Talk:Page Previews/2018

Page Previews solves the core problem of users opening multiple tabs to gain an understanding of a word in the context of the subject they are reading. Whenever a reader hovers over a link to another article, a short summary of the subject, including its graphical image, is provided to them so they can decide whether they need to visit that subject more fully before continuing the current subject.

Please give us feedback on your experience using this feature so we can change and improve it. Each language is welcome in this discussion!

You can read more about the feature here.

Known Issues

• All issues with potential work attached to them tracked here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/765/

Only one line of text is shown in link previews sometimes

Occasionally, only one line of text is shown in link previews, with the fade-out at the end of this line, instead of the usual 7 lines of text. This seems to occur mostly in articles with only two sentences in the lead, or an otherwise short lead, but most short-lead articles show correctly (it shows the full text of the lead, with no fade-out).

Example: page – link preview

This is a response to CKoerner (WMF)'s reply on this topic.

P.S. It would be nice to be able to change the number of lines shown in a preview, or otherwise have more customisability with the gadget. · • SUM1 • · (talk) 21:22, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

It may be related, but occasionally only one sentence of text is shown, without a fade-out.

Example: page – link preview · • SUM1 • · (talk) 01:19, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Reader feedback

I just wanted to point you to a discussion at EnWiki Village Pump: [:EN:WP:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Recent_user_interface_change_discussion Recent_user_interface_change_discussion] (permalink to likely-incomplete discussion).

I suspect(?) that they encountered the feature on a different language, and I assume they thought it would be most effective to contact us in Wikipedia's main/home language.

The key fragment is this: I just wanted to register how awful a change I think it is. I respect and commend the utility of the feature; my comments are solely about forcing it on people. Some of us specifically like the Wikipedia interface for its simplicity and lack of movement. An 80-year-old user I know specifically complains about "all that moving stuff" which prevents her using many sites.

I think it well embodies the prevailing editor view on EnWiki. The feature offers an obvious utility, but default gadgets&gizmos are awful. There's a broad view valuing a certain kind of simplicity for Wikipedia. Alsee (talk) 16:55, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Hey, @Alsee. Currently, the feature is deployed to all Wikipedias except for English and German. It is off by default for logged-in users and on for anonymous users. Its possible this user came from a different wiki and was logged out. Also, we’ve been running some tests on English and German wikipedias where we have been delivering the feature to a very small percentage of anonymous users as well. Each preview also has a settings option from which the feature can be disabled. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 17:53, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Agree. Hate it. Wrongheaded from the start. 2601:C0:C280:34A:BCE8:410D:F030:2B0B (talk) 00:41, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Link previews are occasionally blank for pages with content

Simply outdated cache or maybe a random intermittent error. Purging the pages fixes it.https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T182953

Occasionally, link previews are blank for pages with content (including a lead), instead displaying the notice "Looks like there isn't a preview for this page". Despite searching the source code of the articles every time, I haven't been able to find any common element that may be causing this.

Example: page – link preview

This is a response to CKoerner (WMF)'s reply on this topic. · • SUM1 • · (talk) 04:31, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Blocky side image/picture on the mouseover preview

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Blocky image/picture with the mouseover preview

Hi team, I've noticed what seems to be a recent change which appears as the above on these example pages:

Burton upon Trent

Oxford

Sunderland

That's when previewing on Chrome. In IE the preview image is blank. I am unsure this has been reported previously but did a search in the talk page archive, nothing directly related appears.

I get a view such as this link. Oxford example My Chrome is version 63.0.3239.132 (Official Build) (64-bit) and IE is 11.0.16299.15. Most curious as most mouseovers show the first image in the article correctly so hints at some wrong code on those pages above..

I mixed it up with Navigation Pop-ups and reported it there, and was advised to turn that on instead, but think I prefer Page Previews so am reporting it in case it's an issue.

Thanks for any suggestions. J The Equalizer (talk) 00:32, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

This is a temporary problem, tracked in phab:T187955 —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 01:08, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Nice! Will wait it out, thank you. The Equalizer (talk) 01:12, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I hate page previews.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I use a laptop. I use the two finger gesture to scroll, which leaves the actual mouse wherever it was last showing as the page scrolls beneath it. As a result, as often as not, when i scrolled a page the mouse would be activating an annoying popup when i was done.

In general, any UI where I feel like I have to play some sort of game of 'avoid the popups' while just moving the mouse around results in a terrible impression of the site. I was looking for a way to turn it off after less than a minute. Thankfully there was one.

I don't think it should be on by default, or even exist. If there were a clickable bit next to the link to open them that would be ok, and even useful, then I could click on either the link, or on the preview if i just want the preview.

But forcing me to carefully avoid leaving the mouse too close a link on articles often dense with links was just infuriating.

What possessed you to take an advertising technique (linking hover adds to keywords in content) that motivated people to adopt ad blockers and make it a part of the wikipedia user experience? I think there's even a wikipedia page about it...with some good advice:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_advertising

"Advertisers choosing to test this type will want to exercise moderation to increase Internet user acceptance."

Why would it say that? Because Internet user's really don't like playing 'avoid the mouseover popups', no matter what they contain. 70.69.224.86 (talk) 06:17, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm a laptop user too. In fact, when I'm at my desk I too use a trackpad. I never thought of the feature in they way you describe. Thank you for the feedback. It's good to hear you found the option to opt-out. We wanted to make sure that people who didn't like the feature could choose not to use it.

As for the rest, I suggest you take a look at some of our documentation on why we perused this feature and some of our A/B and user testing results to perhaps have a better understanding. The feature has many inspirations, least of which is the oft-enabled Navigation Popups.

I won't try to sway you, but please understand this wasn't born out of ignorance or malice. :) I sincerely appreciate the feedback. I'll be sure to bring it up with the project manager next time we speak. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 16:31, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I also think hover-state popups are absolutely user-hostile. Was surprised, taken aback, and disappointed on the first occurrence. 2601:C0:C280:34A:BCE8:410D:F030:2B0B (talk) 00:40, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I DONT WANT TO BROWSE LOGGED IN. PLEASE DON'T FORCE THIS CRAP ON ANONYMOUS USERS 2601:C0:C280:34A:BCE8:410D:F030:2B0B (talk) 00:42, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

You don't have to log-in to turn them off. Click the "cog" icon, and you can turn off page previews, which is saved in a cookie. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:25, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Does not work. Popups show again next time I visit Wikipedia. 2A02:8071:8290:7100:E23F:49FF:FE10:F621 (talk) 10:42, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

It have nothing to do with this addition. Popups were on Wikipedia since the beginning of time. Please stop whining. Biografer (talk) 15:48, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I use a touchpad and do 2 finger scroll too and the card doesn't really show up on normal scrolling but they do if I scroll super slow, maybe there should be an option to adjust the delay but I find the feature nice. 120.57.23.86 (talk) 12:19, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I hate them.

I clear cookies when I quit the browser, so every time I re-open Wikipedia I have to disable the hovers.

Hateful distraction. 76.11.108.191 (talk) 19:28, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

The choice of words in a few of the comments on this talk page comes across to me as needlessly venomous. Expressing opinions about whether this feature should be enabled by default, how to introduce the feature to logged-in and non-logged-in users, and whether the feature is a good idea in the first place are all subjects that are fair game for discussion. However, statements that go along the lines of "I hate this feature" and "this is awful" are a bit excessive. I ask that people who dislike the feature or anything about its introduction please express their views in ways that are both candid and civil. Making comments like "Please change X", "This causes problems for me", "I wish that disabling this feature was easier", "This makes my browser too slow", or "I don't understand why this feature was developed" may lead to productive conversations. I'm personally not a model of perfect civility, but please avoid going overboard with some of the choice of words here. There are more important issues to be angry about, and this feature has some valuable upsides that should also be taken into consideration before making a judgement about the value of the feature as a whole. Thank you. ↠Pine (✉) 00:42, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Improvements to Page Previews

Hello,

We wanted to take a moment to share an update on Page Previews.

