

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

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.
======
Timothee
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.

~~~
DrJokepu
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.

~~~
ax0n
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.

------
jonknee
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.

~~~
conflux0
To be honest it would be nice if HN was less like Reddit.

~~~
RevRal
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 :)

~~~
billswift
Nice sarcasm, I wonder why you got down voted.

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isleyaardvark
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.

~~~
benatkin
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.

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

------
chaosmachine
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

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jamesbressi
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.

~~~
nfnaaron
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.

------
mixmax
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.

~~~
wwortiz
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.

------
daveungerer
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.

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

~~~
DrJokepu
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.

------
nfnaaron
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.

~~~
fh
"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?

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

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

~~~
nfnaaron
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.

~~~
jacquesm
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.

------
jlgosse
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?

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

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

------
ugh
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.

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

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

------
obneq
someone might accidentally upvote a comment, dont worry.

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

------
thedjpetersen
You could always find a friend to rectify your mistake.

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

~~~
thenduks
I believe it's around 200.

~~~
nandemo
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.

