(The following is an issue in many places on the site. I’m just giving the most visible example.)
Suppose you go to the front page and have a look at, say, the latest-comments section. If you hover your mouse pointer over any of the comments, you’ll see a highlight around a box containing the comment and its metadata, and it seems like the whole box functions as a button that takes you to that comment in its context. (So, e.g., clicking on whitespace within the box does that; and your pointer changes shape as it does when hovering over a link or a button.)
Very nice. Makes it easier to follow these links. Less fiddly. WRONG.
Why wrong? Because actually the whole box isn’t a link. Or, rather, it kinda is, but then some things inside it do different things. If you click on one little bit of it, you get the author’s profile page instead. If you click on another bit, you upvote or downvote the comment.
I suggest that the ability to upvote and downvote comments without even reading all of them (let alone their context) is a Really Bad Idea. Some people will do it on purpose. Some people will do it by accident. (I have, at least once. Fortunately I noticed. I bet it’s easy to do without noticing.)
The overall effect is that all the visual cues you’ve got are telling you “this whole thing is a big button-like thing, just click anywhere inside it” but the reality is quite different. This will remain true even if the voting arrows are removed, which they absolutely should be regardless of any other changes.
Possible fixes: (1) Make the whole thing be a big button-like thing all of which does the same thing. (Downside: anywhere you do this, you lose the ability to go to the author’s profile page, which is useful from time to time.) (2) Make it so that the whole box containing the list entry is no longer a link. Now we have a bunch of fiddly little mouse targets—but it’s no longer masquerading as something else. (Downside: a bunch of fiddly little mouse targets. Also, not clear how effective this will be on its own; perhaps combine with 3.) (3) Make the special bits more visually apparent, using colour or boldface or whatever. (Downside: goes against the aesthetic apparently being aimed for on LW2 as a whole—which I find a nice-looking aesthetic but often not a good user experience.)
Yeah, so originally the whole comment was a link. But then I wanted to make it expandable to not have it be so massive on the frontpage, and for that it needed to not all be clickable, and so we ended up with the current state.
I think it probably makes sense to change the design and no longer make it do its hover-over card thing. And then making the comment link more prominent.
(The following is an issue in many places on the site. I’m just giving the most visible example.)
Suppose you go to the front page and have a look at, say, the latest-comments section. If you hover your mouse pointer over any of the comments, you’ll see a highlight around a box containing the comment and its metadata, and it seems like the whole box functions as a button that takes you to that comment in its context. (So, e.g., clicking on whitespace within the box does that; and your pointer changes shape as it does when hovering over a link or a button.)
Very nice. Makes it easier to follow these links. Less fiddly. WRONG.
Why wrong? Because actually the whole box isn’t a link. Or, rather, it kinda is, but then some things inside it do different things. If you click on one little bit of it, you get the author’s profile page instead. If you click on another bit, you upvote or downvote the comment.
I suggest that the ability to upvote and downvote comments without even reading all of them (let alone their context) is a Really Bad Idea. Some people will do it on purpose. Some people will do it by accident. (I have, at least once. Fortunately I noticed. I bet it’s easy to do without noticing.)
The overall effect is that all the visual cues you’ve got are telling you “this whole thing is a big button-like thing, just click anywhere inside it” but the reality is quite different. This will remain true even if the voting arrows are removed, which they absolutely should be regardless of any other changes.
Possible fixes: (1) Make the whole thing be a big button-like thing all of which does the same thing. (Downside: anywhere you do this, you lose the ability to go to the author’s profile page, which is useful from time to time.) (2) Make it so that the whole box containing the list entry is no longer a link. Now we have a bunch of fiddly little mouse targets—but it’s no longer masquerading as something else. (Downside: a bunch of fiddly little mouse targets. Also, not clear how effective this will be on its own; perhaps combine with 3.) (3) Make the special bits more visually apparent, using colour or boldface or whatever. (Downside: goes against the aesthetic apparently being aimed for on LW2 as a whole—which I find a nice-looking aesthetic but often not a good user experience.)
Yeah, so originally the whole comment was a link. But then I wanted to make it expandable to not have it be so massive on the frontpage, and for that it needed to not all be clickable, and so we ended up with the current state.
I think it probably makes sense to change the design and no longer make it do its hover-over card thing. And then making the comment link more prominent.