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Comment by Slackwise | Hacker News Reader

I like how hovering over "kudos", in an attempt to understand what it is, automatically performs an action I didn't want to perform. And there is no undo.

Great UI there, guys. I like how you focus on aesthetic novelty instead of functionality, but I guess that explains why you're hiding the UI all over the site until you hover over crap [1].

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation

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Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. It's refreshing to hear the voice of reason.

Yep! But u get used to it. though it doesn't mean it's in any way GOOD. Just "pretty".

This is yet another reason to use a Javascript whitelist in your browser.

Considering that Svbtle has been around for like a year and a half now and it's not a particularly annoying UI scheme (rather one with more of a novelty element to it), can we get past debating about the Kudos button? I mean, it's not relevant to the article at all and it's not fair to the author, who had nothing to do with the feature.

That said, so people can catch up:

Here's some backstory on Svbtle: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742314

Here's Dustin Curtis responding to criticism over it: http://dcurt.is/unkudo

Dustin Curtis' "response to the critcism" in that second link consists of:

1. Quoting a well-articulated email from yet another reader who felt deceived by the trickery; and,

2. (After a preface stating how he finds it amusing that so many people are bothered about this button) The following high-level technical overview of what happens behind the scenes when someone's kudos are volunteered willy-nilly:

  Here’s what it actually does: when you hover over the button, a CSS transform animation is activated which fills 
  the circle. After 1 second (the length of the animation), it fires a request to the server which increments an 
  otherwise meaningless number by exactly one.

This is the full extent of his response. As far as I could figure out, this "response to criticism" addresses the following introductory paragraph of his interlocutor's email:

  I was curious about the Kudos button you mention in your http://dcurt.is/web-standards article. I hovered over it 
  with my mouse pointer, and then it said “don’t move”. I didn’t move. Then it said “sent”. Apparently someone 
  invented a button that does not need to be pressed in order to be triggered.

And totally ignores the sentiment communicated by the more weighty second paragraph which concludes with:

  I very humbly request that you kindly decrement the Kudos statistic by one unit in order to compensate for the 
  one that I definitely did not intend to send until it was forcefully withdrawn from me by a deceitful human 
  interface.

Did Dustin Curtis really miss the subtle (svbtle?) sarcasm of that first paragraph, or am I just imagining things?

Wait a minute, so he didn't realize that the criticism is that it performs a function without me wanting to perform it, and thinks the criticism is that "i feel it sucks out my soul" -_- Seriously, why DID the GP link to this?

Wait, let me get this straight: It's wrong for them to use HN to complain about their bad on-line experiences in hopes of getting people to change software for the better. But it's ok for you to complain about your bad on-line experiences in hopes of getting people to stop talking about their bad on-line experiences.

What makes your experience more important than theirs? If we're going to have complaints here, I'd rather they be towards fixing things than to get people to pretend to stop noticing problems.

That wasn't what I said. All I said is that complaints like this irrelevant to the guy's article. What's wrong with merely asking people to stay on-topic?

Your complaint is also irrelevant to the guy's article. Both you and the person you're complaining about think you have something relevant to the audience. You seem to think that your view of what's good to talk about is more important than somebody else's.

Me, I think the complaint about the bad UI is totally on topic here at Hacker News. I hadn't noticed it before, and was interested to have it brought to my attention. And I agree that it's terrible UI.

Add to global stylesheet:

    .kudo.able.clearfix {display: none;}

(Though I agree fully with your comments.)

What does it do?

What's really hilarious is they tell you "Don't Move". I made a gif of the behavior in question, so you don't have to try it yourself. I inadvertently gave them like, five more kudos trying to capture it: http://oi39.tinypic.com/24e2kw1.jpg

Sorry, I never make videos, much less upload them, so I didn't really know what services to use. If anyone has recommendations, I'd love to hear about htem.

imgur.com is the current standard in throw away image hosting.

Yeah, but then it's linked to my account then, right? I guess I was looking for more of a throw away picture hosting scheme

No. If you have an Imgur account maybe, but you could just open an incognito window and upload the picture. No account is necessary.

No, not linked to your account.

It's a like button, effectively. Not a Facebook like button, just a 'I like this post' button.

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