Ok, I just tracked down the bug and fixed it.

(It was in some new domain-banning code. The problem was that I was checking the domain even on url-less submissions, which caused an error between the point when the story was created and when it was upvoted by its submitter.)

The bug is that when you submit a story it doesn't automatically get voted up. Still no downvoting.

Yes, looks like that's what happened. For some reason the submitter's initial upvote is not included in the votes of this story. I'm not sure how this happened.

You sound like you've seen this before. Have you?

I saw it earlier today... I added my upvote to sort it out. The only similarities were that both stories had no external urls... they were both questions to the community.

Ah, here it is: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=256760

Hmm, sure enough, the submitter is not listed in the voters for that one either. If anyone knows of any other examples, please let me know.

It happened on my last submission. At first I thought I'd been flagged as a spammer, but it still let me vote up manually.

For a day or two my votes didn't count. Maybe they were on moderation when they submitted?

You triggered some automatic protection against some form of abuse. I forget what.

I think that was when I downvoted all the congratulations in your wedding thread. :)

I just submitted a story that immediately had an upvote. Under what conditions do stories not have an automatic upvote?

I've been wondering about the point system too... Lots of comments have negative points, but I don't see how to downvote. Does downvoting require a certain amount of karma?

Yes, I think it's like 25 before you can downvote comments.

I am on 25 and I cannot down vote comments. Is karma rating the only mechanism for restricting this?

It's increased, I was hovering at 43 or so, without a down vote button. But then my karma jumped up to 73, and I can.

Kinda off-topic, but I noticed that you can't (or at least I can't) downvote direct replies to my own comments. I like this feature, but is it new or have I just never noticed it before?

You never noticed before.

Thanks. I guess I'm not as observant as I thought.

You need to get a certain karma before you can downvote comments. I think it was 100 before I could ...

Go to the new page and see the entry in question: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=257108

I'm battling the temptation of upvoting it :)

No, it definitely earned that zero.

Somebody couldn't resist, now it has 1 :(

That wasn't me though.