Most recently we:

• Deployed the new HTML endpoint for generating previews, leading to better rendering of preview content (math equations work, more predictable formatting of information in parentheses, etc.) (T113094)

• Completed two A/B tests on English and German Wikipedias. The results displayed a decrease in pageviews, but an overall increase in the number of pages readers interact with, indicating that they are more likely to explore a larger variety of topics when the feature is on.  We also noted decreased usage of the back button and very low rates of disabling the feature. These experiments built on earlier qualitative and quantitive testing of the feature.

Other improvements:

• Addressed and fixed many bugs

• Refactored the code (that's fancy developer-speak of restructuring the code to be more performant and stable) (T149801)

• Made sure Page Previews do not interfere with the functionality of Navigation Popups
  • As both can not be run simultaneously, users of Nav popups will need to disable the gadget in order to try out Page Previews.

• Reviewed feedback from readers across the web [1] [2][3] [4]

If you haven’t already, you can enable the feature in your preferences under Appearance. Feedback on how things are working for you is welcome. The HTML endpoint change was deployed just last week and we’re very excited to see the improvements. We’re expecting some smaller bugs and edge cases, so please let us know if you notice something out of order. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 14:59, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

How can we say no to the entire feature? 2601:C0:C280:34A:BCE8:410D:F030:2B0B (talk) 00:39, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Previews for articles which have a single line in the Intro/first paragraph.

Where the article has a single sentence in the intro section, the preview card for that article does not show the complete sentence.

For example: If you hover over the link of an article say https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Carreras_Mart%C3%AD

I used the link on the home here (List of deaths) page https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Portada, the entire first sentence doesn't show up in the card, making the card pointless.

This issue has been addressed many times, but it still seems to re-surface. With my ad-hoc testing, I'm not sure if its a few one off links, or if there is in fact a bug with single sentence intros. Kindly look into it. As a user if I see cards which don't help me understand the term, it compromises the quality of the feature to some extent. It would be great to reduce these instances. Vibhabamba (talk) 22:40, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

It seems like this may soon be fixed:

T188581 —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 08:37, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

This fix is now live. Previews with only one line of text no longer display the gradient. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 10:41, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Previews appearing randomly

On March 22, 2018 I visited a page on English-language Wikipedia and noticed that link previews appeared when hovering over links. When I left that particular article (and even when I revisited it), the link previews no longer appeared. This happened again today (March 23, 2018) when I visited the English-language Wikipedia page for blackboard systems: previews did not persist in new tabs (whether I opened them from scratch or via the page where previews were appearing), but did persist in the same tab when I refreshed the page or navigated to a new Wikipedia page within the same tab. I assume this is caused by the way sessions are tracked. I am using Chrome. (If so, it seems flawed; I think it reasonable to consider child tabs to be part of the same session.)

I only report this because I thought that the English-language A/B test for page previews had ended, and I saw no indication that another was scheduled. Is this intended?

(Side note: some page previews contain viscerally unpleasant preview images, especially those for pages describing medical conditions. I wonder whether those pages will receive reduced click-through and lower hover duration than others, and whether early negative experiences with those images could train certain users to avoid links altogether.) 67.211.67.211 (talk) 08:17, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Hello - thanks for your feedback! While the A/B test has ended and we are no longer collecting data, we decided to leave the feature on for the sessions that already have it. In terms of the behavior you're describing however - this might be a bug. If you're bucketed in a test session, previews should appear regardless of what tab you're in - unless you're clearing your browser cache and/on in icognito mode. Could you give us some details on this? Also, what browser/OS are you using?

In terms of the images, we are currently working on an option which will let editors select the PageImage for a page to make sure that the image best reflects the page content. Basically, an editor will be able to choose the image that will then appear in Page Previews as well as other features on the site and apps. We're hoping on making this change in the next month or so. You can track our progress on this phabricator task. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 10:40, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

I was using Chrome on Windows 7, and didn't clear my cache or use incognito mode at any point. For what it's worth, I haven't seen the page previews feature appear at all since those two cases on the 22nd and 23rd of March—even if there's a bug there, it might have been caused by something very particular to my system. If that's the case, then it probably isn't serious enough to track down.

I'm looking forward to this feature going live: I've been tracking it for a few years now and think it's a great idea. Cheers! 67.211.67.211 (talk) 15:51, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Bug when image included with line breaks in caption

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

When a file such as an image is included via [[File:SOMEFILE|...]], there is a bug in page previews when the caption contains empty lines. The empty lines do not cause a problem for rendering the image on the page, only the preview. They seem to be allowed according to the documentation at w:en:Wikipedia:Extended image syntax. I have created a temporary sample here and another here. Daask (talk) 18:21, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know. I tried to reproduce on Beta Wikipedia. I added a link to African Union from the Barack Obama article. On the African Union page I copied your example. I tired with and with out the {{note}} template, and with and without an opening line of text. Perhaps I'm being a little dense, but I can't see the bug. Could you help elaborate? If you can share a screenshot that might be the most direct way to help. :)

https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Barack_Obama

https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/African_Union CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

@CKoerner (WMF): There is no bug; this is my mistake. There was an unclosed template bracket within the extended image description in the problematic page I discovered this in. I had noticed the page preview was still broken after closing the bracket, but further testing indicated that it just takes some time for the page preview to be regenerated. Sorry to bother you and thank you for your work! Daask (talk) 14:54, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

That's great news. Thanks for following up with me. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:27, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Rollout Update April 2018

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The next step of rollout for English and German Wikipedias is planned for the first half of April 2018. This deployment will include turning the feature on by default for logged-out users.  This will mean no changes for logged-in users. The feature will be off by default for logged-in editors, unless currently enabled. If you would like to enable it, it is available in your Preferences under “Appearance”. If you have the feature enabled already, it will stay on.  

In terms of future changes for logged-in users, we have a few options we have requested feedback on (English, German):

• Keep the feature off by default for logged-in users.  
• Turn the feature on by default for new accounts only. Currently, when users move from being readers to contributors and create an account, the feature will seem to vanish, and that would be confusing.  As a further step in the feature rollout, we plan to change this configuration and enable the feature for all new accounts.
• Turn the feature on by default for existing logged-in users (Even if it were enabled for everyone, it would still be automatically suppressed for anyone who uses NAVPOPS.) OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 11:47, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

@OVasileva (WMF) there is currently a strong consensus established against doing this.

Consensus can of course change with a fresh proposal. I'd be more than happy to help if you want to post a new EnWiki Village Pump Proposal. It should include a prominent link to the previous consensus, and it should of course not exclude the status-quo result from the list of options.

Note: Discussion should probably be centralized at Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Page_Previews for now. Alsee (talk) 15:08, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Brackets containing IPA are not properly displayed

Discovered the issue was a missing closing bracket, not an issue with hovercard. Edit 17 April 2018: rediscovered that there is in fact an issue with the displaying of brackets containing IPA. Detailed below.

As I understand, it is hovercard's policy to remove bracketed content in link previews (which is a good thing). Well, it is failing to do this when the IPA template is used within brackets. It seems to end the omission at the end of the IPA template rather than at the closed brackets. As you can see in the example below, it correctly omits the next set of bracketed content after the first failed omission.

Example: page – link preview · • SUM1 • · (talk) 02:37, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Update 17 April 2018: I have discovered that there is in fact a problem with brackets containing IPA being displayed in link previews. The problem seems to follow the exact same logic as described in my original post above.

