https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4582
--- Comment #272 from Bill Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 2008-12-05 15:51:28 UTC --- (In reply to comment #270) > I can resignedly go along with Bill's idea (third patch), though it doesn't > seem optimum to me. I can't agree with the idea that the sea of blue isn't a > real problem and we need more and more links. Overlinking is a well-studied > problem in usability circles, and has been since the mid-1990s, with a lot of > data backing up the concerns. It's not a WP issue, but a general one with > regard to hypertext media as a class. Just in case there's any confusion, the third patch DOES eliminate links on [[]] formatted dates (leaving [[:]] or "piped" [[|]] dates alone) so it solves the "sea of blue" problem. My personal preference would have been to keep the links, but I wrote the patch to do what (I think) other people want, not what I want. As for usability studies, I'd take them with a grain of salt. I had a boss that was fond of pointing to usability studies to "prove" that serif fonts were easier to read than san-serif fonts (he came from the newspaper industry and insisted on serif fonts on all our websites.) Then, about ten years ago, the numbers started to shift -- and nowadays, san-serif fonts are preferred something like 2-to-1 over serif fonts. What changed? More people started reading text on computers, which are more likely to us san-serif fonts. Usability studies measure what people are *familiar* *with*, not what is "inherently" easier to use. As people gain more exposure to hyperlinked text, their "tolerance" for hyperlinks will increase. Plus, there are always people in any usability study that deviate from the norm. My point in saying that *I* don't mind the hyperlinks is that the choice of whether or not to link a date should be one left up to the *reader* in most cases. Some people don't like an abundance of links, and they should have the option of turning off the links. Some people like having links, and they should have the option of turning them on. -Bill -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are the assignee for the bug. You are watching all bug changes. _______________________________________________ Wikibugs-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikibugs-l
