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Dear PG: Make up/down voting reversible

75 points by vishaldpatel 11y ago

I think I just down-voted someone by mistake, I think. It was by mistake - a misclick. I didn't mean to downvote or upvote the entry. Surely I'm not the only one. It'd be nice if voting was un-doable.

r-w 11y ago
Aw, crap! I didn't mean to upvote this.
- ilurk 11y ago
  Immutable votes.
joshstrange 11y ago
This comment appears to hint that PG is onboard with this feature https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4984221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4984221 It's in reply to this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4982388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4982388 which, among other things, asks about an undo function. I can't seem to find anything on search about PG saying anything though.
dm2 11y ago
This could be done without changing anything on the site. Just create a new page that can be accessed via options which lists the last 10 votes and a delete button.
anigbrowl 11y ago
It's just not that important. Accidents happen but cancel each other out due to statistical noise in busy threads. No single vote is going to doom a worthy comment to undeserved obscurity, or a crappy comment to endless notoriety.
- birken 11y ago
  The problem is the visibility of comments changes their potential for future upvotes or downvotes. If you have a comment sitting on top of a thread, it will get much more visibility and opportunities for a statistically good sample of upvotes and downvotes. But if you downvote a comment and relegate it to the bottom (or gasp, the faded out text), then it can be very difficult for it to recover. A more out-of-the-box solution to all of these problems is to have both comment order and story order be probabilistic rather than absolute, which could help guarantee everything enough visibility to get the fair compliment of upvotes/downvotes. But then again that is much more complicated than other potential solutions (assuming the problem is even large enough to care to fix).
tptacek 11y ago
It would be nice, especially for mobile users, but as a "cost of doing business", it's not worth a lot of effort. A better strategy: think of comment scores along a log scale, something goofy like log3. It's not 'pg anymore, BTW: it's 'dang and his team now.
- comex 11y ago
  This can be used to justify basically any missing feature though. Not incorrectly, per se - the site clearly works well enough in the exact state it is today - but it would be unfortunate if random papercuts (that could probably be fixed pretty easily) stayed around forever because fixing them was a "cost of doing business".
  - tosh 11y ago
    I just upvoted comex but since the arrows are so small I'm afraid I actually downvoted comex :(
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Sure. I guess the subtext here is: this has been a complaint for years and years, so presumably, it's not all that straightforward to fix. It would be better to eliminate karma altogether.
    - krapp 11y ago
      >this has been a complaint for years and years, so presumably, it's not all that straightforward to fix. If only there were some pool of talented programmers with obvious time to kill who would be willing to take a crack at it, almost certainly for free ...
      - nobody20150517 11y ago
        Can't happen since that would let people more easily circumvent bans and further reveal any behind-the-scenes mechanisms to promote YC compliant statements and suppress opposing views.
mahouse 11y ago
Yes, but the timeout should be very short.
antirez 11y ago
People saying statistics filters out the few errors, I don't think this is true for the single news. User X posts a news that gets 2 points in a few minutes. With point 3 the news would stay a few seconds in the home page, enough if it is interesting for other users to be upvoted and end stable in the home page. If the third vote is down for error maybe this will never happen again since now even another upvote will not be enough, and goodbye. Moreover every news site out there has the ability to undo votes and is unlikely that everybody is wrong but HN.
- DanBC 11y ago
  HN has submissions and comments. Submissions can be upvoted, or they can be flagged. They can't be downvoted. No one confused the upvote button for the flag button. Comments can be upvoted, or downvoted, or flagged. People sometimes mistake the up and downvote buttons. > User X posts a news that gets 2 points in a few minutes. With point 3 the news would stay a few seconds in the home page, enough if it is interesting for other users to be upvoted and end stable in the home page. This doesn't happen. People can't downvote submissions. Comments don't get ranked like that on /newcomments.
  - antirez 11y ago
    You are right, flagging is reversible, so what I said only applies to comments. Still I can't see good reasons for not making users able to undo their votes.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
DigitalSea 11y ago
Accidents happen. For every person that makes a mistake, I am sure there are many who will correct it. I don't think being able to change a vote is an important piece of functionality.
tzs 11y ago
Or just move the freaking down vote button. Change the row layout from up/down user time to up user time down That will make it a lot harder to hit the wrong button.

