If you thought this is a criticism of wikipedia, you got me wrong by hundred and eighty degrees. I am as much a wikipedia lover as you are, or for that matter lover of anything wiki.
I was just reading an article on Macroeconomics and I was really irritated with myself wanting to click on each of those sundry terms to understand macroeconomics better. It was a paradoxical situation given that I was a novice in this field and there was no way I could understand it without clicking on those links and trying to figure out what they are before proceeding further. And If I did so, there was every chance of getting lost in the sea of information and ultimately abandoning the original idea which I started with. I am sure any wiki user will agree with me at least to some extent if not completely.
So coming back to my original intent of writing this, I would suggest Wikimedia Foundation to modify the Tooltip for each of the relevant links on the page to show a standard and very precise definition of the term instead of just showing the link's name. Just to give an idea, I would suggest one to check out pagalguy and move the mouse over 'CAT' on any of the posts in there. Now I understand that this can put them in a trickier situation, because a good number of articles which these links point to will never be visited by anyone except through the links which point to them. Well, thats precisely why I said 'very precise' definition. At the end of these definitions, there should definitely be a link to the related full length article, and please be reminded that I am just asking to modify the tool tip, the links are supposed to work as they are. The whole idea is to help the users concentrate on the original article without digressing too much on other-but-still-related topics.
I am otherwise very impressed with wikipedia and the noble objective of its creators Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. And I understand that it will continue to affect the lives of millions of users in a very positive way as it is doing today.
Friday, February 29, 2008
My advice to Jimmy Wales
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Technology
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