> We'd really need to figure out a better way of mitigating problematic content without using up/down votes before we can solve this problem unfortunately.
Agreed. All sharing platforms, HN included, conflate agreement with importance. I can't disagree with someone without silencing them on HN and Reddit. And I can't congenially disagree on Facebook or Twitter, at least not in a way that transparently affects the various algorithms.
> I can't disagree with someone without silencing them on HN
This bothers me too. I've encountered quite a few posts that were unreadable. Why? Was it because they violated some rule, or was it because they were unpopular opinion? I have no way to know. This is the largest problem with HN I can see.
What I don't understand is why it apparently doesn't occur to the HN admins that "fading" peoples' posts into oblivion makes people pay more attention to them. If HN's intent is to make undesirable opinions less visible, it's a colossal failure.
Often it's a waste of time to highlight those posts with my mouse, because they're usually downmodded for good reasons. But I still feel compelled to look, and I doubt I'm alone in that respect.
To fix this, I'd limit the text contrast to two levels -- normal and obviously-but-not-illegibly faded. In other words, don't make it look like you're trying to hide something from me. If a post is so bad that it deserves to be rendered at near-zero contrast, then it's bad enough to delete altogether... and only blatant spam falls into that category IMO.
For me, I think it actually works well as a user interface.
If I'm in a mood to be charitable and particularly open-minded, I can choose to squint closely or highlight with mouse, and read a greyed-out comment.
However, once that reading is done, the fact that it's greyed out means I don't feel the need to respond to it, correct it, etc. I know that it's being hidden, that people will give it less credence and attention. Plus, I just don't have to look at it once it's no longer highlighted.
In effect, greying out text is a gentle reminder to "don't feed the trolls"
Agreed. All sharing platforms, HN included, conflate agreement with importance. I can't disagree with someone without silencing them on HN and Reddit. And I can't congenially disagree on Facebook or Twitter, at least not in a way that transparently affects the various algorithms.