Advanced Link Sigils

[woodrowbarlow]

i could add link sigils for all of the following types of links. let me know which of these (if any) you think would add to usability.

• [x] links to user pages
• [ ] links to .links pages
• [x] links directly to edit pages

the following already have sigils. if you think they're too cluttering, i can remove them.

• [x] email links
• [ ] remove doi links

[jdpage]

In general, I think it's best to adhere to the advice from the alt-text of xkcd 1306: "The cycle seems to be 'we need these symbols to clarify what types of things we're referring to!' followed by 'wait, it turns out words already do that.'" Specifically, if it's already obvious what the thing is, then don't add a sigil.

I think that sigils for external vs. internal vs. broken links are good, because otherwise they'd only be distinguished by colour and that's not good for colour-blind users. On the other hand, email addresses always render as that email address (due to the way the markup works), so I don't think there's any need to distinguish them from external links.

Links to user pages: I don't think they're necessary; they either have a sigil already in the form of the icon, or it's obvious that they're a user from context. They're also kind of just Regular Ol' Wiki Pages (TM) anyway.

Links to .links pages: I don't know.

Links directly to edit pages: don't link directly to edit pages.

Email/doi links: I'm not sure these need a sigil other than "external link", per above; because of the way the wikimarkup renders, it's pretty obvious what they are.

[woodrowbarlow]

okay. i'd like to make one last argument in favor of keeping the email sigil. mailto: links usually cause a separate application to be launched, and this is frankly annoying as fuck when you didn't mean to do that (especially since outlook takes so long to boot up) so i think a little bit of extra visual warning that it's an email link is warranted.

i'll remove the doi sigils. they were pretty ugly anyway.

if you decide a sigil for .links pages is in order, i suggest we use U+2261, since it visually suggests a list or navigation element.

[jdpage]

I'm ambivalent about whether .links pages should get a sigil or not. I will leave that up to you. In any case, I'm likely to change the URLs for links pages to /i/PageName.html in the near future, and will probably give them their own CSS class when I implement #22, so if you decide that you want them you should at least hold off on them until I've done that.

[jdpage]

Also the rationale for the email links sounds fine to me.