Hi everyone,
*tl;dr: We'll be stripping all content contained inside brackets from the
first sentence of articles in the Wikipedia app.*
The Mobile Apps Team is focussed on making the app a beautiful and engaging
reader experience, and trying to support use cases like wanting to look
something up quickly to find what it is. Unfortunately, there are several
aspects of Wikipedia at present that are actively detrimental to that goal.
One example of this are the lead sentences.
As mentioned in the other thread on this matter
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mobile-l/2015-March/008715.html>,
lead sentences are poorly formatted and contain information that is
detrimental to quickly looking up a topic. The team did a quick audit
<https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/spreadsheets/d/1BJ7uDgzO8IJT0M3UM2q…>
of
the information available inside brackets in the first sentences, and
typically it is pronunciation information which is probably better placed
in the infobox rather than breaking up the first sentence. The other
problem is that this information was typically inserted and previewed on a
platform where space is not at a premium, and that calculation is different
on mobile devices.
In order to better serve the quick lookup use case, the team has reached
the decision to strip anything inside brackets in the first sentence of
articles in the Wikipedia app.
Stripping content is not a decision to be made lightly. People took the
time to write it, and that should be respected. We realise this is
controversial. That said, it's the opinion of the team that the problem is
pretty clear: this content is not optimised for users quickly looking
things up on mobile devices at all, and will take a long time to solve
through alternative means. A quicker solution is required.
The screenshots below are mockups of the before and after of the change.
These are not final, I just put them together quickly to illustrate what
I'm talking about.
- Before: http://i.imgur.com/VwKerbv.jpg
- After: http://i.imgur.com/2A5PLmy.jpg
If you have any questions, let me know.
Thanks,
Dan
--
Dan Garry
Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps
Wikimedia Foundation
Hello all,
As mentioned previously, the current version of the Android app contains an
A/B test where it presents "read more" suggestions to the user, based on
(a) the standard "morelike" query, or (b) the new "opening_text" query.
Here are the results from the last ~10 days of the test[0]:
- The clickthrough rate using the default morelike query is (and has been)
around 15%.
- With the new opening_text query, the clickthrough rate decreases to about
12%:
[image: Inline image 1]
Therefore, it seems that the new query has a nontrivial negative effect on
CTR :(
We'll plan on removing this test in the next release of the app, but we'll
be happy to plug in a different or updated query, if it will be of further
use to Discovery.
[0]
https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/spreadsheets/d/1BFsrAcPgexQyNVemmJ3…
(queries embedded as comments in the headers)
--
Dmitry Brant
Senior Software Engineer / Product Owner (Android)
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
Hello mobile wikimedians,
Big day for Wikipedia apps. First, big congrats to the Android team on
today's awesome update!
On iOS, after a long beta testing period[1], focusing on improving
performance and reducing crashes and instability, we've released the 5.0.5
version of Wikipedia to the App Store.
We expect users will see:
- less hangs or failures to load on the Explore feed
- full AuthManager support and stable account log in and creation
- use less device resources, espeically when backgrounded and in our
backups
- most importantly, less crashes!!
We also fixed over a two dozen other bugs and usability issues, large and
small.
Thanks to our volunteers (particularly thanks to huayu0723, bart-kneepkens
and gregggreg2 for their code contributions, and josve05a for his
invaluable help with OTRS and testing). I also want to thank our beta
testers, who put in extra effort on this version to help us find and
diagnose stability issues.
Thanks,
Josh
[1] - You can read about the changes we made and the reason behind the long
beta in previous announce post here:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mobile-l/2016-June/010254.html
Cross posting.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Dan Andreescu* <dandreescu(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Friday, July 29, 2016
Subject: [Analytics] [Pageview API] Data Retention Question
To: Analytics List <analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Dear Pageview API consumers,
We would like to plan storage capacity for our pageview API cluster. Right
now, with a reliable RAID setup, we can keep *18 months* of data. If you'd
like to query further back than that, you can download dump files (which
we'll make easier to use with python utilities).
