User blog comment:Wildoneshelper/Removing colored comment boxes??/@comment-23204006-20131211101259/@comment-4189499-20131215064049

I think the coloured comment boxes are OK as long as the colours are pale. Many of the colours currently in use are way to bright. May I suggest some more subtle colours which might give some users less cause to complain? For example from the coloured comment boxes in this conversation, Wildoneshelper could have #DAF5F0 as his colour, Julianthewiki could have #FAE2B3, TimBluesWin would look better with #F5B1AC, Tonverg11 would be #FACA9B, Storm2 with #BEF0BE, and ZombieBird4000 could have #C5E5F7. Try these out with your browser's web developer tool. I know it's Ctrl+Shift+I for Chrome, and you can get in through the settings in Firefox. Would that be less damaging to the eyes?

However, when it comes to coloured unernames, that should just be restricted to show off a user's status, because otherwise it becomes quite ridiculous! It works quite well over at Tardis Data Core, one of the biggest and oldest wikis on Wikia. While they have the standard blue for normal links and user names, sysop names are in purple and Wikia staff names are in a sort of greeny-goldy-browny colour, making those users stand out to those seeking help. If you are going to do any coloured names here, they should only be for official groups, one colour per group, and Lefty just counts as a sysop along with the rest of the admins and bureaucrats on this wiki. You should also avoid using MediaWiki default colours in the name colours, such as red (because of red links) and black (because of normal text).

Of course, it's also fine to go with no colours at all. Most wikis don't colour code in this way and don't suffer because of it. This is especially true because people have their nice big avatars beside their comments, allowing for easy identification. But if you do want to colour code, these are my opinions on the best way to go about it. Also, those colours I suggested look a lot better on people's comments than the current ones. If you are keeping the colours, please consider changing them.