HN Explorer

Suggest HN: Use opacity for better downvoted-comment hiding

7 points by kyro ↗ HN
Downvoted comments whose font colors are adjusted to more closely match the background page color are still easy to read simply by highlighting them because the highlighted background color doesn't change, leaving you with outlined, legible characters. And it's actually quite tempting to read these comments since it takes such little effort to do so.

Adjusting the opacity property seems to affect both the font and the highlighted background, making it near impossible to read a comment set at, say, opacity 0.2. The only options you'd have to render the text legible would be either editing the css file, or copying/pasting the text elsewhere, both (I think) being too high-labor and making the effort just not worth it.

Edit: Tested a bit more, seems like opacity only seems to have a noticeable affect on legibility at around 0.4 and under. What about a combination of both systems whereby after hitting a certain threshold of negative karma, a greyed out comment is rendered more transparent? The idea is to make it difficult to read comments that are almost without a doubt inflammatory and uncivil. Often you'll see an endless stream of repetitive and replies made to a completely greyed out comment.

12 comments

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krapp
I disagree. Given the various reasons people have for downvoting comments, including simple disagreement, trolling and trying to upvote on mobile but hitting the wrong button accidentally, being able to read the downvoted comments should always be easy.

If anything, I think it should take more effort to white them out at all.. it can be assumed that a comment with, say, five or more downvotes is probably not worth reading but a controversial comment could take some downvotes but still possibly be worth a look at.

RKoutnik
I think this is by design - Downvoted comments clearly show community disagreement, but one can still read them with minimal effort.

Not to mention that so long as they're displayed on the page, someone will come up with a userscript to display them.

kyro
I think `dang recently mentioned* that he's found the majority of downvoted and greyed out comments to be noncontributory. If that's the case, then there's little reason for them to be read.

*He did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7642127

sp332
"The majority"? What about the others? And anyway, who cares what dang thinks? :) (Hi dang!)
krapp
Well, with respect to dang and his having admin rights and all, his opinion is not necessarily objective fact. Enforceable policy, perhaps, but not fact.

Would it not be better to allow people to make up their own minds about it than to make that choice more difficult?

RKoutnik
Sure there is! They provide good examples of what is not accepted here at HN so that bystanders know where the line is. Educating newcomers about what is acceptable is a very difficult thing to do in web communities, and examples (of both good and bad) are the best way.
argumentum
If the goal of graying out was to prevent these comments from ever being read, why show them in the first place?

The goal, I think, was to reduce noise for the majority of users. If someone really wants to read a grayed out comment, they are entitled to do.

Seems to work just fine.

Mz
I am with those saying this is a bad idea. Karma no longer shows on individual comments. I understand that was goal oriented and accomplished it's goal. Greying out of comments is a non-numerical signal of negative karma. It isn't intended as censorship. Nor should it be.

I tend to be controversial everywhere I go. It is not uncommon for me to get one downvote and then one corrective upvote. I know for a fact that there are forum members who practice corrective upvoting. I suspect a lot of the downvotes I get are from folks who personally dislike me, not really based on the quality of that comment per se.

If you turn negative karma on a comment into censorship instead of signal, you start moving towards a situation where groupthink gets way out of hand. It isn't healthy to completely silence minority opinions or other kinds of outlier communication. Intentionally creating an atmosphere where you kill the messenger and force people to be yes-men will harm the health of the forum (and of YC, indirectly) not improve the civility of the community.

dang
I know some people disagree, but personally I think the current balance is about right. Anyone can read faded-out comments if they want to; at the same time, there's a community signal there, and the very worst stuff—which was a growing problem for HN, and which (fingers crossed) seems to be subsiding—has its harmful effects mostly neutralized.

Perhaps I'll repeat a related point: if you notice a faded-out comment that's both substantive and civil, it's good community practice to give it a corrective upvote. This practice evolved on HN a long time ago, but we're asking people to do it more consciously now, because of our recent change to make some downvotes more powerful. When a comment has been downvoted unfairly, it usually only takes one or two corrective upvotes to get it back to par, so every user can make a big difference.

brudgers
I don't see what problem this solves because I am not aware of any problematic behaviors associated with reading comments downvoted to greyness nor positive behaviors associated with being prevented from doing so. And I can't really imagine any...though that may be a function of a poor imagination on my part.

On the other hand, I often see uncivil comments rendered in the dark tone of legitimacy and I associate those with eliciting similar comments. I don't have to imagine their effect, I've seen it.

BTW, when I see a stream of short repetitive replies to a greyed out comment, my bad response radar goes off and downvotes sometimes follow. Just arguing, pointing out the obvious, or worse doesn't add anything to HN.

dragonwriter
> Downvoted comments whose font colors are adjusted to more closely match the background page color are still easy to read simply by highlighting them because the highlighted background color doesn't change, leaving you with outlined, legible characters. And it's actually quite tempting to read these comments since it takes such little effort to do so.

Isn't that the point? Downvoted comments are less visible if you are skimming, but easy legible if you care to see them.

> Adjusting the opacity property seems to affect both the font and the highlighted background, making it near impossible to read a comment set at, say, opacity 0.2.

Making it impossible to read a downvoted comment means it is impossible for people to find inappropriate downvoted comments and vote them up. Downvoting isn't supposed to make a comment unreadable, its supposed to make it deemphasized so that it is less intrusive while keep it readable with minimal, but non-zero, effort.