Whenever a reply to me starts with "I don't mean to be insulting," I know that the comment ahead is doomed to be insulting. Yours was certainly no exception and delivered every bit of insult that you claimed to not intend. I'm going to tackle your comment point-by-point to reinforce to you just how arrogantly you come across here:

> I think you just lack design sense. His redesigns are very clearly significantly better

...to you. Design is subjective and, as a designer, you should know that such a statement of universal truth cannot be spoken of a design. What looks good to you, or perhaps even a majority of people you can find that agree with you, might look abhorrent to another person. There are very few universal appeals in the humanities. There's what I find appealing visually, and there's what you find appealing visually. Sometimes they align, sometimes they don't.

I know designers have quantified some things like subtleties of typography and the mathematics of color, but in the end design comes down to what looks appealing in most cases (or to the client). I'm sharing my personal opinion on the specific redesign that I've pointed out, and I'm asking Hacker News if I'm missing something plainly obvious in that I don't think it's better.

You implore to me that his designs are not only better, they're very clearly better, implying that not only am I stupid for asking, I'm stupid for missing the glaringly obvious reason it's better that's somewhere right in front of me. That's precisely the question I asked, and you haven't answered it; you've instead made me feel stupid for asking by reiterating it to me another way. This sort of dismissal is something I've come to expect from many designers, and it's unfortunate for the designers that genuinely love interacting with people and discussing their craft without the inherent elitism that the rest of you seem to bring into threads like this[1].

I'd say from that linked thread you tended to agree with 54mf. Hey, he said the same thing I just did[2]!

> (which is why they have been so popular here on HN)

Because popularity on Hacker News is an implication of something.

There's two general trends for a story on Hacker News. Either something kills it early on (like a flag) and it's doomed to a life below the fold for eternity, or it gains a few crucial early votes and hits page 1. Once on page 1, what I call the bandwagon effect kicks in and it's guaranteed a trip to near the top.

In either case, the popularity of a specific item on Hacker News indicates absolutely nothing. There are things regularly voted to the top that shouldn't be, merely because they hit page 1 and got to ride the bandwagon.

> and default bootstrap ALWAYS looks bad on a professional company's production site. It screams "I don't give a shit about real design so i just used bootstrap".

To who? You? Depending on the audience, it might not matter.

A Bootstrap site for paying electric bills, for instance, isn't a big deal. We had this fight in the other thread, and I'm not going to rehash it here. It looks bad to you because you're a designer and you're looking for it. Paradoxically, you and numerous other designers were arguing against changing Bootstrap because Bootstrap looks fine in the other thread.

> I would urge you to study design a little more before you start critiquing designs.

Here's that elitism coming back. I don't need to study anything to know what appeals to me and what doesn't. I especially don't need to study anything to critique design. To imply otherwise is to silence dissent.

Do you think film critics go to film school before they're "allowed" to write about film? Do you think automotive journalists have, by and large, designed their own vehicles? Has your average food critic earned a Michelin Star? If I tell you that the contrast between the text and the background on roots.cx makes the text nearly illegible, are you going to tell me to go study typography and color before I'm allowed to say that to you?

No.

Because we can identify with what appeals to us or repulses us without training of any kind, we hire designers and then work with them until we find something that we like. When's the last time you had a client that you could tell "this looks good, and you're not trained enough to tell me otherwise, here's your invoice"?

> I regularly see you discussing design on hacker news, and everything you post about it is misguided

No, you don't. I called you and other elitist designers out on that thread you shit all over about making Bootstrap look a little bit better, and you're remembering that and trying to paint me with a larger brush. That's the only design-related thread I've participated in on this account. Go check. I'll wait.

Each and every comment I made in that thread wasn't about design. It was about the arrogance and elitism of people like you. I stand by every single one and only regret that I can't render them in boldface, since it was entirely lost on you.

I abhor you for making my comment about me rather than its own merits. Yes, shoot the messenger for not being educated enough to discuss design with "real" designers, then go through my comment history and pigeonhole me as the "bad commenter re: design". Get over me and start reflecting upon your own qualities, because they leave a lot to be desired.

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4927249

[2]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4935556