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Make link clearer in fundraising banner (don't say "click here")
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RobLa
Jun 8 2022, 22:04
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Description

Hi folks! The fundraiser banner is compelling, and I hope it's successful in exceeding your fundraising goal (whatever that is). One gripe I have: the link is only four characters long, and buried in other text:

....Miraheze would exceed its budget requirements. Click here to learn more!

What's worse, it commits a sin identified by the infamous Aaron Swartz over two decades ago; that is, it uses the "click here" link. See Swartz's very brief essay on the topic ("Don't use "click here" as link text") for further guidance.

My recommendation: change the text I quoted above to the following:

....Miraheze would exceed its budget requirements. Visit the Miraheze 2022 fundraising page to learn more!

Y'all could A/B test my theory if you're set up for it. If nothing else, you could try avoiding "here" in links for a while and see if you anecdotally observe a change. FWIW, I looked up the messages that would need changing, and the English-language versions appear to be at the following locations:

With my proposed version of the text, you don't need to make a change to ..-message-3 (the text: "to learn more!")

Like I said, I hope the fundraising goes well. Good luck!

Event Timeline

Agent_Isai claimed this task.

Thanks RobLa for the suggestion! Indeed, this has been one of our most successful fundraisers to date. I have implemented a big blue button that says "Click here to chip in!"/"Click here to learn more!" (depending on which of the 5 CentralNotice banners displays).

Unknown Object (User) triaged this task as Normal priority.Jun 9 2022, 16:28

@Agent_Isai wrote:

I have implemented a big blue button that says "Click here to chip in!"

Nice! I just received the "Click here to chip in" button. Yeah, the big blue button is almost certainly going to be more effective than a small text hyperlink that says "here". I've gotten out of the habit of creating "click here" links because of Swartz's essay, but I can see where a CSS-fake-blue-button would be a clear call to action.

Unknown Object (User) added a comment.Jun 9 2022, 22:48
In T9359#189636, @RobLa wrote:

@Agent_Isai wrote:

I have implemented a big blue button that says "Click here to chip in!"

Nice! I just received the "Click here to chip in" button. Yeah, the big blue button is almost certainly going to be more effective than a small text hyperlink that says "here". I've gotten out of the habit of creating "click here" links because of Swartz's essay, but I can see where a CSS-fake-blue-button would be a clear call to action.

That's actually the reason why I used a button instead of a link on the new landing page done a few days ago also. So thank you for bring the banner notice up as well, it does look nicer now.

Unknown Object (User) awarded a token.Jun 9 2022, 22:50

@Universal_Omega - I'll note that the new banner looks a little strange with black text on a blue button, for users of "Default mode". When one is looking at a wiki set to "Dark mode" in the preferences, it looks nice, but for wikis with the default theme (either vector or vector-2022) with a white background, it looks weird. As I recall, there's a text CSS style that can be applied to the button text that adapts to the theme in use. I'm reopening this task rather than opening a new one, but feel free to close this and request a new Phab task for fixing the "Click here to chip in!" text on the banner (e.g. "Fix text style on fundraiser banner button so that text is white when theme background is white" or something like that)

This has now been fixed, apologies!