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Have you ever tried to reverse back your vote on answers, that you already up/downvoted some time ago? and you get messages like, "You last voted for this answer.... and your vote is now locked..." ? if you were like Oh No you didn't!! then keep reading..

Apparently, if you really want to upvote/downvote for whatever unknown reasons you have, you can still do it, and all you have to do, is just make any edit to the answer yourself..

If you see the below, image, I tried to downvote an answer which I had already upvoted 2 months ago, and it basically told me to screw myself over, but after editing the answer, I was able to bypass the system restriction. enter image description here

This obviously does not make much sense, but I give two hypotheses in my answer below anyway.

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    darn it, I thought there was a hair stuck on my screen!
    – Old Checkmark
    Jun 18, 2013 at 16:19

2 Answers 2

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This is most definitely not flawed logic. Let me give an example:

  1. You see an answer that, at first glance, does not seem to provide any helpful advice - so you downvote it.

  2. Later that day (possibly while shaving), you realize that there was actually some helpful information there, but it was just hidden in too much fluff and formatting.

  3. You go back to the answer, edit it to clean up the irrelevant rants and try to ensure that no one else will get tripped up by some tricky formatting or ambiguous statements.

  4. After your edit, the post is now top notch! So you remove your downvote, change it to an upvote and give yourself a pat on the back!

So you see, it is totally plausible for a user to be able to make an edit on a post in order to change their vote.

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    @php - it does make sense if you assume the edit was made in good faith to try and improve the post and not only to change the vote.
    – Lix
    Jun 18, 2013 at 16:08
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    So you're admitting to vandalising... interesting.
    – juan
    Jun 18, 2013 at 16:13
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    @php - Sure, people could very possibly abuse this flexibility. But as I said in my previous comment - the system has to assume that the edit was an attempt to improve the post. With your logic - any new account that is opened could possibly be a sock puppet.
    – Lix
    Jun 18, 2013 at 16:13
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    @php you have to consider 2 other factors in this, first any edit will bump the point, so you can vandalize a post all you want, someone is going to see the edit. Likewise, it is also likely that someone will see a downvote with a timestamp very close to the timestamp of the edit and assume you are the downvoter. Do it enough and you are going to get a nice letter for a moderator.
    – psubsee2003
    Jun 18, 2013 at 16:22
  • @phpNoOBఠ_ఠ If you see this as a potential problem/temptation, maybe your editing permissions should be removed
    – SomeShinyObject
    Jun 18, 2013 at 22:51
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It says in the information popup that voting is locked until the post is edited.

This is so that if someone improves their answer/question in an edit a user can change their vote to reflect those changes. If the edit improves the question, such as making it clearer or adding a more detailed answer, a user could change their vote from a down to an up to reward it.

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    I'm saying that it's working as intended. You are free to improve other peoples questions/answers, as well as your own, and if you did - the question/answer may deserve a change a vote by users.
    – Amicable
    Jun 18, 2013 at 16:06

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