4 ms·

How about an unflag toggle or an undo? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226414 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226414

by nadim 18y ago

jrockway 18y ago
HN appears to be all about not being able to undo things. Is there any operation that's undo-able, other than deleting your own posts?
- pg 18y ago
  Is there anything that's not undoable, except voting?
  - eru 18y ago
    Doing anything and waiting for some time. But I guess that's by design.
  - alabut 18y ago
    Voting's a pretty big one. I'll own up to the fact that I often use votes as more of a bookmarking tool, to follow up on promising links later when I have more time. As a result, I get the urge to unvote something every once in a long while when I realize that it doesn't deserve good karma. Although if the intent is to discourage that usage pattern and make people more careful about voting in the first place, then it works, at least in my case. I use votes as bookmarks much more extensively on digg, where I know I can undo them.
    - icey 18y ago
      I agree with the voting thing. Although with me, I'm just more likely to accidentally vote something up or down from not being precise enough when clicking. I pay a lot more attention to the precise location of my cursor now, but it used to be bad.
      - palish 18y ago
        It seems best to keep voting as a permanent operation. That will require people to think a little harder about whether a story or comment is truly worth an upvote.
        jrockway 18y ago
        Sometimes my mouse slips and I accidentally downmod an excellent comment. Would you write better code if your text editor didn't have undo and you didn't use version control? Probably not.
        alabut 18y ago
        I don't think "voting permanency == more thought before voting" is true for most people. I was saying it was true in my case and even so, it was a (relatively) long time before I noticed that unvoting was missing and that I still use votes as bookmarks, just less often than before. Plus it seems like an inefficient way to cut down on votes for bad links compared to being able to take back a mistaken vote. More importantly, although I've reduced my usage of votes as bookmarking, I don't see why that's a good thing. The implied counter example is that if people could unvote, it would be a giant safety net and unleash a tidal wave of spurious votes, with people clicking on stories willy nilly because their actions were reversable. This doesn't sound true - more realistic scenarios are that there'd be a slight bump in votes overall or even a reduction of "bad" votes by allowing people to correct misclicks. Thinking about my usage patterns, I bet a lot of people realize they can't take back their votes, use votes as bookmarks anyway and are simply annoyed at not being able to trim down their "saved" list by removing outdated/mistaken/irrelevant links. The lack of an undo feature doesn't change most people's actions unless they notice in advance that it's missing because the action they're about to perform is something really important, like paying for something or deleting their writing. A big chunk of the problem may simply be the verbiage and language of the profile page. I can see how newish people (like myself) misunderstand voting for saving because votes are displayed as "Saved: ##" rather than "Votes: ##" instead. Saving implies bookmarking, as well as unsaving. Being able to "unvote" sounds unnatural, it sounds like what happened to Gore in Florida and nobody would expect to take back their participation in a poll. Whereas "unsaving" doesn't sound weird and is a routine operation.
    - radu_floricica 18y ago
      I've seen the voting=bookmarking discussion on reddit too. If it's such a big deal, why does neither site offer a bookmarking link? Any other reason except feature trimming? Looks like a sound idea to me...
  - vlad 18y ago
    I've accidentally upvoted one of the worst posts I've seen on HN before, because I was using a mobile device. Maybe the arrows should be two or three times as big when a mobile browser is detected?
pg 18y ago
You can now unflag.
- wmeredith 18y ago
  We're fast? You're fast.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
    - deleted 18y ago
      [deleted]
  - boredguy8 18y ago
    "Exploratory programming" in action :D
- nadim 18y ago
  Thanks. Would you mind moving the flag link location to not be on the rightmost edge? I think if you see below others also feel the same way. The right edge is the first place I instinctively click, and flag is the least likely use case.
  - Bluem00 18y ago
    Anecdotal evidence in support of your request, I just had the following happen: Read a headline I'm interested in. Looked at the flag button because it's new and interesting. Decided to check out the comments for the headline...And clicked flag. Maybe incidence of this will go down in the future, but the link I'm least likely to click is right next to the one I'm most likely to click, so the mistake is easy.
- xlnt 18y ago
  how about un-upvote or un-downvote? can we have that please?

