People saying statistics filters out the few errors, I don't think this is true for the single news. User X posts a news that gets 2 points in a few minutes. With point 3 the news would stay a few seconds in the home page, enough if it is interesting for other users to be upvoted and end stable in the home page. If the third vote is down for error maybe this will never happen again since now even another upvote will not be enough, and goodbye. Moreover every news site out there has the ability to undo votes and is unlikely that everybody is wrong but HN.
Submissions can be upvoted, or they can be flagged. They can't be downvoted. No one confused the upvote button for the flag button.
Comments can be upvoted, or downvoted, or flagged. People sometimes mistake the up and downvote buttons.
User X posts a news that gets 2 points in a few minutes. With point 3 the news would stay a few seconds in the home page, enough if it is interesting for other users to be upvoted and end stable in the home page.
This doesn't happen. People can't downvote submissions. Comments don't get ranked like that on /newcomments.
You are right, flagging is reversible, so what I said only applies to comments. Still I can't see good reasons for not making users able to undo their votes.
Comments
People saying statistics filters out the few errors, I don't think this is true for the single news. User X posts a news that gets 2 points in a few minutes. With point 3 the news would stay a few seconds in the home page, enough if it is interesting for other users to be upvoted and end stable in the home page. If the third vote is down for error maybe this will never happen again since now even another upvote will not be enough, and goodbye. Moreover every news site out there has the ability to undo votes and is unlikely that everybody is wrong but HN.
HN has submissions and comments.
Submissions can be upvoted, or they can be flagged. They can't be downvoted. No one confused the upvote button for the flag button.
Comments can be upvoted, or downvoted, or flagged. People sometimes mistake the up and downvote buttons.
This doesn't happen. People can't downvote submissions. Comments don't get ranked like that on /newcomments.
You are right, flagging is reversible, so what I said only applies to comments. Still I can't see good reasons for not making users able to undo their votes.