Talk:Community Wishlist/W124

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Thanks!

Hey @Hym3242 - thank you for this wish. It sounds like an interesting wish, but I'm curious to understand your point of view. How would seeing how many times an external link is opened inform policy making or keep/delete on an edit? JWheeler-WMF (talk) 17:28, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Unlikely to get done

This is unlikely to get done / at least not a priority for many reasons

• Tracking clicks can be a privacy issue in general
• and it would need some technical development that can have issues
• links are not and should not be deemed useful or not depending on how often they're clicked
• it wouldn't be reliable as many would just copy the link and open it manually and if these stats display next to the links that may have users concerned
• external links are clicked by very few users (probably way less than 1/110 readers clicks one; it has been studied: see image) – I think the main benefit of what's proposed here would be making this better known so Wikipedians consider moving the External links section before the references section which most users don't scroll below as some language versions of Wikipedia already do

Prototyperspective (talk) 11:31, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Declined per the above reasons. SWilson (WMF) (talk) 08:34, 7 October 2025 (UTC)