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Comment by danieltillett | Hacker News Reader

Rather than something complex like this can we get the down and up vote arrows separated? Something simple like putting the arrows on opposite sides of the user's name would be fine. This will stop fat fingered people like me from accidentally down voting a post when I am reading on a mobile device.

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This is only a problem because you can't modify your vote. On Reddit, you can change your vote any time before the thread is archived.

It is a problem even if you could modify your vote as a lot of the time I am not sure if I have up voted or down voted a post.

I love HN and its low fi design, but this is the one thing that I think takes away from the community spirt here. Intent should always be clear.

You could tell from which arrow got disabled by your vote.

But both arrows disappear when you vote.

[edit] Or are you suggesting a way in which the site could be modified to reflect your vote? In that case yeah, I think that would work.

Both arrows disappear when I vote (Chrome)

Many online forums resolve the problem you mention by showing your vote. Disqus, for example, simply shows the up arrow button in a blue highlight if you've already upvoted the comment.

If you're using Chrome I can only strongly recommend the HN Enhancement Suite which takes care of this issue: https://github.com/etcet/HNES

Ues, this, a million times. I have done it again and again without the ability to undownvote. I can't even zoom in far enough to be sure that I have hit the correct button.

This might help with this problem: I reverse pinch gesture the text around the vote arrows for a larger font, vote, then pinch gesture the text back to normal size. This just takes an extra few seconds and is a good workaround.

I'm actually pretty sure I managed to upvote you on mobile, like I intended! Sorry for the strong language but I think it is nothing short of retarded that after so many years and so many complaints this issue has not been fixed yet.

The only reason I know for sure that I up voted you is because you are replying to my post! What do we need to do to fix this - it can't be talent or will given the community.

That's why I'm so surprised this hasn't been fixed yet. I'll go take a looksy tonight to see whether the HN source code is available online.

There is a github thing.

The vote buttons are, as far as I know, a firm and definite won't fix.

The vote buttons are about the only thing I hate about HN on mobile.

Do we have any idea why the vote buttons are a won't fix? Surely it can't be that anyone thinks the current design is good?

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