Evaluating Hypertexts

A site whose author is “teaching a small course in media aesthetics next term, “ Jerz’s Literacy Weblog has posted a link to an article by George Landow, , a key thinker in the field of hypertext theory.

What is quality in hypertext? How, in other words, do we judge a hypertext collection of documents (or web) to be successful or unsuccessful, to be good or bad as hypertext? How can we judge if a particular hypertext achieves elegance or just mediocrity? Those questions lead to another: what in particular is good about hypertext? What qualities does hypertext have in addition to those possessed by non-hypertextual forms of writing, which at their best can boast clarity, energy, rhythm, force, complexity, and nuance? What qualities, in other words, derive from a form of writing that is defined to a large extent by electronic linking. What good things, what desirable qualities, come with linking, since the link is the defining characteristic of hypertext?

[Is this hypertext any good? Evaluating quality in hypermedia](https://www.dichtung-digital.org/2004/3/Landow/index)