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The language here rubs me the wrong way. Everything is stated as being "incredibly harmful" with no explanation beyond > ...directly harms visually impaired in

The language here rubs me the wrong way. Everything is stated as being "incredibly harmful" with no explanation beyond > ...directly harms visually impaired individuals due to lack of visual clarity. I am also not sure how "Elements lack unity" is related to the UI causing harm. I don't use discord, so I have no idea how good the UI is. If the UI is bad and hard for the visually impaired to use, there is definitely a better way to communicate that. This is how they end their post: > This is not good UX design. It is the opposite. It harms end-users. Revert the changes. The whole thing reads like a bad tumblr post.

silicon2401 5y ago
> The whole thing reads like a bad tumblr post. It's exactly the kind of demonizing language that has unfortunately become common in recent years. By using dishonest wording to make your target look like an inhuman villain, it's easier to make the readers accept whatever the writer says. The writer then tries to sneakily shirk the responsibility to justify their claims. Just like at your quote: > This is not good UX design. It is the opposite. It harms end-users. Revert the changes. This wouldn't have passed my high school writing class. It's 3 arguments, 1 conclusion, and 0 evidence to support the conclusion. Instead of justifying their claims, people nowadays like to just throw out extreme words like "harm" and make it sound like Discord is installing keyloggers or something
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  For people like you and I, this is bad rhetoric - not well written or argued. But I feel like this is how the younger generations communicate and persuade with online messages. Be short, make bold claims, and make a call to action based on a sense of justice.
- tobr 5y ago
  Speaking of 0 evidence, I’d like to stick a [citation needed] on this: > It's exactly the kind of demonizing language that has unfortunately become common in recent years. It reads like a thinly veiled “kids these days”.
  - mpalmer 5y ago
    This comment does the best job of explaining it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27118267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27118267 Writing like this is meant not to persuade, but to incite and coerce using emotion.
    - tobr 5y ago
      The question is, has it really become more common?
      - mpalmer 5y ago
        Sure. I don't really know what you're looking for in terms of citations, it's a general writing style. There's no database to query. Personally, I see it all the time on Twitter, and more broadly online in left-of-center political discussions.
- dancemethis 5y ago
  While in a general sense I agree with the excessively demonizing language all around, Discord is an inhuman villain in the world.
faitswulff 5y ago
Well, if we’re just talking about unwanted opinions, then a sighted person tone policing a visually impaired user rubs me the wrong way. What if they use discord to keep in touch with their family and the product is unusable to them now? Why do you care how emphatically someone expresses how they cannot even properly see the product in question anymore? Imagine stepping into a car and the windshield is completely painted over. You need it to go somewhere. You would be irate! Do you need someone else telling you “you aren’t saying how, specifically, it affects you?” or “why don’t you ask nicely?” Have a little sympathy and the problem is clear. Discord doesn’t need your sympathy. They have an obligation - possibly even a legal obligation - to keep their products accessible to their end users.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  I agree that Discord should maintain accessibility in their products, and I can sympathize with how frustrating it is when services you rely on break. I think we are in agreement here - this post is an emotionally charged person venting. I don't have any problem with that, but maybe there is a better way to vent than on the discord support page. If you want to actually effect change, this is not the way to do it.
  - faitswulff 5y ago
    What you're doing is called tone policing and it's not helpful. Would the post have gotten as much attention if the poster had been meek and polite? Probably not.
    - adamrezich 5y ago
      people are allowed to have opinions on how other people express themselves. where does the policing come in, I don't understand
      - faitswulff 5y ago
        The policing comes in when the top comment criticizes how the poster presents themselves instead of addressing the content of the post.
ffn 5y ago
Yeah, the phrase "cause harm" carries a lot of affect (e.g. urgency, impatience, panic, outrage, etc.). If we were to have a graph of common word usage and association, the words "cause harm" would be strongly linked with other phrases like - morally repulsive - life or death - fix immediately All of which is just one step away from the affect-saturated words like "hitler / mao / stalin", "genocide", etc., As such "cause harm" is one of those magical phrases in our common lexicon that has gained the power to turn an "is" to an "ought", and the author uses it as the logical glue to connect the relatively descriptive phrase of "This is not good UX design" to the proscription of "revert the changes" But by using such an affect-laden phrase, the author is implicitly asking the reader to assign more weight to feelings (e.g. impatience, outrage, disgust, etc.,) and less weight to calculated executive thought. This attempt through language to subvert the executive portion of our brain in favor of more primal processes makes me feel the whole article is suspect. After all, if the author's argument can be one that stands up to executive scrutiny, than what is the intention when the author attempts to by-pass executive scrutiny?
