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I'm somewhat new to meta, but I figured I would report this. When I voted down, it went down by 2 (from 3 to 1). Then it reverted itself back because it didn't allow the downvote because of a cap or something.

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I don't know about that... the -1 I gave you seems to stick. :/ –  Lorem Ipsum Nov 18 '11 at 20:27
What went down by 2? The question/answer score? The user's rep? Your rep? Care to provide a link? –  Anthony Pegram Nov 18 '11 at 20:27
@AnthonyPegram On stackoverflow when you vote for a question (up or down, obviously) I voted down. It went down by 2 and reverted back. The reverting back part is normal because I had reached some sort of limit or I wasn't allowed to vote on it or something, but it still subtraced -2 instead of the normal -1 before it reverted. –  Gabe Nov 18 '11 at 20:28
There is a chance you hit the button millisecond before vote update, where someone hit it second before you. Therefore you got -2. –  joltmode Nov 18 '11 at 20:28
@Tom I did it several times to make sure it wasn't just a mistake or something. It happened repeatedly –  Gabe Nov 18 '11 at 20:29

2 Answers 2

up vote 5 down vote accepted

Had you previously voted the same post up? It's not uncommon for people to:

  1. vote up
  2. later realize the answer is wrong
  3. try to cancel the upvote by pressing the downvote button
  4. see the vote count flicker while the vote is being processed
  5. find that the vote is "locked in" because the original vote was cast a long time ago

The reason for what you're seeing is that going from upvote to downvote is a change of score + 1 to score - 1, a net change of two.

(The correct way to undo an upvote is to click the upvote button again, but that wouldn't help if it's been so long that the vote is locked.)

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When you vote, an updated score is returned by the ajax post.

It's possible someone voted in between the time you loaded the page and the time you voted, and I think JavaScript will revert the number back to what it was rather than using the updated score. Not positive on that last part though.

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Not possible. As I stated, I refreshed and tried again. The score wasn't manipulated by anyone's vote except for mine. –  Gabe Nov 21 '11 at 14:43

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