[Wikipedia-l] Re: Questionmark Links Considered Harmful

[Daniel Mayer]

On Sunday 22 September 2002 05:38 am,  Erik Moeller wrote:
> One design aspect that has always bothered me about Wikipedia and Usemod is
> the questionmark used to denote page creation:
>
>               page that does not exist?
>
> This is bad design for several reasons:
>
> - It is non-obvious. A questionmark is associated with help and many sites
> in fact use such notation to explain terms.
> - It is easy to overlook. People not familiar with the way Wikipedia works
> will probably tend to ignore it the first times they see it.
> - It is ambiguous. Since Wikipedia links are not underlined, it is not
> clear whether the questionmark refers to the whole term or only part of it.
>
> It's also annoying in print, but Wikipedia fortunately already hides it
> when printing pages.

Yep. I agree. I hate the default behavior and have been using the "highlight 
empty links" option ever since I first noticed it months ago. The default for 
all users and visitors should be set to this option. ?s are ugly and annoying 
in the middle of sentences and much of the web-public are either too clueless 
or too impatient when it comes to selecting the "printable page" feature. 

> I encourage you to take a look at the design I have chosen for the
> infoAnarchy wiki:
>
> http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/
>
> Here non-existent pages are linked to with red links on gray background.
> This is non-ambiguous, visible and intuitive, as I notice that many people
> experiment with these links.

I like the red text idea as a default but the gray background may not be 
needed here. Come to think of it, why not also have links to sub-500 byte 
stubs display differently (maybe a yellowish-orange or another color that 
works good on white - or whatever - backgrounds)? Truth in advertising is 
always a worthwhile goal.

>....
> This would be an easy way to improve usability for average users while not
> sacrificing accessibility.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

The question mark thing has been bugging me for months and I'm glad you 
brought it up. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)