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Another is to gray down comments with negative scores to near invisibility, in the hope that this will cause downvotes to tail off. I'm not sure how long this
by kylec 18y ago
Another is to gray down comments with negative scores to near invisibility, in the hope that this will cause downvotes to tail off.
I'm not sure how long this has been going on but it's really annoying. I end up having to highlight the text to read it. The methods of hiding unpopular comments that Reddit and Digg use are much better because they provide the option to view the comment unobstructed if desired.
- redorb 18y agoI think it signifies a trust in user votes; basically, if you hit a certain negative votes, the odds of you wanting to see this comment is thought of as low... having the system this way builds trust among fellow members of the commmunity (hope I'm not way off here)
- AndyKelley 18y agoI think the sorting is much more effective than the graying out.
- kleevr 18y agoI noticed this one today, got a kick out of it!
- mechanical_fish 18y agoWhereas I think the greying out is not merely funny, but also useful and elegant. But I don't make a habit of reading downmodded comments. Life is too short. So I'm not one to comment on their legibility.
- jcl 18y agoI end up having to highlight the text to read it. Perhaps this is related to the gamma of your monitor? I understand that Macs use a different gamma (1.8) than PCs (2.2), which would make bright tones calibrated for a PC less distinguishable on a Mac. I'm using a PC, and I have yet to see a comment I needed to highlight to read.
- kylec 18y agoPerhaps - what about this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=173351 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=173351 Granted I'm on a Macbook, but this is very hard to read for me.
- jcl 18y agoYeah, that's pretty unreadable for me as well. I guess I haven't seen posts modded down that far; I must be fortunate in my choice of threads.
- hugh 18y agoI actually think this one is counter-productive. Firstly, when I see an extremely light gray comment, I'm always curious to see what could possibly have been so ridiculous as to justify that kind of downmodding, so I'm more likely to read it than I am a positive-karma comment. Secondly, if it truly was a stupid or objectionable comment, it gives some satisfaction to downvote it, and watch it turn an even lighter shade of gray. So for me at least, this feature actually encourages the two things it's supposed to discourage: reading negative-karma comments and downvoting them to oblivion.
- mhartl 18y ago+1. I also have resorted to the highlighting hack on many an occasion.