I take personal issue with the fading of downvoted comments.
1) The mechanic silences an opinion by making it harder to read/requiring highlighting to read
2) Swaying public opinion of a comment without even reading it. "Oh, it's already almost faded out entirely. It's probably a terrible post that I should just downvote without actually reading." (E: I understand HN requires you to "spend" a karma to downvote something. This doesn't prevent people from using their karma in this manner when they have 1,000's)
3) Allows self-validation of "others agree with me, because this comment has been downvoted and I disagree with this comment", which is fallacious reasoning. Popular/majority opinion can be wrong and patting yourself on the back for having other people agree with you can be detrimental. Self-validation without critically thinking about your opponents arguments is an injustice to them.
I have a rule in Stylish to set "font" to #333 so that all comments appear the same for me. Unless someone mentions "why is this downvoted", I'm completely unaware of any comments being downvoted. I find this leads to a better experience on HN.
Note: For #3 I use "you/yourself" in a "third party not necessarily you 'you'" way.
1) The mechanic silences an opinion by making it harder to read/requiring highlighting to read
2) Swaying public opinion of a comment without even reading it. "Oh, it's already almost faded out entirely. It's probably a terrible post that I should just downvote without actually reading." (E: I understand HN requires you to "spend" a karma to downvote something. This doesn't prevent people from using their karma in this manner when they have 1,000's)
3) Allows self-validation of "others agree with me, because this comment has been downvoted and I disagree with this comment", which is fallacious reasoning. Popular/majority opinion can be wrong and patting yourself on the back for having other people agree with you can be detrimental. Self-validation without critically thinking about your opponents arguments is an injustice to them.
I have a rule in Stylish to set "font" to #333 so that all comments appear the same for me. Unless someone mentions "why is this downvoted", I'm completely unaware of any comments being downvoted. I find this leads to a better experience on HN.
Note: For #3 I use "you/yourself" in a "third party not necessarily you 'you'" way.