Decaflon

If this was a real problem, there'd be a solution.

People aren't stupid; they don't forget what they were reading as soon as they click a link.

And you've always got the option of just quoting the information in your blog entry or whatever.

If you're concerned about this, quote the article you're linking to and put the link on the side as a reference or bibliography type entry.

Wow Rich, I guess if we lived by your logic we'd still be travelling around by horse and cart and writing eachother letters... No it is not a problem, per se, but that does not mean that it can't be done better.

People aren't stupid, no, but you'd be fooling yourself to think that they care enough about your blog post to honestly head back to your blog post most of the time. People are easily distracted, and unless they are reading for a specific purpose, it is a consdieration to keep them on topic.

So what I'm talking about, is enriching the experience.

I recall one of the earliest rules of web land was not putting links in the middle of text, for just the reason you cite. For this alone Kottke should be bludgeoned with a haddock.

For me, related links should be clustered at the end of an article or somewhere in a sidebar.

People aren't stupid, no, but you'd be fooling yourself to think that they care enough about your blog post to honestly head back to your blog post most of the time.

You seem to be labouring under the misconception that everyone that reads blogs has ADHD. Seriously: Most of the time, people do come back. You are mistaken about that, I assure you.

Go to any blog entry, on any blog (that has readers). There are as many comments on entries with links as there are on entries without links, I bet. The Web is made up of hyperlinks -- if we all had the attention span of a goldfish, we'd never get anywhere.

I think you're making a mountain out of something that barely qualifies as a molehill.

Sure, the process could probably be better, but it's not quite as bad as being counter-intuitive. It works. That's why there's no rush for a better solution. In fact, people are building on the current solution more than anything -- look at Snap previews, for instance.

I remember when it was commonly advised that you not include links within texts, but times changed. (Maybe this in itself was a solution.)

You seem to be labouring under the misconception that everyone that reads blogs has ADHD. Seriously: Most of the time, people do come back. You are mistaken about that, I assure you.

Whilst you are clearly interpreting this from the position of a writer, and not a reader. I'm talking about the case of hyperlinks breaking the flow of reading - not on the terrible occurance of a reader leaving your page! *gasp*.

I am not turning this into a bigger issue than it is - I am musing on the subject. It is nice sometimes to consider the things we take for granted, in order to improve our experiences. I'd hardly consider posting a note on 9rules to be making a mountain out of a mole-hill when all you're doing is opening conversation...

Well hey, sarcasm ain't a great way of encouraging conversation.

This seems like a product trying to work on a solution.

Well hey, sarcasm ain't a great way of encouraging conversation.

Oh do excuse me, I thought you'd already dismissed the topic. Besides, isn't it ok to have some humour?

@Devin - that is definitely the kind of thing I am talking about. Providing a constant and accessible context to the web. It's certainly a good starting point, anyway.

"If this was a real problem, there'd be a solution."

sarcastic, and the stupidest thing ever written!

The only place I can see this as being something worth thinking about is Wikipedia.

"If this was a real problem, there'd be a solution."

sarcastic, and the stupidest thing ever written!

I agree. It's just double-quotes and an exact echo of what I said.

Totally stupid. Not to mention redundant. Right?

I think that tabbed browsers do a lot to take care of this issue. Hello, center button!

Of course, now the problem isn't that I've navigated away from a page, but a few hours later when I'm wondering why the heck I had opened a seemingly random article about species of tomatoes.

I dunno, I usually open the links in a new tab, finish reading, and then look at the link. I think it's silly to assume that people aren't going to finish an article they're immersed in.

However, if the article isn't catching them, they likely won't finish the article anyway. I've given up on articles before, but never because I get distracted by a link.

I too tend to open the link in a new tab or window and read it later. I wonder if people who read my stuff online do the same?

I think it's a pretty valid statement. I can't go in to much detail because I know as little or more than you do about it, but I have three rules I live by on the Internet Websites:

1. It sucks when you click on the play button on an embedded YouTube video and it takes you to YouTube's website rather than playing it on that page itself. Therfore, be careful with YouTube.

2. Command/Control click on all links. That way, they'll open in a new Tab, and 567 tabs later (after clicking on all of the links that each of those tabs have) you can get back to your original point. Though I do find that I'm typically completely bored of the original tab. Unless, of course, it was LineRider or, possibly, LineRider2.

3. Expect it to take a while. At last count, there were over 250 webpages on the Internet. It'll take you awhile to read all of that alt text.

I'm always very picky about the people I link to. When I write about members I want people to click over and I don't care if they click back for two reasons:

1) I'm hoping to throw some traffic their way.
2) I know I will "see" them again because a large portion of readers on my site enjoy interacting with me.

That is my deal breaker. If I don't mind them leaving my site I link. If I have a problem with it I don't link and will write the entry so I'm talking about the person/site but not using their content (like a quote) so I'd have to link. Technorati will pick up I wrote something regardless if I link or not.

But to answer your question: if they like the site they come back. 9rules is nothing but links but people are here, aren't they? :)

You are not thinking way too wrong. I am also sometimes concerned about the distraction level of the links. One of the tricks about the links [which I am trying to follow] is to give the links near about the end of your posts or at least far down enough that you have captured the attention of your audience. Here is one such example create a word press theme

There is one more solution that address this problem. You may give a kind of appendix in your application that has links. You link to that appendix .. and appendix links to external sources.

Also this is not a huge concern for bloggers. One of the most important factors in bringing traffic to your blog is by getting traffic from other bloggers. And you cant get any traffic unless you are ready to give yours. If your article has enough strength to keep the reader involved you have little to worry.

I'm always very picky about the people I link to. When I write about members I want people to click over and I don't care if they click back for two reasons:
1) I'm hoping to throw some traffic their way.
2) I know I will "see" them again because a large portion of readers on my site enjoy interacting with me.

While I would agree that the flat nature of hypertext isn't the ideal that was originally proposed, I don't see the current implementation of it as such a problem. In my own reading and research I've embraced tabbed browsing - it's not unusual for me to have twenty or thirty tabs open at once. Instead of navigating away from an article mid-read however, I tend to read the article through, cmd+clicking to open links in background tabs, then I go through the tabs once I finished the article.

I quoted Tyme however because she has the right of it for me - I don't mind sending people away from my site. If I link to people/sites it is because I think they are worthy of people reading their stuff. If my readers then want to come back to my site and talk about things, lovely, but if they don't the world is not going to stop spinning on it's axis. Herein I guess lies the beauty of not actually writing for the money or for the traffic.

I will point you in the direction of tiddlywiki however. It's got a very funky hyperlink implementation going on - all the links open within the one page. It works beautifully for a self contained notebook, which is what it was designed for, but it could be intriguing to see how it worked on a bigger scale.