This is more about blogging than football, but Nicholas Carr at Rough Type has a provocative piece about the potential distraction that links in blog posts provide that I would be interested in hearing your opinion on:
Links are wonderful conveniences, as we all know (from clicking on them compulsively day in and day out). But they’re also distractions. Sometimes, they’re big distractions – we click on a link, then another, then another, and pretty soon we’ve forgotten what we’d started out to do or to read. Other times, they’re tiny distractions, little textual gnats buzzing around your head. Even if you don’t click on a link, your eyes notice it, and your frontal cortex has to fire up a bunch of neurons to decide whether to click or not. You may not notice the little extra cognitive load placed on your brain, but it’s there and it matters. People who read hypertext comprehend and learn less, studies show, than those who read the same material in printed form. The more links in a piece of writing, the bigger the hit on comprehension.
The link is, in a way, a technologically advanced form of a footnote. It’s also, distraction-wise, a more violent form of a footnote. Where a footnote gives your brain a gentle nudge, the link gives it a yank. What’s good about a link – its propulsive force – is also what’s bad about it.
At Pitch Invasion, our essays usually feature plenty of links, though while Peter Wilt peppers his weekly pieces with often very clever and even sometimes snide links (that provide a commentary on the topic linked), others here like Andrew Guest are more restrained, though he still uses links to note where information has come and to provide further reading — often very helpfully.
But is this all distracting our brains from properly processing the points being made in the text?
One solution from Nicholas Carr? Instead of inline linking, collecting all the links at the end:
Laura Miller, in her Salon review of The Shallows, put all her links at the end of the piece rather than sprinkling them through the text. She asked readers to comment on what they thought of the format. As with Gillmor’s early experiments, Miller’s seemed a little silly on first take. The Economist writer Tom Standage tweeted a chortle: “Ho Ho.” But if you read through the (many) comments her review provoked, you will hear a chorus of approval for removing links from text. Here’s a typical response:
Collecting all the URLs into a single block of text at the end of the article works very well. It illustrates Carr’s point, and it improves the experience of reading the article. It also shows more respect for the reader – it assumes that we’ve actually thought about what we’ve read. (Which is not to say that all readers merit that level of respect.)
The comments to Carr’s piece delve further into other possible solutions, such as using CSS to hide links unless the user mouses-over looking for a link — though I suspect this would prove more distracting, as users “hunt” for links with their pointers.
In general, I wonder: should we try essays here without links in the text?
I don’t really find them distracting…then again. I open links in other tabs and read them only after reading the original piece first. Because, yes…you can easily find them distracting but with that little bit of discipline, the cognitive overload is easily avoided. You just have to fight the urge to stop reading the original article.
But I like the wikipedia’s way of handling (off-site) links in the footnotes. That’s probably a good middle ground.
I tend to find inline links mildly distracting (much like parenthetical documentation), even though I click to open links in a new tab behind the current window.
I also think it leads me scan rather than reading the piece. Then again, that could also be the quality of the content that I am reading. As distracting as it may or may not be, I think getting rid of the link would be misguided at best. Without them, you lose valuable context or the ability to frame the topic. I guess I lean towards footnotes as a balanced solution for blogs with quality content, such as Pitch Invasion.
As an aside, I do find Carr a fascinating writer, but I haven’t had a chance to read The Shallows. As an IT professional, I did like his previous tech related books.
I am guilty of a link dump now and again, but since I generally write about things I haven’t seen in person, I think it’s important to reference what I’m talking about. There are one or two sports blogs (this one not included) that will make passionate posts going on at length over things they wrongly assume I already know a lot about.
It’s why I love things like Pitch Invasion. The writers here tell me what happened and why they think it’s important.
I prefer the inline links as they give context. Like the previous commenters, if I feel I need to read a link I open it in a new tab and continue reading. Once I’m done, I’ll then go to the tabs and read whatever interested me enough to click on.
If you’re just willy nilly clicking clicking and forget where you came from, well… that says more about you than the author of the article you’re reading.
John Beech – as you’d expect of an academic – uses footnote-style links, which mean I read the text as he writes it, rather than distracted. The link-notes mean I know that there’s a citation for further reading, but I do find that finding the actual link is harder when it’s a small number.
I think linking references or source material inline is too much the de facto standard to fight it, at this point.
If they’re not over-done, I don’t find them distracting. There are some uses that I don’t like, however. Linking _three_ _words_ _in a row_ (like that was meant to illustrate) is goofy. I also don’t care at all for the nudge-nudge, wink-wink hidden meaning links, like Wilt uses. I’m not a child and I want to read essays, not play find-the-hidden-meaning puzzles.
And the lord king of distracting links: those trashy double-underline keyword ad links that spawn little pop-ups. They overly emphasize random words, totally aside from whatever the author intended, and of course they’re as spammy as hell. But I digress; I’m sure you would never have those here at PI.
In my opinion, segregating links at the bottom of a post, footnote style, would be a good deal of extra work, and it would lose or frustrate more readers than it would gain or help.
I think that an actual system of footnotes would be the ideal option, especially since the site recently switched to a more “essay-style” format. Footnotes have been used for decades (centuries?) for a reason: they are the best compromise between information and distraction. Plus…Run of the Play recently implemented footnotes. That means they have to be good, right?
Personally, I use as few links as possible – I run a links piece on a Monday, to ease people into the week, but other than that, unless something specifically needs further illustration (and most of the time it doesn’t), then I trust myself to be able to give readers enough information and credit my readers with enough intelligence to be able to understand what I’m saying.
If you see what I mean.
I have a feeling that if you try essays without any links whatsoever you”ll end up with (a) very long posts and (b) excessive use of parentheses. Links are fine when not used excessively.
i’m definitely guilty of overlinking. Few of my links are necessary for understanding or appreciating the essays and can be (and i’m sure are) passed over by someone looking to read quickly. Most of the links i use are intended to provide further background or humor for those with time and interest in a particular subject. And i’ll admit that many of my links are for my own amusement or for the amusement of a minority of readers who may get the joke or reference.
Ironically, when i read other columns, i rarely click on links. My attention span is too short and i’ll forget to return to the original column.
i think linking doesn’t have to strictly pertain to material that is directly connected to the article’s content. it’s up to the reader to decide whether he wants a quick read or he wants to explore the little markers the writer left for him. i just read andrew’s article group h and learned a few things that i didn’t expect and i’m happier for it. ultimately, if the writer finds something of interest that he wants to quote thats part of his editorial rights. thanks!