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This post isn't specific to Puzzling.SE, but I am posting it here, since this is where I learned it.

I was a member on Puzzling.SE for many months before I figured out how to correctly undo an up-vote (or down-vote). The first 3-4 months I would just click down-vote to undo the up-vote, and then get a little frustrated that it wouldn't undo, but would actually down-vote.

Eventually, I accidentally figured it out by trying to click the up-vote button again, and realized that it undid the up-vote.

This should be more dummy proof, on all stack sites. Maybe a message should be there, or pop-up, to educate the user.

I suspect that other users have had the same problem.

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    $\begingroup$ This was actually in the page for vote up (How do I vote up? second paragraph) and for vote down, but I do agree that we should include this in a popup for those who don't read the pages in the help center. However, this would clutter up the page. When you downvote, you already see a popup that says "Please consider adding a comment if you think this post can be improved." It's annoying if you get so many popups every time you vote. $\endgroup$ – mmking Jul 12 '15 at 14:36
  • $\begingroup$ And maybe consider limiting this to users who have cast less than some number of votes. I don't need to see the same message the first time I vote and the thousandth time I vote! $\endgroup$ – mmking Jul 12 '15 at 14:36
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    $\begingroup$ The only thing needed is to show a popup only when a user up-votes a post, and then tries to down-vote it later. The message should say, "Down-voting will not just undo your up-vote. If you want to only undo your up-vote, simply click the up-vote button again." Then have 2 reply buttons: "OK, I will do that." and "No, I meant to remove my up-vote AND down-vote this post." My theory is that almost always, people are trying to undo their up-vote. $\endgroup$ – JLee Jul 12 '15 at 22:11
  • $\begingroup$ @mmking Yes it was there, but pretty much no one ever reads those pages. Hell, I forced myself even to click on the link you provided, and I am the one posting about this. That is how strong the resistance is to reading those pages. haha $\endgroup$ – JLee Jul 12 '15 at 22:12
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    $\begingroup$ Habits die hard, and better than retraining would be just to let you downvote to cancel an upvote. There's a really old SE meta post on it. $\endgroup$ – xnor Jul 13 '15 at 11:29
  • $\begingroup$ I don't know how widespread this problem is, but at the most I'd like something in the tooltip (similar to the "click again to undo" on whichever one is active). Anything more I would feel is intrusive. $\endgroup$ – Set Big O Jul 13 '15 at 13:46
  • $\begingroup$ @xnor yes, old habits do die hard, and I agree that just letting people downvote to cancel an upvote is the very best solution! $\endgroup$ – JLee Jul 13 '15 at 14:44

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