Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on Wikipedia • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by mistrial9 » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #162

mistrial9 wrote: post #160

This is a great collection of comments! because it exposes a deep bias in the readers, who are mainly coders and dev-culture. Guess what ? perfectly machine-readable data is called a DATABASE, and it works well in its scope.. and if you think that all of human knowledge, history, arts and culture are perfectly represented in a DATABASE, then congratulations, you are already more computer than human in your preconcept…

> Guess what ? perfectly machine-readable data is called a DATABASE, and it works well in its scope.. and if you think that all of human knowledge, history, arts and culture are perfectly represented in a DATABASE, then congratulations, you are already more computer than human in your preconceptions. It's on a computer. It is a database. Are you also upset at people who smash the subtle beauty of music into unfeeling…

not upset -- I am pleased .. many comments expose a naive point of view that I can easily contrast to .. seems fun

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

#172

Post by osteele » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

thelastidiot wrote: post #129

Not to criticize the hard work that went into doing this feature (I worked on a project using wikipedia/wiktionary data), all the things that had to be achieved to come up with a "simple" preview features are just made hard because the data in wiki media is not machine friendly. Things like the obvious priority order of fields and bizarre templates that one needs to implement to parse the data makes the job unbelieva…

In UCG gardens — as with data structure and algorithm design — there are trade-offs among retrieval difficulty (friction, for humans; time complexity, for machines), update difficulty, centralization and skill set of contributors, and centralization and skill set of editors, and the complexity of the structures themselves.

IMDB, CYC, Wolfram, and various RDF data sets, sample this space differently, and have different amounts of data and richness, probably as a result.

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

#173

Post by mistrial9 » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

PeCaN wrote: post #164

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Guess what ? perfectly machine-readable data is called a DATABASE, and it works well in its scope.. and if you think that all of human knowledge, history, arts and culture are perfectly represented in a DATABASE, then congratulations, you are already more computer than human in your preconceptions. It's on a computer. It is a database. Are you also upset at people who smash the subtle beauty of music into unfeeling…

>It's on a computer. It is a database. So if I print it out is it not a database anymore?

a strong theme in the comments here is that features and amenities are harder to build upon than .. something .. on WMF web pages because WMF internal content is not rigorously defined and enforced.. print is not the point at all, and would take considerations in yet another direction

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

#174

Post by jotux » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

lucideer wrote: post #165

publicfig wrote: post #145

There's a lot of negativity in these comments (which is to be expected, as it is still HN after all) but I've been using the preview boxes for a while now and have to say that I absolutely love them. I use Wikipedia a LOT for primative/secondary research and being able to even just figure out the dates someone lived, the very basic information, or even sometimes just a photo saves me from so many instances of new-tab…

Responding to your edit on respectful commenting, I can't see any disrespectful comments in this thread (and generally find discourse on HN better than other places). Have some been deleted? The top-level comments are mostly positive, with one or two constructively critical ones. There are one or two sub-comments with strongly worded criticism of Wikipedia's markup (the code holding the text), but none that mention p…

I'm a little confused as well. I skimmed through the comments a second time to see if I missed something but none of the negative comments look especially disrespectful or hateful. Mostly just people complaining that they don't like pop-ups or find the feature useful.

That said, I intentionally try to read text online in the most charitable voice possible, so maybe my perception is very different from others.

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

#175

Post by publicfig » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

lucideer wrote: post #165

publicfig wrote: post #145

There's a lot of negativity in these comments (which is to be expected, as it is still HN after all) but I've been using the preview boxes for a while now and have to say that I absolutely love them. I use Wikipedia a LOT for primative/secondary research and being able to even just figure out the dates someone lived, the very basic information, or even sometimes just a photo saves me from so many instances of new-tab…

Responding to your edit on respectful commenting, I can't see any disrespectful comments in this thread (and generally find discourse on HN better than other places). Have some been deleted? The top-level comments are mostly positive, with one or two constructively critical ones. There are one or two sub-comments with strongly worded criticism of Wikipedia's markup (the code holding the text), but none that mention p…

I am not sure whether or not some have been deleted. When I made the edit earlier I noticed quite a few (some top level, but many secondary). I also usually find discourse on HN really a step above so many other sites I frequent! That's why it's been so disappointing to notice a rise in that kind of behavior for me lately (at least based off of my perception, of course).

