I've often thought the same.

This should be easy as a greasemonkey script to save other people having to make changes to support it.

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EDIT: Out of curiosity I made up a javascript bookmarklet that seems to do the trick... upsize all the page's upvotes to 30x30

  javascript:{im=document.images;iml=im.length;for(i=0;i<iml;i++) {if(im[i].src=="http://ycombinator.com/images/grayarrow.gif"){im[i].width="30";im[i].height="30" } } alert("Done"); void(null);}

Cut and paste that into your browser URL bar, or bookmark etc. It's easy to validate by eye, for the worried

The issue is that it doesn't work on MOBILE devices, i.e. things without greasemonkey.

Even better solution: separate the up and down arrows:

[up] 7 points [down] by alanh 35 minutes ago | link | parent | flag

Or just use links instead of arrows:

4 points by alanh 18 minutes ago | link | parent | flag | upvote | downvote

On the iPad or iPhone, just zoom in.

This is definitely the answer :)