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When trying to upvote a comment made on a locked post (ordinary lock, not historical lock which remove the vote arrows and flag altoghether) we are greeted with such error message:

Or in words:

This comment is not eligible for voting or flagging

Being the curious type, I went straight away and tried to flag, fully expecting the same message... just to see the flag dialog open up just fine:

I was able to flag as well.

Can the error message please be changed to just "This comment is not eligible for voting"? Or of course, if it's not the intended behavior really disable the option to flag?

The original post on which I experimented is now deleted, but here is other locked post you can play with.

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2 Answers 2

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+50

That's a good idea, but actually another thing confuses me as much as the fact I can actually flag it.

"This comment" sounds a bit misleading because it is not really only this comment, but all the comments can't be voted on (and it is not possible to lock only one comment, as I know). So I propose this wording:

This post is locked; voting on comments is not allowed

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    Why not just remove the voting button altogether, like we do for the posts themselves? Then you don't even need a message with potentially problematic wording.
    – Thunderforge
    Commented Aug 3, 2018 at 22:30
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Trivia: many years ago now, there were three types of votes that could be cast on comments...

  1. UpMod
  2. Delete
  3. Offensive

The first is the upvote arrow. The second is the delete link (only visible to comment authors and mods). The third was the flag option, until we redesigned the flagging system and stopped storing those as votes.

So at one time, this message would have been accurate.

But since it isn't now, I kinda like nicael's idea: let's remove the ambiguity and just tell folks that the post is locked and that that's why they can't vote. And make no mention of flagging.

Comments on locked posts are not eligible for voting

While you're thinking about that, here's a bit of trivia I discovered while researching this: you also can't vote for comments on deleted posts... but you can undo any votes on such comments you might've already cast. I cannot think of any good use for this ability, but it's there if you ever need it.

Jan 11, 2019: this is live:

Screenshot of comment vote attempt on locked post: Comments on locked posts are not eligible for voting

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    I cannot delete my own comment for the same reason
    – mplungjan
    Commented Dec 14 at 17:22
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    @mplungjan This is also true for me, I used to delete obsolete comments of mine on users' deleted posts. I know I cannot upvote any comments on deleted posts but I don't understand the message when I'm not upvoting anything. I want to delete my comments that I see are unnecessary.
    – Mari-Lou A Слава Україні
    Commented Dec 14 at 19:32
  • @Mari-LouAСлаваУкраїні Героям слава!
    – mplungjan
    Commented Dec 14 at 19:46

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