75 points by vishaldpatel 11y ago

r-w 11y ago

Aw, crap! I didn't mean to upvote this.

ilurk 11y ago
Immutable votes.

joshstrange 11y ago

This comment appears to hint that PG is onboard with this feature https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4984221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4984221 It's in reply to this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4982388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4982388 which, among other things, asks about an undo function. I can't seem to find anything on search about PG saying anything though.

dm2 11y ago

This could be done without changing anything on the site. Just create a new page that can be accessed via options which lists the last 10 votes and a delete button.

anigbrowl 11y ago

It's just not that important. Accidents happen but cancel each other out due to statistical noise in busy threads. No single vote is going to doom a worthy comment to undeserved obscurity, or a crappy comment to endless notoriety.

birken 11y ago
The problem is the visibility of comments changes their potential for future upvotes or downvotes. If you have a comment sitting on top of a thread, it will get much more visibility and opportunities for a statistically good sample of upvotes and downvotes. But if you downvote a comment and relegate it to the bottom (or gasp, the faded out text), then it can be very difficult for it to recover. A more out-of-the-box solution to all of these problems is to have both comment order and story order be probabilistic rather than absolute, which could help guarantee everything enough visibility to get the fair compliment of upvotes/downvotes. But then again that is much more complicated than other potential solutions (assuming the problem is even large enough to care to fix).

tptacek 11y ago

It would be nice, especially for mobile users, but as a "cost of doing business", it's not worth a lot of effort. A better strategy: think of comment scores along a log scale, something goofy like log3. It's not 'pg anymore, BTW: it's 'dang and his team now.

comex 11y ago
This can be used to justify basically any missing feature though. Not incorrectly, per se - the site clearly works well enough in the exact state it is today - but it would be unfortunate if random papercuts (that could probably be fixed pretty easily) stayed around forever because fixing them was a "cost of doing business".
- tosh 11y ago
  I just upvoted comex but since the arrows are so small I'm afraid I actually downvoted comex :(
- tptacek 11y ago
  Sure. I guess the subtext here is: this has been a complaint for years and years, so presumably, it's not all that straightforward to fix. It would be better to eliminate karma altogether.
  - krapp 11y ago
    >this has been a complaint for years and years, so presumably, it's not all that straightforward to fix. If only there were some pool of talented programmers with obvious time to kill who would be willing to take a crack at it, almost certainly for free ...
    - nobody20150517 11y ago
      Can't happen since that would let people more easily circumvent bans and further reveal any behind-the-scenes mechanisms to promote YC compliant statements and suppress opposing views.

mahouse 11y ago

Yes, but the timeout should be very short.

antirez 11y ago

People saying statistics filters out the few errors, I don't think this is true for the single news. User X posts a news that gets 2 points in a few minutes. With point 3 the news would stay a few seconds in the home page, enough if it is interesting for other users to be upvoted and end stable in the home page. If the third vote is down for error maybe this will never happen again since now even another upvote will not be enough, and goodbye. Moreover every news site out there has the ability to undo votes and is unlikely that everybody is wrong but HN.

DanBC 11y ago
HN has submissions and comments. Submissions can be upvoted, or they can be flagged. They can't be downvoted. No one confused the upvote button for the flag button. Comments can be upvoted, or downvoted, or flagged. People sometimes mistake the up and downvote buttons. > User X posts a news that gets 2 points in a few minutes. With point 3 the news would stay a few seconds in the home page, enough if it is interesting for other users to be upvoted and end stable in the home page. This doesn't happen. People can't downvote submissions. Comments don't get ranked like that on /newcomments.
- antirez 11y ago
  You are right, flagging is reversible, so what I said only applies to comments. Still I can't see good reasons for not making users able to undo their votes.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

DigitalSea 11y ago

Accidents happen. For every person that makes a mistake, I am sure there are many who will correct it. I don't think being able to change a vote is an important piece of functionality.

tzs 11y ago

Or just move the freaking down vote button. Change the row layout from up/down user time to up user time down That will make it a lot harder to hit the wrong button.