How about an unflag toggle or an undo? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226414 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226414

by nadim 18y ago

How about an unflag toggle or an undo? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226414 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226414

jrockway 18y ago

HN appears to be all about not being able to undo things. Is there any operation that's undo-able, other than deleting your own posts?

pg 18y ago
Is there anything that's not undoable, except voting?
- eru 18y ago
  Doing anything and waiting for some time. But I guess that's by design.
- alabut 18y ago
  Voting's a pretty big one. I'll own up to the fact that I often use votes as more of a bookmarking tool, to follow up on promising links later when I have more time. As a result, I get the urge to unvote something every once in a long while when I realize that it doesn't deserve good karma. Although if the intent is to discourage that usage pattern and make people more careful about voting in the first place, then it works, at least in my case. I use votes as bookmarks much more extensively on digg, where I know I can undo them.
  - icey 18y ago
    I agree with the voting thing. Although with me, I'm just more likely to accidentally vote something up or down from not being precise enough when clicking. I pay a lot more attention to the precise location of my cursor now, but it used to be bad.
    - palish 18y ago
      It seems best to keep voting as a permanent operation. That will require people to think a little harder about whether a story or comment is truly worth an upvote.
      - jrockway 18y ago
        Sometimes my mouse slips and I accidentally downmod an excellent comment. Would you write better code if your text editor didn't have undo and you didn't use version control? Probably not.
      - alabut 18y ago
        I don't think "voting permanency == more thought before voting" is true for most people. I was saying it was true in my case and even so, it was a (relatively) long time before I noticed that unvoting was missing and that I still use votes as bookmarks, just less often than before. Plus it seems like an inefficient way to cut down on votes for bad links compared to being able to take back a mistaken vote. More importantly, although I've reduced my usage of votes as bookmarking, I don't see why that's a good thing. The implied counter example is that if people could unvote, it would be a giant safety net and unleash a tidal wave of spurious votes, with people clicking on stories willy nilly because their actions were reversable. This doesn't sound true - more realistic scenarios are that there'd be a slight bump in votes overall or even a reduction of "bad" votes by allowing people to correct misclicks. Thinking about my usage patterns, I bet a lot of people realize they can't take back their votes, use votes as bookmarks anyway and are simply annoyed at not being able to trim down their "saved" list by removing outdated/mistaken/irrelevant links. The lack of an undo feature doesn't change most people's actions unless they notice in advance that it's missing because the action they're about to perform is something really important, like paying for something or deleting their writing. A big chunk of the problem may simply be the verbiage and language of the profile page. I can see how newish people (like myself) misunderstand voting for saving because votes are displayed as "Saved: ##" rather than "Votes: ##" instead. Saving implies bookmarking, as well as unsaving. Being able to "unvote" sounds unnatural, it sounds like what happened to Gore in Florida and nobody would expect to take back their participation in a poll. Whereas "unsaving" doesn't sound weird and is a routine operation.
  - radu_floricica 18y ago
    I've seen the voting=bookmarking discussion on reddit too. If it's such a big deal, why does neither site offer a bookmarking link? Any other reason except feature trimming? Looks like a sound idea to me...
- vlad 18y ago
  I've accidentally upvoted one of the worst posts I've seen on HN before, because I was using a mobile device. Maybe the arrows should be two or three times as big when a mobile browser is detected?

pg 18y ago

You can now unflag.

wmeredith 18y ago
We're fast? You're fast.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
- boredguy8 18y ago
  "Exploratory programming" in action :D
nadim 18y ago
Thanks. Would you mind moving the flag link location to not be on the rightmost edge? I think if you see below others also feel the same way. The right edge is the first place I instinctively click, and flag is the least likely use case.
- Bluem00 18y ago
  Anecdotal evidence in support of your request, I just had the following happen: Read a headline I'm interested in. Looked at the flag button because it's new and interesting. Decided to check out the comments for the headline...And clicked flag. Maybe incidence of this will go down in the future, but the link I'm least likely to click is right next to the one I'm most likely to click, so the mistake is easy.
xlnt 18y ago
how about un-upvote or un-downvote? can we have that please?