On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 2:04 PM, max <max@koehler-kn.de> wrote:

@jared:

I've got two points.

1. Hover isn't a thing we can rely on. Even desktop computers have touch screens now.

Whether or not underlines are shown all the time or on hover is configurable via a preference.

2.The colour red usually means that something's wrong (in our case: a page doesn't exist yet), and so does the "!" icon. "Dotted Underline" on the other hand has no meaning to it, it's super abstract. Users would have to learn what it means by trial and error.

Adding a ! icon after every redlink would decrease ease of reading for everyone (including the color-blind). Considering that inability to distinguish between red and blue is extremely rare in humans (1:33,000), I think it would make a lot more sense for us to focus efforts on improving our usability for people with poor eyesight (~50% in the U.S.). For example, we have countless instances of showing colored text on a similar-colored background, especially in en.wiki templates. Our perennial obsession with color-blindness is given undue weight by comparison.

Ryan Kaldari