17
votes
Votes on the left
I'm super used to sites like reddit, hackernews, lobsters, and voat which have votes on the left of posts. Can we have an option to swap which side we see votes on?
edit: On larger screens it's also a significant distance between titles and votes.
I wonder if it isn't in keeping with the philosophy of the site to have it on the right though. We have the comment box at the bottom to psychologically nudge people to read before they write. I wonder if the same might be said for having the vote button follow the post title?
I bet the effect would be much diminished by comparison though, so it probably doesn't matter quite as much.
My reasoning was basically that the vote count is valuable information, but it's not the most important information, so putting it in the most important position (left edge, where everyone starts reading from) isn't really necessary. It's easy enough to find if you want to know what it is, but it doesn't need to be right in your face at all times.
I love this design thinking. It really works for me as well.
Tildes vote placement makes me almost forget about them which is great.
Yeah. For me it helps break the habit of "vote before I read just because it seems like it promotes a topic I like"
shrug it makes it harder to read, that's all. From the right to the left of the screen is a significant gap, and it can take some mental effort to figure out which post lines up with which votes.
Sorry but... topics are listed with alternated colours... how it can be hard to track which box is?
https://imgur.com/BBdfBkk
I'm using a 1920, dunno with higher res but still...
It's not really a matter of difficulty to track, but more that I have to look back and forth to scan the front page. On reddit or something, I can just read down the left and read across when I find something interesting. An important piece of information is simply not in an ergonomic place for me.
We can all just get used to the votes being on the right, it's neither arduous nor time-consuming to remember where one votes. It just takes a moment of adaptation, nothing more.
Just because something is the familiar way to do it, doesn't mean it can't be done a different way. Besides, tildes is trying to find it's own identity, separate from those other sites.
That would break consistency, surely.
It's not about memory, it's about habit. I automatically scanning down the left side expecting to see votes where there are none.
Consistency for what? Comment votes are on the left already. I'm only asking for an option.
I was really considering deleting that post, as I didn't like the tone I wrote it in.
Anyway, to your questions.
Alright, but why should we have it there? Is vote number important enough to be the first thing seen?
Consistency between devices or users. But after reading other people's posts that may not be all that important.
Perhaps not, but I certainly would like to be able to read the first few words of the title, the number of votes, and the number of comments in one glance. These are the most important pieces of information imo.
Are all those things not already easily visible? What does the order they are in change?
They are not all easily visible on the same side of the screen. To get all of them I have to look at the other side of the screen. This is tedious to do for every topic.
Why must the vote counter be easily seen?
Votes are there to highlight "good" posts (for whatever tildes users' definition of "good" is). I think it's useful in getting a gist of the quality of the post.
Can we get enough of an idea about the quality of the post by its title, or the tags the poster picked?
Why not just get rid of votes altogether then.
Sort of related: https://tildes.net/~tildes/23f/do_we_need_to_see_the_vote_count
There was also a thread about removing voting entirely as well... give me a min to find it (I’m on mobile atm)
Edit: found it - https://tildes.net/~tildes/pp/what_if_we_got_rid_of_votes_entirely
That's the opinion I'm leaning towards. I'd rather see users vote on specific tags for a post, rather than just a singular vote button.
shrug I like votes
That seems like a needlessly complicated, and labour intensive, feature.
Is there a reason they should be on the left for everyone? Should the vote number be read before the title or something like that?
It's actually super easy because I'm using CSS grid (which is awesome for things like this). The current CSS includes this:
To swap the voting to the left you just do this (reverse the area "columns"):
I've been thinking about adding this as an option for left-handed people on mobile anyway, since currently the voting location is pretty annoying for them.
Also useful for RTL languages, once those are allowed.
Ha - I'm using Stylus so this makes it so easy to swap at will. Cheers.
EDIT: doh Stylus not Violentmonkey
Actually as a right handed person I'd prefer votes on the left too. When I scroll on mobile I accidentally vote on posts a few times per day because they're right in line with how I scroll.
Not gonna lie, this is not what I thought the title referred to at first. I've been reading too much politics...
Personally I like it right where it is, and the votes are in the bottom left of the comments as is, just like reddit. I guess they could be moved, but I don't really see a reason outside of not having a very small learning curve. Changing their color more would be nice though.
This is one of the reasons I use the Dracula theme. It's much easier to distinguish what is voted on and what isn't (turns from blue to pink). That and just, generally, contrasting is clearer.