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On the vote-total popup, the leading + or - is suppressed once the total hits three digits:

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This happens in both the 🟢 upvotes on the top and on the 🔴 downvotes on the bottom.

This has been observed before back in 2010, but that bug report was mysteriously marked despite clear evidence to the contrary being presented. The reason that does not address this problem adequately is because since it was asked fourteen years ago, the behavior has changed, and for the worse.

As I mentioned in comments, notice how when you open up the currently −132 score here, the loss of the sign makes its column a wee bit more narrow and causes the text column of the question proper to suddenly reflow as it finds a few more pixels to occupy than it had before you did the popup.

Isn't that just bizarre? They already paid the price before the popup, did the whole layout, and by snatching back the sign at popup time they make the main column reflow. Really freaky.

Now that we have four- and even five-digit scores, you’re obviously spilling into the third position and beyond already. It doesn’t only print the last three digits! So there seems no sound reason remaining to deliberately suppress the sign any longer, if there ever was.

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  • The width of the votes column is dynamic. When the votes column is wider, then there's less width available for the actual post content. With 3 digits, adding a "+" to the numbers does, potentially, increase the width of the votes column. Thus, this is a design decision of whether to allocate that extra width to the score column or the post content, which is more important with narrow viewports (e.g., mobile). Once the design decision is made to save those extra pixels for the post content, then there's an implementation complexity (and UX) choice as to when, exactly, to not display the sign.
    – Makyen
    Commented Mar 2 at 20:33
  • 2
    Yeah this is probably one of the most ancient bugs by design, totally time to change that bad UX. :/
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Mar 2 at 20:35
  • Assuming the design decision to save width for the post content and to display the "+" and "-" only under some conditions is reasonable, it's a reasonable choice to make the dividing line for display/not display of the number's sign be just that there are >= three digits, as that's simple and easy. Overall, this appears to be status-bydesign and not a bug.
    – Makyen
    Commented Mar 2 at 20:37
  • @ShadowWizardLoveZelda If so, then this should be argued from a UX point of view, and consideration should be made for the potential of having the sign displayed or not based on the impact of the lost pixels to the post content traded off as to the UX of having the sign displayed. Consideration should also be given to accessibility.
    – Makyen
    Commented Mar 2 at 20:41
  • 3
    @Makyen Notice how when you open up the currently -125 score here, the loss of the sign makes its column a wee bit more narrow (nominally three not four columns wide, although of course it doesn't really work that way) and causes the text column of the question proper to suddenly reflow as it finds a few more pixels to occupy than it had before you did the popup. Isn't that just bizarre? They already paid the price before the popup, did the whole layout, and by snatching back the sign at popup time they make the main column reflow. Really freaky.
    – tchrist
    Commented Mar 2 at 20:45
  • 3
    @MartinR No, it does not. The sudden paragraph reflow on the popup score that’s lost its sign is startling and undesirable. It should not be doing that.
    – tchrist
    Commented Mar 3 at 17:56
  • I was only able to reproduce this by zooming in (ctrl-+) twice from the default size before expanding the score. Firefox 123 on Linux, default font and zoom settings. (I also don't understand the purpose of the traffic light emoji and subsequent discussion at the end of the post, joke or otherwise.)
    – Karl Knechtel
    Commented Mar 3 at 18:16

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