There was lately a lot of research about making Wikipedia's usability better
for editing.
Is there any research about the way in which Wikipedia's Actual Readers use
hyperlinks in Wikipedia, both internal and external?
I am wondering about it, because you know, we have Manual of Style for
internal and external links, essays about the pros and cons of red links,
bots that remove over-linking etc. - yet time after time i meet Actual
Readers that tell me that they didn't understand a word in an article, even
though this word was linked to a good article that explained its meaning.
But they didn't click it and because of that they gave up on understanding
the whole article.
If One Stupid Reader would tell me such a thing, i wouldn't mind, but Many
Clever Readers told me that. Did anyone try to think about it deeply?
--
אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
Amir Elisha Aharoni
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore