Delinking: The Silly Story

Nicholas Carr argues that we should link less on the internet.

Allow me to summarize:

• Links are convenient for, well, linking information together.
• Links are really distracting, because we have to mentally evaluate:
  • The existence of the link;
  • Whether we want to click on it or not;
  • If we do click on it, whether to do so in-stream or after finishing the article.
• As links increase, comprehension (measurably) declines.
• Therefore, you should link less.

Now, I certainly agree that links (i) distract, and (ii) the resulting hit on the brain decreasing comprehension.

However, calling for people link less seems odd. Surely there’s another way?

Perhaps, oh I don’t know, changing the link style? If blue links sticking out of a passage is distracting, can you change the color? Hell, you could even make the links disappear entirely – and then add an underline on :hover.

Linking has a number of other advantages, such as linking the web together – which will become increasingly important as we hit the “semantic web.” The advantages may, even, be purely computational – that is, of benefit only to computers trying to interpret hyptertext.

But claiming that the only way to eliminate a negative side effect of links is to eliminate them entirely seems to be going a bit to far: there are other, less extreme ways to diminish the distracting effect. Given the advantages, it seems foolish to cut links out entirely when there are other alternatives.