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Alicorn comments on So, I guess the site redesign is live? - Less Wrong
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Comments (215)
I do not like the icons. I want them to be words.
The colors will take some getting used to but I don't really hate them.
The extra linebreaks on the right sidebar annoy me.
And we still can't view upvotes and downvotes separately on comments argh.
Also, not thrilled about my username being in all caps.
It doesn't read as excitement for you? ALICORN! (Mostly sarcasm, as I almost always read all caps as yelling)
Agree with all of the above. Also, drop-down menus frustrate me when I misaim a mouse click, frustrate me when using a very slow computer, frustate me when Javascript is off, and are generally the spawn of Satan.
On the plus side: whee, it looks pretty and light and stuff! (The thick borders are ugly - maybe keep lime for new comments but don't change border width.) Turning karma bubbles to karma bricks was a good idea. The header and footer are good (though the two icons are too dark for many screen configurations). The "nearby meetups" section is a really, really good idea. Yay.
I, personally, prefer the icons. Mouseover reveals the text explanation, but regular users will have the icons memorized quickly.
What do you mean by 'extra linebreaks on the right sidebar'?
There are now gaps between each recent comment, recent post, recent wiki edit, OB post, and hall-of-famer. This is new. It makes it harder to see lots of info in each screenful.
I second this being annoying.
Yeah, mystery meat navigation sucks!
Words mess up with search engines: "vote", "parent", "child", "date"… There was a comments some months ago about just that. LessWrong looks like democratic astrology to Google. It may suck, but those words have to be removed if we want to change that.
Now there may be a solution if there was a way to use CSS to reintroduce words in a way that search engines don' see them (
beforeandafterpseudo attributes). But such a strategy might be interpreted as Black Hat SEO, so…If you look at the HTML (or turn off CSS) you'll see that the words are actually still there, only hidden. It's making the site harder to use and not even helping the search engine issues.
Ouch. A decision may need to be made one way or another, then. It would indeed be a pity to have the worst of both worlds.
I must say that I kinda like those icons though.
I thought so too at first, and was annoyed, but it seems that icons are more inclusive, as they don't unnecessarily favor native English speakers.
That doesn't mean the current set is optimal. I already registered my objection to an envelope icon for a reply, when the symbol normally means "private message".
This might be a more important consideration for a website that wasn't, you know, based around arguing subtle points in fairly precise English.
True, but from the fact that someone is somewhat fluent in English, it doesn't follow that they can easily infer the meanings of such context-free and technical terms. In fairness, though, I don't know the extent of this problem, and I can't really speak for such an audience. I do know that has been, well, general, unspoken policy to be at least as inclusive in other contexts, even when the nature of this site would kind of obviate the need to be inclusive in that particular way.
The new icons have potential to be offensive, however; a thumbs-up gesture is an obscene suggestion in some cultures. If we have to use icons for up/down votes, it might make more sense to use reddit arrows.
I'm personally not in the "no icons" camp, so much as the, "these are the wrong icons" camp. Even though I know what they mean, I keep thinking the bent arrow is the reply button and that the envelope means private message. And the peanut-looking thing isn't very suggestive of its function, either.
Of course, I don't know that there are any icons that would satisfy me; I'm just saying I'm not in principle opposed to them.
However, if the main purpose of the change is SEO, then there's no reason we couldn't have icons with text in them... ;-)
(As someone else pointed out, though, the text is still there, just hidden. A little tweaking in Firebug, and I've actually gotten the action links to look roughly like they did before, and I'm tempted to try to figure out how to make those changes permanent on my end.)
One other thing that bugs me about the current icons is that they are not at all inviting. Every time a new user sees "vote" and "reply", they are being subliminally primed to participate in the site. (Heck - they have that effect on existing users as well.) The icons, however, don't prime a damn thing AFAICT. I see the thumbs and think, "meh" - they look like somebody changing their mind, unsure whether to vote up or down. I see the envelope, and wonder if I have any mail.