Link colors reversed?

Question

On a Super User search page, link colors are set to this effect

.question-hyperlink {
  color: #1086a4;
}
.question-hyperlink:visited {
  color: #13b3bd;
}

Which equates out to a darker blue for links, and a lighter blue for visted links. Most sites I have come across over the years use the exact opposite convention; blue/lighter for links, purple/darker for visited links.

• HTML5 boilerplate
• Twitter Bootstrap
• even Stack Overflow

support this convention. What gives, Super User?

Answer 1

The W3C's HTML 4 default stylesheet does not define colors and leading web usability consultant Jakob Nielsen only argues that unvisited and visited links should be different colors.

Since Super User does use different colors, one color not being darker or brighter than the other is trivial. If you must, you can use always a custom stylesheet in your web browser.