What is meta? ×

Prompted by comments on this question.

I added the following comment

the accept rate is colour coded - Green == good, Grey == acceptable, Red == low

but I thought I ought to double check that a) this is accurate and b) complete.

The blog post that introduced the feature just states:

Certain visual styles will be applied to the percentage depending on how high or low it is.

without any indication (that I can see) of what these styles are.

I don't think publicising the exact percentages is necessary just the colour == value.

@Ladybug Killer makes a very good point about colour blind or visually impaired users. While there is a tooltip which gives you the raw numbers (19 of 23 eligible questions) there isn't an indication that this is good, acceptable, poor or bad.

share|improve this question
There is also orange when it's very low. –  BrunoLM Oct 27 '10 at 10:58
@BrunoLM - I was fairly sure that there was another colour. Actually I think it might be mentioned on the blog. –  ChrisF Oct 27 '10 at 11:05
You should look at them from colour-blind people's point of view. –  Ladybug Killer Oct 27 '10 at 11:20
@Ladybug: from the colour-blind people's point of view, green vs red and especially green vs orange (i.e. what we already have now) is a completely and utterly awful choice to begin with. By far most colour-blind people have difficulty with telling red from green hues. Very few have difficulty with telling red from blue. –  ЯegDwight Oct 27 '10 at 11:40
@RegD: You see? –  Ladybug Killer Oct 27 '10 at 11:45
There are different colours? –  Wikis Mar 21 '11 at 13:24
+1 for the Tooltip, that never occurred to me before. –  takrl Jun 17 '11 at 8:30
While red/green isn't great for colorblind users, this is a situation where there's only slight "added value" for those with full color perception. There's no important signal or incorrect assumption a colorblind user is likely to make based on the color of the accept rate text, unlike mistaking a big green "go" button with a big red "kill everyone" button. –  Ben Brocka Dec 27 '11 at 20:11
@BenBrocka - I agree. The colours were (if anything) confusing rather than adding any information. –  ChrisF Dec 27 '11 at 20:18
They give a slight positive/negative association to the accept rate implicit with the colors, but it's a metaphor that would be lost on the colorblind anyway. We could make them blue and red, but then the metaphor no longer makes sense even to non-colorblind users. –  Ben Brocka Dec 27 '11 at 20:20
@BenBrocka - I know the basic red/green bad/good correlation was there. It was the different shades that were confusing things (for me at least). –  ChrisF Dec 27 '11 at 20:21
I actually like the idea of the different shading, at least in how it's applied to comment votes; hues become more vibrant and/or add more color as upvotes grow in number. It's less clear what the color change in accept rate means. The light orange->red orange doesn't mean much. I'm not sure I would consider 90% significantly better than 85% due to the use case where a user may really have 15% questions with no acceptable answers. –  Ben Brocka Dec 27 '11 at 20:33

1 Answer 1

up vote 8 down vote accepted

The coloration of the accept rate is based purely on the percentage value, and nothing more. I'm not sure what to say about past observations otherwise, but I've confirmed internally (Thanks to Geoff Dalgas! Give him a hand!) that this is exactly how the code makes it. So I'm willing to chalk up any mis-readings (including my own from my previous answer) as "You were seeing things". ♪

At 35 or below, accept rate will be shown in increasingly deep shades of red and orange.

At 80 or above, accept rate will be shown in green hues.

At any value in between, accept rate will be grey.

share|improve this answer
Does this mean we can rap the knuckles of anyone who complains about someone else's accept rate when it's above 35%? –  Al E. Dec 27 '11 at 20:52
You could also do it on anyone who complains about their own accept rate, technically. –  Grace Note Dec 27 '11 at 20:59

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .