Incorrect score observed for one post

[ialbert]

See

http://www.biostars.org/p/56661/#56663

and discussions below

[ialbert]

fixed and scores have been reset

[vanbug]

Thanks for the fix, just curious, why it happened, was this a bug or something else, because it can be potentially disastrous.

[ialbert]

this is one of those things that on paper look simple but in practice end up being a headache

There was a "smart" limit put in that would not allow a post to go too low so that if a few people colluded and wanted to wreck some havoc they couldn't do it. Of course that "smart" limit had some issues in did not properly wrap things into proper transactions so there was brief open time window in the option checking of the effect of the vote and that of turning a positive vote into a negative vote. You see a vote switch is actually two votes, one to remove the old vote and one to apply the new vote. If another vote comes right in that open time window then it may use the wrong intermediate value to self increment - it is very rare as we are talking about under a millisecond - but when that happens it fells into hole that it cannot not get out of. So that's what happened - it is difficult to disentangle the order in which things exactly happened - but thishas been fixed.

[vanbug]

Oh I didn't thought such a timeframe could be a problem. So, this whole idea has been replaced or only this instance is corrected.

[ialbert]

All downvoting is now disabled - we need to rework the concept as a whole - we need some sort of downvote protection against silly behaviour and we also need to protect newbies that may ask a question incorrectly then end up with the stigma of minus reputation for a long time.

[vanbug]

Absolutely right!!

On 20 November 2012 15:50, Istvan Albert notifications@github.com wrote:

All downvoting is now disabled - we need to rework the concept as a whole

• we need some sort of downvote protection against silly behaviour and we
  also need to protect newbies that may ask a question incorrectly then end
  up with the stigma of minus reputation for a long time.

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