Example: page – link preview

@CKoerner (WMF) · • SUM1 • · (talk) 22:21, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

@SUM1 I wanted to let you know I saw this and have reported it to the project manager. We're looking into it. I'll let you know what I find out. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi @SUM1 - thanks for reporting this! The issue you mentioned was actually happening due to a parenthetical that needed closing - note that the first parenthetical in the article right before the IPA was never closed. This has since been fixed now in the page and the preview no longer shows IPA. That said, we are aware that more edge cases with parentheticals might occur - please let us know if you've noticed any other issues. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 13:50, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Hovercard is displaying brackets and other punctuation if their are multiple IPA templates used. Examples [[w:Louisiana]], [[w:Scythian languages]], and [[w:Scythians]] 2604:6000:120C:8033:7917:657F:8F12:F348 (talk) 20:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Those are supposed to be links to en.wiki 2604:6000:120C:8033:7917:657F:8F12:F348 (talk) 20:24, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

@CKoerner (WMF) Was there any update on this issue? · • SUM1 • · (talk) 12:17, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

I've opened https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T198264

Note https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Popups?useskin=vector#How_can_I_remove_content_from_a_page_preview does provide an option for you to workaround this issue in the meantime. Jdlrobson (talk) 21:35, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Terrible feature - why? what user asked for this?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Hover state popups? really? This is what wikimedia considers top priority development? 2601:C0:C280:34A:BCE8:410D:F030:2B0B (talk) 00:34, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Just to make it clear, this makes browsing more difficult and confusing for me, as I can't let go of the mouse without RANDOM CONTENT POPPING UP and obscuring the very page I'm viewing.

Please, please stop with this kind of non-helpful design masturbation 2601:C0:C280:34A:BCE8:410D:F030:2B0B (talk) 00:37, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Every browser I use has a specific feature to open a link in a new tab. Why have you forced a re-work of that onto me? I absolutely hate it.

-- Software engineer and web designer for 20 years 2601:C0:C280:34A:BCE8:410D:F030:2B0B (talk) 00:38, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Because it's extremely popular, judging from the responses on Twitter at least. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 12:46, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Feedback on page previews

Love it!

Thank you very much.

ps: Do please ignore the mindless haters.

x 83.216.88.99 (talk) 12:53, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

"Mindless haters" have a reason. I don't though. Biografer (talk) 02:10, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Handy, informative, flexible feature. Well done! 24.117.74.56 (talk) 22:28, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Help, how do I turn this horrible feature off?

See Page Previews#Enable/Disable

Simple, please. Only explanation I can find have to do with editing javascript or whatever.

This is a horrible "feature" I do NOT want. 2601:1C2:1A80:12F0:3D9E:CD06:AB33:8998 (talk) 20:02, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Hello. Thanks for checking. To disable Page Previews, please try one of the following methods:

Method 1: When a preview displays, click the settings "cog". Then click the radio button labeled "Disable". Then click the button labeled "Save".

Method 2: If you are logged in, you may need to use this method. In the top of the page, click on the link labeled "Preferences". Then click on the tab labeled "Appearance". Under "Reading preferences", where it says "Get quick previews of a topic while reading a page", click on the radio button labeled "Disable". Scroll down and click the button labeled "Save". ABaso (WMF) (talk) 21:06, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, ABaso.

I'm the anon OP. I may create an account, but even without one I've been a Wikipedia user, contributer, and cash supporter for years.

With method 1, without an account, how would I turn it back on? (since the gear icon is within the popup)

Meanwhile, I found an extension that works nicely: "Quick Javascript Switcher" which does domain level JS on/off.

Another workaround is to add the .m prefix to URL to load the mobile page. 2601:1C2:1A80:12F0:21F6:9401:E8ED:4CE (talk) 22:58, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

> With method 1, without an account, how would I turn it back on? (since the gear icon is within the popup)

There will be a link at the bottom of the page, as described here: Page_Previews#Logged_Out_Users. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 09:31, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Or diasable all your javascript. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 22:11, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I found "Quick Javascript Switcher" browser extension works nicely. It does domain level JS on/off.

Another workaround is to put the .m prefix to load the mobile page. 2601:1C2:1A80:12F0:21F6:9401:E8ED:4CE (talk) 22:59, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi, I found this page looking to solve the same problem. All the solutions given here are not practical, as it shouldn't be necessary to log in, retain cookies, or disable JS entirely. In the end the best way I found to get rid of this annoyance is to use uBlock Origin filter like this:

wikipedia.org##.mwe-popups

Should also work with other content blockers. If you're not using a content blocker yet then it's a good excuse to install one now, you can thank me later.

Dear Wikipedia powers that be, please reconsider this "feature." 1.164.194.170 (talk) 04:08, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

> Dear Wikipedia powers that be, please reconsider this "feature."

Sorry, but i don't see why we should make this an opt in option for the general public, for the sole reason of a few people who don't like them AND disabled browser capabilities.

One that group is tiny. Two, that group is making choices which have effects, and thus they should live with those effects, and three they tend to be technically capable enough to handle things on their own. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 03:11, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the uBlock Origin entry! 79.51.174.203 (talk) 21:16, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for responding, TheDJ. (The previous comment is mine, it's just that my IP address has changed since.)

I do not know how you concluded that the group of people who do not want the pop-ups is "tiny." Clearly, it appears, in particular from the comments here and elsewhere, that most people "using" previews have not consciously chosen to do so but simply do not know how to get rid of them.

Pop-up previews are a distraction that interferes with reading. Similar techniques are widely implemented by the "attention industry" motivated by other factors but from the user's point of view this is an anti-feature.

Wikipedia is free from advertising and supported by donations. It should then be compelled to act in the best interests of its users only, unburdened by other (e.g. commercial) constraints, and has in fact succeeded in doing so on a number of past occasions. It is no accident that university textbooks, research papers or even any serious journalism are all presented in a linear manner (with just footnotes where truly necessary).

The implementation of pop-up previews suffers from a number of technical issues as well. The pop-up size is too large, it is slow to load, it includes rarely relevant graphics instead of just text, and most importantly, it often shows content from another page the link was redirected to, which is usually unrelated (at least the top of such page, which is used for the preview, as opposed to the particular section targeted by the redirection). The previews also interfere with pop-up dictionaries, which are widely employed by language learners, and an excellent example how pop-ups can genuinely be used productively.

On a broader note, considering that most Wikipedia articles are saturated with hyperlinks, many of which are only tangentially related to the article content, it is hardly beneficial to see all of them suddenly turning into pop-ups. And it is no less concerning how this change affects people on older hardware, slower connections, and those who have to pay for their bandwidth.

It almost feels as if the person that wrote the code behind this does not even use Wikipedia themselves, or at least some part of the above should have been obvious.

And in any case, it would have been much more considerate towards the users if preview pop-ups were first implemented under a separate address, such as http://beta.en.wikipedia.org/, where they could be tested, evaluated and rethought, or at least if they worked by default only with a modifier key such as Alt. There could still be an opt-in setting to switch them on permanently for anyone so inclined.

To recapitulate, previews shouldn't be made opt-in because of "a few people who don't like them" but rather because they are a poorly thought-out and poorly-implemented solution in search of a problem that creates more issues than it supposedly solves, and the way it it is being imposed on the users is completely against what Wikipedia is supposed to be about, in terms of both its goal of building an online encyclopedia accessible to everyone, and the community-driven process it has hitherto employed. 1.164.206.213 (talk) 10:15, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

> I do not know how you concluded that the group of people who do not want the pop-ups is "tiny."

I didn't. I said the group that doesn't want them AND doesn't want to use an account AND blocks cookies so the opt-out doesn't work AND doesn't disable their javascript is tiny. But yeah, even if we discount that, it's about 5-10% of the general audience that doesn't like them. That definitely doesn't count as anything more than 'small'.

> Clearly, it appears, in particular from the comments here and elsewhere, that most people "using" previews have not consciously chosen to do so but simply do not know how to get rid of them.

