Edit comments after 5 minute window has closed, and how to remove a down/upvote

Question

I recently posted a comment that had an error in the math I had posted $a^3t+b^2t+ct+d$ but should have posted $at^3+bt^2+ct+d$. I didn't see the (brain dead) mistake till after the 5 minute window closed and the site went down for maintenance directly after that. In the meantime the person who asked the question had given an answer (and thankfully ignored the blatant error).

Is there any way to fix a comment error after the 5 minute window to edit it post has closed? Normally I delete and repost it, but I didn't want to mess up the flow of the conversation, and I also didn't want to add an "oops" post.

The other thing that just came up is my finger decided to downvote a post that I was neutral on, I wanted to clear the downvote but couldn't figure out how to do it. (I tried clicking up vote but it just went from downvote to upvote). Is there a way to clear a vote that is a mistake? In this case I just changed it to an upvote and added a comment, but would have rather just cleared the vote altogether.

Answer 1

I don't think there's any way around the 5 minute edit window. About the only choice to make is:

1. add correction in new comment
2. add correction in new comment and delete old comment

The issue of harming the conversation flow might be helped by not deleting the erroneous comment. (It happened. It's embarrassing and that's ok. We've all made typos and thinkos.)

For voting buttons, you should be able to undo a vote by clicking the same button again. But there's a 5 minute window to do this as well*.

_{* You can bypass the window for vote retraction if an edit is made to the post.}