Color of visited/unvisited links

Question

Is it just me, or does Lifehacks.SE unnecessarily invert the colors of visited and unvisited links?

In the above image, I have not visited the first link, but I have visited the second link.

However, I instinctively interpret this the other way around, due to the colors that are being used. The first link appears to be greyed out, which suggests that I've already visited that page.

Compare this to e.g. English.SE:

Here, I have visited the first link, but not the second. The first link appears to be greyed out, which hints that I've already clicked it before.

Note that it's not about the visited link being lighter in color. There are other cases where a visited link is darker, e.g. on Arqade.SE:

I have visited the top link but not the bottom link. This is in line with the color coding; where the top link is desaturated compared to the more fully blue unvisited link.

It's not about making visited links lighter/darker, but rather that a visited link should be desaturated when compared to an unvisited link.

But for Lifehacks.SE, the unvisited links appear as if they are a desaturated version of the visited links; which suggests the opposite. Lifehacks.SE is the only site (of the 7 StackExchanges that I frequent) where I constantly make this mistake.

I'm curious if others are experiencing the same thing?

I would ask if this could be changed, but that's of course not up to me to decide. But if others feel the same way, it might be worth looking into.

Answer 1

On sites like English (your example), the color portrait of the text on those sites doesn't allow a much darker version. If the unvisited links show in black or nearly black, you can't really go darker (Another example would be Geographic Information Systems), so they are made to appear faded.

On sites where the unvisited link text is a bright color/shade, where a faded color would be harder to see, it is darkened to distinguish.