reason). Everything else remains visible with 'showdead' turned on in your profile.
I'd say that you might not have enough karma to have access to all the features.
Are you suggesting that with enough karma one can down-vote a submission? I certainly don't have enough karma yet.
Only Paul Graham knows.
Or any of the others who work on the code. However, even jacquesm[0] - third on the leader board[1] - says that to the best of his knowledge one cannot downvote articles:

    http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ#downvotearticle
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jacquesm

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

There are no downvotes on stories, unless you consider flagging a kind of story downvote. That's a legitimate way to look at it, since it answers the complaint upthread [1]: if you think that a story is not appropriate for HN, that's what flagging is for.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8124546