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Ask HN: Why dont my upvotes work?

news.ycombinator.com

41–50 of 117 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why dont my upvotes work?

#42
post #2

We can test your theory here if you like. Upvote this comment and I'll tell you if it counted. If you leave a comment I'll upvote it so you can see if you get upvotes. I'd be surprised if either of these didn't just work.

I upvoted you and was able to tell by checking your karma score before and after; aren't those visible to everyone?

Re: Ask HN: Why dont my upvotes work?

#45
post #15

My upvote doesn't work either. Never did (tried a few times) -> I just don't upvote.

How can you tell? I click upvote, the buttons disappear, and I have to move on with my life.

Try to upvote then refresh the page. You will see (or not) that the upvote icon re-appears and the vote count decrements by one.

Re: Ask HN: Why dont my upvotes work?

#46
post #35
post #2

We can test your theory here if you like. Upvote this comment and I'll tell you if it counted. If you leave a comment I'll upvote it so you can see if you get upvotes. I'd be surprised if either of these didn't just work.

Are there thresholds to see post and comment scores?

Post scores are visible to all. PG removed the comment scores a while back. Only the person who posted the comment can see its score.

Re: Ask HN: Why dont my upvotes work?

#47
post #34
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can still flag things - both posts and comments. Could your flagging history be perceived as excessive?

I guess so. I think it disappeared after I flagged a lot of comments in one thread, but I'm not really sure (and it happened a few years ago).

AFAIK there's no "flag" on comments, just stories (conversely, there's no downvotes for stories, just comments). Or maybe I just don't have enough karma to see it (or I lost it long ago).

An other weird thing about HN: sometimes I can't see the "reply" link on a comment for a while, even if I reload.

Like, I wanted to reply to your post earlier but I couldn't even though ch0wn had already posted his own. I don't understand what triggers that behaviour.

Re: Ask HN: Why dont my upvotes work?

#48

Hmm, I guess that 1 upvote does not always equal 1.0 karma. Maybe you could find out more about that by reading through the HN source code ... Also maybe your voting behavior tripped off some heuristic. If I was trying to prevent spam I'd probably disable voting privileges for accounts that regularly upvote submissions that get flagged/banned.

I guess that 1 upvote does not always equal 1.0 karma.

It definitely doesn't when it comes to posts. I believe it does for comments however.

PG's always been exceptionally protective and elusive when it comes to how karma is handled. I assume it's to deter people/organisations from gaming the system.

I've been on HN for years and I still have absolutely no clue how upvotes are handled for posts.

Re: Ask HN: Why dont my upvotes work?

#49

Upvotes on comments, or on submissions? How do you know they don't count? What tests have you done? With no more information than just "my votes don't work" it's like a user saying "the internet is broken." HN has lots of features to help protect itself against spam, sock puppets, voting rings, and more. Maybe you inadvertently tripped something, maybe you've fallen foul of some detector, but there's no chance of wor…

I have tested voting ring: I have upvoted a friend who has upvoted me also. Result: both of us have lost karma :-<

Re: Ask HN: Why dont my upvotes work?

#50
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you tell? I click upvote, the buttons disappear, and I have to move on with my life.

I go to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6547669 , vote to e.g. 0, button disappears, reload page, I get the same points (and buttons) back.

Oh, on posts/polls I can see scores. I cannot see any scores on comments.
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