I have no first hand knowledge, but I would be surprised if a 2.5 year old account with 250 of karma (like you do) is not considered established enough for this purpose.
I wouldn't, actually. I've got comparable karma (221) after about two years, and I can't even consistently downvote items. I noticed down arrows a while ago for comments, but recently I've noticed that they only appear on certain comments, and others are upvote only. My assumption has been that there is some sort of inflation at play.
Not that I'm complaining of course. I think I've only used my downvote powers once normally. The only other time I've used such powers was when I noticed some spam comments, and chose instead to flag them on the noobcomments list.
I honestly think that something like my level of karma is too high a limit for posting things like an RMS. This place isn't reddit, so I take my comments on here a lot more seriously. As such, I don't comment nearly as often since I don't usually feel I have a comment of sufficient intelligence to contribute.
Really, I'm quite amazed anytime I see my karma increase here. I have a definite inferiority complex when reading some of the great comments here.
With experience like that, building any measure of karma could be a slow and arduous process for the typical new user. Unfortunately, I'd imagine a lot of people working on their first project would have the same sort of inferiority complex, yet they would be exactly the sort to benefit the most from an RMS sort of post.
In fact, I'm building (very slowly, thanks to inexperience and a bit of RSI) my first "major" project, and I had hoped to show it off here first, but now that same "I'm not worthy" feeling is making me feel like it wouldn't be welcome.
Also I believe you cannot down-vote comments you reply to or that reply to you or something of the sort. That is to avoid flame wars.
I think the grandparent (xatax) is being far too timid, I am sure 221 karma is enough to do anything on here that any other non-moderator is allowed to do.
Odd, I didn't think the post I referred to was that old.
I guess it also makes sense not to have submission downvotes, since the really bad posts will just get killed, and the iffy posts just won't get enough points to get very visible.
What about a 2.5 year old account with no karma? You'd be surprised at how many lurkers there are. I know quite a few (and was one myself up until a short while ago).
Karma's really a proxy for community participation, albeit kind of one-sided since you don't get increased karma for up-voting someone else (and rightfully so). I don't think it would be unreasonable to say that if you don't participate, then you don't get to solicit the help of others.
But the bar is much lower than that. For the purpose of just keeping spam accounts out, I think the combination of a karma threshold with average non-karma accruing activity over time (such as upvoting others, clicking through on articles, etc) could be an effective filter.
I as well. I've been 'lurking' on hacker news for almost two years. It doesn't mean I don't want to participate, it's just that whenever I do have something to say it's typically been addressed already by another user (the topics I'd probably post on are the hot-topics that draw more eyes.) And I'd rather not add redundancy to comments. To me the natural game mechanics that arise from 'gunning for karma' by being first to post (relevantly) takes a lot of effort.
That's basically where I'm at (speaking of redundancy).
I'm usually afraid to say something wrong, since I know that there are always experts on the topic of the post. It makes more sense to me to let said experts explain a particular topic than to possibly disseminate wrong information, even though I might have a useful perspective to add.
People shouldn't be afraid to say something wrong. If you say something wrong, people should correct you and everyone will learn (including readers that don't know anything about the subject).
The issue is if people that see that you're wrong, instead of correcting you, just downvote you. In my opinion, a wrong statement should not be buried with downvotes, it should stay at 1 point with a reply that corrects it and that get a lot of upvotes.
I started posting less when the karma ratio became a big deal. But you can still pick up a point or two here and there by making encouraging comments to people far down a thread. This does add value to the community, but it's not a big shot-in-the-arm like a popular submission or a relevant "first post". They do, however, add up.
