Sometimes I’ll share a link to a service page of ToS;DR and the feedback is usually as follows:
“Nice summary of points, but where can I find the source claim of X point”
“TL;DR Can you send me a screenshot or a link to the page where the quote is located”
- The following is my interpretation, of their site visit flow:
I’m on the service page, I see the edit pencil icon of that point I want to know the source of,
I click, a point page appears with info all over, but my eyes catch the quote in the middle of the page.
I see the policy source hyperlink underneath the quote, I click it takes me to another page that seems
to be the source of the quote, although not quite, It’s an edit page and a copy of the policy page.
I’m still on the ToS;DR site… Where is the source of this claimed policy quote!?
- Little did they know the source link was located above the quote on the point page.
I gather, from the viewer’s perspective, that the quote is so large and in the middle of the page,
it becomes first and foremost of what their eye catches and thus leads to unexpected confusion
of the policy page.
- The second issue is when a user is trying to locate the exact quote on the official policy page.
With that, I propose a couple of solutions:
For the first issue, “simply” swap the hyperlinks so that the quoted policy is linked to the
official source page and as for the top link, rename it from “Source: Link” to something like:
“Source Copy: Link”
“Source Document: Link”
“Source Edit: Link”
As for the second issue, replace regular policy page sources to source linked quotes
by contributors utilizing the “Copy link to highlight” chromium feature which has been
around since Chromium 90 (over 4 years ago). The two cons of this feature are:
It’s reliant on the client side, and it’s chromium only.
Perhaps a fallback link for users wanting just the official source page. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Lastly, an improvement to the browser extension is accessing
the point pages faster by making them clickable (hyperlinking).
P.S:
I was contemplating on adding screenshots for illustration but re-reading this
post I believe it should be detailed enough, although if not then you may ask. 