'Our Addiction To Links is Making Good Journalism Harder To Read' (qz.com) 92
The building blocks of the web have become its intellectual Achilles' heel, Quartz reports. Links have turned against us, and they're making it impossible to read and learn. From a report: I know, you got here via a link. Links are crucial for navigation and seem instinctively useful to journalism. But when they're embedded within an article that should be a calm, focused learning experience, they are a gateway to distraction and information addiction. A 2005 study suggested that "increased demands of decision-making and visual processing" in text with links reduced reading comprehension -- a challenge we face every day as we try to parse the web's infinite information. Last week, one of my favorite publications ran a thoughtful, well-written article that I could barely read. It contained 57 links in less than 2,000 words. Today, the top five articles on the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal averaged a link every 197 words -- that's one link for every minute of reading. Since the advent of the written word, there's only been one reason to change the color, style or weight of text: emphasis. Your eye is trained to pause and assign added importance to any word that carries a different style than the words before it. A great article deserves focus, and it's almost impossible to achieve any level of focus when random words are emphasized for no reason other than their association with a previous article or the fact that they refer to an outside resource. Read the full story on Quartz.
Links Make It Worse Written Not Better (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
And fuck useless AC trolls like you.
Re: (Score:2)
This.
And it's even worse on social media like Facebook.
There, people share unoriginal memes with no accompanying insight.
It takes negligible effort to Share and I give that shit the same amount of careful consideration.
Rarely, people actually compose original thought and I appreciate the effort even if I don't agree with the content.
On /., when I use a link as a reference, I quote the relevant part(s) so the reader can avoid navigating off my post unless they want to explore further.
Re:Links Make It Worse Written Not Better (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple solution: make links indistinguishable from regular text unless you hover over them with your mouse pointer. For mobile devices, make links appear only while scrolling or through a floating toggle of sorts.
Re: (Score:2)
Simple solution:
[citation needed]. Is it really Simple? Wait did you provide a citation? I don't know, I'm not going to hover over every word.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah that works very well in Wikipedia... but for references.
Re:Links Make It Worse Written Not Better (Score:4, Insightful)
Boy, are you gonna be pissed off when you find out that book can have footnotes.
Re: (Score:1)
Key word FOOT notes. Foot meaning the bottom & you can pursue it at your leisure.
Not INLINE middle of the paragraph, calls to external references, that remind you there is something you're supposed to go learn before continuing to the next sentence.
Re: (Score:2)
There's a generation of writers and editors today who believe that the inclusion of a boat-load of hyperlinks obviates the need to provide any background for the reader.
Yes, they replace the generation of writers and editors who believed that a basic level of education and competence could be required to comprehend an article. Isn't this an improvement? This way, you can click for the backstory if you need it, but if you don't you can read without interruptions of the narrative for tiresome explanations.
Re: (Score:2)
At some point I started getting more of my news fix from blogs and such instead of newspapers, radio, and TV. When I go back to old school media, I often find myself missing those links to interesting background and different perspectives linked to in articles and comments on blogs and electronic publications. So
Re: (Score:2)
Nah.
As I read the initial reports of "bump stocks," I opened another tab; put that in to Google, scanned that and continued reading.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
For example, an article about the recent Las Vegas shooting would have links embedded that explain what bump stocks are and why they need to be banned.
Yes, modern media would completely ignore any arguments why banning them would not solve the problem. Just tell us they should be banned and we'll pick up the baton and lead the chorus.
This is good journalism
Presenting one side of a constitutional argument is always "good journalism" -- for one side of the argument.
Minus that bump stocks haven't been banned yet, I fail to see any problem here.
Hmmm. No, I suspect you wouldn't.
Good journalism? :) (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Banning that would kill articles related to cyclical trends in the financial market.
So, no.
Re: (Score:1)
Good journalism is when someone goes to a scene, notes everything that happens and then tells everyone what happened without embellishment.
Re: Good journalism? :) (Score:2)
Dependence on NGOs and philanthropy is just as bad, if not worse.
ADHD Morons (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't read an article because some of the text is tinted blue you have bigger problems. I hope you never have to read a scholarly article with all those distracting footnotes. Providing links to enable people to get more information is a huge boon, and you can easily ignore the links if the summary in the article was sufficient for your level of interest, or you are already steeped in the previous writings on the subject. In the later case it is much easier to skip over a single blue link than to have to skim paragraphs and paragraphs of information you already read the last time the issue was reported on to get to the kernel of new information, which is what reading the news used to be like (and don't get me started on inverted pyramid writing style - thank god that has all but died).