What do you think? Will you need more than 18 months of data? If so, we
need to add more nodes when we get to that point, and that costs money, so
we want to check if there is a real need for it.
Another option is to start degrading the resolution for older data (only
keep weekly or monthly for data older than 1 year for example). If you
need more than 18 months, we'd love to hear your use case and something in
the form of:
need daily resolution for 1 year
need weekly resolution for 2 years
need monthly resolution for 3 years
Thank you!
Dan
Introducing the Explore Feed: a new way to discover Wikipedia content!
We've redesigned the home screen of the app, which now shows a feed of
featured content from Wikipedia, as well as personalized reading
suggestions based on your reading history in the app[0]. See Wikipedia
articles about current events, today's trending articles, today's featured
article and featured picture from Commons, and more[1]. Scroll down in the
feed to see featured content from previous days.
Since this is a significant departure from the previous experience in the
app, we especially welcome the feedback of our Beta users. Let us know if
you see any issues or bugs, or if you have any suggestions for making it
even better.
This version includes a volunteer contribution from repeat contributor Amir
Aharoni[2]. Good work! You too can help make it better! Read our getting
started guide[3]. We can't wait for your contributions!
-The WMF Android team
[0] Note: your reading history is only stored locally on your device.
[1] "In the news" and "Today's featured article" are currently limited to
English Wikipedia only.
[2] Wikipedia User:Amire80, IRC and Twitter: aharoni
[3]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/Wikipedia_Android_app_ha…
Hi
Last week we have released the version 1.6!
Here the new fixes and features:
* NEW: Table of content
* NEW: Recent searches
* NEW: New (fulltext) search ranking system
* NEW: Enhanced layout javascript on iPhone
* NEW: Use SafariViewController to handle external links
* NEW: Access ZIM storage server using HTTPS
* NEW: Enhanced Search UI on iPad and iPhone 6/6s Plus (landscape)
* NEW: Clear search history in settings
* FIXED: Downloading / paused book no longer got purged when they are
removed from online library
* FIXED: Removed code that mistakenly indicates app use Wallet
* FIXED: Open main page when first book finish downloaded
* FIXED: Performance problem in book scan and search
* FIXED: App Launch speed
* FIXED: iPad recent search divider not drawn correctly when rotating
from portrait to landscape
Stay tuned, 1.7 is already in the pipe :)
Regards
Emmanuel
--
Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more
* Web: http://www.kiwix.org
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiwixOffline
* more: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication
Fyi :)
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Wikitech-l [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] Im Auftrag von Chad Horohoe
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 21. Juli 2016 17:08
An: Development and Operations engineers (WMF only) <engineering(a)lists.wikimedia.org>; wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Betreff: [Wikitech-l] Gerrit downtime this Monday!
Hi,
So the time is upon us to finally upgrade Gerrit. I thank everyone in advance for all of your patience and good work testing things out for us. The plan is outlined in detail on Phabricator[0], but I'll give everyone the short version here.
The downtime will be on Monday, July 25th from 01:00 to 04:00 UTC; that's Sunday night for those of us who are US-based. This time was picked based because it's one of our lowest traffic times on Gerrit. There's never a *good* time to bring it down, it's always being used, but this looks like it'll impact the fewest number of users. I do not anticipate the process actually taking the full 3 hours, but I'm giving us a lot of extra time just in case.
Jaime will be on hand to assist with a final DB snapshot of the old version and possible rollback, and Daniel Z. is going to assist me with the puppet work. Most of this is already prepared so the amount of "change" to do the swap has been kept to a minimum.
Gerrit is a critical service to all developers, so the plan includes a generous provision to roll back if things are not operating properly--I'd rather us be on the old version that works on a Monday morning than be stuck broken going into the work week.
I'll be sure to send a last minute reminder Sunday night prior to taking services offline.
Thanks again!
-Chad
[0] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T70271#2482308
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