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As others have done before, I accidentally upvoted a comment that I wanted to flag.

But I am not asking for a way to cancel the upvote. Rather I would suggest moving the "flag comment" to the right margin of the comments.

Currently, on the right margin one gets a link to the little cross in order to delete one's own comment; and on the left we have the up-vote and the flag. I think it would make more sense to have the flag on the right, together with the delete-comment button, and keep the upvote on the left. That way, there is no danger of upvoting when attempting to flag, and in a sense it keeps the positive and negative actions separate: positive action (up-voting) on the left, and negative action (delete, flag) on the right. It seems to me to make more sense.

So I am requesting that the Powers That Be consider moving the "flag this comment" link to the right of the comments.

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  • 2
    I do agree that it's a bit close to the upvote, but I don't know that moving it to the right margin is the "correct" fix from a usability standpoint.
    – Daniel DiPaolo
    May 4, 2011 at 17:56
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    @Daniel: To be clear, I think that preventing the "oops, up-voted instead of flagging" is a nice plus, but not necessarily the main reason for the move. I suspect the current thought process is that deleting is something you do to your own comments, flagging and up-voting something you do to other's comments, and that's why they are in different places. I am suggesting that a different conceptual dividing line be considered.
    – Arturo Magidin
    May 4, 2011 at 18:12
  • edit is also on the right, and it's not a negative function, so I don't quite think that this fully fits your new conceptual divide.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    May 4, 2011 at 18:59
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    @Grace: Edit is only temporary, though, and is always visible (does not simply pop into visibility when you hover over the comment), while upvote/flag/delete are permanent and "hidden".
    – Arturo Magidin
    May 4, 2011 at 19:00
  • Eh? How is edit temporary? Because it goes away after 5 minutes? Upvote/flag go away when you cast one of those. In fact, for moderators, edit is the one thing that's least temporary, since the moderators can edit well after 5 minutes. And for us, it does hide when we're not hovering over it, just like all of the other icons.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    May 4, 2011 at 19:02
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    @Grace: Yes, I meant "temporary" in that it only appears for the first 5 minutes, then it is no longer available. As far as I can tell, after 5 minutes it not merely "hides", it goes away entirely. Right now, my comment above has the "edit" link visible even though I'm not hovering anywhere near it, and the "delete" link will appear to its right when I hover. But the second comment, made 51 minutes ago, has no link, and the delete link appears right next to the 51 mins ago text, with no phantom space for the "edit". What moderators get to see or not see, I couldn't tell you.
    – Arturo Magidin
    May 4, 2011 at 19:06
  • For moderators, edit behaves pretty much exactly like the delete button does. But also, the "goes away entirely" is still the same for upvote/flag, once you actually cast one.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    May 4, 2011 at 19:07
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    @Grace: I guess in my mind the distinction is between "happens automatically" and "happens after you take action." But, if you don't agree,you don't agree. I'm making a suggestion that I think makes sense, wouldn't presume to think it makes sense to everyone. I've never really understood why the flag is right under the upvote in comments in any case.
    – Arturo Magidin
    May 4, 2011 at 19:09
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    The main reason, I imagine, that it's underneath the upvote is because flagging and upvoting are mutually exclusive actions that oppose each other. You can either upvote a comment, or you can flag it. The number of flags required to delete a comment is directly proportional to the number of upvotes on the comment. That, I imagine, is the main motivation behind the current setup. And I know this is just a suggestion - I'm just here to provide other viewpoints as well. I'm happy to listen to your side (and by explaining that distinction, it helps).
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    May 4, 2011 at 19:11
  • I so wish they would fix that as well. They're just too close together, also depending on how fast the page renders I find that the page jumps around a bit before settling down and the next thing I know the upvote icon is sitting where the flag icon is.
    – Kev
    May 5, 2011 at 1:15
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    Now that we can unupvote comments, the problem that motivated this is probably solved.
    – Jonas Meyer
    Jun 21, 2012 at 3:18

2 Answers 2

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This should now be completed, because we require an additional click on a reason to flag.

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    That handles “mistakenly flagged instead of upvoting”, but not “mistakenly upvoted instead of flagging”. This isn't [status-completed], at most [status-comp].
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Jun 4, 2011 at 23:25
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The answer declaring this is now doesn't resolve the issue and has not implemented the actual feature request.
It only makes accidental flagging "slightly harder to do", but not accidental upvoting, as per the original question/feature request.
(So is not really accurate)

As such, I thought I'd provide a note which shows that the problem behind the reason for this feature request is a little less of a problem now due to another feature being implemented.

As of Apr 12 '12, we can now cancel an upvote with the following criteria:

  1. You can un-upvote a comment within the first 60 seconds, provided you did not navigate away
  2. Once you un-upvote a comment you can not upvote it again.

In fact, this arguably resolves the actual issue - if you wanted to flag a comment but accidentally upvoted, now unupvoting resolves this. Also, as you cannot upvote after flagging, not being able to upvote following an unupvote is no difference.

The only scenario I can think of where this would be an issue for is:
If you wanted to flag, but accidentally upvoted, then unupvoted, and then changed your mind about flagging and now want to upvote.
Although, obviously, in this scenario you should just be taking a little more time to decide on the right course of action.

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