There are analytics, surveys and then you can just go to Twitter, search for 'wikipedia popup' or 'wikipedia hover' (can't link, because spammers caused twitter to be blocked on this page) and find that the people who like it far outweigh those who don't like it. The people that complain are always much more visible in fora like this, because people who are happy have no reason for posting. That is why high-barrier fora like this tend to be a very bad representation of real life.

> Pop-up previews are a distraction that interferes with reading. Similar techniques are widely implemented by the "attention industry" motivated by other factors but from the user's point of view this is an anti-feature.

Every technology can be used for good and evil, + opinion

> Wikipedia is free from advertising and supported by donations. It should then be compelled to act in the best interests of its users only

We do, but we can't satisfy everyone and you happen to be in that small group.

> The pop-up size is too large, it is slow to load, it includes rarely relevant graphics instead of just text, and most importantly, it often shows content from another page the link was redirected to, which is usually unrelated (at least the top of such page, which is used for the preview, as opposed to the particular section targeted by the redirection). The previews also interfere with pop-up dictionaries, which are widely employed by language learners, and an excellent example how pop-ups can genuinely be used productively.

There is an opt-out. Also, you are using another popup yet complain about popups ?

> On a broader note, considering that most Wikipedia articles are saturated with hyperlinks, many of which are only tangentially related to the article content, it is hardly beneficial to see all of them suddenly turning into pop-ups. And it is no less concerning how this change affects people on older hardware, slower connections, and those who have to pay for their bandwidth.

Well that's why you can turn it off. Unless you break your browser.

> It almost feels as if the person that wrote the code behind this does not even use Wikipedia themselves, or at least some part of the above should have been obvious.

Again, you are inferring things from your own preferences.

> And in any case, it would have been much more considerate towards the users if preview pop-ups were first implemented under a separate address, such as http://beta.en.wikipedia.org/, where they could be tested, evaluated and rethought, or at least if they worked by default only with a modifier key such as Alt. There could still be an opt-in setting to switch them on permanently for anyone so inclined.

They had been active on our pre deployment website https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org for years, and had been available as a beta option for registered users for 4 years. They were also deployed on multiple of our other wiki's for sometimes over a year.

> To recapitulate, previews shouldn't be made opt-in because of "a few people who don't like them" but rather because they are a poorly thought-out and poorly-implemented solution in search of a problem that creates more issues than it supposedly solves, and the way it it is being imposed on the users is completely against what Wikipedia is supposed to be about, in terms of both its goal of building an online encyclopedia accessible to everyone, and the community-driven process it has hitherto employed.

Again: opinion, opinion, opinion.

Greetings, a volunteer editor. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 11:34, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

TheDJ. Wait, you just used Twitter as a defense? That's your analytics? Twitter responses?

5 to 10%? Yeah, you're going to need to do better than just type it out. It's on you to prove your claims, not on us to go running off to verify them. You know, logic 101.

"There is an opt-out. Also, you are using another popup yet complain about popups ?"

Oh dear me. You do know that there are popup options? And dictionaries are one of them? Why, that's the entire point. Choosing it as opposed to it being forced on you? Apparently that just went right over your head. Shanklin land (talk) 11:47, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

> you just used Twitter as a defense?

@Shanklin land yes, I did, because its very very real and totally matches the earlier analytics and survey.

> It's on you to prove your claims, not on us to go running off to verify them. You know, logic 101.

Ehm. I don't see why it's on me. First of all, I have no responsibility to even give you an answer in the first place, I'd much rather spent my volunteer time on other stuff. Second, the Page Previews-page (you know the one that this forum is linked to) already provides this information.

> Choosing it as opposed to it being forced on you? Apparently that just went right over your head.

I just thought it was quite ironic. Anyway. I appreciate that people go out of their way to make their point. But as far as I'm concerned this discussion was over when people said they do not want to use the opt-out methods provided to them.

We can't satisfy everyone, you are clearly not satisfied, for which i'm sorry, but neither of us can have it all. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 12:35, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

TheDJ

It is on you if you're the representative and you make a claim. The page previews page does not compare hover cards to click to activate. Why is there no study on this? Why is there no information on a preference between the two? Where's the study that compares them? Where's the "twitter" responses to click to activate?

POPUPS. It's a frickin' popup in your face. It does not matter how many Twitter people you say like this. It does not matter how many metrics you use for the ONE option. Without a complete study it's useless. It's a loaded study.

It's bad UX design. It's a known bad design. Again, POPUPS. It's been discussed for decades. Studies have been done. Real ones. And you ignore them. All of them. Every single one of them.

Ironic? I don't think that means what you think it means.

"but neither of us can have it all."

No. Click to activate wasn't even considered as an option that I can see. No studies, no user tests... The perfect answer but you went with hover ads, the bane of the internet, from the very beginning.

"I have no responsibility to even give you an answer...". Well then don't reply. Pretty simple stuff, pumpkin. Shanklin land (talk) 13:31, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

How can page previews be turned off permanently?

The problem is that if you delete cookies often you will have to turn it off every time. It is even worse if you don't allow cookies, there is no way to turn it off 90.71.217.218 (talk) 18:26, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Disable javascript. 197.218.91.133 (talk) 19:00, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that works, but I don't think is a long term solution. right now I'm messing with some filters for adblockers. this 2 seem to do the work:

en.wikipedia.org##.mwe-popups-containeren.wikipedia.org##[role="tooltip"]

1st one hides the pop up, and the other one hides the little arrow. what I don't know is if they affect anything else 90.71.217.218 (talk) 19:21, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

this destroys all pages that make responsible use of JS 2A02:8071:8290:7100:E23F:49FF:FE10:F621 (talk) 10:52, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

A fair question. If you use a content blocker in your browser of choice you can always modify your client-side CSS to hide the container for Page previews. Although, doing that will make me sad. :) CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:16, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I meant to reply here, so I'll copy paste the message. Sorry, it is my first time writting here. 90.71.217.218 (talk) 19:28, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

apparently copy paste doesn't work. anyway, the message is just below. can you tell me if those 2 filters are correct to block the page previews? 90.71.217.218 (talk) 19:34, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Could you kindly give me a rule to block it? The problem I have is that it is distracting when you scroll down and don't mean to hover any link, or when you put your mouse over a link by mistake. I don't find it really intrusive or anything, in fact I liked it at first. but after browsing for a while it is just distracting

right now I made a couple of rules for adblock and they seem to work, but I'm not sure if I'm blocking anything else by mistake, can you tell me if they are correct?

en.wikipedia.org##.mwe-popups-container

en.wikipedia.org##[role="tooltip"] 90.71.217.218 (talk) 19:26, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

After trying to write some rules to block page previews for a while, it is getting ridiculous. I must be doing something wrong because I can't get rid of the little arrow that pops up, it seems it is a different one for different kinds of links. here is the list of rules so far:

en.wikipedia.org##.mwe-popups-container

en.wikipedia.org##.mwe-popups.mwe-popups-fade-in-up.mwe-popups-image-tri.mwe-popups-is-not-tall

en.wikipedia.org##.mwe-popups.mwe-popups-fade-in-down.flipped_y.mwe-popups-is-not-tall

en.wikipedia.org##.mwe-popups.mwe-popups-fade-in-up.mwe-popups-image-tri.mwe-popups-is-tall

en.wikipedia.org##.mwe-popups.mwe-popups-fade-in-down.flipped_x_y.mwe-popups-is-not-tall

en.wikipedia.org##.mwe-popups.flipped_x.mwe-popups-no-image-tri.mwe-popups-is-not-tall.mwe-popups-fade-out-down

en.wikipedia.org##.mwe-popups.flipped_x.mwe-popups-is-tall.mwe-popups-fade-out-down

en.wikipedia.org##.mwe-popups.mwe-popups-fade-in-up.flipped_x.mwe-popups-is-tall

en.wikipedia.org##.mwe-popups.mwe-popups-fade-in-up.flipped_x.mwe-popups-no-image-tri.mwe-popups-is-not-tall

en.wikipedia.org##.mwe-popups.mwe-popups-fade-in-up.mwe-popups-no-image-tri.mwe-popups-is-not-tall

There has to be any other way, can anyone help me to write a simple rule? 90.71.217.218 (talk) 19:57, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Try the following:

en.wikipedia.org##DIV[class^="mwe-"]

Removes all DIVs with a class starting with "mwe-". 83.89.198.38 (talk) 18:55, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

.mwe-popups {

display: none !important;

} CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 13:44, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

HOW DO I TURN THIS REALLY ANNOYING FEATURE OFF PERMANENTLY????

