[ratsmack]

I have a problem with people down voting things that they disagree with and up voting things they agree with. I had always assumed that voting was for "quality of post" and not for agreement.

I see this same scenario played out in many forums where a very good, high quality comment is made which quotes what "someone" said and subsequently heavily down voted because of the person that said it. In other words, the message is quashed because of the person that said it, and not because of the message itself... this is a sad testament to online dialogue.

[dvtrn]

Apparently that’s their intended function according to mods[0] I just prefer downvoted comments don’t turn grey just because some may disagree with it, it’s an annoying UX personally, as I’ve actually found some interesting information I hadn’t previously been exposed to from comments a few people decided they disagreed with.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17996858

[ratsmack]

I have a problem with the greyed out posts because they are difficult to read with my poor eyesight. I usually select them with the mouse so they are highlighted, which makes them easier to read.

[contravariant]

I always assumed that's what you were supposed to do anyway. If it's just slightly downvoted it is still somewhat readable but after that it gets hard to read quick. I don't think this has much to do with eyesight, it's by design. I guess poor eyesight might make it hard to distinguish between normal and slightly downvoted comments, but that's not too important a distinction anyway.

[dvtrn]

Yup. This is my precise annoyance with the styling. I understand not everyone will bother to read greyed out comments because they trust the wisdom of the crowd here. I do not. As a result, reading the comments adds one extra step now just to interact and engage.

Thankfully someone below our published some userstyles below.

[chrisco255]

That's interesting never thought about the accessibility problem with greyed out posts.

[sfgweilr4f]

Especially when the downvotes are blatantly because someone disagreed and the grayed out comment is actually interesting, or the comment is actually a question that shouldn't have been downvoted at all.

[doc_gunthrop]

> I had always assumed that voting was for "quality of post" and not for agreement.

That's how it's supposed to be used. This also applies to other platforms that have some social media or online discourse component (e.g. reddit, twitter, etc.).

But since there is no barrier to entry to these platforms, any "slob in a smelly t-shirt" can post comments and upvote/downvote at will, regardles of how unqualified their opinion may be.

I've noticed the more egregious forms of this on HN recently, where a commenter will cherry-pick a snippet of comment made by another user in an unrelated post from weeks prior in an attempt to discredit them in a current post.