4 ms·

We don't really know why text-based submissions are faded by default, or more accurately, I don't recall pg ever saying why it was done. On the other hand, we c

by jcr 12y ago

We don't really know why text-based submissions are faded by default, or more accurately, I don't recall pg ever saying why it was done. On the other hand, we can obviously see the effect fading of reducing emphasis, and from the HN guidelines we know attempting to attract attention is discouraged. A text-based submission puts the words of the author at the very top in a prominent and unfair position for attention. The very slight fading of the those unfair top-most words has always seemed to me to be an attempt to compensate for the prominent position they get by default. I could be wrong, but it just looks like a way to make the playing field a bit more fair while still allowing a discussion to be started with text alone. As for favoring link-based submissions over text-based submissions, my guess for the reason has always been sitting in the title of the site; "News," whether the original name, "Startup News," or the new name, "Hacker News." The term "News" implies "new" and the time-based ranking techniques are an attempt to keep the "new" stuff where it will be seen. In other words, "new" gets more emphasis and prominence. Calling the fade effects on comments "censorship" seems a bit unfairly rhetorical. If someone wanted to reverse the rhetoric to make the feature seem unfairly beneficial, they'd call it "curation" instead. Either way, the fading does reduce emphasis and prominence, but the same is true for all the ranking and other aspects of the site. If a dissenting opinion is well written but was "unfairly" down-voted in your opinion, the fade effect gives you the needed feedback to take the "needed" corrective measure of up-voting it to compensate. It may not be a perfect system, but it's still much better than bias and competition issues caused by displaying per-comment points. Though how to use up and down votes have never been formally defined, their use has never been "purely subjective" since the terms "up" and "down" and even "flag" still have general but vague meaning. Maybe I lack the needed imagination, but I simply can't imagine a regular person using an "up" vote to indicate disagreement, disapproval, opposition, annoyance, discouragement, or punishment.

krapp 12y ago
FWIW here is pg personally stating the reason for text submissions being faded out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=468231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=468231 I think it is censorship, but i'll concede it's weak censorship and that plenty of users seem to be ok with it, which is valid. You're right, that one person's censorship is another person's curation - though I would personally go a step further and say that curation is a subset of censorship, without the negative connotations. Whether it is or not depends on whether you agree with the net effect. >A text-based submission puts the words of the author at the very top in a prominent and unfair position for attention. I guess we would disagree here, since I don't believe it is unfair. The prominence of the author's post is the entire point of a text post - the author is asking a question or presenting a product or something, and the rest of the thread is a reaction to that (or reactions to reactions, etc.) It's implicit to the medium that the tree has a root. Reducing legibility and reducing prominence are two different things, at least to me. I have no problem at all with upvotes or downvotes affecting where subthreads wind up in the sorting order - that's precisely what they should do. But why also make content more difficult to read as well? If anything, that makes those elements more prominent, as it send a visual cue that "this is something you can easily ignore as it's not worth your time," which may not be the case. Keeping comments and text posts legible forces people to actually read the content, consider it on its own merit and act accordingly (downvote, upvote, ignore, respond, whatever). It encourages conversation rather than the creating of filters to stifle it.
- jcr 12y ago
  Great find on the pg link on the text-based submissions. We agree on how text-based posts need to put said text prominently at the top. It just wouldn't make sense otherwise. From the link, it seems the point of slight fading the text-based submissions slightly was to discourage the text-based submissions and also distinguish them from regular comments. You also have a point regarding legibility. Since faded text is still readable to me, I hadn't thought of it in terms of legibility. Reduced legibility does result in requiring increased effort, and many people simply won't bother. The real trouble with "legibility" is it's highly subjective due to depending on both the type and configuration of the system hardware being used, and the eyesight of the person attempting to use it. Though most things try to be usable for people with "average" eyesight, there are actually countless combinations of human visual capacities, advantages, impairments, and preferences. Since all we ever know is how our own eyes see things, we often forget how the exact same thing can be vastly different for others. I might be able to see the faded text a whole lot easier than you can, or vice versa, so faded text could be extremely annoying for one, but only be trivially inconvenient for the other. When I caught myself wondering if your system was configured "correctly," the supposedly "obvious" finally dawned on me; it's probably a whole lot easier for me to read the faded text than it is for you, so our difference of opinion could very well be due to being unable to literally see things the same way the other does. If faded text is extremely annoying and difficult for you to read, then please contact me through email. I know great deal about accessibility issues and configuring systems/software to adjust for many different types of eyesight impairments and idiosyncrasies.
  - krapp 12y ago
    No, you don't understand - it's not a usability issue for me, I can see it fine. Actually better than fine because i wrote a userscript for myself which undoes the effect anyway, so even dead posts come up in black text. I apologize if I gave that impression. It is actually kind of an ethical issue for me. It doesn't matter that the initial effort to read the faded text is minimal, but that the site is putting that extra friction there to begin with. Users should be able to judge the quality of posts and comments on equal terms, not have the site predispose them to dismiss certain posts based on what may be an irrational metric. I understand that it's probably not a popular opinion and it seems like a minor and petty thing but it just bothers me. I'm not going to push it, though, i'm sure it already seems like i'm ranting.