Every time I empty cache or cookies, I have to turn this STUPID GIMMICK off again. 92.184.110.58 (talk) 20:05, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Wenn du AdBlock verwendest, geht es folgendermaßen:

Filtereinstellungen | Eigene Filter | Filter hinzufügen

In der Zeile "Filterregel" untenstehende Zeile eingeben. Für das deutschsprachige Wikipedia en.wikipedia in de.wikipedia ändern.

en.wikipedia.org##DIV[class^="mwe-"] 79.235.245.163 (talk) 16:13, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Wenn du AdBlock verwendest, geht es folgendermaßen:

Filtereinstellungen | Eigene Filter | Filter hinzufügen

In der Zeile "Filterregel" untenstehende Zeile eingeben. Für das deutschsprachige Wikipedia en.wikipedia in de.wikipedia ändern.

en.wikipedia.org##DIV[class^="mwe-"] 79.235.245.163 (talk) 16:14, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Please disable page previews for logged-out users by default. Showing pop-ups on hover actually breaks "accessibility" for normal people when it is unintended. There are certain natural semantics attached with the use of mouse pointer. Causing pop-ups on hover is as good as clicking on the links every time the mouse pointer hovers over them. This unintentional hurdle in reading Wikipedia is annoying and insane. 2401:4900:36C1:C9E3:2B1D:7491:9790:48F0 (talk) 19:49, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

I second this. The pop-ups is the most annoying feature ever with Wikipedia. They also cannot be disabled for my account. I looked and the "navigation checkbox" is empty in my settings. Still these super annoying pop-ups show up constantly every time I move the cursor. 1.47.74.183 (talk) 16:15, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Please disable this nonsense feature. It makes reading articles so difficult when you like following your gaze with your mouse pointer. It's so annoying. Disabling doesn't help if you don't allow cookies. I know this feauture is like 10 years old at this point but it's still a pain in the ass. If I wanna see the article of a link, I click it or open it in another tab and then go back or close the new tab. This feature is annoying nonsense. 2A02:168:49C6:0:DC51:3B6E:F689:5CC7 (talk) 12:35, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

For editors preview, add disclaimer logo and length of article

Hi. Very good work..I think on the power previews for editors may be also useful displaying: 1) the disclaimer logo (the article is a stub, citation needed, has to be verified) 2) the total lenght of the article: how many words or how many pages.

In such way, instead of clicking on the blue link to a random article in the homepage, the editor moves from the article he is reading, to a related subject matter he is interested on.

If any people has some time and knowledge to spend on editing wikipedia, it is important to point his choice to improve an article urgently needing help.

If there too informationts to be displayed, an user may set his options for the editors preview. 78.14.141.17 (talk) 10:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Heya 78.14, there's some thought happening on what other features could be added to Page Previews. I added a note of your suggestion to the task where the team is working.

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T109796 CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 13:39, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

How to enable the feature on my wiki?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Hi, I use 1.30.0 mediawiki to run my wiki about ants. Since we use a lot of scientifical terminology it would be nice to have this feature enabled. I was searching on how to enable that, since it does look like it is not a built in feature (?)

I was reading the pages related to Page Preview feature but information found there didn't help. I simply do not have the possibility to turn them in in settings (Special:Preferences). ZielonaMrowka (talk) 08:38, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Page previews is a nondefault MediaWiki extension. Please follow these installation instructions (note: the extension is named "Popups"). Thanks! Niedzielski (talk) 15:36, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, I see that "updating" the wiki is required for it to work, so first of all I will have to fight on how to backup my wiki. ZielonaMrowka (talk) 10:26, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Just priceless

Several comments by Shanklin land were deleted as CoC violations - this section only contains the comments that survives, which makes it look odd

> stop making decisions based on your own egotistical self.

I think this is the best part of your post, in which you request changes (decisions) for your self. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 03:15, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

@Shanklin land, welcome to MediaWiki.org. Thus far you've been discussing the feature with other volunteer contributors such as yourself. They are trying to provide context and you are being rude. They are not responsible for the feature being deployed.

Your arguments regarding this feature shows a shallow understanding of the subject, a lack of assuming good faith, and an unhealthy level of contempt for the work people have done - if not contempt for individuals themselves. It's worth mentioning that we don't do that here and we ask that folks work together in a civil manner. We have expectations on how we treat each other. If you are unable, or unwilling, to engage with folks in a civil manner then I ask you spend your time elsewhere.

At this point, we have listened to the feedback (yours and others), provided options to opt-out, and reiterated the research and work that has gone into the feature. We are open to constructive examples, links, and bug reports to address issues. They are welcome here or on Phabricator. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 18:15, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Hi, @Shanklin land, I am the PM on this project.  I have been following this conversation from the beginning and believe that theDJ and CKoerner have done a really good job at thoroughly addressing your concerns and pointing you correctly to the documentation and previous conversations with the community where the answers to your questions can be found.  Thus, I find myself with nothing to add.  Thank you for your concerns, but we believe that our data, both qualitative and quantitative, has led us to the conclusion that this feature is welcomed by the majority of readers.  I would encourage you to review our documentation and test results a second time if you’re interested in learning how and why we came to the decisions we did.   OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 14:25, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

This should not be on by default

When I'm reading content I'm scrolling down when needed, I'm not looking at the cursor, I'm reading the text, scrolling down to read some more, repeat as necessary. BAM! Up pops a pop out over what I'm reading. I close it and now have to find where I was reading. BAM! Another pop out.

With this I have to pay attention to where the cursor is while trying to read. There's nothing about this that is user friendly. This isn't solving any problems, it's creating a very distracting one. Why can't this be manually activated if I want to use it? What's wrong with something by the link to click on to see the page preview?

I'm turning it off. This is not how I read content. I honestly can't imagine anybody would ever want to read a page of text while having to concentrate on scrolling and cursor location. Joneleft (talk) 03:25, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to give you feedback. I'm sorry this feature was not for you. I'm glad you were able to find out how to disable the feature. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 15:50, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Page Previews is a genius idea for the Wikipedia glossaries!

Thank you for implementing Page Previews for Wikipedia. It is a great idea, especially for the Wikipedia glossaries. It is fantastic studying tool. It allows users to turn glossary terms into flashcards just by hovering over the terms. You even get the illustrations!

By the way, speaking of glossaries, could you please add a link on the Main Page of Wikipedia to the Category:Wikipedia glossaries page. I think the glossaries are one of the most important features of Wikipedia but a lot of people are not aware of them. Page Previews will now allow people to start using them as flashcards as well as glossaries. So please, please, please add the link. Readers will thank you.

I absolutely love Page Previews!

Thanks! LearnMore (talk) 18:27, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. As for adding a link to Category:Wikipedia glossaries, you'll have to consult with the community to have that change made. I'd suggest making your argument on the Main Page talk page for a start. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 15:49, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

"There was an issue displaying this preview"

Not sure where to report this, but today's featured article includes a link to the 1974 Atlantic hurricane season which, if hovered over, consistently gives an error message "There was an issue displaying this preview". Other links work, I suspect maybe it doesn't work here because there's no intro? Apologies if this was already reported. 24.143.222.162 (talk) 21:21, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

There was no intro because the page was vandalized and this somehow got unnoticed by the en.wikipedia community for 8 hours. Should be OK now. Bdijkstra (talk) 21:29, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Please make disabling more visible

Please put Disable option at the bottom of the page. I could not stand this and closed them immediately when they popped out. I looked around for the disable option but could not find it and had to research it. Not everyone is going to leave the popped out window open long enough for them to see the gear.

