For some reason there's always some highly-rated complaint on HN comments about the website layout, and I do not understand why. They are honestly the most boring comments to read.
> A reader emailed to complain about how this and other HN discussions often become derailed by off-topic carping about blog design. I agree completely. Could there be a more classic form of bikeshedding? It would seem parodic if it weren't sadly real. This has become more of a thing on HN lately. It needs to become less of a thing.
> I don't mean to pick on you personally, or just on this one comment. (Your second sentence alone, by the way, would have been a helpful contribution.) The problem is the tedious stampedes such comments spawn.
You realize you can shrink your browser window width and
increase the text size to make the layout how you want?
I would much appreciate an answer as I've tried taking up the responsibility of doing my part in keeping HN a great place with valuable comments and insights!
To divorce the content and the presentation is simply not feasible and pretty insulting to the good work of designers/typesetters and indeed readers.
I suspect the frequency of this sort of comment is due to the frequency of bad design.
Perhaps in other cases this sort of comment isn't relevant, I can accept that argument. I argue that here it is relevant because the entire premise of the material is that it's for reading and the presentation makes that unviable.
Do we also stop positive comments like this[0] one?
Perhaps what I should have done is make a more detailed post outlining the issues with the content and perhaps linked to well accepted design practices that help improve the reading experience. But to suggest 'these types of comments' are without relevance (*and deserving of flagging) is to deny conversation about an important part of the submission content.
I definitely would not flag every design-related comment, but I was mostly wondering if it is ever justified to do so.
(and just to be clear, I had no particular opinion on your comment - it just reminded me to ask about flagging etiquette)