As we know that the appearance/background of blockquoted text has changed recently. Earlier it used to be a light yellow background (which you can still taste from mobile view) and now there is gray vertical line at the left side of the quoted text.
The couple of reasons behind this change explained in the announcement posts are as follows:
- Historically, we had a bit of feedback that the yellow backgrounds were overpowering, reducing the contrast of the quote itself. The yellow border also lacks contrast with the background.
- Others have indicated that there should be more visible differences between block quotes and spoilers and between code and quotes.
Talking about the first reason, I don't think this community (Hinduism Stack Exchange) has any such issue with contrast of quote.
Talking about second reason (which I think would have taken seriously) is the problem with distinguishing block quotes, spoiler and codes. Now, as far as I know we (the users of Hinduism.SE) don't use spoilers and codes. Spoilers are widely used on sites like Code Golf, Puzzling etc. Neither we are using codes which is widely used on programming sites and shouldn't be use for another purpose; neither for emphasizing purpose. So, since we are not using codes and spoilers the 2nd reason (mentioned above for this change) is not applicable to Hinduism Stack Exchange.
Some justifications provided in the announcement post behind this change are as follows:
These yellows also compete with theming in our communities, especially those with backgrounds that aren’t perfectly white like English Language & Usage and Role-Playing Games.
We’re proposing we switch to a single gray bar in our blockquotes. This should fix those theming issues and make it easier to distinguish between quotes, spoilers and code.
This will also improve blockquote nesting, since our current nesting is a mess because the darker yellow bar is barely noticeable on the paler yellow background.
I think these all things are not applicable to Hinduism Stack Exchange because it is all about theming issue, differentiating blockquotes with codes and spoilers.
Hence, we may conclude that this change was not necessary for Hinduism.SE. Now let's talk about if there is any disadvantage of this change. I think many users would not be ok with this change. A meta post quoted text background is looking ugly? already called this to be ugly! A major disadvantage of this change is it vanishes the difference between normal text and quoted text. You can see that there is only just a gray vertical line to recognize the difference of quoted text with normal text. So, I feel that this change is not adding any value for this community, adversely this change is devaluing the quoted text.
After experiencing this problem, through a question on MSE I tried to explain this problem and asked if we can have suitable background. But that post didn't get positive feedback. So, I decided to post a question here so that this community (users of Hinduism Stack Exchange) can review this change.
What concluded above may just be my opinion and it may need to get reviewed.
So, review this change and provide your feedback whether we should have some more suitable background or we would like to revert the change to the previous yellow background or you're ok with this change. (If you find your feedback is more or less already posted then vote on existing answer otherwise add your answer)
Update:
As of the recent update, It sounds like de-emphasizing the quote and this would destroy the importance of quoting scriptures for communities like us.