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks, pavon. Nothing more needs to be said here.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually the link density they complain about being too high seems kinda low to me. Long, wordy articles are usually just filler and journalistic masturbation. If there is substance then get to the point, state it clearly and offer some graphics and links for illustration/proof. If I want more info then I can check Wikipedia or Google, I don't need your rambling bullshit narrative or to have stuff I understand explained to me like I'm a child.
BBC articles are generally quite good, as an example. Not too lon
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, links can be abused like anything else, and they don't eliminate the need for good writing. That doesn't in any way override the principle that good writing involves citing sources, and links are the best way to do that.
Re: (Score:1)
Exactly. When you enter a library (brick-and-mortar style), would you rather that all the books other than the one you requested were removed, since they're too distracting? Links should always be welcome, since they can lead to a learning experience. You need to be in a mindset to avoid them (like the ads) when you don't want them.
Re:ADHD Morons (Score:5, Interesting)
If you can't read an article because some of the text is tinted blue you have bigger problems.
A few years back, I read a piece from a researcher (IIRC) that argued that the presence of a link caused you to break your reading flow to decide if you wanted to follow the link or not. As I recall, the researcher backed it up with reading retention tests of the same text with and without links, where test subjects had better retention if they had read the text without the links. From TFA:
A 2005 study suggested that “increased demands of decision-making and visual processing” in text with links reduced reading comprehension
Re: (Score:2)
It's trivial enough to blow away link styles with a user css.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:ADHD Morons (Score:5, Interesting)
If you can't read an article because some of the text is tinted blue you have bigger problems.
But we do have those bigger problem. Text emphasis was designed to stand out. Its sole purpose is to break the flow of reading. It's purpose is to emphasise certain part of the text. If this text that is being emphasised is not actually the important bit then the text itself becomes hard to read and confusing.
ITS MUCH THE SAME AS WRITING ALL CAPS or omitting grammar from the sentence all of this is designed to make it easier for us to read the important points
The way text is displayed conveys meaning.
I hope you never have to read a scholarly article with all those distracting footnotes.
There is a very good reason why they are footnotes, why they are on the bottom of the page, and why references to the footnotes are made as unobtrusive OMG FOOTNOTE READ ME NOW [[[[1]]]] as possible rather than being something incredibly attention grabbing [2].
Providing links to enable people to get more information is a huge boon
Yes it does. One good way of doing it would be to put links into ... footnotes.
[1]: You don't need to read this.
[2]: I hope you recognise how hard it was to read this post compared to if I just replied normally.
I'd read TFA but ... (Score:2)
... I'm doing /. right now.
In proud slashdot tradition.... (Score:5, Funny)
Journalism? (Score:1)
Over/Misuse of Links (Score:5, Insightful)
Good Link:
(CNN) The president announced today that the Paris Climate Accord (linked to Wiki) would continue tentatively based on continued good faith measures.
Bad Link:
(CNN) (link to CNN stock) The president (link to all recent CNN articles with Trump) announced today that the Paris Climate Accord (link to the last time Trump talked about PCA) would continue tentatively based on continued good faith (link to CNN - Religion Section) measures.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Your "good" link is almost as pointless as the bad ones. Even CNN readers know how to use wikipedia.
No actually, many don't. Most think that google or bing is an objective search for information rather than an unsolicited advertising polluted wasteland with useful information few and far between.
Embedded links should be citations for quoted facts, not lmgtfy stuff or "Here's some random barely-related shit we hope you accidentally click to boost our ad revenue".
Links should be anything that benefits the reader, including reference material that may be inconvenient to find, rather than unsolicited advertising drivel that is only going to waste their time.
Re: (Score:2)
"Even CNN readers know how to use wikipedia."
True, but the link makes it significantly more convenient to find the material by using a single click rather than having to highlight the word, right click, and select "Search Google For...", or copy the material to a new browser window and search for it there.
Ask Amazon about how important being able to complete an action in one click is to the user experience and having people complete transactions.
I don't have trouble reading articles with links.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I alone in this? As long as the color of the link isn't overly distracting - darker shades of green, blue, grey, etc work well if the text itself is black - then I am fine with it.
I wonder if it is just a problem for folks who aren't accustomed to this sort of reading, perhaps because they were already well into adulthood before online articles with links became prevalent? I'm no spring chicken, and grew up reading books and magazines, but I don't have a problem with this.
Moreover, I'd prefer to have plenty of links rather than have whole articles where you cannot follow the sources or fact-check easily!
