Reduce the "vote timer" back down to 5 seconds or less, from the current 8 seconds

Some time in the last few days, I noticed that I now have to wait eight seconds between up/downvoting comments and images on the site (no idea if the same applies to forum posts, as I don't touch the forums). Forgive me if there's already a place to discuss this, but I didn't see one and I felt this needs to be addressed. I am requesting that this change be reverted.
I wouldn't consider myself a particularly quick reader, and yet still I find myself constantly needing to wait for the timer to run down before I can vote a comment or image, especially if I'm just reading through a thread. Five seconds was bad enough, but eight is simply ridiculous. Even worse, if you misjudge the invisible timer's progress and click too soon, it resets without accepting your vote and forces you to wait even longer. The entire experience is just frustrating and seemingly unnecessary. Is it a server load thing? Why does no other website impose such a throttle, despite KYM not even being that heavily populated? What happened recently to prompt an extension of the timer from its already severe length?

August Day wrote

no idea if the same applies to forum posts

It is an issue in the forums as well.

Even worse, if you misjudge the invisible timer’s progress and click too soon, it resets without accepting your vote and forces you to wait even longer.

I have to agree on this. I could almost see it as being "more okay" if it was a simple it would not process the upvote until later, be it literally saving the vote to processed at some later time, or not letting you press the button until the time has elapsed. The current method (which thankfully doesn't apply to the forums) is arguably the worst of both worlds. Not only will it not let you vote on a post within 8 seconds time without telling you how long it has been since the last vote, it "locks" it in the vote option even if your vote can't process, so that you have to literally reload the entire page to try voting again (and hope that you don't vote too quickly that time as well.)

I know that the timer was initially but in place because upvoting to much too quickly caused the site to lag, according to James. I'm not going to pretend I know how much this supposedly slowed down the site. However, it feels like forcing something as basic as delaying voting, especially in a way that forces you to reload and not tell you how badly you missed the mark, (and adding the fact I literally can't think of another site that forces you to wait to vote) would drive down community involvement, which I would think would much worse than a slight lag on the site.

I'm sure James has a reason but I'd like to have more actual discussion about why it's deemed to be needed. As is, it feels more like a thing intended to get people less involved in the community, doubly so given the lack of explanation and, IMO poor implementation (see required reloading above)

Last edited Apr 30, 2017 at 11:25PM EDT