This wasted too much of my time. Don't hide it away please, make it easy for people who don't want it.

Thank you. Adam trev (talk) 23:12, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks @Adam trev for the feedback. The team considered multiple options for enabling/disabling the feature. We tried to come up with a solution that works for the majority and found that a link in the footer was not the most discoverable. There are a lot of links there already and most folks don't even read those that are there! :) Our testing shows that folks know how to disable. Regardless, I've shared your note with the team for their consideration. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 14:29, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply but it seem odd. I do not understand how there be a lot of links that are not used as good reason to not include it. It seems like a much more likely place than to hidden away in popped out you want to go away. Are you limited to one place and only the one? It can not be in the two places?

But thank you ok.

Adam Trevijano 173.239.236.27 (talk) 12:56, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Hi. Just to say, I also do not think disabling is clear at all. I have spent a lot of searching to find this page and how to disable this (IMO) disruptive and intrusive change. I did not think to look at the actual pop-up because I was trying to do exactly the opposite to that! I also looked at the header and footer of the pages for settings instead. 81.104.101.137 (talk) 09:33, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Based on some of the feedback, I have created a ticket phab:T194345 to take another look at this, but it's going to be low priority I think. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 08:20, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Why is ok for "enable page views" at bottom but not "disable"? If as said people don't use others then why can put "enable" but not "disable". Why low priority? If one is there why not the other? Make no reasonable sense. 173.239.228.99 (talk) 20:55, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Possible use for short descriptions

English Wikipedia is adding short descriptions, eventually to all articles. These may be useful for page reviews once WMF has disabled the use of short descriptions drawn from Wikidata. The short description is an annotation to the article title, which when done correctly, should provide a one-line indication of article content. Cheers, Pbsouthwood (talk) 10:02, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

page previews tend to be longer than short description though. Short description is one liner, a disambiguator of the title. A page preview (or rather text extract) is the size of the first paragraph of the lead of the article, a google top result blurb or the size of what Alexa/Siri might answer you. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 08:07, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Turned off

I tried to keep with the page preview but I had to turn them off. They’re too intrusive for reading.

They would be better as an on call type thing instead of either leaving them on or turn them off.

I’m reading about Tutankhamen and I turned on the cervical vertebrae page preview by accident, it just sprang out.

Now I can’t just read the article, I got to really pay attention to how I read it. If I don’t pay attention then here’s some of the other pages that could spring out at me while I’m trying to read:

sickle cell disease, Marfan syndrome, Philadelphia, walking sticks, CT scans and literally dozens of other really not relevant to me on this article.

And all I really want to do is read the article on Tutankhamen.

On call button would be better for everyone. Then I wouldn’t have to decide to leave it on or turn it off. This solution serves everyone and that's the goal. 205.251.148.34 (talk) 11:25, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

>On call button would be better for everyone.

Discoverability is an important aspect of reader-focused features. How would you imagine this would work? CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 15:07, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

I came here to say pretty pretty much exactly what you point out but you beat me to it. I 100% agree with you, it's very annoying not being able to just read the article without changing how you do it.

I've noticed a few more things.

Why does the Language have a settings icon/gear that you MUST manually activate but no other settings work like that? They're mixing in all kinds of user interfaces without any consistency.

Why would you introduce something like page previews in such a way that it interferes with your major purpose which is reading information? Why can't that be manually activated like the Language settings icon?

Why would they argue about putting a disable at the bottom, the same place as the enable? Again, they're using 2 completely different user interfaces to do the same thing, in this case On/Off. On not only doesn't work like Off, it's not even in the same place. It all makes for a very poor design.

I turned it off not because it couldn't be useful but because it's done so poorly and it's very annoying.

Lars Fex 107.181.79.12 (talk) 15:45, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

>Why does the Language have a settings icon/gear that you MUST manually activate but no other settings work like that? They're mixing in all kinds of user interfaces without any consistency.

Page Previews are one of the few logged-out user features that has any interface for preferences. Other tools (I would love examples) have been built by other teams over a long period of time.

Perhaps this leads credence to having some sort of unified preferences for logged-out users. :) See: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T91201 CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 15:22, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Not Seeing Page Previews

I tried to deal with the settings as a logged on user but the page preview section in Appearances is not showing the ability to do this. Just gives me the Skin and then the date. Why? YappyHiker (talk) 14:59, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Hello. Which wiki are you trying this on? For instance, it's not enabled here on MediaWiki.org or on a project like Wikidata. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Strange use

This page is not easy to find as is the disable option.

This is a strange way to use this. Hulu has a preview but it's directly related to a show. Twitter's preview/page is directly related to a user profile. Amazon also slightly increases to give you some more information on that one show. Gmail's is about the sender. All of them are a 1 to 1 relationship which make sense.

The way it is here things can suddenly popup that have nothing at all to do with the article. There is not always a 1 to 1 relationship and that makes no sense. And there's no user control except for disabling it.

Too annoying to use for me. Give the user control and it might be a good thing but as is there's nothing about it that makes sense. 173.244.36.65 (talk) 14:12, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the disable option, we have a task for the product team to review. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 15:14, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

I meant Netflix, not Amazon. 173.244.36.65 (talk) 14:17, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback.

You said this page was difficult to find. If you don't mind me asking, how did you find it?

The feature provides more context about the hyperlinked word or phrase for readers within an article. Can you expand more on what seems strange? Are the articles linked from pages not providing context to the subject you're reading? Your examples provide similar context to the user and I want to better understand the difference.

What sort of user control could you imagine adding? CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 15:04, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

"The feature provides more context about the hyperlinked word or phrase for readers within an article."

As an example, to make Lithuanian Jews a link that I could activate by scrolling when I'm reading about Bob Dylan is just not that relevant to the article. Great that his grand parents were Lithuanian Jews but that doesn't mean I want to read about Lithuanian Jews. And it's not that there isn't some distant context there, it's that it can popup without being summoned even if I don't want to read it.

User control like a little button - I've seen small buttons with ? in them next to words and links that when clicked activates a popup that provides information, some informative, some providing help. The user has total control. It doesn't have to be disabled or enabled, it's just there IF you want to use it.

There's just way too much information in a long Wikipedia article to have all these links be popping up just by scrolling over them. For me it's too cumbersome and annoying. Easier just to turn it off so I can read the article in peace. 173.244.36.9 (talk) 02:08, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Thank you for the feedback. I'll pass it along to the product team. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 10:29, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Too intrusive, improvements proposed

I have to add my voice to the chorus of people who find the implementation of "page previews" too intrusive to accept. If I were cynical, I would say it was designed to force people to give up their privacy by beating them with page previews unless they log in. Part of the problem is the bad design of the pop-up itself. Instead of having a single click on the "gear" turn off the previews, it merely takes you to another popup, where you have to both click "disable" and click "save", then another pop-up to click "done" - 4 points and clicks in all. Even then, the attempt to turn off the harassing previews may not last through a "back" click, and is lost across private-viewing browsers or across restarts of the browsers, all of which I use quite frequently in the interests of avoiding "tracking" by various commercial websites that might share the browser with a use of Wikipedia.

