Ask HN: Stupid Question – How to undo accidental upvote/downvote?

6 points Jul 16, 2015

It's such a basic thing, but I'm not sure how to do that on HN. Call it old age, but sometimes I accidentally click upvote when I had to click downvote and vice versa. How can I undo that? It hides both the icons as soon as I click on any of them, and I don't want people to feel bad about my mistake (And there are studies which show downvotes affect more downvotes)

Edit: There might be some answers saying the Karma points don't matter. If that is the case, we should just remove the voting system altogether. It's more about not making the comment writer feel bad, than the Karma points (and I know you feel bad on downvotes).

evo_9 Jul 16, 2015

You can't but you can always let the person know, and then if you really want to undo your mistake, look at their profile and find a few recent submissions/comments and upvote TWO to 'undo' your mistake.

piyush_soni OP Jul 16, 2015

And that might mean I'd have to upvote a couple of his/her comments which I don't necessarily agree with, just to correct a mistake in which I downvoted a comment I agree with. I create an even bigger mess :).

brudgers Jul 16, 2015

Karma is Newtonian. There are no accidents. Or if you want to be statistical about it, it all evens out in the way that it should on the scale of the universe.

Good luck.

AnimalMuppet Jul 16, 2015

I've seen a post from someone else that indicated that they replied to undo a downvote. That is, if I understand correctly, you can't downvote a post and also reply to it. If you reply, it clears your downvote.

Alternate approach: Create another account, log in in that account, and fix it there.

j_baker Jul 16, 2015

You don't. It is not considered necessary for you to correct downvotes.

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