What does "neither" actually do?

[gbonehead]

There seems to be some confusion about the "neither" button; people believe that if they select "neither" the item is not counted as being voted on and shows up again.

That's not what the descriptions I've read seem to imply, but it would be nice to hear for 100% sure that voting "neither" is actually a vote and not just a flag to put the item back in the queue.

(I'm not hitting the "neither" button at all, so I don't really care one way or the other ... I'm doing my darndest to pick whichever one is super-best when both are really good and whichever one is least bad when both are bad.)

[Gary Teter]

The "neither" button records a tie in the database between that pair of items for you. Currently that puts that particular pair back into the list of possible pairings for you to vote on, so there's a non-zero chance you may see that specific pair again.

Later today we are planning on changing this slightly. Once that change is rolled out, clicking "neither" will remove that pairing from the list of possible pairs for you to vote on. Both items will still be eligible for pairing with other items, just not with each other.

In either case, a "neither" vote ends up not helping or hurting that particular pair of items with respect to each other. In other words, if you and fifty other people all vote "neither" for item A and item B, and one person votes for item A over item B, then item A will be ranked higher than item B.