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Ask HN: Voting on comments broken ?

21 points by jacquesm ↗ HN
I've noticed that I can no longer upvote whenever the upvote button is there. It looks like the vote goes through, but after refreshing the page you see that the vote hasn't been counted but now the voting buttons do disappear.

Is this just me or is it a common thing ?

And if it is by design then why not simply remove the vote buttons ?

25 comments

[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 37.1 ms ] thread
niyazpk
I just upvoted this post and it is working for me.
jacquesm
It's on comments only as far as I can see. For example, I just upvoted you but your comment shows as '1 points' after I refresh the page.
brk
I just upvoted both of you and it seemed to stick.

Karma-whore!! (j/k)

jacquesm
Interesting, I'll upvote you and see if that sticks.

yes, that one did work.

This is weird!

It looks like it is related to where you are in a thread relative to the things you comment on.

So if you haven't been active in a thread yet you can comment on anything, but once you are active your voting options are limited, but it doesn't show that by removing the buttons.

tjr
Yes, it seems once you're responded to someone, you can no longer vote them up and have it stick.
jacquesm
Cool, thanks !

So that means it is a display bug rather than a voting bug.

Those particular 'up' arrows should simply not be there.

david927
That happened to me about two weeks ago on all browsers and on two machines. But a couple days later it was fine again.
jacquesm
Did you even find out the cause ?
david927
No, I thought I was "kicked out" for some reason and then it just started working again.
lionhearted
It happens if you refresh too fast. It's been like that for ages. While a minor inconvenience, a good thing about it is if you catch yourself making a reactive vote or misclick, you still have a second to hit refresh to null your vote.
jacquesm
Just tested it, waited for 10 second before refreshing the page, same result.

So that's not it.

Also, that wouldn't explain the vote button disappearing (after the refresh the vote button isn't there), which after all means that a vote has been registered.

justlearning
are you using chrome? the latest build? It has been happening to me. Switched to firefox - works as mentioned by lionhearted
jacquesm
Using firefox here.

Everything else seems to work ok, it's just the voting that is completely weird. What's even stranger is that it seems that I'm the only person currently experiencing this.

icey
This has happened to me in the past, pg has had to fix it for me.
mziulu
Well, it is the same for me too. I noticed this behavior one or two days ago, but I dismissed it thinking that maybe someone downvoted the user I just upvoted more or less at the same time.
tjr
Replying to you to test a theory.
mziulu
Ok, I tried to upvote you once, it didn't stick on (a quick) reload but the arrow didn't go away. I tried to upvote and wait some 5, 10 seconds and it didn't stick and the arrow is gone!
tjr
I upvoted you, and it seems to stick. So you can upvote those below you, but not above?
romanm
I got the same problem today , I thought it is part of the karma rating algorithm and I can't give points because I don't have a high karma , but I guess it wasn't like that all the time
pg
I'm experimenting with changes to the code that decides which votes count.
romanm
I see my guess was right, what is the idea ? To make new fellows to give less karma in the beginning ?
jacquesm
Thanks for the confirmation, at least I'm not going nuts.

Would it maybe be an idea to drop the buttons if you aren't going to count the votes anyway ? This feels a bit silly.

If it isn't clear which vote buttons work and which ones are just pacifiers then it might lead people to stop voting completely.

pg
Votes still get registered, even if they don't effect the current score of the item. So it is not quite the same, functionally, as taking away the buttons. Plus if I took buttons away, users would lose the visual indication of what they'd voted on.
jacquesm
Ok. But it feels inconsistent to see an integer vote count, that goes up when you vote, but after a page refresh those votes are all gone.

Maybe there is a way to at least show them to the user that voted ? That way that feeling would be gone.

hlizard
Also can't submit anything today: I get an error message that say: You are submitting to fast but I have no submits today.