[Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness

[Sue Gardner]

On 12 April 2011 12:02, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I just tried editing an article on en:wp on my shiny new BlackBerry
> 9300. (Which can browse Wikipedia just fine.) It was ridiculously
> annoying and I'm not sure I'd bother fixing typos I spotted in casual
> reading.
>
> (At least Vector worked in that version of the BlackBerry browser ...)
>
> Does anyone here edit any of the WMF wikis, or any other wiki, on
> their phone much? What's it like, and what's the phone?


I edit, infrequently, from my Droid Pro. It's actually not too
gruesome, because the whole phone is optimized for text input. (The
Pro is the so-called Blackberry killer, the one with the excellent
physical keyboard.)

It's not fun, due mostly to the small screen size, but it's possible.
I do quick time-sensitive wiki-tasks from it and I occasionally fix
typos, but I would never attempt a complicated article edit.

Stepping back a bit -- for anyone who doesn't know, mobile is a
second-level priority for the Wikimedia Foundation right now (behind
Rich Text Editor and new editor retention). You can read more here:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Product_Whitepaper. Gist is, we
want to support both low-end and high-end phones and connections, and
do some experimentation with mobile contribution mechanisms -- minor
edits, image uploads, article ratings, and that kind of thing.
Basically the kind of thing Quim Gil was talking about, below....

>> On 12 April 2011 19:46, Quim Gil <quim.gil at nokia.com> wrote:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/App_Features_&_Roadmap

> * "Share this" like WikiNews does.
> * Watch an article - simple way to get readers progressively involved.
> * Patrol a new article - could be suggested by the app.
> * Geotag an article - maybe there is a way to offer suggestions.
> * Assess the relevance / importance of an article - app could suggest
> * Upload and embed a picture to a page - implementation might be tricky.
> * Add a comment in the discussion page - rather than applying templates
> directly.
> * Let SuggestBot to suggest me a mobile task - (with some fine tuning of
> the bot this could be a stand-alone mobile app in itself)
> * Spellchecking - highly automated, engine tbd.

Thanks,
Sue