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I have recently noticed that if you down vote a question that was at 0 for example, it will become -1. Then if you change your mind (the asker updates their question) and you change it over to an up vote, it will automatically jump up to 1 (giving them +2 instead of 1).

Is this a bug that has been discussed yet?

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Yes. It's +1 for removing the downvote and another +1 for adding an upvote. It's not really a bug, but it is a usability issue. meta.ux.stackexchange.com/questions/382/undo-vote-expectancy – Patrick McElhaney Aug 31 '11 at 20:26
ha! Yea, this has bugged me as well. It's always been that way on StackExchange. Maybe it's a penance for being so quick to downvote in the first place. ;) – DA01 Sep 1 '11 at 5:53
bugged me too... – colmcq Sep 5 '11 at 8:50

1 Answer

up vote 5 down vote accepted

When if you change your mind (the asker updates their question) and you change it over to an up vote, it will automatically jump up to 1 (giving them +2 instead of 1).

No, it does not give them +2, it just gives them +1. You can't cast two votes on a question, obviously. So when you switch from down to up, you are changing your vote, not voting twice.

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If you downvote to -1, then change your mind, it should go to zero, not +1. It seems the functionality is that you can give a + vote or a - vote, but you can't cancel a vote. (it makes sense technically, but is confusing from a UX POV). – DA01 Sep 1 '11 at 5:54
Maybe another way to describe the confusion: If a user has a neutral zero, and you decide to downvote, there's no way to take that back and leave them at zero. All you can do is then upvote, leaving them with +1 -- but all you wanted to do was leave it at neutral. – DA01 Sep 1 '11 at 5:57
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you can cancel a vote by clicking again on the arrow. Hover your mouse for the tooltip which explains. – Jeff Atwood♦ Sep 1 '11 at 6:13
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"you can cancel a vote by clicking again on the arrow" = I had NO IDEA you could do that! Now that I do, good to now! I still say it's not ideal UI, but glad to see it can be done! Thanks! – DA01 Sep 1 '11 at 6:15

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