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HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

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Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#81
post #74
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that an upvote is more often about agreement than a downvote is about disagreement.

People do it that way, but it's incorrect. You are not supposed to use downvotes to disagree. (Initially it was like that, but not anymore because it stifled the conversation and caused groupthink since people were too scared to post anything controversial.)

It is correct. What is incorrect is to thing that symmetrical interface elements can have asymmetrical actions. How would you like if turning steering wheel to the left would give left turn, but turning it to the right would stop the car? If you want asymmetrical meaning, please, use different elements.

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#82

And please put more whitespace between links so us iPhone users can press on links without accidentally hitting the comments link. Thanks :)

That's one of the reasons I really like Opera mobile and Opera mini: if you fat-finger and there are two possible links you could've hit, it zooms in so that you can disambiguate the click.

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#83
post #9
post #4

It will also look crisp on my normal-resolution display. This website's font is too small for me so I always open it in 150%.

Me too. Doesn't it drive you nuts when some sites don't let you resize fonts? Specifically, look at the Facebook comments on Techcrunch. I can zoom in all I want (command-+) but the comments-font stays tiny. My eyes are bad.

I was under the impression that all browser already switched from "increase font size" to regular zoom (as Opera had for example). But yeah, Chrome seems to broken in this regard. It's not as horrible as Firefox and IE used to be, but still... I'd file it as a bug report to your browser vendor.

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#84
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do it that way, but it's incorrect. You are not supposed to use downvotes to disagree. (Initially it was like that, but not anymore because it stifled the conversation and caused groupthink since people were too scared to post anything controversial.)

It is correct. What is incorrect is to thing that symmetrical interface elements can have asymmetrical actions. How would you like if turning steering wheel to the left would give left turn, but turning it to the right would stop the car? If you want asymmetrical meaning, please, use different elements.

When the site was initially made that was what the meaning was: Agree/Disagree.

However that norm changed when people realized that was a bad idea.

The UI didn't change with the norm change.

At one point the norm was you could downvote to disagree if the comment had a score greater than 1. But now that comment scores are no longer displayed, that norm changed too.

Now the downarrow basically means spam/stupid/useless, etc. Actually for spam you also need to click on flag.

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#85
post #3

Very good proposal. There are more unicode symbols to choice from: http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/geometric_shapes.html Down arrow/triangle: ▼ It is not only matter of resolution but I personally like bigger fonts and have zoomed in HN so triangles look bad: http://i.imgur.com/fpA7N.png

I use Firefox "Zoom text only" which only zooms text.

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then upvote/downvote are the wrong semantics for what you are proposing. Change them to "like" and "spam". For a multi-lingual audience, that is easier to grok than to hash the up/down arrows.

I'm not proposing anything. "Upvote" and "downvote" are the names given to functions of the HN site. My descriptions of those words are my understanding of the consensus among HN users on what they mean and how they should be used. If my understanding of that consensus is wrong then I hope that others users will put me right. Edit: Would whoever downvoted this care to explain why? I'm genuinely interested.

By downvoting you in order to show disagreement, it looks like the consensus is quite eloquently explaining why it thinks you are wrong.

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#87
post #70
post #3

Very good proposal. There are more unicode symbols to choice from: http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/geometric_shapes.html Down arrow/triangle: ▼ It is not only matter of resolution but I personally like bigger fonts and have zoomed in HN so triangles look bad: http://i.imgur.com/fpA7N.png

We could use the "pile of poo" ( http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm ) character for downvote instead!

How does one get down-vote?

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#88
post #77

Browsing HN with images disabled is impossible(no voting) for this reason (I wrote about it at https://gist.github.com/2947068 )

Strange, I sometimes browse hn with links (lynx-like console browser), and voting works ok .

IIRC, links replaces images by some [alt-text] or [IMG]. Turning the images off in a graphical browser just.. well.. turns the images off.

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#89
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could use the "pile of poo" ( http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm ) character for downvote instead!

How does one get down-vote?

I'm pretty sure you get downvoting powers at 500 karma. (At least, that's about when I got them. I have heard rumors that it fluctuates, and like all the mechanics of Hacker News, the precise rules are proprietary secret sauce.)
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