[publicfig]

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

EDIT: This is unrelated, but after reading more of the comments, I legitimately can't believe how absolutely disrespectful and hateful so many of these comments are in here. I appreciate this site as a place where you can express your opinions, even if they aren't just placid support of whoever the OP is, but I really don't want to see this community dive further and further into the echo chamber of hate that it seems to be becoming.

[lucideer]

Responding to your edit on respectful commenting, I can't see any disrespectful comments in this thread (and generally find discourse on HN better than other places). Have some been deleted?

The top-level comments are mostly positive, with one or two constructively critical ones. There are one or two sub-comments with strongly worded criticism of Wikipedia's markup (the code holding the text), but none that mention people or are in any way ad hominem.

[jotux]

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

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

[le-mark]

Charity in discourse, particularly online, is good policy for everyone[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

[publicfig]

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

[abalone]

There's a rule against excessive negativity but respectful, constructive criticism is an important role that HN plays here. Here's a feature that wades into what is arguably browser vendor territory, rethinking the way that hyperlinks work.[1] Is it a good pattern we should adopt throughout the web?

Does its on-by-defaut nature disrupt the reading experience? Does summarizing linked content have problems? What about mobile (now approx. half of traffic and growing)?

I see a few comments using the word "hate" but for the most part the negative ones are just critical, with supporting points. I think a fundamental design pattern like this is worth some scrutiny alongside the support.

[1] Case in point: Safari implemented a feature similar to this a few years ago. It works generally across all sites, uses reserved gestures (3D Touch on mobile, 3-finger-tap on desktop) to gives users full control, and sidesteps the whole summarization problem by using more screen real estate to just show a bigger preview.

[publicfig]

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

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

[abalone]

My criticism is actually about lack of mobile support. I think it's not a good practice to invest years of effort solving a problem in a way that's fundamentally incompatible with mobile. Already nearly most traffic to wikipedia is mobile, and the share is growing.[1]

Browser vendors seem better positioned to solve this problem. Indeed, my reaction to this was I've been doing this with Safari for years already (3 finger tap on macOS, light or long press on iOS). On wikipedia and all over the web. But I can see why Chrome/Firefox users would love this feature, if this is their first encounter with it.

[1] https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sit...

[tbayer]

Mobile keeps growing indeed, but around 45% of our pageviews are still on desktop. Here's an overview on how this has changed in the last half decade: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Audiences#/media/Fi... (I'm the data analyst who has been working on this software feature, and also keeps track of Wikimedia's reader traffic in general.)

[yarrel]

Describing the comments here as "an echo chamber of hate" is inaccurate and serves to raise the temperature in itself.

[isaacremuant]

It's inaccurate, it's distracting and it discourages people from contributing with criticism.

It's an appeal to emotion, too.

There are modding tools to make sure people aren't trolling or being too aggressive against other users but discourse shouldn't be censored due to offense.

[ravenstine]

It's a very noticeable feature too. I was very delighted to recently discover it, and it really does help Wikipedia to continue to be the revolutionary platform it is. Kudos to those who implemented it.

[barkingcat]

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

[publicfig]

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

[agentPrefect]

Absolutely agree.