(Note: This is only an early heads-up, to be prepared. Google Code-in
has NOT been announced yet, but last year, GCI mentors asked for more
time in advance to identify tasks to mentor. Here you are. :)
* You have small, self-contained bugs you'd like to see fixed?
* Your documentation needs specific improvements?
* Your user interface has some smaller design issues?
* Your Outreachy/Summer of Code project welcomes small tweaks?
* You'd enjoy helping someone port your template to Lua?
* Your gadget code uses some deprecated API calls?
* You have tasks in mind that welcome some research?
Google Code-in (GCI) is an annual contest for 13-17 year old students.
GCI 2019 has not yet been announced but usually takes place from late
October to December. It is not only about coding: We also need tasks
about design, docs, outreach/research, QA.
Read https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/Mentors , add
your name to the mentors table, and start tagging tasks in Wikimedia
Phabricator by adding the #gci-2019 project tag.
We will need MANY mentors and MANY tasks, otherwise we cannot make it.
Last year, 199 students successfully worked on 765 tasks supported by
39 mentors. For some achievements from the last round, see
https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/02/20/partnerships-make-it-possib…
Note that "beginner tasks" (e.g. "Set up Vagrant") and generic
tasks are very welcome (like "Choose and replace 2 uses of
Linker::link() from the list in T223010" style).
We also have more than 400 unassigned open #good-first-bug tasks:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/3YnDUWYJfXSo/#R
Can and would you mentor some of these tasks in your area?
Please take a moment to find / update [Phabricator etc.] tasks in your
project(s) which would take an experienced contributor 2-3 hours. Read
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/Mentors
, ask if you have any questions, and add your name to
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/2019#List_of_Wikimedia_mentors
Thanks (as we will not be able to run this without your help),
andre
--
Andre Klapper (he/him) | Bugwrangler / Developer Advocate
https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
Hey everyone,
We're excited to release our latest update to the Wikipedia Android app
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia&hl=en>, now
available on the Google Play store. Aside from numerous minor enhancements
and bug fixes, the biggest highlight from this update is:
== *Suggested edits, the continuation ==*
Earlier this year we released the "Suggested edits" screen (accessible from
the left navigation menu in the Feed screen, when you're logged in) which
offers you a stream of suggested contributions. Initially these
contributions were limited to adding and translating Wikidata descriptions
for articles that were missing a description.
We have now expanded these suggested contributions to include adding and
translating structured image captions on Commons! The Suggested Edits
screen now presents you with images that are missing a structured caption,
or if you have more than one language configured in the app, it shows you
images that are missing translations of the caption into the other
language(s) that you have selected.
You may also add or translate the captions of images directly while
browsing articles. Tap on any image to go to the full-screen gallery, and
you should see options to add, edit, or translate the caption.
Check it out, and we'd love to hear your feedback.
Cheers,
--
Dmitry Brant
Senior Software Engineer (Android)
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
Hello mobile Wikimedians,
The Wikimedia iOS app team is excited to announce our next major update is
now available on the app store:
https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=32471523…
v6.3 is chock-a-block with fixes and features, including:
- Been having trouble syncing reading lists or downloading reading lists
to new devices? We fixed a ton of sync problems!
- Easy support for adding media from Wikimedia Commons in editing mode.
Press the media button and easily an images to add with a tap.
- Easy wiki link insertion and updating tool.
- Fix issues with currently reading article not reopening after app
background. Now when you return to the article it will still be there!
- Join the conversation with support for User talk built in. Go to
Settings and log in to see your user talk in a mobile friendly
presentation.
- A fresh new sticker pack from the Foundation's Communications team and
Giphy.
Thanks as always to our volunteer translators, coders and testers. If you'd
like to sign up to help beta test future versions, you can now sign up
directly here:
https://testflight.apple.com/join/Z0AU0KXC
Cheers,
Josh Minor
PM, Wikipedia for iOS
Hi
We have published a new maintenance release of Kiwix for iOS 1.9 branch.
Here is a short changelog:
* Fix memory usage issue when performing searches
* swift 5.2
* Version bump of libkiwix, realm and SwiftyUserDefaults
* Removed third party library ProcedureKit, now use
Foundation.OperationQueue to handle async tasks
Kiwix for iOS has been conceived for iPhone & iPad devices.
