At what karma level does one gain the ability to downvote stories? Anyone know?
No one has enough karma to downvote stories. Hacker News isn't set up to allow downvoting stories. Some users can flag stories, which has the partial effect of making stories slide down the front page a little faster (and autokilling the stories if enough users flag them).
I don't want to flag stories like this when they don't actually violate the terms of use. But IMHO, there should be some way for users to express the popular "Why is this on Hacker News?" sentiment without cluttering up the comment thread.
Otherwise, we'll just end up with upvoting cabals, and I'd argue that this story is likely to be a prime example of such.
That's one of the functions of flagging. I learned from some veteran participants on Hacker News to flag more stories about politics--even if they relate to startup industry--than I used to. That doesn't always work, but it seems to help.
At what karma level does one gain the ability to downvote stories? Anyone know?