kevingadd 5y ago
A person who uses Discord posting on the Discord forum about how the changes (in their opinion) make the product worse to use is not exactly a good comparison to a "bad tumblr post", unless what makes it a bad tumblr post is that it's a downer or you feel it doesn't meet your quality bar for Good Forum Content. By my reckoning, the post clearly enumerates their complaints with the new design, it provides some references that they believe support their argument, and suggests a remedy (revert the design). There is no cursing in it and it does not contain any personal attacks. It doesn't contain any conspiracy theories or memes or sarcasm or other markers you might associate with "bad posts". It's kind of baffling that you are willing to decide that the poster is some sort of tumblr reject based on not liking how they argue their points when you haven't even used the product.
- listless 5y ago
  I think it’s the “harmful” rhetoric that signals “I have an agenda”. We really need to get passed this charged way of conveying perfectly valid feedback. Because come on. It’s a chat app.
  - kevingadd 5y ago
    Of course they have an agenda. Discord is harder for them to use now, and they want it fixed. When did "agenda" become a negatively charged concept that only bad actors possess? Slack and Teams are chat apps too. Why would chat apps not be important?
    - kodah 5y ago
      Using emotionally charged language is usually pretty off-putting. Some people are used to using emotionally charged language any time they feel some way, but I think that ends up wearing people down for when they hear it in the future. That's probably why you have so many people here commenting about the use of "harm".
    - listless 5y ago
      By “agenda” I meant it in the sense that this isn’t about accessibility as much as it is this person getting points for a call out. That’s a bad faith interpretation. So not presenting that as irrefutable fact.
1970-01-01 5y ago
It should rub you the wrong way because the language is wrong! The author has used the wrong word to describe the problem. If you replace the word harm and harmful with difficult it makes sense. harmful: of a kind likely to be damaging difficult: hard to deal with, manage, or overcome I've done it for everyone: >Saturated dark colors against dark backgrounds are hard to read and difficult to parse >White mentions lack visual clarity and are incredibly difficult for individuals with visual impairment >Color redesign lacks contrast and are difficult for individuals who are colorblind and/or visually impaired >Elements lack unity >Saturated, mid-value colors covering large fields are difficult for end-users >Text contrast with new colors fail the WCAG test
- falcolas 5y ago
  For the visually impaired, it's not "difficult" to use, it's closer to "impossible" to use. By toning back the language, you've made it sound like whining and not a legitimate concern. You make it easy to ignore.
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    "X elements are impossible for me to see because of Y condition" is a perfectly legitimate piece of feedback. "X element being the wrong color is causing catastrophic harm" is insane feedback. By using silly language, they are making themselves easy to ignore.
    - tobr 5y ago
      “Catastrophic harm” is a phrase you came up with. It’s fair to phrase accessibility concerns in terms of harm, because being denied access to something other people can use is a type of harm. “Catastrophic” is very common hyperbole for something you think is highly unfortunate.
      - ry4nolson 5y ago
        first paragraph of the article: >These are catastrophic design failures for the new UX, and directly harms both end-users due to eye-strain, and directly harms visually impaired individuals due to lack of visual clarity. It makes the app less accessible, and is not only visually displeasing, but actively ableist in nature.
mpalmer 5y ago
"actively" and "directly" really are the new "literally". Seriously, what is it to be actively ableist as opposed to passively ableist? Are words just emotional signifiers now? Exaggeration has become the bare minimum for getting your point across. EDIT: don't get me started on "blatantly"
- nathanaldensr 5y ago
  It's YouTube Face, except written.
spicybbq 5y ago
It is disappointing to see that the comments here are dominated by tone policing and semantics. We ought to be able to look at the substance of the criticism and not get distracted by some of the word choices. The post makes several concrete claims in clear language that are worthy of discussion. I use discord, I have a mild color anomaly in my vision, and have had problems reading low-contrast elements in the UI. Discord's update gives us a useful example of a major release that violates some dark mode design best practices.
- mpalmer 5y ago
  Accusations of tone policing are themselves tone policing, so there's disappointment all around. How we use language is important to plenty of people; there's a reason OP is the top comment. There are indeed discussion-worthy claims in the post, and they're discussed elsewhere in the comments. Why hijack the top comment to change the subject?
- no-dr-onboard 5y ago
  > It is disappointing to see that the comments here are dominated by tone policing and semantics. I agree, but I'm afraid the argument that the post is making is not based on a logical series of steps. It doesn't follow the typical convention of observation, problem, evidence, conclusion. The post is substantially an emotional outpouring and a call to action. This changes the dialectics. If you're going to create a central claim that is solely Pathos based, the tone and semantics of how you do so become the most important thing in your argument and, to your point, this is why this post comes off so _wrong_. The post author failed at convincing this audience in large part because of their tone and semantics.

