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Has anyone suggested it yet? I think LW should have a system to notice users whether they've read a linked article or not when they're reading inside another. That's a basic & universal need, yet I'm surprised it's not implemented. On other sites, it's simply the link's color: blue if unread, violet if read. If you guys decide to opt for a more sophisticated system, then I propose using 8 rainbow colors: black means the user hasn't read it, red indicates once, orange twice... purple 7 times or more. In case you're worried the various long link shades may distract people, then just apply them to that circle indication at the end of the link. You could make it bigger and bold for readers to distinguish the colors.
If the information is already available via the API, someone could create a reader/plugin which does that.
When I use the site it shows posts I've already visited as a lighter grey while unvisited posts a dark grey/black.
Yeah, though I think this information currently isn't available on a post-page when following links. My guess is we should just add it to the hover-preview somewhere, probably by just applying the same grey/black distinction to the title in there.
I guess you guys running the site like monochrome. While it's ok enough to differentiate on the homepage, where blog titles are big and bold, I doubt using that scheme will be effective with hover.
Besides, that will requires readers to reach out and move their mouse over the link for 1 second, squint for a while to find whether it's grey or black, and then move it out and wait another 1 second for the preview to go off; in contrast to just glance at the circle icon to find out. No-brainer IMO.
Yeah, it seems pretty plausible to me that read status should be indicated by that circle, though we were also considering using the circle for other things, like epistemic status for example.
It is possible that CSS overline or underline could be used. It would leave the bubble free for displaying epistemic status, remain readable, and not break the style of the site.