User:Cessaune/Lead to body link proposal
New form of section links
[edit]This proposal aims to link a reader of article X from the lead of article X to a section in the body of article X (section link). In theory, and oftentimes in practice, there will either be a hatnote (Main article: Economic policy of the Donald Trump administration) or an immediately visible phrase in prose (Trump was inaugurated) linking the reader to a more specific article. This creates an elbow: when the reader clicks on a link in the lead, they are routed through the body.
Rationale
[edit]Studies suggest that readers read less and less the further down the page you get (see Meta:Research:Which parts of an article do readers read). I would be willing to suggest that the effect is even more pronounced in larger articles. This means that the average reader is very likely to read at least a portion of the lead, and less likely to read the body of an article.
This in turn suggests two things: 1) readers might be likely to read the lead and leave through a lead link; 2) readers might be likely to read the lead and be satisfied with the topic. I believe that the former is substantially more prevalent (people getting sucked into the Wikipedia rabbit hole) and the above study suggests the same thing:
On most mobile (non-tablet) views, the reader only looks at the article's introduction without opening further sections
- This source:
Wikipedia is accessed from more than 46.4 million mobile devices and over 23.4 million desktops on a daily basis
- This source:
This suggests that most readers are only reading the lead.
...wikilinks located in the lead section receive between 26% and 43% of the clicks on wikilinks... a follow-up study found that although the lead and the infobox contain only 17% and 4% of the links of an article, they receive 32% and 18% of clicks, respectively
This suggests that many readers are in fact clicking on links in the lead (and infobox).
In many cases, the user doesn't need more info than what is present in the body, and, in fact, more information may actually be detrimental to learning. For example, in the Donald Trump article, Iran nuclear deal links to an article that is technically dense and a bit overwhelming. A user might be more likely to want to read something such as Donald Trump#Iran.
Going along with the above point, a reader may not be able to find what they are looking for in the body without some serious scrolling. When I Ctrl+F search for "Iran nuclear deal", I see the lead link (links to a different page) and a citation. Even "JCPOA" isn't referenced in Donald Trump#Iran—merely Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. At best, it's annoying; at worst, it's an accessibility issue.
We write articles here at Wikipedia. If readers bypass the article's body by clicking on links in the lead, what even is the point of writing it? The body becomes functionally useless, only accessible to those who want to know all information.
Section links that are indistinguishable from article links (this vs this) are a little MOS:EGGy. As a reader, I'm always a little disappointed when I click on an innocent-looking link and get directed to a location on the same page. There is no consistent way to tell whether a wikilink is an article link or a section link—page previews being buggy on occasion—and this annoys me. And, while I'm sure that a script could be created (or already exists) that could deal with this, this is an issue that affects the casual reader first and foremost. While this proposal only deals with links from the lead to the body, the applied to links within the body.
{{Section link}} breaks up prose, which is why you see it in hatnotes and "See also" sections. There's no way to use it in a section of prose without generating the § character.
Idea
[edit]On the Donald Trump page: replace most wikilinks in the lead with section links of some form described above. Names and locations will remain standard wikilinks.
Technical
[edit]There are many proposed designs, such as:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
A template exists for ease of coding: {{Lead to body link}}. It is currently set to output
foo, bar.
Other colors are possible, which could help with differentiation; we would have to ensure WCAG compliance.
You can link tooltips; in practice that's very rare, and it's the only visual issue I can think of. There may be more.