A slight side note: this is one of the most difficult parts with using Hacker News on a mobile device. I fat finger upvotes all the time! I wouldn't mind the ability to change a downvote to an upvote and vice versa, even if it was time limited so I could correct any incorrectly voted items.

couldn't this be easily fixed by putting the downvote triangle on the other side of the time?

(upvote arrow) name xxx hours ago | parent | flag | (downvote arrow)

would make it less fat finger prone and still be pretty straightfoward to use (plus having downvote close to flag IMHO makes sense as well from a context perspective)

Could be easily fixed by one line of CSS to make the dang buttons larger, but apparently Hacker News can't be bothered to improve their shitty website.

EDIT: great community, shitty website.

Yup that would work really well

Either that, or a way to hide the down vote on mobile. I hardly ever legitimately down vote so when i fat finger it on mobile it just makes me look like a jerk.

Except no one can see you did it, so it doesn't make you look like a jerk. A random downvote here and there shouldn't bother anyone. It's probably better off if we just realise this and never talk about it.

Depends on context. I'm at +149 right now on the top-level comment, so one upvote that turned into a downvote isn't really a big deal. It could be pretty annoying if you've worked hard on a long comment and then it goes from 0 to -1 instead of +1 because of a fat-fingered downvote.

I use the Android app Materialistic, and don't seem to have ui problems. YMMV.

I use it too. The only problem is that the latest update broke the commenting (it only allows you to type one line). But I filed a bug report and it was fixed, so we just have to wait for the update. This is why I love free software. No begging in app comment sections.

I love that app so much. It is nearly perfect!

I gotchu fam