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This is extremely annoying behaviour. If you've voted to delete a post and then you press the delete button again, you can now rescind that vote, but then you can't vote again!

Because the button is exactly the same and there is always a confirmation popup when deleting, many people have made the mistake of accidentally retracting their delete votes unintentionally. This is unacceptable and needs a fix.

I propose to change the button text/look to make it more obvious that one has already voted to delete. Or maybe use a different popup. Or allow people to cast the vote again if they accidentally retracted it (but not after the post has been undeleted).

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  • 10
    "Or maybe use a different popup": Make the pop-up for retracting your delete vote different from the pop-up for casting it
    – Ryan M
    Nov 12, 2021 at 12:21
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    That said, I like these alternate ideas better than that idea.
    – Ryan M
    Nov 12, 2021 at 12:21
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    It's a bit annoying, and you're prone to retract delete votes accidentally, yes. Just happened today to me. I don't care which solution should be implemented, both proposals are fine for me. Nov 12, 2021 at 14:50
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    I haven't used this yet, but I see this is very true. Nov 12, 2021 at 17:11
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    This 1000 times. I have already retracted several delete votes by mistake. Another solution would be to allow casting the vote again within some small time frame, like 5 minutes. Nov 20, 2021 at 9:19
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    For those that add custom CSS to SE, the following CSS will put an asterisk after the vote count on the close and delete buttons if you've voted: /*Indicate you have voted to close*/ .js-post-menu button[title*="You"] .existing-flag-count:after, .js-post-menu button[title*="you"] .existing-flag-count:after { content:")*"; } /*Indicate you have voted to delete*/ .js-post-menu button.js-delete-post[title*="You"]:after, .js-post-menu button.js-delete-post[title*="you"]:after { content:"*"; position: relative; right:.3em }
    – Makyen
    Jun 29, 2022 at 17:20

2 Answers 2

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+50

I made a script to help with this after accidentally retracting my delete vote a couple of times here on Meta SE. I got frustrated enough to pull out my shoddy JavaScript skills. They were just as shoddy as I remember...

After installing the script, when you load a post that is not yet deleted but has a delete vote from you on it, the "Delete" text is replaced with "Retract Delete":

Retract Delete button, renamed from Delete

The same will apply to undelete votes as I figure that, while rarer, this confusion could still be present:

Retract Undelete button, renamed from Undelete

The prompts when you click these buttons now have ALL CAPS text to try and draw a bit more attention to what you're doing as well:

Revised prompt when asking to retract vote to delete

If you're a keyboard user, it will also replace the dialog with a Stacks confirmation dialog. If you're robotically performing the keyboard actions to delete, the confirmation dialog will catch you as it defaults to "Cancel".

Stacks prompt when retracting vote to delete when using keyboard shortcuts

Here's the GitHub repository for it. If you run into issues, you can report them there or over on the Stack Apps post. (Install Link, requires a script manager like Tampermonkey)

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I also wrote a script for this, found the other one a bit too heavy.

Here it is (2 lines) undo-delv.user.js

It doesn't change the dialog, only the text, as shown below.

Undo-delv

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  • assert 2*line + 3*sentence == 1*minimalism
    – bad_coder
    Jul 4, 2022 at 18:56

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