[Wikitech-l] Improvements to Page Previews

Hello, We wanted to take a moment to update you all about a reader-focused feature called Page Previews, which has also been popular as a Beta Feature among editors. [0] [1] The Readers web team at the Wikimedia Foundation has been working on a few things we’d like to share. [2] Most recently we: * Deployed the new HTML endpoint for generating previews, leading to better rendering of preview content (math equations work, more predictable formatting of information in parentheses, etc.) [3] * Completed two A/B tests on English and German Wikipedias. [4] The results displayed a decrease in pageviews, but an overall increase in the number of pages readers interact with, indicating that they are more likely to explore a larger variety of topics when the feature is on. We also noted decreased usage of the back button and very low rates of disabling the feature. These experiments built on earlier qualitative and quantitive testing of the feature. [5] Other improvements: * Addressed and fixed many bugs [6] * Refactored the code (that's fancy developer-speak of restructuring the code to be more performant and stable) [7] * Made sure Page Previews do not interfere with the functionality of Navigation Popups ** As both can not be run simultaneously, users of Nav popups will need to disable the gadget in order to try out Page Previews. * Reviewed feedback from readers across the web [8] [9] [10] [11] If you haven’t already, you can enable the feature in your preferences under Appearance. [12] Feedback on how things are working for you is welcome. The HTML endpoint change was deployed just last week and we’re very excited to see the improvements. We’re expecting some smaller bugs and edge cases, so please let us know if you notice something out of order. You can find out more about the feature on MediaWiki.org. [13] [0] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Page_Previews [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Team [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T113094 [4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Page_Previews/2017-18_A/B_Tests [5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Page_Previews#Success_Metrics_and_Feature_Ev… [6] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/765/query/jJ.50s_0Xlq9/ [7] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T149801 [8] https://twitter.com/torresromain/status/904357789006364673 [9] https://twitter.com/xtoq/status/903276948641771522 [10] https://twitter.com/lsinger/status/903170252636377088 [11] https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/80sybr/wikipedias_new_hoverhyp… [12] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering [13] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Page_Previews Thank you, Chris Koerner Community Liaison Wikimedia Foundation