As I understand it, -4 is the lowest you can get (basically everyone hates your point of view), so you may have found a bug but more likely found 5 or so people who don’t like you quicker than expected!
I have seen (my) posts bounce up and down so there I suspect there is a lot of
Voting going on compare to actual movement. But in the end HN is biased for positivity (as you cannot go lower than -4)
But someone with sight of codebase might have more useful comments
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.
This seems to have gone to -10 and then went up according to this, which matches what your comment had said that you were seeing -10 on your android.
Edit: (actually it had gone all the way to -15) and seems that this website has been still stuck at -8 upvotes at the moment of this comment and this link has also been the proof for me to finally see/confirm this as the submission now has positive upvotes.
It is hardly a satisfying answer, but I haven't the foggiest what caused it. I submitted it the same as I've submitted many other submissions in the past.
Maybe there is an API to downvote posts and some bots found it?
Edit: Actually I would wager that it’s some kind of automatic downvoting when the system detects bad votes or comments. Something like “friends shouldn’t vote”. Since we see voting on posts and not comments we could see it go negative.
If you change `how=up` to `how=down` it downvotes the post.
I tried it once, didn't change the vote count, but I issued the inverse operation with `how=un` and the vote count went up, so I'm guessing someone upvoted at the same time I downvoted. That or it doesn't really work like it says it does, but it does respond with a 301 followed by an OK, so I think this works.
Ive been curating HN Arcade for a few months now. One thing I noticed is the vast amount of ShowHN games that get 5 karma points. I was thinking this was some sort of boosting system that low karma ShowHN posts get.
On HN I almost never downvote. On reddit this was different. Not sure why but I feel that on HN karma is so much harder to get that I don't want to be an obstacle. On reddit I could more easily downvote. It also was easier to get karma. (Reddit is annoying with regards to its censorship though. That is one arbitrary censorship over there ...)
Perhaps some kind of auto-downranking system used for moderation of specific topics or thigns (without explicitly removing them) that accidentally targeted said post? Just idle speculation.
Now, the post linked itself has been upvoted so it doesn't have negative submissions but it seems to have had been the case.
I don't quite understand how posts can have negative points :-/
A hunch but maybe a post which got confused as comment id of some other comment which got downvoted so you had negative karma, but I am unsure of this spooky action at a distance. It would be really interesting to know the reason behind it.
Bots. I've posted many popular and unpopular takes here. Down always comes first, and as the bot votes evap into the ether, the true human take is almost always revealed after an hour or two.
As stated elsewhere in this discussion: downvotes exist for comments on HN, but not for submissions, as far as anyone is aware, which is what makes it puzzling.
As I understand it, -4 is the lowest you can get (basically everyone hates your point of view), so you may have found a bug but more likely found 5 or so people who don’t like you quicker than expected!
I have seen (my) posts bounce up and down so there I suspect there is a lot of Voting going on compare to actual movement. But in the end HN is biased for positivity (as you cannot go lower than -4)
But someone with sight of codebase might have more useful comments
the interesting part here is that it is a submission with negative karma, not a comment.
there is no downvote button on submissions, so it doesnt make sense for it to get negative karma.
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.
When I click on 'A HN post with negative points – how?' from the HN homepage (currently ranked 12 for me), it goes to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48104663 instead of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48106316 (I found the latter via google search for the title string)
I suspect the same is happening for some others too, based on the comments on that article.
Bizarre!
Update: 2 minutes later and the link from the hn home page now correctly leads to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48106316
Never seen that happen before.
This post you are commenting on (*6316) is a link post that points to the other one (*4663)
The normal behavior for link posts in HN is that the title takes you to the link address, not to the post address.
To enter the post address, you need to hit the "discuss"/"x comments" button.
So, what you describe is HN working as expected AFAICT, it's just a bit counterintuitive because it's an HN post linking to another, which is uncommon
Here is a self referencing HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33130986
Pointers are hard
This post has been added as a link, instead of a comment one. Then when you click on it you go the linked page.
