Wikipedia launches page previews for its English webpages

Page previews will contain a portion from the first paragraph of the article, an image if available, and also a tool for users to turn this feature on/off.

Page previews on Wikipedia was first launched in December, 2017. (Shutterstock)

Wikipedia has deployed a new "page previews" feature for its English webpages to help users get a peek of the information behind a link without clicking on it.

The goal of "page previews" was to decrease the cost of exploration for each blue link users come across, "allowing readers to satisfy their curiosity or clarify a confusing or unknown topic without the burden of opening a new page and navigating back to the original", Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia platform, said in an official post last weekend.

The feature would decrease the efforts of going back and forth between articles, allowing readers to decide if the information on that link is what they needed or not, the post said.

"This seemingly cosmetic change may seem far from revolutionary, but has been built through careful and vigorous testing; scaling APIs to Wikipedia levels of traffic and a change to how we build our code," Wikimedia Foundation said.

"Our testing shows that the feature makes it easier and more efficient for Wikipedia readers to interact with our content and get more context about a topic," it added.

In 2017, Wikipedia deployed this feature as a default experience to all language Wikipedias, except English and German.

"It (the 'page preview' feature) quickly gained attention and praise from readers on-wiki, as well as on other platforms such as Reddit and Twitter," the post noted.