If you are a regular Wikipedia user and have often got baffled about what exactly is going to be present on the page you are on, here’s the solution for you! Wikipedia has recently introduced a new feature called ‘page previews.’ This unique feature will help you gauge what exactly you’ll find on a certain page without having to read it all.
This will not only save your time, especially when you are not sure whether you should read further on or not but will also provide you with other additional details related to the topic you’re reading about. As the Wikimedia Foundation says about this feature, it is “one of the largest changes to desktop Wikipedia made in recent years,” it will make your research easier. You’ll now have a popup window that will bring to you additional context for the topic you are searching by going behind the link.
Sometimes Wikipedia pages can turn out to be really tricky. Of course, it is always a fun to explore something new or get some unique and new set of information in a most adventurous way. But it is not the same experience for all every time they hit the page looking for some information. Especially, when a reader is in hurry or is looking for a more informative article but gets stuck into a massively long and not so useful article, and feels completely confounded!
Now, with this new feature, you won’t waste your time on an article if it doesn’t offer you the information you are actually looking for. This all new page preview feature will open up a small preview of the article with some sentences briefing you about the context of the article along with an image. You get more information available to you when you simply take your mouse over the link present in the preview. And on clicking on the pop us you land on the article page while simply removing your mouse, the page disappears. Of course, to click or not to click will be your personal choice, thus, you won’t waste time if you don’t need to read more.
Wikimedia also conducted an extensive A/B testing to check how good the feature works and so to develop it further. It found that the feature is well liked by most users as they didn’t disable it. Wikimedia also found that “each reader is interacting with the content of more pages while navigating the site.” The feature also led to the decrease in site’s overall page view as users now only click open what they find more relevant to them. The testing of the feature further reveals that users tend to look for the information right in the popup available through the preview. Thus, they visit fewer pages for what they are searching; nevertheless, they show better engagement with the information. In other words, this new feature offers the users with more information and lesser page hopping.