In short, while I am quite sure there are some users who like the feature, and many who neither like or dislike the feature, there are some, including myself, who find it so offensive and so intrusive that it s worth while to log in to record my objections here. It seems that quietly cursing about how intrusive and offensive this "feature" is to some does not have any actual effect. I can, however, offer at least the suggestion above and another suggestion, below as an attempt to ameliorate the problem of the two opposed user communities,

The only way I can see out of the dilemma of faced by the developers of how to advertise a feature with such diverse reception to non-logged-in users, might be for wikipedia to implement an alternate url, or append start-up information in its url, so that the initial setting for such a feature can be embedded in the bookmark that accesses wikipedia initially and for the selected value to be propagated across clicks on links even when clicked as a new browser.. CSProfBill (talk) 14:00, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback - and cynicism. :) Part of my job is to make sure project teams don't do anything purposefully disruptive to the reputation of the projects or larger movement. So, I hope with some faith you can believe me when I say there's been no attempt to use the feature in a manipulative way. There is a task to review the disabling of the feature for logged out users. There's also a larger discussion around settings for logged out users as mentioned below. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 16:49, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Is there somewhere I can add my name to a list of readers who are pissed off with preview and the fact that I can't turn it off. No matter how many times I click the settings and disable it, there they are again. I'm looking for a Firefox add-on to disable them. Anyone have any ideas? 86.143.237.6 (talk) 20:58, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

I would like to add my voice to this too. I am forced to stay logged in at home so I don't have to deal with this very intrusive popup but at the office I can't be logged in and therefore I am forced to click the "disable" setting multiple times a day in an attempt to try and make it go away, which never works for very long. The preview is annoying, it obscures what I'm trying to read, and I'm generally not interested in what it has to say. 152.111.38.163 (talk) 08:24, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

> I am forced to click the "disable" setting multiple times a day in an attempt to try and make it go away, which never works for very long

BTW. this shouldn't be needed, unless you using something that messes with the local storage of the browser. Do you use 'cookie' blocking or something ? —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 08:50, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

I'd like to be added to the list as well. 185.51.229.3 (talk) 10:07, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm also among the users who would rather not have them. I've never purposefully activated one, but they are often popping up to obscure the text I am trying to read. I guess I'll eventually learn to corral my cursor. 76.171.144.221 (talk) 22:01, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

stats

I like the new preview, its so great. I deactivated some older gadgeds for this. Where can I get a statistic over the shown previews of all users? Because thise feature reduces article views, so I would compare new situation. Thanku you very much! Conny (talk) 15:47, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

I had to do some digging to find what I think you're asking for! There was a round up of the recent documentation of the feature published earlier in the month. In one of the posts is a link to the event logging data showing activations over time. Here's a chart showing the last 7 days of use. You can zoom out with the menu at the top right. We're seeing an average of about 1,000 previews per second. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 16:42, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Disabled

I don't like this, too in your face, so disabled it.

Take a look at Google Earth. You can click on a little button by cities, towns, restaurants, places of interests, campsites, etc. and up pops a card (what you call page preview) with information about it.

Go to Paris and see all of the buttons you can click to find out about stuff. Now imagine browsing through Paris and every one of those little buttons can pop out a preview if you stay over one too long. It would be unbearable. That's what this is.

The user activated button is so much more user friendly than your mouse pointer happening to rest over a link or word and it pops up. The user has the control which is the way it should be. 196.52.39.11 (talk) 15:52, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Interesting feedback. Thank you for the consideration. I think the crucial difference is that Page Previews activate on a hyperlink. Folks expect that when you click on a hyperlink it takes you to another page. Making the preview appear upon a click (or other interaction) would fundamentally change the way hyperlinks work. That seems counter to readers expectations on how hyperlinks should behave. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 16:34, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Don't make the hyperlink a page preview, put a button next to the hyperlink to activate the page preview. The hyperlink would still function as expected and the button would give the user control.

You mention what readers expect. I'd bet a princely amount that what readers don't expect from hyperlinks is to scroll over them and have them pop out at you. That is not the way hyperlinks have ever worked. So you've fundamentally changed the way hyperlinks work compared to the entire rest of the content delivery world. 173.239.212.48 (talk) 17:51, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

@173.239.212.48: That is not true. Having a small popup nearby e.g. an icon, or any other visual object on the desktop, is a well-known standard feature, existing since Windows 95. Look at what is shown on your browser when the extension is disabled and the mouse cursor hovers beneath a hyperlink: there IS a small popup window showing the address where the hyperlink will jump to. All this extension does is expanding that popup to an article preview. It is a cool and heavily used feature within our wiki; when editing an article, it enables us to check if the hyperlinks are correct without clicking all links, and it allows us to do so in the article preview, i.e. BEFORE saving the edit. The proposal of an additional button nearby the hyperlink is not a good idea because that will extremly disturb the reading process of the article text. The feature is cool. Anyone that doesn't want it, shall switch it off. AnonymusGdpr (talk) 11:00, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Aizi24 - those are called tooltips and balloons help and you're right, they have been around for awhile. Balloon help first appeared in Apple's OS around version 7. Tooltips are usually a small bit of information related to a button, etc. Balloon help was more information again used for help, like how a function worked in MS Word.

Tooltips remain but balloon help has slowly faded away simply because it's too intrusive.

Wikipedia's implementation is not a tooltip, it's more like balloon help on steroids.

You're using your particular needs - having your own wiki and editing it - and applying it to Joe public. It's really not the same thing at all. Sounds like for your needs it is pretty handy but for someone who just wants to read an article it's intrusive.

"...button nearby the hyperlink is not a good idea because that will extremly disturb the reading process of the article text."

If you read the complaints that is exactly what people are annoyed with, how it extremely disturbs the reading process of the article text. Without focusing on your curser at all times (tracking your cursor changes the very way one is browsing through an article) these can popup by simply coming to rest over a link.

For the average user having control of that popup would give them control without having to turn it off if they're annoyed by it. A small button (like a ? button) would put control in the users hands. It's the only solution whereby the feature can be used by everyone.

People who don't want it don't necessarily think it couldn't be useful, they don't want it specifically because it's annoying. I can certainly see its usefulness and would use it but as is it's too annoying to use for me. I want to use it - and this is a key arguement - ONLY WHEN IT'S USEFUL. When it's not it's just annoying.

Wikipedia is saying it's either on or it's off.

And no other content delivery site functions like this. You wouldn't read a WSJ article and expect to have to focus on where your cursor is at all times so you can avoid things popping out at you. 185.51.229.3 (talk) 10:41, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer. I just stated my own single private opinion because when browsing through the discussion topics, one can see lots of complaints but rare acceptance. I do not consider speaking for Joe everyone (as some of the local hypercritics do) nor did I intend to offend you. Sorry if you felt so. AnonymusGdpr (talk) 12:40, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

suggestion: pop previews farther away from cursor

I use two-finger trackpad scrolling on a MacBook, and since previews pop up at the cursor, and since my cursor is always near what I am reading, the popup always covers what I am reading and ignites a rageflare in my brain reminding me to disable javascript and reload the page*. It occurs to me that there would be no issue if popups positioned in either the farthest corner from the cursor (computed) or a non-obstructive region such as the left sidebar.

*I always dismissed the popups so quickly that I never noticed the gear icon, until today googling eventually informed me of it. However a slide switch like Youtube autoplay or some other binary control would have been discovered.... 24.35.58.87 (talk) 17:20, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Amen to that sentiment. I disabled them pretty quickly because they had a surprisingly accurate ability to obscure what I was trying to read.

Any way to move them away from the reader's focus would be appreciated.

The way they are set up now, they are much more of a hindrance than a help.

Also I don't really understand the level of angst about "down the rabbit hole". Isn't that part of why we are looking at stuff on the internet? To look at stuff?

If I am researching something for work I stay very focused. Otherwise, just browsing for fun, it is interesting to see the variety of connections that come up. 2601:649:0:F60D:8DF9:9B8A:5B3C:1EF9 (talk) 05:48, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Page Previews Harm the Wikipedia Mission of Disseminating Information Effectively

Here is a story about Page Previews:

I was using Wikipedia to research a wildlife refuge in Texas. A picture popped up and I ignored it, moving my mouse to some other area of the screen. But I saw the picture and it left an impression on me. It showed a path leading through a lush green area into a forest. In any case, I finished reading the article and put the wildlife refuge on the short list of places to visit during an upcoming trip.

