37

Apparently, we're not supposed to be able to upvote comments in moderator elections any more.

Only, it turns out that you can, if you just know how:

Screenshot of upvoted comment in moderator election

Basically, it's yet another back-end validation issue: while the upvote button is missing from the page HTML, the SE back-end is still happy to accept and display upvotes for election comments, so all you need to do to restore the missing functionality is to edit the page HTML in your browser's dev tools and paste in the code for the upvote button from some other page.

What I'm not sure about is whether the actual bug is that we can upvote election comments like this, or that we (supposedly) cannot. Specifically, while the bug report above (about the inability to upvote election comments) is marked as , Anna Lear's answer to it seems to suggest that it may not be really by design (emphasis mine):

This was taken out a while back along with flagging.

Nobody seems to recall exactly what went bust there once flagging was taken out, but for the moment this is by design.

So, is it by design or not? Did somebody decide that comment votes on election nominations are bad and should not be allowed, or was it just a side effect of disabling comment flags that the devs decided not to bother fixing? Who knows?

The thing is, I'd kind of like to know, before I add the code I wrote to restore the upvote buttons into SOUP. :)

Improve this question
23
  • But can you still flag? My guess is they removed the flag option both server side and client side, and didn't expect the client side would also bring upvoting down.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 14, 2014 at 14:48
  • 3
    Wow! I'm going to be popular!
    – Aditya Hase
    Commented Dec 14, 2014 at 14:51
  • 19
    At least we can all agree it was a comment worthy of being upvoted.
    – user642796
    Commented Dec 14, 2014 at 14:52
  • 1
    @ShadowWizard: You seem to be right about flagging: I can bring up the flagging dialog and submit it, but the flag gets rejected by the server.
    – Ilmari Karonen
    Commented Dec 14, 2014 at 14:56
  • Ps. Aww, @ShadowWizard, you ruined my subtle intertextual reference in the title. :)
    – Ilmari Karonen
    Commented Dec 14, 2014 at 14:57
  • Whoops, didn't notice the pun! Feel free to rollback. :)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 14, 2014 at 14:59
  • 1
    Yay, I love hacks!
    – nicael
    Commented Dec 14, 2014 at 15:02
  • 2
    Hrm. I'm gonna check with the community team to see what we want to do in the end. In the meantime, please don't add this to SOUP cause that'd just be majorly weird for the vast majority of users who, you know, don't run your extension. :)
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Dec 14, 2014 at 16:56
  • 5
    @Anna: OK, I won't. :) But if you want my input, I really would like to see the ability to vote on election comments restored. I do feel that it helps to organize the commentary, and to reduce the temptation to post "me too" comments.
    – Ilmari Karonen
    Commented Dec 14, 2014 at 18:28
  • @Anna: Did you ever get any feedback from the community team on this?
    – Ilmari Karonen
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 21:27
  • @IlmariKaronen This needs to be fixed on our end. Providing upvotes via userscript is definitely a non-starter - confusing to everyone who doesn't know about it, if nothing else.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 21:32
  • @Anna: OK, but just to clarify, there are plans to restore the voting interface for election comments, right? Or did I read too much between the lines in your reply?
    – Ilmari Karonen
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 21:34
  • @IlmariKaronen Honestly... the immediate fix will likely be to disable the voting. I personally miss it, but making it work is apparently non-trivial. :/
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 21:39
  • 1
    Nah, it's okay. Thanks. :) Restoring the physical buttons isn't a big problem. You know, as I think more about it... I think the voting/flagging logic has changed since the upvoting was taken out for election comments. In a good way - might be able to get upvotes going again. No promises, but I'll look.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 21:51
  • 1
    @IlmariKaronen - Was able to reproduce this in the SO moderation post (sorry). I believe that the entire post being locked in the previous situations is what led to a false belief (on my part as well) of this issue having been handled. Status-Repro in my opinion.
    – Travis J
    Commented Apr 6, 2015 at 21:06

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
12
+50

Voting for comments has been disabled during the nomination phase for now. We want to make sure that we are at consistent when it comes to elections.

Improve this answer
11
  • 9
    This is sad because I think comment voting is a very important feature when it comes to elections. Very important.
    – ɥʇǝS
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 3:52
  • 1
    You will still be able to vote for comments, just not in the nomination phase of an election.
    – Geoff Dalgas
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 3:53
  • 2
    I'm confused. Your post and comment contradict each other.. Can you clarify?
    – ɥʇǝS
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 3:54
  • 5
    Voting for comments in the nomination phase is disabled, voting during other election phases should work as it did before.
    – Geoff Dalgas
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 3:55
  • 7
    That seems.. Pointless. It isn't easy to add comments during the other phases. Why allow voting on comments at all then?
    – ɥʇǝS
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 3:56
  • 5
    This is sad because comment voting is a very important feature when it comes to elections. Very important.
    – CRABOLO
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 4:23
  • 7
    ^ reposted what Seth said since I couldn't upvote
    – CRABOLO
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 4:24
  • 2
    Ditto on what Seth (and Roombatron) said. Also, voting on comments during the final election phase appears to be impossible anyway, since the nominations are locked then, so basically you're saying that we can now only vote on election comments during the primary (if there is any)?
    – Ilmari Karonen
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 8:13
  • 3
    For a real-world example of the point @Roombatron5000 is illustrating, see Raghav Sood's nomination.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 11:07
  • @BoltClock: Indeed. Just in case some mod comes along and cleans that up, I saved a screenshot.
    – Ilmari Karonen
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 12:49
  • 5
    You also can't see comments on the primary & election tabs (you have to switch back to the nomination tab)... so this doesn't really make sense.
    – hichris123
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 15:00

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .