Based on some of my comments that have been nuked from orbit, I thought there was a per-comment score limit of -3 (so a net -4) for karma scoring purposes.
A comment goes near-invisible at -3 or -4, so most individuals won't read it or downvote further.
A motivated brigade can still keep downvoting, e.g. more than 20 downvotes on a single comment.
Brigade downvoting could incentivize future self-censorship. But it's also a strong signal for the Streisand effect, which can be surfaced by a bot and reposted elsewhere.
Has that always been the case, or was that added in recent years? I've seen more than 4 downvotes on a comment in approx 2015 era. It was noticeable because it wasn't about the comment content, but all my comments on one story were being downvoted. By the time it stopped an hour or two later, total karma was down more than 40 points. Good to see there is now a floor on downvotes.
Yeah it was definitely the case back when you could see other people's comment scores that there were often examples far lower than -4.
Don't know when the change was made, this subject has made me notice just how long ago I first joined HN and the last time I thought about how the voting works was definitely years ago.
