On unliking posts

[elijah (Eli the Bearded)]

After you hit the button below a post, a timer begins after which you can no longer revert that action. I don’t know how long that is, but five to ten minutes it seems.

A user created a topic and has been in the habit of “liking” () every follow-up. And then today realized that one of those posts contains content s/he finds abhorrent. When the user couldn’t unlike it, s/he flagged it for moderation, and us moderators have been unable to assist.

A little more specifics: this is a Discourse hosted install, which I will not name. I am a moderator there, not admin. The topic is for youtube videos, and post liked links to a video that doesn’t break rules, but does treat suicide in a frivolous manner. Apparently the user liked the post, then watched the video, then found the timer had run out.

What options are there?

[Falco]

The admin can increase post undo action window mins temporarily if needed.

[elijah (Eli the Bearded)]

So: increase timer, ask user to unlike, then reset timer.

And in the meantime (haha), it’s open for everyone to unlike if they want (but they won’t know)?

[ralph1 (Ralph Myalynn)]

Staff should be exempt from the post undo action window. Maybe a feature for future addition?

[Stephen]

Even if they were, there’s no UI to remove a specific like which isn’t your own.

That’s quite a lot of engineering instead of “look before you like”.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

It’s interesting how rarely this has come up. I agree the workaround is a bit awkward, but… it’s so rare.