by jcr 12y ago

krapp 12y ago

FWIW here is pg personally stating the reason for text submissions being faded out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=468231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=468231 I think it is censorship, but i'll concede it's weak censorship and that plenty of users seem to be ok with it, which is valid. You're right, that one person's censorship is another person's curation - though I would personally go a step further and say that curation is a subset of censorship, without the negative connotations. Whether it is or not depends on whether you agree with the net effect. >A text-based submission puts the words of the author at the very top in a prominent and unfair position for attention. I guess we would disagree here, since I don't believe it is unfair. The prominence of the author's post is the entire point of a text post - the author is asking a question or presenting a product or something, and the rest of the thread is a reaction to that (or reactions to reactions, etc.) It's implicit to the medium that the tree has a root. Reducing legibility and reducing prominence are two different things, at least to me. I have no problem at all with upvotes or downvotes affecting where subthreads wind up in the sorting order - that's precisely what they should do. But why also make content more difficult to read as well? If anything, that makes those elements more prominent, as it send a visual cue that "this is something you can easily ignore as it's not worth your time," which may not be the case. Keeping comments and text posts legible forces people to actually read the content, consider it on its own merit and act accordingly (downvote, upvote, ignore, respond, whatever). It encourages conversation rather than the creating of filters to stifle it.

jcr 12y ago
Great find on the pg link on the text-based submissions. We agree on how text-based posts need to put said text prominently at the top. It just wouldn't make sense otherwise. From the link, it seems the point of slight fading the text-based submissions slightly was to discourage the text-based submissions and also distinguish them from regular comments. You also have a point regarding legibility. Since faded text is still readable to me, I hadn't thought of it in terms of legibility. Reduced legibility does result in requiring increased effort, and many people simply won't bother. The real trouble with "legibility" is it's highly subjective due to depending on both the type and configuration of the system hardware being used, and the eyesight of the person attempting to use it. Though most things try to be usable for people with "average" eyesight, there are actually countless combinations of human visual capacities, advantages, impairments, and preferences. Since all we ever know is how our own eyes see things, we often forget how the exact same thing can be vastly different for others. I might be able to see the faded text a whole lot easier than you can, or vice versa, so faded text could be extremely annoying for one, but only be trivially inconvenient for the other. When I caught myself wondering if your system was configured "correctly," the supposedly "obvious" finally dawned on me; it's probably a whole lot easier for me to read the faded text than it is for you, so our difference of opinion could very well be due to being unable to literally see things the same way the other does. If faded text is extremely annoying and difficult for you to read, then please contact me through email. I know great deal about accessibility issues and configuring systems/software to adjust for many different types of eyesight impairments and idiosyncrasies.
- krapp 12y ago
  No, you don't understand - it's not a usability issue for me, I can see it fine. Actually better than fine because i wrote a userscript for myself which undoes the effect anyway, so even dead posts come up in black text. I apologize if I gave that impression. It is actually kind of an ethical issue for me. It doesn't matter that the initial effort to read the faded text is minimal, but that the site is putting that extra friction there to begin with. Users should be able to judge the quality of posts and comments on equal terms, not have the site predispose them to dismiss certain posts based on what may be an irrational metric. I understand that it's probably not a popular opinion and it seems like a minor and petty thing but it just bothers me. I'm not going to push it, though, i'm sure it already seems like i'm ranting.