That would certainly increase the number of accidental votes.

As it stands, I have already accidentally clicked "ago" and gone to a comment permalink when I wanted to collapse a thread. Not much better.

Since collapse persists on page loads, hopefully it is better now. Then again, we can un-vote now, so I think we're back to having the behavioral advantages and disadvantages being close enough that it's a toss-up what any particular user thinks is more of a problem.

Why not double-click the comment body to collapse/expand? or maybe some other behavior that isn't creating a click minefield.

But at least now we can undo upvotes/downvotes so it's not as much of an issue as before!

...which is now not a problem.

It's not as much of a problem, but if people are regularly trying and failing to perform the action they want it's a UI wart.

Accidental upvote is a possible wart, collapse on the right is a guaranteed wart.

When in doubt, stick with already established standards.

Reddit does it that way, and I haven't seen any of the developers complain about accidental votes.

Because accidental votes are not a problem when you can undo a vote, which is now possible as well.

I've used HN Enhancement Suite for a while, and that really wasn't a problem.

I feel like it would be worth the trade-off.

This would be appreciated here too. The functionality is great but it feels unnatural where it's currently positioned.

Making it a slightly bigger target with a dash would also be useful: [–] instead of [-]

More generally, can you try to adjust it so that the [-] button doesn’t move around after being clicked?

The spacing above the username at the top of the comment shouldn’t change when a thread is collapsed.

I would say: left of the vote button too.

That's the behaviour I have on the reader I wrote. https://hack.ernews.info Works pretty well

I agree -- the Hacker News Collapse Chrome extension works this way, and I have become accustomed to it.

yes. it doesn't make sense from any design perspective. alignment is an important visual signifier and usability design tool.

there is no reason why vote arrows would be aligned across posts (it suggests a connection where there is none), while there are several for the collapse buttons.

this is textbook user interface design!