Blue Fever

Blue Shifting is such an aesthetically pleasing phenomenon that many long-time wiki editors eventually develop it into a full-blown compulsion. Forum posts, blog entries, news feed comments—if it doesn't have enough hyperlinks, it just feels plain wrong. This condition is known as Blue Fever.

In other terms, people suffering from Blue Fever gradually begin writing everything like they write their wiki entries. The most visible symptom of this is that every term that a given reader might not possibly be familiar with will invariably be linked to an article pertaining to it on an appropriate wiki. The abundance of hyperlinks in the resultant work tends to give it a soothing blue shade, leading to the name "Blue Fever".

In purely objective terms, this is not necessarily a bad thing. An increased number of hypertext anchors helps connect the Internet and points readers towards additional information, and more advanced symptoms of Blue Fever—such as obsessive spell- or fact-checking—can provide for an even better reading experience.