and further replies in that subthread will incur 5 karma points penalty.
Is there still a warning given about this five point penalty? I ask because I it presumably exists but I have yet to see it, either after this change or the previous change. If it does exist I must just have never wanted to reply to a comment that has been significantly downvoted and, more recently, never have wanted to reply to a comment with a downvoted ancestor.
Performed the following experiment:
Went to this comment, which has (right now) a score of -9 and a child with a score of +12 and a grandchild with a score of +4.
Recorded my karma score (9686).
Attempted to reply to the downvoted comment; got the warning. Didn't post a reply.
Attempted to reply to the upvoted child; got the warning (which, incidentally, warns about replying to downvoted comments, which might be confusing). Didn't post a reply.
Also performed the following experiment:
Went to this post, which has (right now) a score of -9 and some upvoted comme...
I just found out that a new website feature was implemented 2 days ago. If a comment is voted to -4 or below, it and all replies and downstream comments from it will be hidden from Recent Comments, and further replies in that subthread will incur 5 karma points penalty. The hiding, but not karma penalty, applies retroactively to comments in that subthread posted before the -4 vote.
This seems to be worth a discussion post since most people are probably still voting things to below -3 without knowing the new consequences of doing so.