Vote Reversal Time Limit Concerns

Question

I understand the reasons for decreasing the time window on being able to reverse a vote, but I think it ultimately is going to cause more problems than it solves. I addressed this in a comment to one of Jeff's responses to another question on "tactical downvoting", but I think it warrants further discussion.

There are legitimate times when a downvote is warranted based on initial impressions or original content. However, after after additional research (or the question being edited) the downvote is not warranted anymore. By reducing the window it is no longer possible to reverse a warranted downvote for these type of legitimate reasons.

A perfect example of this can be seen by the revision history for this question. Based on the original content of the question, it absolutely warranted a downvote. However, since the question was edited, the downvote is no longer warranted. Unfortunately, having downvoted it initially, I can no longer change my vote (either by removing the downvote or upvoting).

Just to clarify the sequence of events in this particular case, they are:

1. Original question asked.
2. I downvoted the question.
3. I left a comment explaining why I downvoted.
4. Someone else downvoted the question (resulting in a -2 vote score).
5. Someone other than the questioner or myself edited the question.
6. I revisted the question and felt that the downvote was no longer warranted.
7. I removed my comment.
8. I attempted to undo my downvote and recieved the message telling me I was outside the time limit window. (I tried to undo by clicking the downvote again and also by clicking the upvote, both resulted in the same message.)
9. I edited the question.
10. I was then able to undo my downvote.

Based on my understanding of how this is supposed to work, I should have been successful in step 8 since it was after an edit. I also did not provide an answer to the question so I don't see how any of this could have been construed as trying to game the system to increase rep. In fact, I'm not sure how I see voting/undoing votes on a question can game the system at all; doing this on answers, yes but not on questions.

Answer 1

As I understand it, the voting window should have been reset by Jonathan's edit. If not, I would consider that a bug.

Note that you have enough reputation on Stack Overflow to edit the question, an action that should also give you opportunity to change your vote. Until the bug is fixed, I consider this a valid work-around (I highly doubt such isolated actions will trigger any fraud warnings, but if so the resulting noise should provide sufficient motivation to fix the bug... ;-)

Answer 2

Be aware that if you want to change your vote there are two different ways:

• cast initial upvote
• click upvote again to "undo" upvote
• click downvote

That's 3 votes by our reckoning.

• cast initial upvote
• click downvote to convert your upvote to a downvote

That's 2 votes by our reckoning.

Don't be surprised if a) is blocked, while b) is not.

And of course you can always re-vote after an edit, but if you are sloppy in the way you cast your votes (see above), you may be blocked regardless.

Answer 3

I was just bitten by this also. See this question. Nothing wrong with the question as posed. I voted it up. When I returned to the page after a meeting, I saw that an answer to a completely different question from the one posed had been accepted.

No change was made to the question itself. As posed, it does not correspond to the accepted answer (and it does correspond to another answer). (I did not answer the question, myself, having understood it as it was posed. I don't have a horse in the accepted-answer race.)

This is a shame, IMO. A user asks for an alligator, gets a wombat instead, and is happy because s?he really meant "wombat" when s?he said "alligator". The user's question was upvoted as a request for an alligator, and cannot be downvoted once it is understood to really be a request for a wombat.

It makes little sense, I think, that I cannot now change my vote, once I've seen that the question as posed is in fact quite poor, if it was really meant to ask the different, unasked question answered by the accepted answer. I left a comment, instead.

Why the time limit? What difference does it make, whether I change my vote right away or 5 hours later?

Yes, I could edit the question now, but I don't think that is the answer here, to this problem. I should be able to remove my upvote or even change it to a downvote at any time, irregardless of whether the question gets edited. This is a case of the rules getting in the way of what is right, AFAICS.

Answer 4

I am very much annoyed the lock timeout is too short. In my no longer humble opinion after being burnt too many times on casting votes that after discussion in comments were incorrect, the timeout should be increased to 48 hours.

On stackoverflow I can force edit questions, so I edit a bunch of spaces onto the end. As this counts as an edit I can now change my vote. On other sites, the OP is not so lucky.