More about comment up/downvoting

Published by Vlasta about 9 hours ago.

Let's have a closer look on how comment upvoting and downvoting works. It is not particularly complicated, but I have noticed some misconceptions about how it interacts with the karma system.

The basics

Each user starts with 0 available votes (on account creation or on first login to the new web) and then receives 1 vote every 4 hours up to a maximum of 5. If you use all of your 5 votes, you'll have them back the next day (in 20 hours to be more precise). There is no downside to using them every day, using them responsibly does not cost you any karma.

Effects of up/downvoting

On pages, where comments are ordered by quality instead of date, accumulated votes have the highest impact on the comment order. This applies to set pages, where people review the icon and cursor sets, and to forum questions, where everyone can post one answer. The most useful reviews/answers should make it to the top. If you wish to respond to the review/answer, use the response box.

If a review reaches -25 votes and it contains a star rating, the star rating is deleted. If a comment reaches -50 votes, it is hidden.

Interactions with karma

At this time, only people with at least 5 karma can upvote or downvote a comment. This means that new accounts cannot immediately use this feature, people first need to accumulate some good karma to cast a vote.

The amount of karma influences the power of your vote. For example, if you have at least 200 karma, a single upvote/downvote will move the counter by 2 points instead of 1.

You can upvote/downvote the same comment multiple times if you really like or dislike it. That said, use that feature with caution, the voting system is not there to promote your opinions and suppress opinions of others, its purpose is to promote well written and helpful comments and suppress offensive content, spamming or general low quality content (comments like 'lol', 'hi', consisting of just smilies, etc.). If you are caught systematically downvoting high quality comments or upvoting garbage, it can cost you karma.

If a comment accumulates 5 upvotes, the author of the comment receives 1 karma point. If it accumulates 50 upvotes, the author gets another karma point. On the other hand, if a comment reaches -10 votes, the author loses 5 karma points and if it reaches -50, they lose another 5.

Possible future enhancements

Right now, it is impossible to up/downvote comment responses. If this proves to be a way for trolls to be active, the voting system can be extended. Furthermore, it is now possible to up/downvote old comments and things you did a long time ago can come back and bite you. Similarly, the responses posted today can affect your karma in the future.

As mentioned above, people with 200 karma cast two votes with a single click. This may eventually be changed so that they would cast just a single vote like everyone else, but they would have a higher maximum of votes and a faster recharge rate.