from what i have tested (because afaik the admins said NOTHING about this to the community - hopefully someone will show up and tell me i'm wrong and this was long-discussed with the community and i just missed it...)

in X period of time you can downvoat a single user's comments Y amount before you are restricted for Z period of time.

don't know x.

think y is about 10 downvoats..

working on testing z. past 20 minutes.

edit: formatting.