Ask HN: I accidentally downvoted a good comment. What now? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I accidentally downvoted a good comment. What now?

51 pointsnatch45 comments

Is there a way on HN to undo an accidental downvote? I feel bad; the comment had a score of 1 and now it is 0.

Move on. For many reasons:

- The karma points don't mean anything.

- if the comment was in fact good, it will be corrected by other viewers

- the comment can not have been so good that you should spend a bad afternoon thinking about it

- in just a few hours, nobody will ever see that comment again, because new articles and comments will continue to come in.

No, really, no need to feel bad: this is just a comment, this is just a pretty meaningless karma point.

Some people don't take being downvoted to heart as much as others (and rightly so) but I'm sure that no-one likes to be downvoted. It is only natural to feel a bit bad when your comment is downvoted (as we're no robots) and I really don't want other people feel bad just because I can't manage to click on the right vote button.

I don't know about "feeling bad" as I have discovered certain kinds of humor I like using that almost guarantees a downvote, even if my comment was valid. I pretty much learned to embrace the downvoting when I post something like that, because I'd rather say my piece than not. Still, it'd be nice to be able to undo a downvote.

It would be nice if you could change your vote like you can on Reddit. The arrows are quite close to each other and I've done the same thing several times. It's especially tricky on a touchscreen device.

To be honest it would be nice if HN was less like Reddit.

So flawed in this case?

Yes. And let's get rid of our comment functionality.

Reddit has comments, HN never should have implemented that functionality.

This is kind of like saying [some group of unliked people] eat sandwiches, so let's not eat sandwiches.

*Edit: Hurrah for accidentally downvoting me three times :)

Nice sarcasm, I wonder why you got down voted.

This is odd - I don't see a downvote arrow, only one for upvoting. Why is this the case?

http://imgur.com/Nbeqa

Edit: Looks like I need more karma.

One way would be to put the downvote arrow on the right-hand side of the meta info: ...xx minutes ago | link [down-arrow]

If it's a good comment it'll probably get more than one upvote, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Stuff happens.

I had asked PG for exactly that (and other possible solutions) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1275394

grinich's HN app for the iPhone & iPod Touch has the arrows far apart from each other (it's shown in the image next to the App Store logo and the screencast):

http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/

I think the narrow width of the iPhone makes it work, though. Your solution (also thought of by others) is the best solution I can think of for the website.

Here's a screenshot: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4595/hn-vote.png

Better:

[up-arrow] 13 points [down-arrow] by isleyaardvark 1 hour ago

This way, the up and down are unambiguously tied to the total number of points (nobody will wonder why there's a down arrow way over next to the word "link"), but are separated by enough of a margin that it's difficult to click the wrong one.

Whenever one of my comments gets zeroed, I always assume someone missclicked. May or may not be true, but it makes me feel better ;p

Ahhhh, I bet you were using an iPad or iPhone or some other touch screen device, yes?

This is an issue: HN up/down votes + touch screen devices.

Yes, some will say be more careful, but I say up/down voting on sites in general are due for an interface/interaction redesign in light of ever increasing touch devices.

I don't think I've ever used a touch device. I have used a treo and centro stylus device that also works with a fingernail.

Don't these things have some sort of mouse/cursor emulator mode, for fine control when it's needed? It'd be easy enough to use: get into fine mouse mode however you do that, and then you can drag your finger anywhere. Your finger doesn't directly manipulate what's under it; instead, the mouse cursor moves. Tap, double tap, triple tap, etc.

I normally reply with a comment where I state that I meant to upvote and accidentally downvoted.

Psychology takes care of the rest - within minutes someone else will have upvoted the comment based on my comment. This mechanism could probably be used for malicious purposes if you cared enough about karma and not enough about basic decency.

Please don't reply saying you downvoted by mistake if you aren't already adding a comment to it, from what I've seen everything works out in the long run and accidental downvote comments just distract from the whole.

I would prefer you don't. Meta is boring and usually unwelcome on HN (from what I've seen). I don't want to read a comment about how you voted or meant to vote.

What now? Now you learn not to attach so much value to the little number next to your own comments, even when it's a 0.

I suppose the opposite happens as well: upvote when downvote is intended. In the long run it levels out.

No I don't think it does, I'm sure that there are several magnitudes more upvotes than downvotes so assuming that the probabilty of accidental upvoting is the same as accidental downvotes, there must be a lot more downvotes-meant-to-be-upvotes then upvotes-meant-to-be-downvotes.

Find another comment or submission from the same person and upvote it, if you feel bad about reducing the guy's karma.

Apologize in response to the comment, if you feel bad about taking the shine off the comment.

Move on.

"Don't fix the UI problem, work around it! Who cares if a good comment is downvoted and a possibly worse one upvoted, as long as the user's total karma is correct?" Is that your suggestion?

Never forget the 80 / 20 rule.

You guys have just downed a: "Focus on the right thing first" saying.

Well, yeah, that is my suggestion. And for extra bonus points, it works right now today. If it gets fixed in code, great.

except that the purpose of voting is supposed to be to help readers find the better comments, not to provide karma to the posters.

I was responding to the concerns of someone who was upset at accidentally downvoting a comment. I suggested two solutions, one which would restore karma, and one which would explain the downvote. Obviously not intended for SOP. One could use either solution, both, or neither.

After thinking about this more, I think you're wrong. There are at least two purposes to voting. One is to help find better comments, because points are associated with the comments.

But the other purpose is to provide karma to the posters. Otherwise there would be no accumulation of points associated with posters and shown next to your name when you're logged in.

Past 200 it doesn't matter. There is no extra functionality that gets enabled, so it only is an odometer telling you how much work you could have done.

It's not that important of a problem. I prefer knowing my vote is irrevocable and using it carefully.

I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but I can't tell how to downvote a comment on HN.

Any insight into this?

You need more karma, then the option will magically appear.

I believe the magic line is at 200. You're almost there :)

After I recently accidentally downvoted a comment to zero I wrote a answer to that comment, apologizing and asking two people to volunteer upvotes. After the parent picked up some votes a few minutes later I deleted my comment. But that’s certainly only possible for submissions high up on the frontpage which are seen by a lot of people.

I probably wouldn’t do that when I weren’t sure that many people would see my comment within minutes, I also wouldn’t do it when I accidentally downvoted someone who already has a few karma points.

Every comment gets some accidental down votes, so I think just accept your slip as part of it's accurate overall score.

A workaround would be to wait for another person that sees the same good as you did when commented.

someone might accidentally upvote a comment, dont worry.

What's the comment link? I'll fix it for you.

You could always find a friend to rectify your mistake.

probably a stupid question, but how much karma do you need before you are able to down vote something?

I believe it's around 200.

Karma isn't enough. Apparently there's also an average karma per comment threshold.

The down-arrow is always displayed for me, but often the up and down-arrows have no real effect: for instance, if I upvote a comment its count goes up but after I reload the page the count is back at where it was. This is a known behavior though I don't think it's documented.

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