23

Choose a question you haven't voted on yet, click on the rating so it will show the amount of upvotes and downvotes. After that, vote on it. If the question has a rating of -15, it will show "16" instead of "-14".

EDIT:
Now with freehand circles and drop shadows, enjoy

alt text http://uploads.segfaulting.com/1.PNG alt text http://uploads.segfaulting.com/2.PNG

Now a bounty since this bug really bugs me. No pun intended!

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  • 4
    This also happens for any starting value. Simply show the up/downvote count, vote and see the magic. Your question is at 3/1 right now. If I upvote you, it should be 4 - 1 = 3, yet it shows 5 (4 - (-1)). The same thing would happen if I'd downvote you. It would still show 5 (3 - (-2)).
    – alex
    Commented Feb 2, 2010 at 6:37
  • I see it as well. Commented Feb 2, 2010 at 13:51
  • @Daniel it's hard to miss it.
    – alex
    Commented Feb 2, 2010 at 13:53
  • 3
    A better question... Why were you upvoting a question with 13 downvotes? Sympathy votes just add to the problem of separating the wheat from the chaff. Commented Feb 3, 2010 at 20:37
  • 1
    @gnostradamus: To demonstrate the behavior, after that I canceled the upvote as I suggested everyone else to do in my bug report. I thought it was obvious? I'm not sure what's up with meta and people not understanding examples. Commented Feb 4, 2010 at 3:34
  • @Koper: I see what happened. @pi removed that part of your question when they edited it. Not sure why. Commented Feb 4, 2010 at 5:20
  • @gnostradamus: oh, I see.. I didn't realize he edited it out, it's not THAT obvious now then, sorry Commented Feb 4, 2010 at 7:27
  • @gnostradamus sorry if I over-edited, maybe I got a bit carried away. I just thought there was no point to that remark, I thought it was implied. Feel free to add that missing part back, if you like.
    – alex
    Commented Feb 4, 2010 at 10:20
  • Aha, a bounty. So you're hoping Jeff et all care about the bounty, and will fix this within 7 days? ;-)
    – Arjan
    Commented Feb 6, 2010 at 22:25
  • @Arjan: something like that! :) Commented Feb 7, 2010 at 5:08
  • 1
    Image links broken
    – badp
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 17:06

3 Answers 3

6
+100

Fixed - thank you for finding this!

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  • 1
    It might be helpful to explain a bit about what the problem was. That way if someone does a Google search because they are having a similar problem, they can figure out how to fix it themselves. Commented Feb 12, 2010 at 16:00
4

Confirmed.

Before voting, the votes on this question stood at +1/-1 (normalized as 0). I upvoted it, and I got a big juicy 3, or when turned into two numbers, +2/-1. Removing the upvote left a 2.

Trying downvoting this time, +1/-1 downvote-> 1, or when turned into two numbers, +1/-2, and when reversed, the result was also wrong (I failed to write this one down).

I upvoted and downvoted a few times, reversing the vote each time, and got the "normalized" count up to a 4 before the vote window ran out.

Looks like some javascript has lots its marbles!

No screenshots with freehand circles; sorry to disappoint everyone.

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  • I think it's related to the new design of the individual votes Commented Feb 2, 2010 at 4:17
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    I remember it being very difficult getting the hang of negative numbers too... mind you, I was 10 at the time :)
    – Ether
    Commented Feb 2, 2010 at 4:26
  • @Æther: I actually think this new feature is pretty cool. Yes, I think everybody who was smart enough to get 1000 rep understood it, but the new interface looks much cooler. Commented Feb 2, 2010 at 4:58
  • Agreed! I believe the colours were added first, and then the +/- a few hours later.. I think it's best now, but simply the colours would have been fine too.
    – Ether
    Commented Feb 2, 2010 at 6:25
  • 3
    The colours need to be tweaked to make them distinguishable by those with red/green colour blindness.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Feb 2, 2010 at 9:29
  • 3
    @ChrisF: wouldn't that be the point of the +/-?
    – perbert
    Commented Feb 2, 2010 at 13:50
  • 1
    @The Big Cheese you're right. How much more obvious can this thing be made? I think we're splitting hairs on the functionality.
    – alex
    Commented Feb 2, 2010 at 13:59
  • @The Big Cheese - I'm not with it today at all. Must engage brain before typing.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Feb 2, 2010 at 14:12
4

Apparently, if you show the number of upvotes and downvotes and then you vote (doesn't matter if you upvote or downvote), it will simply add the 2 values and come up with a new, wrong value. It doesn't matter if the initial value vas negative, as Koper thought.

His question as I'm writing is at 4/1 votes. If I upvote, the split count will disappear and it will simply show me 6 (although it should be only 4). If I downvote, the same thing will happen, the vote count will incorrectly show me 6 (4 + 2 instead of 4 - 2). I think it simply adds the number of downvotes and upvotes together, instead of substracting the downvotes.

1
  • Like you commented yourself a few minutes before posting this answer: it's probably +4 minus -2, which indeed yields 6. So, it's probably subtracting, but using the negative number for the downvotes.
    – Arjan
    Commented Feb 3, 2010 at 20:36

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