JavaScript makes the upvote/downvote buttons work in a way that users expect them to work. Given that is almost 50% of the end-user functionality of this site, I'd say that's pretty important.
The vote/downvote buttons do not require JS. You can verify this in the same, under the network tab. There is disallowed JS request, but the vote succeeds independent of the JS not being allowed.
Thank you, very good answer! It makes a bit more sense to me. Also tested in Chrome w/o Javascript, and it does indeed work. Upvoting's just a little more inconvenient.
Ah, interesting observation. The difference is actually that the up arrows don't have an onclick attribute if you're not logged in, so you end up with the vote behaviour you normally get if you have JavaScript disabled.
I agree with you, but just a point: the upvote and downvote arrows actually go to other pages when you disable JS, so it makes sense for them to be <a> tags. They should provide better feedback though (and a title attribute for screen readers).
The [-] is more complicated. Ideally it would link to a non-js fallback, but alas. But it's much better as an anchor tag than as a button disguised as a link.
Oddly enough no, I can read the vote up buttons just fine and should in fact use them more :) maybe some JS behind the scenes that is taking care of it
> I am using a text-based browser and so I do not use the upvote/downvote javascript. Consider this comment an upvote.
I haven't tried, but looking at this page source it looks to me that vote arrows are divs wrapped in anchors pointing to up- and down vote URLs. They should definitely be usable without JS; maybe the problem is that the empty divs are not visible in your text browser?
I always thought the only way downvotes buttons should be implemented is that they're non-functional, in that they do nothing other than let a user take an action; you could perhaps then influence what that specific user sees in the future, to help get an idea of their tastes, or instead not actually affecting where a comment or post shows up in an order.
> it's just a sampling from the subset of HN users that can figure out what the buttons do
Or those who don't experience layout problems. Often there is a significant part of the down arrow that results in an upvote or vice versa. Generally happens in FF for me. I feel like I need to check the URL before clicking.
For better or worse, the up/downvote buttons are used to express an opinion -- that is the primary purpose.
The problem is that any crowdsourced curation feature uses significant downvotes as a signal for spam or content which otherwise violates the site policies.
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