The app is available on iTunes at http://ios.kiwix.org.
Please share with us problems and remarks:
https://github.com/kiwix/apple/issues
Enjoy
Emmanuel
--
Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more
* Web: http://www.kiwix.org
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiwixOffline
* more: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication
Hi, I am noticing that the usability of ENWP talk pages on mobile seems to
be improving. I would like to say a brief thank you to the people who have
worked on this. For me, the small interface changes make a significant
difference for usability.
Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
Hi folks,
I wanted to highlight a few really interesting pieces of data/stats
regarding the release of the Suggested Edits feature on Wikipedia app for
Android. These come from the daily report
<https://analytics.wikimedia.org/datasets/wikipedia-android-app-reports/sugg…>,
which is also where you'll find a brief description of the feature.
First, at this time 25.3% of editors (whose contributions are being tracked
since launch of the backend) have unlocked the feature by making the 5+ title
description edits
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Short_descriptions>
currently required to unlock it. (See: unlock stats
<https://analytics.wikimedia.org/datasets/wikipedia-android-app-reports/sugg…>)
That's 632 editors out of the 2495 editors who have made at least one title
description edit since April 5th. We have plans to experiment with this
threshold and see what happens if we lower the barrier to entry.
By the way, we don’t expect all logged-in users to edit or unlock the
feature (by making the required number of title description edits), as
there are incentives on the mobile apps to use an account just for reading
(e.g. reading list syncing
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/2018/05/25/synced-reading-lists/>).
However, perhaps we should advertise this ability better (especially to
logged-in users) and that those title descriptions don’t require any
knowledge of wikitext.
And since the production release, the feature has had a steady stream of
20+ users unlocking it per day. What are our users doing with it once they
unlock it? They’ve been using it! (Sorry if the text in the included graph
is too small to be legible, it's larger in the report.)
Nearly half of all title description edits made with the Android app each
day are coming in from editors using the Suggested Edits feature to add &
translate descriptions. More than half, even, on some days! Furthermore,
some of those edits are made by users who have previously used the feature.
Every day we have some editors who are using Suggested Edits for the first
time, but there are also quite a few who are returning to the Editor Tasks
screen & contributing more. (See: edit stats
<https://analytics.wikimedia.org/datasets/wikipedia-android-app-reports/sugg…>
)
“Okay, so what’s the quality of those 200-400 descriptions being added
every day?” you might ask. Well, one way we can check that is to check how
many of those edits are reverted within 48 hours. Turns out, almost none of
them:
This is especially impressive when compared to the proportion of other
title description edits that are reverted. (See: revert rate
<https://analytics.wikimedia.org/datasets/wikipedia-android-app-reports/sugg…>
)
When the user goes to the Suggested Edits screen and opens a task, they
begin receiving suggestions of articles to add descriptions to (or
translate descriptions, if they have unlocked that next tier of Suggested
Edits). On average, users express interest in editing 30-40% of those
suggestions. Among the suggestions they tapped to edit, they end up
actually making an edit around 60% of the time (although the average varies
from 40% to 70%). (See: interactions
<https://analytics.wikimedia.org/datasets/wikipedia-android-app-reports/sugg…>
and other engagement stats
<https://analytics.wikimedia.org/datasets/wikipedia-android-app-reports/sugg…>
)
Since the suggested edits are currently completely random, this leaves us
with a lot of room for improvement by, say, employing machine learning and
simple recommendation systems to suggest articles without title
descriptions that are similar to articles the user has added title
descriptions to previously. (Just a thought.) For example, in my own
experience with the suggestions I tend to skip articles that I don’t feel
confident enough to write short descriptions for, which are often articles
well outside my interests.
We’re still in the first month of the production release, so it’s hard to
draw conclusions about the longevity of this feature. These early numbers
are promising, and hopefully the number of editors using this feature
continues to grow because then those editors might be inspired to edit
articles too (if they haven’t yet). Of course, if we see people get bored
over time we might have to consider ways to encourage/inspire long-term
use. We also have plans to explore ways to recognize users for their
contributions.