silicon2401 5y ago

> The whole thing reads like a bad tumblr post. It's exactly the kind of demonizing language that has unfortunately become common in recent years. By using dishonest wording to make your target look like an inhuman villain, it's easier to make the readers accept whatever the writer says. The writer then tries to sneakily shirk the responsibility to justify their claims. Just like at your quote: > This is not good UX design. It is the opposite. It harms end-users. Revert the changes. This wouldn't have passed my high school writing class. It's 3 arguments, 1 conclusion, and 0 evidence to support the conclusion. Instead of justifying their claims, people nowadays like to just throw out extreme words like "harm" and make it sound like Discord is installing keyloggers or something

BitwiseFool 5y ago
For people like you and I, this is bad rhetoric - not well written or argued. But I feel like this is how the younger generations communicate and persuade with online messages. Be short, make bold claims, and make a call to action based on a sense of justice.
tobr 5y ago
Speaking of 0 evidence, I’d like to stick a [citation needed] on this: > It's exactly the kind of demonizing language that has unfortunately become common in recent years. It reads like a thinly veiled “kids these days”.
- mpalmer 5y ago
  This comment does the best job of explaining it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27118267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27118267 Writing like this is meant not to persuade, but to incite and coerce using emotion.
  - tobr 5y ago
    The question is, has it really become more common?
    - mpalmer 5y ago
      Sure. I don't really know what you're looking for in terms of citations, it's a general writing style. There's no database to query. Personally, I see it all the time on Twitter, and more broadly online in left-of-center political discussions.
dancemethis 5y ago
While in a general sense I agree with the excessively demonizing language all around, Discord is an inhuman villain in the world.

faitswulff 5y ago

Well, if we’re just talking about unwanted opinions, then a sighted person tone policing a visually impaired user rubs me the wrong way. What if they use discord to keep in touch with their family and the product is unusable to them now? Why do you care how emphatically someone expresses how they cannot even properly see the product in question anymore? Imagine stepping into a car and the windshield is completely painted over. You need it to go somewhere. You would be irate! Do you need someone else telling you “you aren’t saying how, specifically, it affects you?” or “why don’t you ask nicely?” Have a little sympathy and the problem is clear. Discord doesn’t need your sympathy. They have an obligation - possibly even a legal obligation - to keep their products accessible to their end users.

dahfizz 5y ago
I agree that Discord should maintain accessibility in their products, and I can sympathize with how frustrating it is when services you rely on break. I think we are in agreement here - this post is an emotionally charged person venting. I don't have any problem with that, but maybe there is a better way to vent than on the discord support page. If you want to actually effect change, this is not the way to do it.
- faitswulff 5y ago
  What you're doing is called tone policing and it's not helpful. Would the post have gotten as much attention if the poster had been meek and polite? Probably not.
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    people are allowed to have opinions on how other people express themselves. where does the policing come in, I don't understand
    - faitswulff 5y ago
      The policing comes in when the top comment criticizes how the poster presents themselves instead of addressing the content of the post.

ffn 5y ago

Yeah, the phrase "cause harm" carries a lot of affect (e.g. urgency, impatience, panic, outrage, etc.). If we were to have a graph of common word usage and association, the words "cause harm" would be strongly linked with other phrases like - morally repulsive - life or death - fix immediately All of which is just one step away from the affect-saturated words like "hitler / mao / stalin", "genocide", etc., As such "cause harm" is one of those magical phrases in our common lexicon that has gained the power to turn an "is" to an "ought", and the author uses it as the logical glue to connect the relatively descriptive phrase of "This is not good UX design" to the proscription of "revert the changes" But by using such an affect-laden phrase, the author is implicitly asking the reader to assign more weight to feelings (e.g. impatience, outrage, disgust, etc.,) and less weight to calculated executive thought. This attempt through language to subvert the executive portion of our brain in favor of more primal processes makes me feel the whole article is suspect. After all, if the author's argument can be one that stands up to executive scrutiny, than what is the intention when the author attempts to by-pass executive scrutiny?

