If a HN user downvotes all comments by another user, is that punished?

Question

The scenario I'm describing is not just downvoting another user's comments in a particular thread.What I mean is that if User A monitors all comments posted by User B across multiple stories and consistently downvotes them (e.g. in retribution for a perceived slight), does HN have a way of detecting that kind of behavior, and if so, is it treated as abusive?

dang · Accepted Answer

Yes. Here are pg comments about this from 11+ years ago: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...The code is more complicated now, though, and I fear that some abusive cases squeak through. If you notice places where you think this is happening, please send them to hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it.

arethuza · Answer

I think you can only downvote fairly recent comments and there is a rate limit on how frequently you can comment so even if someone did do that the damage would appear to be fairly low.On a positive note it looks like you can always upvote comments no matter how old they are.