So congratulations to the Android & Reading Infrastructure teams and
congrats to Rita Ho (now on the Growth team) for an impressive release. We
all look forward to the addition of image caption translation and seeing
the impact of the expanded Suggested Edits v2 on Structured Data on Commons.
Thanks for reading! :D
Cheers,
Mikhail
--
*Mikhail Popov*, Data Analyst (he/him)
Product Analytics <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Product_Analytics> //
Audiences <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Audiences> // Wikimedia
Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Other info (including PGP): https://people.wikimedia.org/~bearloga/
Hi
We have published a new maintenance release of Kiwix for iOS 1.9 branch.
Here is a short changelog:
* updated user feedback email address
* dropped support for external indexes
* improved iOS 12 support
* new version of libkiwix and Swift 4.2
Kiwix for iOS has been conceived for iPhone & iPad devices.
The app is available on iTunes at http://ios.kiwix.org.
Please share with us problems and remarks:
https://github.com/kiwix/apple/issues
Enjoy
Emmanuel
--
Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more
* Web: http://www.kiwix.org
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiwixOffline
* more: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication
Hi everyone,
We're pleased to release our latest update to the Wikipedia Android app
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia&hl=en>, now
available on the Google Play store.
We may have missed a release email to this list for our previous minor
release, so here is a cumulative list of highlights since our last update:
* *Suggested edits*: The app now has a screen (accessible from the left
navigation menu) that offers suggestions for items to edit. For this
initial release, this is limited to adding and translating Wikidata
descriptions. In future updates, this will be expanded to suggest other
types of edits.
Note that this feature must be "unlocked" to be accessible: you'll need to
add or edit at least five (5) Wikidata descriptions in the usual way (using
the edit icon while reading an article), then wait a while to make sure
your edits are not reverted. The app will then notify you when the feature
is unlocked.
* *Improved editing interface*: The article editing screen has a number of
new conveniences, including the ability to change the font size of the
wikitext window, the ability to find text within the wikitext window, and a
series of "syntax" buttons at the bottom, to simplify adding or modifying
the wikitext syntax at the cursor, as well as "undo" and "redo" buttons.
* *Sepia theme*: As usual, you can change the app's theme in Settings, or
from the bottom toolbar while reading an article.
* *"Continue reading" bar*: When browsing the Feed, or looking at your
reading lists, you will now see a "continue reading" bar at the bottom that
displays your current topmost tab, along with the total number of open tabs
you currently have.
* *Enhanced table of contents control*: The table of contents now features
a circular "thumb" scroller that you can hold down and drag to scroll
quickly through different sections of the article, while highlighting the
section that is currently in focus.
* *Improved search in reading lists*: Searching within the Reading Lists
screen will now match results from individual articles in any of your
reading lists, as well as the names of reading lists themselves.
Check it out, and happy reading (and editing)!
Cheers,
--
Dmitry Brant
Senior Software Engineer (Android)
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
Hi all,
last week we've successfully brought the improved font choice to our mobile
skin MinervaNeue onto all wikis.
It helps to provide our users a better reading experience – across
languages, in and beyond latin scripts and a more modern typographic feel
to many of our text-focussed projects, taking advantage of specifically
designed and optimized fonts for every major system.
Technically we're applying an operating system font first stack for running
text (every text element besides main page titles, headings of 2nd order,
blockquotes, code snippets, basically most of every page) on mobile devices
for most popular systems[0].
Thanks to everybody who has helped in the process of this project, Nirzar
Pangarkar for bringing the idea to the table[1], Jon Robson, Jan Drewniak,
and the rest of Reading Web team for co-researching and supporting the
implementation, Alex Hollender for fine-tuning design parts as well as
documenting pre- and post-change, Brad Jorsch for important reminder of
learnings from the Typography Refresh 2014 and Chris Koerner for
accompanying the communication externally along the way.
You can read more on the details on the project page and at the Phabricator
task.
Please let us know if you have any questions or further feedback, either by
responding to me or on the project's talk page[2].
[0] -
https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Design/Projects/Improve_mobile_reading_experie…
[1] - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T175877
[2] -
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Design/Projects/Improve_mobile_reading_…
Enjoy and best regards,
Volker
--
Senior UX Engineer, Lead User-Interface Standardization
Wikimedia Foundation
volker.e(a)wikimedia.org | @Volker_E