I don't think it happens very often. I remember having twitchy fingers on the "Moderate" button (due to alcohol) once, before there was a "consider" checkbox; also "Moderate" was called something else in those days, probably "Submit".

Anyway, I put a request into the CB for the node to be unconsidered, and it was fairly quickly. There's usually a janitor not far away, listening, and plenty of senior monks voting "Keep".

Conclusion: the existing mechanism works well enough; I can't see any reason to change it.

Or perhaps the original person who considered might be permitted to update (append to) the consideration notes?

To echo what's been said already, I think the system that we currently have works quite well. The cost (in time and in complexity) of adding such a feature is outweighed by the existing alternative of just messaging a janitor or someone higher up with an 'Oops!' message.

When I go near the moderation dialogue, I imagine that I'm using sudo to do something on the command line. It's like a 'root pause': before you press Enter, are you really sure you want to do that?

Be aware that if you do it too often, the pause goes away. I don't even think anymore about putting "sudo" in front of whatever I'm doing because I simply do it so often. And 99% of those are legitimate - my day job requires root access for significant portions of my code to operate, while even my home computer, I'm the obvious sysadmin, so I'm zipping around the linux boxes with a sudo ever at the ready to solve my or my wife's issues.

That said, given the risk/reward ratio, the low number of times it happens, the small amount of effort it takes to undo currently, and the ill effects of such a mistake, I wouldn't think there's enough downside to the current system to warrant a discussion about a better system. I'm sure there is such a better system out there, but having been convinced that "the perfect is the enemy of the good" - this system is "good" enough, we don't need to tweak it into the perfect. Just my $0.02CDN

Huh?!? In theory, that's right. In practice it becomes a habit. And when you make a habit of it the "root pause" still does exist, but progressively sees its power decrease. I am very careful when I do something potentially risky. But sometimes I happen not to realize that something is risky at all! Fortunately this happens rarely enoug, but it happens, as stupid as it may look like: for example when I mv'ed a file over my mailbox on a certain account.

However I get the point: it seems that approximately half of the people thus far agrees with me that as humans (as opposed to Gods) we can fail and we should have a second chance, and another half believes that errors are rare enough and remedies are easy enough to take that we should stick for KISS sake with the current behaviour. That's fine for me. I only want to explain that one reason why I didn't think of the CB is that... ehm... I'm not familiar with it. Really I don't even like it. In fact I have it disabled. Can I just

/msg janitors Oops! I considered [id://123456] by mistake, please unco
+nsider it!
[download]

in case of necessity? Or should I explicitly turn it on?

By all means, turn the CB on to msg someone, then turn it off after you've chatted with the Senior Person In Charge to explain yourself (if necessary). I think the CB is a neat distraction, but I like to see it; and I understand others may not want to see it. I found the Users Currently Logged In node (or whatever it's called) to be very distracting, and hence I deleted it from my view. That's the beauty of being able to configure the site the way you want it.

Alex / talexb / Toronto

"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

I have the CB nodelet enabled in all views, but perpetually /chatteroff. That way, I can still see and respond to direct /msgs, but without the distraction of the chatter itself.

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

Generally the janitors are happy to do the work that they signed on for. Either /msg janitors or mention the problem in the CB. Stuff like unconsidering tends to get done pretty quick. Those who are also Breathers of Fire really burn through the work. :)