User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-7302713-20130401145406/@comment-7302713-20130406112637

Actually, this pop-up is a problem, at least for me.

As you can see, the current Game of Thrones announcement has no closing button for me. And clicking on the link (I hate being forced to go to other wikis) did not make it go away.

This pop-up is blocking pages and is super-annoying. I tried mousing over the corner where the x should be-sometimes the x is invisible, but my mouse changes so I know where it is. Nothing, this pop-up doesn't have an x at ALL. And that is an issue central to this wiki. I know because I checked on a few other wikis and they all have a closing button.

See how normal looking this pop-up is? It's out of the way, and yes, I know that that means that there's less attention, but it doesn't become a problem while reading an article either. It's easy to read, easy to close, easy to everything. If I want to keep the pop-up as a reminder to check it out at a later time I can, and it doesn't affect my ability to do other things.

I get having a big, in your face pop-up for super important things, but most of the time these pop-ups are not important. They frequently function as ads. And I don't like ads. Especially ones that force you to click on them and then don't close anyway.

I had to spend time on this. Time trying to close it on this wiki, time going to the GOT wiki in the hopes that that would close it, and time going to another wiki and hitting their x button.

That's not right. And it's a problem for readers and editors. When these pop-ups were first an issue for me I left the wiki because of it. They were giving me a headache and were very distracting. I couldn't close them and got annoyed. I figured I could find what I was looking for elsewhere and just left. Could I have come to the forums then? Of course. But I didn't know how well your forums worked or anything else and to be honest, I didn't want to know. I came here to get into some trivial detail that I wanted clarification on. I stayed because the wiki was really well done and kinda addictive. I got inundated with pop-ups and it drove me crazy and I left. When I eventually came back it wasn't even intentional. You were a high enough result to my search query that you were on my radar, and when the first few results I tried didn't work I came here. Without the pop-ups I probably wouldn't have left in the first place. I would have made those searches in wiki, kept using and reading the wiki and I probably would have started posting on the forums and editing much sooner. Usability is generally a high goal for any wiki. And at least for me, this is a serious usability problem. I left once because of it. It's hard to imagine that this isn't a problem for others.