I will say that sometimes links in text are annoying on mobile browsers, but that has more to do with the risk of clicking a link when trying to scroll than anything else. I do prefer when the default behavior of a link is to open in a new tab, so I don't lose my place in the original page, but that can be manually controlled if necessary.
Ads in-line with articles are a much bigger complaint for me, personally, and much more distracting when trying to read (and again, they are usually worse on mobile).
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Being able to see what source a writer is pulling from is a good first step in fact checking something. If the link goes to a sketchy site - somewhere known for heavily biased content, for example - then you can get an idea of the likelihood that the information is true and un-skewed. If it is a site you aren't familiar with, you could begin to research the reputation of the site, or follow further links to additional sources. It is not sufficient alone, and there are other ways to go about fact checking as
Re:I don't have trouble reading articles with link (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as the color of the link isn't overly distracting - darker shades of green, blue, grey, etc work well if the text itself is black - then I am fine with it.
How do you know? Are you just reporting your subjective perception, or have you actually tested it?
Subjective perceptions of cognitive performance are often terrible.
Re: (Score:2)
I was speaking subjectively. In my experience, as long as the text of the link is similar enough in color to the rest of the text then I can read right through it without distraction. In fact, I often don't even notice links the first time through - even if they are underlined - and have to go back afterward and look for them (if I want to dig further).
No, I haven't been tested to see if this subjective perception is accurate... but if there was a big enough distraction or delay in processing the link text
Re: (Score:2)
As long as the color of the link isn't overly distracting
You're not alone. You just happened to reiterate the fundamental point of the article.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, was the author concerned with the degree to which the link was different from the rest of the text? I didn't notice that, as it seemed like their emphasis was more on the presence of links in the text at all. For example, they wrote "Every link stops you in your tracks and forces you to make a choice—keep reading, or move on?"
I personally don't find links to cause that dilemma. I treat them instead as the digital equivalent of footnotes: I read right past them, but if I want to come back later and
Wrong Answer, Wrong Blame (Score:2)
The problem is not links. They're like handguns, cars and nuclear weapons. It is the users who are the problems. In this case the editors and journalists who are using the links in the articles and doing a poor job of it. Place the blame where it belongs, not on the tool.
"Our Addiction to Links" (Score:2)
This is what bibliographies are for (Score:1)
Just take the time to do it right - put your links at the end, or put them in a footnote. We have well-established and functional mechanisms for making references.
Good journalism? (Score:2)
In today's world, good journalism? That's a good one. That's rich.
Startling new discovery (Score:2)
tl;dr version: A quarter century after the birth of the WWW, a web publication discovers that text on the WWW contains embedded hyperlinks to still more text, which in turn contains still more hyperlinks and so on ad infinitum.
Links keep journalists honest (Score:2)
The days are long gone where a statistic in a news article can be taken on faith. The quality of the link is far more important than the actual content that is linked to.
For example The Guardian newspaper frequently bases stories (whether you consider a "story" to mean a journalistic article: news or opinion, or a work of fiction, I will leave up to you) on "
Three classes of links in articles (Score:3)
I see three classes of links in articles.
1. Trivial ones. These lead to definitions of words and things like that. I prefer this over spending a paragraph defining terms the author may be afraid people will be unfamiliar with. If you don't need them, skip them. Even if one of these appears useless to you, it's not. It just saved you a few seconds of skimming explanatory text.
2. Fact verification. Sometimes these are pure CYA, so that if something dicey proves to be false, the author can say "it wasn't me that made it up, I was just going with my sources". Other times they are a defense against the troll hordes and autists looking to challenge the basic validity of an article based on "fake news" which really isn't. Unfortunately the only way to tell the difference is to look.
3. The author (or company's) back catalog. This can be perfectly legitimate – why should someone have to paraphrase themselves when expanding on a prior article if you can just read it? But other times it's little more than a scheme to drive more click-throughs. Unless it has a particularly clickbaity title, the only option here is also to look and see.
The solution I implement is to take or leave Type 1, and to launch Type 2 and Type 3 in the background and read them after the current article if indeed I read them at all. Sometimes it is sufficient merely to know where the link goes, to know what agenda is likely to be pushed. This still can result in a Wiki-Walk style vortex, but at least it only pulls me off topic after I've read the initial article.
A world without links (Score:1)
Same problem with footnotes. (Score:2)
The problem of too many links or their misuse has been discussed in depth [tvtropes.org] at TV Tropes.
Personally I find the worst offense is when the links are apparently automatically generated from randomly-picked keywords. Phys.org does this, and the links merely redirect to a "news tagged with" search, which is