3 ms·

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 se

by 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.
- jcr 12y ago
  It didn't seem like ranting to me. I think you did a great job of expressing your opinion clearly and fairly. In a mostly failed attempt to empathize, I brought up the vision/display issue as a possible reason why the fading might bother you more than me. Normally, I need to use a specialized browser to prevent headaches and it never renders the fade effect, so as saying goes, "Out of sight, out of mind." I can only withstand black text on a white background for a few hours, but then I'm pretty much toast and in dire need of some aspirin. Oddly enough, over the last two days I've been once again working out the needed css to override handling of a few corner cases on HN, so for a change, I've actually been seeing the fade effect. The fade is annoying, but on the bright side, it did enable me notice a few unfairly down-voted comments, and prompted me to give a corrective up-vote. The one unfairly down-voted comment sticking in my memory was some person saying they didn't like Debian distribution of Linux and cited the 2006 OpenSSL fiasco as their reasoning. Down-voting a general opinion, and particularly one with factual support, is simply abusive voting, but sadly, it happens quite often on HN. If you know how to stop fanatics from doing dumb and/or mean things with their votes, then I'd love to know the answer. The only solution I know is to up-vote against them (when I notice the down-votes). You said you've already solved the issue for yourself with a "userscript" but whether that's through GreaseMonkey or through leveraging userChrome.js is uncertain. It's actually much easier and cleaner to fix the display with pure CSS, either through a plugin like "Stylish" (chrome/firefox), or through your userContent.css file. For me, I'll probably use something like the code below since I want the down or dead comment to be displayed equally like all the other comments, but I also want some form of feedback to let me know the comment was down-voted. @-moz-document domain("news.ycombinator.com") { /* down-voted comments, reset font color to black */ font[color="#5a5a5a"], font[color="#aeaeae"] { color: #000000 !important; } /* down-voted comments, add trailing indicator of down-votes */ span font[color="#5a5a5a"]:last-child::after, span font[color="#aeaeae"]:last-child::after { color: #aeaeae !important; white-space:pre; display: inline !important; content: '\A\A [down?]' !important; } /* dead comment class, reset font color to black */ .dead, .dead * { color: #000000 !important; } /* dead comment class, add trailing indicator of down-votes */ .dead:last-child::after { color: #aeaeae !important; white-space:pre; display: inline !important; content: '\A [dead?]' !important; } } The above sort of turns the tables (if you pardon the HTML tag pun) by changing the comment font color to black, and adding a subtle trailing text indicator of "[down?]" or "[dead?]" that's mostly faded out. It should level the playing field, but still give me some gentle feedback so I can make a corrective up-vote when needed. As always, it's not a perfect solution, but it seems like an improvement.

by jcr 12y ago

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.

jcr 12y ago
It didn't seem like ranting to me. I think you did a great job of expressing your opinion clearly and fairly. In a mostly failed attempt to empathize, I brought up the vision/display issue as a possible reason why the fading might bother you more than me. Normally, I need to use a specialized browser to prevent headaches and it never renders the fade effect, so as saying goes, "Out of sight, out of mind." I can only withstand black text on a white background for a few hours, but then I'm pretty much toast and in dire need of some aspirin. Oddly enough, over the last two days I've been once again working out the needed css to override handling of a few corner cases on HN, so for a change, I've actually been seeing the fade effect. The fade is annoying, but on the bright side, it did enable me notice a few unfairly down-voted comments, and prompted me to give a corrective up-vote. The one unfairly down-voted comment sticking in my memory was some person saying they didn't like Debian distribution of Linux and cited the 2006 OpenSSL fiasco as their reasoning. Down-voting a general opinion, and particularly one with factual support, is simply abusive voting, but sadly, it happens quite often on HN. If you know how to stop fanatics from doing dumb and/or mean things with their votes, then I'd love to know the answer. The only solution I know is to up-vote against them (when I notice the down-votes). You said you've already solved the issue for yourself with a "userscript" but whether that's through GreaseMonkey or through leveraging userChrome.js is uncertain. It's actually much easier and cleaner to fix the display with pure CSS, either through a plugin like "Stylish" (chrome/firefox), or through your userContent.css file. For me, I'll probably use something like the code below since I want the down or dead comment to be displayed equally like all the other comments, but I also want some form of feedback to let me know the comment was down-voted. @-moz-document domain("news.ycombinator.com") { /* down-voted comments, reset font color to black */ font[color="#5a5a5a"], font[color="#aeaeae"] { color: #000000 !important; } /* down-voted comments, add trailing indicator of down-votes */ span font[color="#5a5a5a"]:last-child::after, span font[color="#aeaeae"]:last-child::after { color: #aeaeae !important; white-space:pre; display: inline !important; content: '\A\A [down?]' !important; } /* dead comment class, reset font color to black */ .dead, .dead * { color: #000000 !important; } /* dead comment class, add trailing indicator of down-votes */ .dead:last-child::after { color: #aeaeae !important; white-space:pre; display: inline !important; content: '\A [dead?]' !important; } } The above sort of turns the tables (if you pardon the HTML tag pun) by changing the comment font color to black, and adding a subtle trailing text indicator of "[down?]" or "[dead?]" that's mostly faded out. It should level the playing field, but still give me some gentle feedback so I can make a corrective up-vote when needed. As always, it's not a perfect solution, but it seems like an improvement.