[Idea] About the voting behavior & appearance

Sir Frosthaven·Sep 25, 2013·5 votes·723 views

Just a couple of thoughts on the voting schematic:

The upvote color (dark green) is hard to distinguish from the neutral unvoted color (dark gray). I feel like this can be fixed by lightening the green up a bit and removing the shadows from the arrows.
Posts that haven't received any outside votes should be distinguished. Maybe make the color of the vote number a shade of gray if there is only one vote? (indicating only the person who made the post has voted). This way threads that have activity will be easier to spot.
There should be a way to remove your vote and return to neutral (perhaps by clicking the number instead of an arrow?). Say I accidentally vote on something - well now I have to either give it a +1 or -1 even if I don't have a reason to vote at all.
Should we really allow voting from the main community page? It seems a bit strange that I can vote things up or down without even having to read the content.

Thanks in advance to the reader :)

Here is an example of the voting widget with changed appearance: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8782995/voting.jpg

4 Comments

RiotKrylhosSep 26, 20135 votes

Thanks Frosthaven

We're definitely open to looking into color palette adjustments. It's also recently been brought to our attention that we haven't been giving enough love to the color blind, which is something we're also in the midst of addressing.

Do you think that graying down the recent posts with no activity from outsiders would discourage engagement from others to come in?

You can return your vote to neutral by clicking the same direction you are currently voting.

You make a strong point about voting from the listing, and we've discussed it a lot as well. With an easy to access preview of the thread (where many threads begin with a relatively short post) it makes sense to keep it there.

Sir FrosthavenSep 26, 20131 votes

As for the graying of the number, I think with some gradient changes to make upvoted and downvoted posts more apparent would suffice. Would you then perhaps consider moving the vote option into the thread preview pane, wherever you place it? I guess I'd have to know in what way you are doing your thread previews. My idea for that was to have a div panel pop up on hover almost like a speach bubble instead of relying on browser tooltips, but I'm sure you guys have discussed some pretty killer options for it :)

Solari EclipseSep 26, 20131 votes

It surprises m that a company of over 800 employees doesn't happen to have someone who is color blind that could just scroll over stuff and say "Looks, good mate, wot wot." or "Eh...This needs addressing." Granted, they probably wouldn't apply to the art and visual departments. So 800+ minus that quantity. Surely, there is one person.

Sir FrosthavenSep 27, 20131 votes

Well to be fair, this community platform is in beta! I hate to admit it but there are times when I'm developing something that I overlook certain things such as color blind users, though I do keep a usability checklist that I hold my work to when done professionally. Until the community platform is out of beta, though, I'd be wary of casting any stones - preferring instead feedback :)