kevingadd 5y ago

A person who uses Discord posting on the Discord forum about how the changes (in their opinion) make the product worse to use is not exactly a good comparison to a "bad tumblr post", unless what makes it a bad tumblr post is that it's a downer or you feel it doesn't meet your quality bar for Good Forum Content. By my reckoning, the post clearly enumerates their complaints with the new design, it provides some references that they believe support their argument, and suggests a remedy (revert the design). There is no cursing in it and it does not contain any personal attacks. It doesn't contain any conspiracy theories or memes or sarcasm or other markers you might associate with "bad posts". It's kind of baffling that you are willing to decide that the poster is some sort of tumblr reject based on not liking how they argue their points when you haven't even used the product.

listless 5y ago
I think it’s the “harmful” rhetoric that signals “I have an agenda”. We really need to get passed this charged way of conveying perfectly valid feedback. Because come on. It’s a chat app.
- kevingadd 5y ago
  Of course they have an agenda. Discord is harder for them to use now, and they want it fixed. When did "agenda" become a negatively charged concept that only bad actors possess? Slack and Teams are chat apps too. Why would chat apps not be important?
  - kodah 5y ago
    Using emotionally charged language is usually pretty off-putting. Some people are used to using emotionally charged language any time they feel some way, but I think that ends up wearing people down for when they hear it in the future. That's probably why you have so many people here commenting about the use of "harm".
  - listless 5y ago
    By “agenda” I meant it in the sense that this isn’t about accessibility as much as it is this person getting points for a call out. That’s a bad faith interpretation. So not presenting that as irrefutable fact.

1970-01-01 5y ago

It should rub you the wrong way because the language is wrong! The author has used the wrong word to describe the problem. If you replace the word harm and harmful with difficult it makes sense. harmful: of a kind likely to be damaging difficult: hard to deal with, manage, or overcome I've done it for everyone: >Saturated dark colors against dark backgrounds are hard to read and difficult to parse >White mentions lack visual clarity and are incredibly difficult for individuals with visual impairment >Color redesign lacks contrast and are difficult for individuals who are colorblind and/or visually impaired >Elements lack unity >Saturated, mid-value colors covering large fields are difficult for end-users >Text contrast with new colors fail the WCAG test

falcolas 5y ago
For the visually impaired, it's not "difficult" to use, it's closer to "impossible" to use. By toning back the language, you've made it sound like whining and not a legitimate concern. You make it easy to ignore.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  "X elements are impossible for me to see because of Y condition" is a perfectly legitimate piece of feedback. "X element being the wrong color is causing catastrophic harm" is insane feedback. By using silly language, they are making themselves easy to ignore.
  - tobr 5y ago
    “Catastrophic harm” is a phrase you came up with. It’s fair to phrase accessibility concerns in terms of harm, because being denied access to something other people can use is a type of harm. “Catastrophic” is very common hyperbole for something you think is highly unfortunate.
    - ry4nolson 5y ago
      first paragraph of the article: >These are catastrophic design failures for the new UX, and directly harms both end-users due to eye-strain, and directly harms visually impaired individuals due to lack of visual clarity. It makes the app less accessible, and is not only visually displeasing, but actively ableist in nature.

mpalmer 5y ago

"actively" and "directly" really are the new "literally". Seriously, what is it to be actively ableist as opposed to passively ableist? Are words just emotional signifiers now? Exaggeration has become the bare minimum for getting your point across. EDIT: don't get me started on "blatantly"

nathanaldensr 5y ago
It's YouTube Face, except written.

spicybbq 5y ago

It is disappointing to see that the comments here are dominated by tone policing and semantics. We ought to be able to look at the substance of the criticism and not get distracted by some of the word choices. The post makes several concrete claims in clear language that are worthy of discussion. I use discord, I have a mild color anomaly in my vision, and have had problems reading low-contrast elements in the UI. Discord's update gives us a useful example of a major release that violates some dark mode design best practices.

mpalmer 5y ago
Accusations of tone policing are themselves tone policing, so there's disappointment all around. How we use language is important to plenty of people; there's a reason OP is the top comment. There are indeed discussion-worthy claims in the post, and they're discussed elsewhere in the comments. Why hijack the top comment to change the subject?
no-dr-onboard 5y ago
> It is disappointing to see that the comments here are dominated by tone policing and semantics. I agree, but I'm afraid the argument that the post is making is not based on a logical series of steps. It doesn't follow the typical convention of observation, problem, evidence, conclusion. The post is substantially an emotional outpouring and a call to action. This changes the dialectics. If you're going to create a central claim that is solely Pathos based, the tone and semantics of how you do so become the most important thing in your argument and, to your point, this is why this post comes off so _wrong_. The post author failed at convincing this audience in large part because of their tone and semantics.