This is how a website should look. It provides information. As others have said, it has a clean, customizable look, and (imo) content that you won’t find anywhere else.<p>The brilliance is the simplicity. You don’t get ads every other article. You get information.<p>Look at a ‘man’ page. It delivers information in an easy to read, text format.<p>We have had so much CSS, JS, pop-ups, pop-unders, and invasive click-tracking shoved down our collective throats that “surfing” the web is not an enjoyable experience anymore. It’s a damn chore.<p>There is an undercurrent of simplicity in the design of web-pages that I personally am starting to more often. If you look at links posted here by highly technical people or *nix power users, it’s a bare-bones blog or site.<p>For example:
<a href="https://plaintextproject.online/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://plaintextproject.online/index.html</a>
Respectfully, I disagree that the UI is awful. It's minimal and plain, yes; but it's also fast, lightweight, and information-dense. The UI conveys that this is a site for power users, at least in comparison with the average web watering hole.
The UI is hackable because it's so bare-bones. If you don't like it, install Stylus[0] and create your own skin.<p>[0] <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpe...</a><p>[0] <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/" rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/</a>
I love it when people say that the UI is awful. It's a sign the UI is doing its job. It's the best gatekeeper there is. It isn't too high of a bar to clear, but people that can't clear it seem to have different values. So in a sense the UI is doing part of the moderation.<p>One value I have is: it's all about information and curiosity. People that need an aesthetically pleasing UI seem to not share this value enough.
Content I find interesting, fair but firm moderation keeping the vibe in check, constructive conversations by and large. I never really notice the UI personally.