LGTM
Original poster of the thread here.
Doesn't appear to be negative anymore, but here is what it looked like: https://vale.rocks/micros/20260512-0652
Screenshot was taken at 06:50 UTC.
Do you have any idea on what caused it?
https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=48104663
This seems to have gone to -10 and then went up according to this, which matches what your comment had said that you were seeing -10 on your android.
Edit: (actually it had gone all the way to -15) and seems that this website has been still stuck at -8 upvotes at the moment of this comment and this link has also been the proof for me to finally see/confirm this as the submission now has positive upvotes.
It is hardly a satisfying answer, but I haven't the foggiest what caused it. I submitted it the same as I've submitted many other submissions in the past.
Maybe there is an API to downvote posts and some bots found it?
Edit: Actually I would wager that it’s some kind of automatic downvoting when the system detects bad votes or comments. Something like “friends shouldn’t vote”. Since we see voting on posts and not comments we could see it go negative.
OP should have archived the page when the count was negative.
Here's a snapshot from when the count was 0 https://web.archive.org/web/20260512115623/https://news.ycom...
I bet some anti-spam measure was inadvertently tripped that dampened the submission popularity, while a bug failed to conceal it.
Take this post for instance, the link to the upvote is https://news.ycombinator.com/vote?id=48106316&how=up&auth=26...
If you change `how=up` to `how=down` it downvotes the post.
I tried it once, didn't change the vote count, but I issued the inverse operation with `how=un` and the vote count went up, so I'm guessing someone upvoted at the same time I downvoted. That or it doesn't really work like it says it does, but it does respond with a 301 followed by an OK, so I think this works.
Someone should email dang as that would be a bug or a fundamental design change or a site compromise. hn@ycombinator.com
HN has the oddest karma system. I've seen submissions get 3 upvotes in the first minute and never another upvote.
> I've seen submissions get 3 upvotes in the first minute and never another upvote.
Is that people looking at the new page and seeing/upvoting your post and then it falls off the front.
That's probably the submitter's friends voting.
Ive been curating HN Arcade for a few months now. One thing I noticed is the vast amount of ShowHN games that get 5 karma points. I was thinking this was some sort of boosting system that low karma ShowHN posts get.
On HN I almost never downvote. On reddit this was different. Not sure why but I feel that on HN karma is so much harder to get that I don't want to be an obstacle. On reddit I could more easily downvote. It also was easier to get karma. (Reddit is annoying with regards to its censorship though. That is one arbitrary censorship over there ...)
Now upvoted, but it was negative
HN has downvotes but you need to have enough karma to access the feature.
Downvotes on comments need a little bit of karma. Now downvotes on submissions, those are not normally doable by random users.
Perhaps some kind of auto-downranking system used for moderation of specific topics or thigns (without explicitly removing them) that accidentally targeted said post? Just idle speculation.
That's correct AFAIK, submissions can't be downvoted.
If anyone's interested, here's a list of undocumented HN features/rules (although I don't know how up to date it is): https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
right, I have reasonably high karma and I can't downvote submissions, although I can flag them.
Yea you can't downvote submissions.
Now, the post linked itself has been upvoted so it doesn't have negative submissions but it seems to have had been the case.
I don't quite understand how posts can have negative points :-/
A hunch but maybe a post which got confused as comment id of some other comment which got downvoted so you had negative karma, but I am unsure of this spooky action at a distance. It would be really interesting to know the reason behind it.
Karma systems in general are opaque. The assumed or advertised behavior is never fully accurate, if it was, it would be all too easy to game.
Behold: my account has -1 karma.
-5 now! Made it -4 for you
Although negative profiles have always been a thing.
You cannot easily downvote submissions, in fact I'm not even sure if you can.
Bots. I've posted many popular and unpopular takes here. Down always comes first, and as the bot votes evap into the ether, the true human take is almost always revealed after an hour or two.
As stated elsewhere in this discussion: downvotes exist for comments on HN, but not for submissions, as far as anyone is aware, which is what makes it puzzling.