The Technical Wishes team is currently working on improving references in Wikipedia.
**With this experiment we aim to test the following assumption:**
Most readers on desktop who click on a footnote marker do **NOT** intend to navigate to the reference list. They are satisfied with viewing all the bibliographic information and details in the pop-up/in-line (e.g. Reference Previews).
If the assumption is true, we will:
1. Change the behavior when clicking on a footnote to show the Reference Previews pop-up instead of flying users down to the reference list, where there is a high chance that they get disoriented and cannot go back to the spot in the article where they left off.
2. Reduce investments in improving the reference list for readers, particulary for sub-referencing.
3. Venture into acquiring a deeper understanding of contributor needs towards the reference list.
**Audience:**
- all readers (logged-in, logged-out )
- desktop only
- on wiki's with Reference Previews turned on:
- 2 large: dewiki, plwiki (Backup: frwiki, svwiki, fawiki, huwiki)
- 2 small: hiwiki, mywiki (Backup: tlwiki, lvwiki, fywiki, hrwiki)
**Duration:**
- 1 - 2 weeks
**UX for Treatment Group:**
{F71625219}
**Success Metric:**
- % of footnote clicks that do not lead to a navigation to the reference list via the pop-up link.
- High value: readers are satisfied by the information in the pop-up
- Low value: readers have a real need to visit the reference list.