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

#176

Post by anotherfounder » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 6:08 PM UTC

I feel like this is some dystopian alternate reality post. It took 4 years to release a hover popup! Take that in for a second. And the post seems extremely proud, and self-congratulatory about it.

From the post: > Our initial version wasn’t good enough. Our community asked us not to go ahead with it. We answered by listening to them and making it better.

This was 2 years ago, and read the comments on the 39 votes it took to not release Hovercards - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28prop...

This meant that the silent majority didn't get these features for 2 years because some considered it 'intrusive'. A feature that you could objectively argue as being a useful utility.

If anything, I think this is an indictment of the complaints against Wikipedia from those observing it and ex-employees. While a benevolent dictatorship might be going too far, such a community process where only the loudest voice wins (over considering what is best for MOST of the users), is surely a broken process. I am surprised that product & design people work there at all in such an environment.

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

#177

Post by publicfig » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

abalone wrote: post #163

publicfig wrote: post #145

There's a lot of negativity in these comments (which is to be expected, as it is still HN after all) but I've been using the preview boxes for a while now and have to say that I absolutely love them. I use Wikipedia a LOT for primative/secondary research and being able to even just figure out the dates someone lived, the very basic information, or even sometimes just a photo saves me from so many instances of new-tab…

There's a rule against excessive negativity but respectful, constructive criticism is an important role that HN plays here. Here's a feature that wades into what is arguably browser vendor territory, rethinking the way that hyperlinks work.[1] Is it a good pattern we should adopt throughout the web? Does its on-by-defaut nature disrupt the reading experience? Does summarizing linked content have problems? What about…

Oh, I absolutely agree. I am in no way saying that constructive criticism (or hell, even warranted, non-constructive criticism sometimes) is fine and should be encouraged! The comments I was referring to (many have either been deleted or removed) were quite a bit less focused on constructive criticism than they were on just a barrage of insults towards the team responsible as if this decision was made intentionally just to spite them.

I think your criticism is a really good one though, especially if these link previews can be harmful towards accessibility/make basic interactions more difficult. Like I mentioned, I enabled a similar beta feature a while back that was a bit difficult to get used to, but I have grown to find indispensable. I think in the same argument, however, you can argue against any sort of hover effects on the web (drop down menus, hover animations, etc.) and to be fair, it would be hard for me to disagree with that point on many instances of that as well.

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

#178

Post by always_good » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

freeone3000 wrote: post #109

rootlocus wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The popup has a little gear icon in the bottom right. You can disable it from there.

They put a small click button on the edge of a hover control? really?

I just tested it and it's trivial to click. Are you actually having difficulty or just pretending it's hard so you can be condescending?

I think the best place for these controls are usually on the feature itself. I don't want to have to search in some independent preferences UI every I want to see if something can be tweaked, but it makes sense to offer it there as well.

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

#179

Post by publicfig » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

barkingcat wrote: post #157

publicfig wrote: post #145

There's a lot of negativity in these comments (which is to be expected, as it is still HN after all) but I've been using the preview boxes for a while now and have to say that I absolutely love them. I use Wikipedia a LOT for primative/secondary research and being able to even just figure out the dates someone lived, the very basic information, or even sometimes just a photo saves me from so many instances of new-tab…

To be honest, it's been like this for a long time. If you haven't noticed the negativity, you've been reading a different "hacker's news" than everyone else on the internet.

To be fair, I've been a regular user under this account for 6 years now, and before that would visit frequently. I know there's always been that component to this place (it's a site publicly available on the web, it's inevitable) but it seems like there has been, maybe just through my perception, a strong rise in the ratio of valid criticism/complaints and seemingly spiteful comments that don't seem to want to accomplish anything other than to incite anger. I have always really appreciated the discussions around here!

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

#180

Post by always_good » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 6:32 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #22

I think I have these turned off, since in Safari I can Force Touch on links to preview them in a similar fashion. This has the benefit of letting me choose where I want to stop reading, instead of cutting a sentence off at some arbitrary point.

You have to manually highlight phrases, even if it's already hyperlinked together, to force-click them. So I end up never using it.

Wikipedia's is simple. And you can just disable it. Win/win.