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I saw this question favorited four times and my intuitive response was that four people marked it as something bad. It's because of the "danger like" color of the star.

Here's my suggestion; make the star golden

enter image description here

I checked a couple of other stackexchange sites, their stars are just fine.

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  • 2
    Yeah, why is it red in the first place? There's nothing else red on the site.
    – user1306322
    Commented Jan 17, 2014 at 16:10
  • 4
    Perhaps the designer was Chinese, who thought it symbolizes good fortune and joy
    – Phil Frost
    Commented Jan 17, 2014 at 17:44
  • I note that the "favourite" icon as used in ux.chat is a golden colour (just smaller)
    – Erics
    Commented Jan 18, 2014 at 15:38
  • If I favourite this question, the colour of the icon is significantly duller than that shown in the image; it's almost brown now. I guess the site admins agreed with your critique and responded!
    – joeytwiddle
    Commented Jan 25, 2014 at 6:35
  • Nope, it's dull only on the meta site, as it was. On the main site it's bright red, as it was.
    – kBisla
    Commented Jan 25, 2014 at 10:28

3 Answers 3

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It's not red until you have favourited yourself too. It only turns that colour after you favourite the question. It's very discoverable what the colour means in the context of the action you have just taken. I don't see any real justification for anyone being confused.

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  • 10
    Yes, in the context of the action just taken, it's fine. But if I happen to browse the same question again sometime, it's not as intuitive. However, I agree, even though red, it's a star which generally means a good thing. Can you tell why a golden star is not better?
    – kBisla
    Commented Jan 15, 2014 at 16:52
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I'd wager it would look too much like the golden badge icons.

Regardless of what you connect the color red to (which is personal, or at the most a cultural thing) it's a color that stands out from the rest of the color scheme.

Marking something as your "favorite" stresses its importance. Thus, standing out from the rest of the color-scheme is a good thing.

I'd say keep it.

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The icon used for the favorite looks to be the same as the badges. So, as Dirk v B suggests, making it gold would confuse a favorite question with a gold badge.

If the red color is an issue, a solution would be to not only change the color, but use something like the the positive space star in the normal StackOverflow site vice the negative space star we're using on UX. The star is a common scheme for favorites or recommendations in the wild, and modifying that would have the double benefit of making it look less like the badges.

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