Later, when planning the trip, I did some deeper research. In doing so, I learned that I had the completely wrong idea about the wildlife refuge. It isn't a lush and forested place; in fact, it has no fresh water and no trees. I went back to Wikipedia to figure out how I had formed such a misguided impression. There, I discovered that the image I associated with the place is really a picture of someplace else. It is an image that pops up automatically whenever a Wikipedia page links to the article on nature trails and the mouse moves over that link.

I now know that this feature which causes potentially unrelated images to pop-up is called "Page Previews" and is intentional.

I know that the people who administer Wikipedia are extremely smart and conscientious, so I'm fairly certain that when they planned this feature, they considered the possibility that attention-grabbing pop-ups might actually detract from their mission, making it more difficult for readers to concentrate on the article at hand, or (as in my case) misinforming readers by presenting images which, in the context of the article, lead to misguided impressions. I'm fairly certain they considered this possibility, but perhaps they regarded it as only theoretical, and they are waiting for feedback from Wikipedia users before they attempt to judge its real impact.

Thus, I wish to state that in my experience the Page Previews feature makes it more difficult to read and understand Wikipedia articles. Please take this into account when planning the future of this feature.

-TC

PS: This page is very hard to find. 70.191.94.22 (talk) 05:33, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

We do have this problem too, in our wiki. Sometimes there are unrelated images showing up in the page preview. I'd suggest to add an additional wiki tag that allows us to define an image as related or unrelated. AnonymusGdpr (talk) 11:06, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Page Previews configuration change for new accounts

Hi all,

We wanted to let you know about some planned changes to the configuration of Page Previews for newly created accounts. Currently, the feature is off by default for all logged-in users and on by default for all logged-out users. When people create an account, the feature will appear to vanish which would be confusing.

We plan to change this configuration and enable the feature for all new accounts. [0] For current logged-in users, there will be no changes to the current configuration. If you have the feature off, it will stay off. If you have it on, it will stay on. If there are no major concerns raised, we plan on making these changes sometime in early July, 2018.

[0] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T197719 CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 16:56, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Intrusive? Nope.

I don't find them intrusive, but the best thing to happen to Wikipedia since Wikipedia. I'm surprised you don't set the popup preference for anon users via a cookie, but I suppose people would complain about cookies then. Keep up the good work. You might want to take a look at the page preview for Pentecost though. Someone's been a bit naughty. 165.86.71.71 (talk) 00:15, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Extra click registered

I really like this feature I really liked this feature... right up until it bugged out on me.

Before: Ctrl-clicking on a preview opened the page in a new tab.

Now: Same but also registers as having clicked the preview.

This is kind of annoying considering I use that shortcut so I can continue looking at the page I'm currently on. 71.244.206.46 (talk) 19:52, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm a fellow ctrl/command clicker myself. Could you tell me more about what browser/OS combination you're using? I don't think the previews should be getting in then way of that browser feature. I am able to reproduce it though. I filed a task for the engineers to look into things. Thank you! CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:51, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Just a quick follow up, this has been resolved. Thanks for the report. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:05, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Brilliant. Kudos to Wikifolk

I had to write to a friend of mine who works for Wikipedia to share my enthusiastic support for the new page preview feature--what a fabulous (albeit slightly ADD) addition to an already amazing learning tool. He pointed me to the page explaining how much thought you put into this, and detailing how aware you are already of "rabbit-hole"-style learning. The visuals in pop-ups are especially great and aid in the contextual flow of learning, making a visit to any topic a potential adventure in learning that's actually even more fun and probably really effective from an educational point of view. As a parent of a young son who will likely be surfing Wikipedia pretty soon, my sincere thanks for caring enough about effective learning and helping to make the pursuit of knowledge an entertaining, self-guided interactive adventure.

-Tom Sturm

Easthampton, MA 132.183.13.61 (talk) 14:03, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your words —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 18:35, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

You're welcome! Thanks for putting in the thought & labor. 132.183.13.61 (talk) 19:27, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

External previews

I am working together with a vendor of a Swedish genealogy software to integrate Wiki context see Task T204229 and prototype (see https://jsfiddle.net/salgo60) is there any good code sample of previews of Wiki content done on e.g. jsfiddler/github.... Salgo60 (talk) 15:54, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Are you looking for something like: https://github.com/joakin/context-cards ? —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 09:09, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Excellent I have started to play around using Jquery and searching in Wikipedia... and have presented that for some people so all ideas are welcome...

All advice are welcome. I feel a little bit scare to use "mouse over" and performance "cost".... Salgo60 (talk) 09:44, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Hovering/Clicking

You have the answer for everyone right there in Reference Tips. You allow THE USER to decide how they want to interact. They can choose to Hover or Click.

Page Preview you give the user no choice - it's either off or on.

Why?

I hate them. It's the most intrusive reading experience I've ever had on any web page. And how do you turn it off? By interacting with the very thing you want to go away. Just terrible.

Again. Why? Why can't I have the ability to click on it if I do want to use it? 216.15.50.66 (talk) 00:32, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Broken and distracting

Page Preview is completely broken on an iOS device where it won't go away and even when it works as expected it's distracting, covers up what I'm reading and depending on how link laden the page is I have to be very careful how I scroll to avoid distraction.

I appreciate there is a way to disable it but it requires disabling it on all devices. If you at least have away to set it to disabled via a URL parameter then that will make it easier to share across multiple devices and it's a non-issue if the cookie eventually gets expired or culled. 2A00:23C4:198F:7F00:193D:EB65:3608:F726 (talk) 23:19, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Problematic image previews on election page suggesting a potentially wider problem

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T91683

The preview for this page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_New_Zealand_general_election (can be previewed from "Next" on this page for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_general_election,_2017)

shows an image of a leader of one specific political party. It is problematic for the preview to show one leader over another in an electoral race that has not begun and and is not decided. Presumably there are similar instances of electoral decisions or democratic debates where the image should be carefully moderated to avoid associating the Wiki article with one or other side or prejudicing the impression of the page before it is opened. 202.36.179.109 (talk) 21:11, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

There is a Phabricator task to allow more control over what image (if any) is selected, however I don't believe there is currently any way to directly control this.

I have moved the infobox and all of the images out of the lead section. It's a pretty crappy workaround, but it should fix the problem for this article for the moment. Other articles are going to run into the same problem though. Alsee (talk) 00:57, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Cool, I noticed your edit. Is there a way to bring this issue to wider attention? I think it is something that will be manipulated. 202.36.179.109 (talk) 01:50, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Already done :)

I posted the issue to

English Village Pump. It will get plenty of attention there. However this is really a global issue. Getting the message out to other languages wouldn't be easy. Alsee (talk) 02:07, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Page previews & SRF datatables format

Dear all,

not sure whether this has been discussed already - but obviously page previews are not working in a result table of SRF datatables format.

Is this a known issue or am I doing something wrong?

MediaWiki: 1.31.0

PHP: 7.1.19-nmm1 (fpm-fcgi)

MySQL: 5.7.21-nmm1-log

Many thanks! Sochin67 (talk) 14:16, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi, I am facing the same issue, do you have any updates?

Thanks,

Lorenzo Loman87 (talk) 09:41, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Restoring default settings turns it off for new users

This feature is on by default for new users, but if the user clicks the "Restore all default settings (in all sections)" link, it actually turns the feature off. I don't know if this is intended behaviour but I just noticed it and thought I'd mention it. kyykaarme (talk) 18:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Filed as https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T211305 —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 09:35, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

permanent preview picture

how can i get permanent preview picture for list table

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third-person_shooters Imanauditore2 (talk) 15:16, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Suggestion

For example if you preview "United States", that triangle that point to the link make the flag/image not center. I think it should be removed Hddty (talk) 10:07, 13 December 2018 (UTC)