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Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on Wikipedia

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Re: Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on Wikipedia

#91

Post by simias »

rory096 wrote: post #52
simias wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that I don't have the bar on the left to be able to switch to a different language conveniently. I use it all the time and I've no idea if it's even accessible at all in the mobile version. The mobile version also wastes a ton of screen real-estate but I guess that's fashionable these days. I really enjoy Wikipedia but the #1 item on my feature wishlist is "redirect me towards the non-mobile version of the sit…

It's at the top of each page - click the icon directly under the article title (on the left) that looks like a Chinese character next to an A. I'd snip a screenshot, but I'm on mobile...

Oh! I had never paid attention to this icon. This is going to be useful in the future I'm sure, thank you.

Re: Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on Wikipedia

#92

Post by Symbiote »

simias wrote: post #44
Numberwang wrote: post #26

I personally always use the mobile version https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page for desktop these days. I much prefer it to the standard version.

I hate that I don't have the bar on the left to be able to switch to a different language conveniently. I use it all the time and I've no idea if it's even accessible at all in the mobile version. The mobile version also wastes a ton of screen real-estate but I guess that's fashionable these days. I really enjoy Wikipedia but the #1 item on my feature wishlist is "redirect me towards the non-mobile version of the sit…

Don't worry, they've also removed the ability to switch to other languages on the normal Wikipedia.

The sidebar shows some major languages (German, Hindi etc), but not the ones I'm trying to learn. Clicking the "more" button then has the most ridiculous UI ever: "Suggested languages"! What is the point of suggesting Yiddish to me?!

Re: Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on Wikipedia

#93

Post by larkeith »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #64
jwilk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, is 5K hits/minute really that impressive? According to https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm , English Wikipedia gets 88K views per minute.

I imagine most people spend more time reading on Wikipedia as opposed to trying to hover over every link available?

That's less than one API hit per 17 English pages viewed - the overwhelming majority of the time, users do not use this feature at all, based on these numbers.

This response is pure sophistry.

Re: Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on Wikipedia

#94

Post by chatmasta »

azeirah wrote: post #81
fapjacks wrote: post #11

That preview window has been a lifesaver. Honestly, as someone with ADD (or ADHD or whatever it's called these days), Wikipedia is a fucking minefield. I regularly have many Wikipedia articles open in sometimes ten or twenty different windows, each with anywhere from twenty to fifty tabs (I open a new window to delineate a completely new tangent, or if opening a new tab will cause the tab icons to disappear, otherwis…

Wikipedia's a minefield for people with ADD, yep. But oddly enough, I found that Stackoverflow's "hot questions" or whatever thing is equally distracting. I'm on a professional software developer network, and then I see a super interesting and legitimate question aaaaaannnddd... I'm in a rabbithole. Don't know if it's helpful or not for you, but I found an extension that limits the maximum amount of tabs you can have…

Been there. That's why I rarely comment on StackOverflow; it could easily become an addiction, and I can't exactly add it to /etc/hosts like I can other distractions!

Re: Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on Wikipedia

#95

Post by SeanMacConMara »

majewsky wrote: post #8

> People seem to like it — we are seeing 5,000 hits to our API a minute to serve those cards that show when you hover over any link. Uhm, no. It just means that people are hovering over links with their mouse. It does not imply any opinion about the previews. > The original idea was conceived four years ago When I was active at Wikipedia/Wikibooks 12 years ago, there was a user script floating around that did the sam…

>Uhm, no. It just means that people are hovering over links with their mouse.

in my case every single time was by accident whilst moving the mouse around, off of other text I was trying to read.

frankly, its bloody annoying

it covered the text i was reading

the search for yet another "disable" setting begins....

Re: Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on Wikipedia

#96

Post by phkahler »

When we do finally send people to Mars I think they'll appreciate having a local copy of Wikipedia with them. This would be one of the top 10 resources beyond what's required to produce air, food, water, and heat. Otherwise, something comes up and any question you have could take almost an hour to get a response from someone on earth.

Re: Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on Wikipedia

#97

Post by tombrossman »

One of the best things about ad blockers is that they are really just general purpose content blockers. Want to disable this permanently? Here's an Adblock Plus-compatible filter to block the div if you find it annoying. Tested and working on uBlock Origin:

  ! Disable link preview popups on Wikipedia
  en.wikipedia.org##.mwe-popups
It's just a div with the class ".mwe-popups", and using your ad blocker will persist the change after clearing cookies, which the preference setting (mentioned elsewhere here) does not.

For Wikipedia in different languages, just change the subdomain in the filter.

Re: Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on Wikipedia

#98

Post by anc84 »

jopsen wrote: post #51

> We couldn’t expect every single article to be edited to designate a thumbnail. It wouldn't surprise me if they could. Not to say that automation isn't great, and for this purpose probably ideal. But, selecting a thumbnail for every Wikipedia article seems like something the community could easily have done.

And what a completely senseless thing it would be. Reminds me of all the random stockphotos in articles wasting bandwidth and attention for no gain.

Re: Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on Wikipedia

#99

Post by diggan »

phkahler wrote: post #96

When we do finally send people to Mars I think they'll appreciate having a local copy of Wikipedia with them. This would be one of the top 10 resources beyond what's required to produce air, food, water, and heat. Otherwise, something comes up and any question you have could take almost an hour to get a response from someone on earth.

That's easy (much easier than to get to Mars): Download your dump from http://download.kiwix.org/zim/wikipedia/ and extract it with https://github.com/dignifiedquire/zim

Now you have a fully static Wikipedia copy, running wherever you want it to :)

Re: Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on Wikipedia

#100

Post by [deleted] »

fapjacks wrote: post #11

That preview window has been a lifesaver. Honestly, as someone with ADD (or ADHD or whatever it's called these days), Wikipedia is a fucking minefield. I regularly have many Wikipedia articles open in sometimes ten or twenty different windows, each with anywhere from twenty to fifty tabs (I open a new window to delineate a completely new tangent, or if opening a new tab will cause the tab icons to disappear, otherwis…

[deleted]
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