Hello,
Welcome to the first in a reoccurring monthly update from the Reading
department at the Wikimedia foundation. Here we'll provide a quick summary
of things that are currently being worked on. An archive of past activity
can be found on
Mediawiki.org. Feedback and questions are welcome.
== Web ==
=== New print styles for the mobile web ===
Based on the findings of the New Readers team, we learned that users are
increasingly getting information online, and then sharing or consuming it
offline. In terms of mobile devices, this often means taking screenshots of
useful information, or saving the article as a PDF to read later on their
phones. Our older print styles did not account for reading on mobile
devices - they focused on paper printing. We will update our print styles
for mobile devices to account for offline consumption, making them easier
to read and navigate, as well as accounting for missing crucial information
such as article title and branding.[0]
=== Moving the lead section before the infobox on the mobile web ===
Over the past few quarters, we've been focusing on the top of the article
experience on the mobile website. One of the identified issues was that,
for articles which contained an infobox, users were exposed to the infobox
content prior to having an overview of the subject of the article itself.
To improve on this issue, we've moved the lead section of each article so
that it appears before the infobox on mobile, allowing readers to have
access to the main content of the page earlier. This change is now live on
all projects. Before, [0] After [1]
=== Completing related pages deployment ===
Since March 30, 2017, we have been running a test on enwiki on the related
pages feature. Over the past month, we collected data and analyzed the
performance of the feature.[2] Based on the results, we completed the
deployment of the feature on mobile English Wikipedia.
== New Readers ==
* The New Readers team is deep in beginning pilots to address the barriers
that were identified as highest priority through deep research in 2016.[3]
You can see deeper, cross-team updates at m:New Readers/Updates. [4]
* For Reading, we're supporting the Android and Web teams in developing
deeper support for readers who have internet sometimes, but want access to
some content when they're offline or don't want to spend the data to read.
To see a summary of that work, check out m:New Readers/Offline.[5]
== Multimedia ==
* In addition to bugfixes and maintenance, the team has been evaluating the
pre-release version of 3D model file support and collecting feedback via
the Commons Village Pump.[6] During the forthcoming month the team will be
prioritizing and working on 3D tasks in anticipation of a future launch.[7]
== Other Noteworthy Stuff ==
* Following April's Q3 quarterly check-in, we examined core readership
metrics for the same timespan in a followup presentation.[8] [9]
[0]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/Print_Styles#Mobile_Pri…
[1]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Mobile_website,_older_version_of_infobo…
[2]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Lead_paragraph_before_infobox_example_-…
[3]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/Related_pages#Metrics_a…
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers/Findings
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers/Updates
[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers/Offline
[7]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2017/05#Pre…
[8]
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/3d/
[9]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Reading,_Comm_Tech_%26_TPG_Quarterly_Ch…
[10]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Reading_metric…
---
The archive of all past updates can be found on
MediaWiki.org:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Status_updates
Yours,
Chris Koerner
Community Liaison - Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation
