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
Team:
This schema MobileWikiAppShareAFact is sending a lot of events, maybe is
worth thinking whether we need that many. It is again a case where tables
are becoming huge and hard to query fast.
cc-ing Jon as schema owner.
Can this data be sampled at a higher sampling rate? I have filed a ticket
to this fact:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T122224
Thanks,
Nuria
On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 8:35 AM, Adam Baso <abaso(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Replacing mobile-tech with mobile-l (internal mobile-tech list
> discontinued).
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 22, 2015, Nuria Ruiz <nuria(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> Team:
>>
>> As part of our effort of converting eventlogging mysql database to the
>> tokudb engine we need to stop eventlogging events from flowing into the MobileWikiAppShareAFact
>> table, we are using this one table to see how long the conversion will take
>> in order to plan for a larger outage window.
>>
>>
>> Let us know if data should be backfilled as it can be, we anticipate
>> events will not flow into table for the better part of one day.
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Nuria
>>
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Mobile-l mailing list
> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>
>
Hey all,
Just a quick heads up that we've rewritten the Wikipedia iOS app
<https://github.com/wikimedia/wikipedia-ios> git history to amend some
mistakes with author information. If you have a local copy of the repo,
please re-checkout the new master. Merging or rebasing are not recommended,
as a lot of the commits have new SHA identifiers. If you have an
outstanding branch with changes you'd like to apply to the new master, it's
probably best to cherry-pick them individually onto the new master.
Feel free to ping me via email or on IRC with any questions
(#wikimedia-mobile, #wikimedia-ios).
Cheers,
Brian
--
EN Wikipedia user page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Brian.gerstle
IRC: bgerstle
Stream of events to MobileWikiAppShareAFact table has been restored. Outage
of events was a bit less than 3 hours , please let us know if this data
needs to be backfilled.
Thanks,
Nuria
On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 8:30 AM, Nuria Ruiz <nuria(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Team:
>
> As part of our effort of converting eventlogging mysql database to the
> tokudb engine we need to stop eventlogging events from flowing into the MobileWikiAppShareAFact
> table, we are using this one table to see how long the conversion will take
> in order to plan for a larger outage window.
>
>
> Let us know if data should be backfilled as it can be, we anticipate
> events will not flow into table for the better part of one day.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nuria
>
>
>
Hello,
Since last quarter the WMF’s iOS team [1] (part of the Reading product
group) has been working on a major version update to our iOS app [2].
Rather than adding new features to the existing app, the team took on the
goal of re-thinking our mobile readers, and how we could provide them with
a delightful, app-specific, experience that will keep them reading
Wikipedia on iOS.
After an extended alpha period we’re ready to share that work with you, and
we’re looking forward to your feedback!
Sign up for the Beta by registering here: https://goo.gl/forms/hNxPJah57p
Once we are approved by Apple, you will receive a notification to install
the beta via the TestFlight platform.
I will also be giving a walkthrough of the app, as a lighting talk tomorrow
at 11 PST. It will be one of several to the WMF’s monthly lightning talks
for Dec, which will stream here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIqhGxtXFbg
Thanks,
Josh Minor
Product Manager, Reading
==More info[3]==
What’s New?
Our aim was to give our users an easier and more inviting way to discover
and read Wikipedia on iOS, and find experiences to keep them engaged. So,
there are few new features or changes to the core features, but an all new
look-and-feel, and many changes to navigation around that core. 5.0 is a
complete overhaul from the ground up, but some major highlights include:
-
New Explore screen, a mobile-friendly way to enable that Wikipedia
moment of serendipity
-
“First time user experience” that helps users get oriented and configure
the app
-
All new user interface look-and-feel
-
Tab based navigation for one tap access to your History and Saved pages
-
Redesigned reader experience, with new page information and table of
contents
-
Easy access to language switching while searching and reading
Why is the app so different than the previous one?
Although the existing iOS app is well reviewed, and has been featured by
Apple, it has never been able to build a sizable audience. Compared to
other content sites on the internet, our official apps have not been able
to keep our iOS users engaged as they shifted from desktop browsers to
mobile apps. In order to “try again” to see if we could engage readers, and
also keep them engaged, we’re trying a totally new way of presenting
ourselves on iOS. You can read a lot more about this on our project wiki
[2] and in this product presentation [4].
What’s this Explore thing?
The app’s Explore screen is a new, mobile friendly, way to experience the
joy of discovery on Wikipedia. It mixes community curated content (from the
en.wikipedia Main Page and Commons) with personally relevant content (based
on articles you’ve read and your device location). All this is compiled
locally on device and presented in a UI paradigm that is friendly to short,
touch based sessions for casual consumption of media. It is an attempt to
find a new way to engage, and re-engage, readers on a regular basis, by
providing them a wide variety of dynamically changing content, presented in
a familiar format. We think it can be very powerful way to enable mobile
users to have that magic Wikipedia moment of discovery.
Where’s my favorite old feature?
Many features that were previously part of the “W” menu are now included in
the Explore page. Random articles and articles near your location can both
be found by exploring your feed. Other parts of the app now live in the
main tab bar (Recent and Saved pages), or in the upper bar (Settings). Not
finding something you loved? Fill out our feedback form and let us know
[5].
What’s missing? Known issues?
- Feed language and site: Currently the Explore page takes its content
from your current “site”, based on your current search language. We will
need to add more nuance to our site and language controls. If you are a
multilingual user of the app, we’re particularly interested to get your
feedback.
- The app can be overly aggressive about updating/refreshing content. We
erred on the side of getting the “latest” content.
- Some localizations and RTL language support are incomplete (especially on
iOS 8). We are actively working on this.
- Navigation issues: although the tab based main interface has been well
liked by users, the new navigation flows have introduced some
inconveniences for longer sessions and quickly accessing some less
frequently used but much loved features. We look forward to hearing from
you about what you like, and don’t, about the new navigation.
How can I give feedback?
We have a feedback form you can fill out (anonymously) here [5] or on the
project’s wiki talk page here [2].
The team will also be at the wiki dev summit
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit_2016>, if you
want to talk IRL!
[1] - https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/iOS
[2] - https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/Why_5
[3] - Also available on wiki at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/FAQ_about_5.0
[4] -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IOS_Wikipedia_App_5.0_Update.pdf
[5] -
https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/forms/d/1NDBPJvWZ0idh9OuQ8pt684c9Mw…
Interesting! Also, so is this:
http://top.hatnote.com
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Thomas Steiner* <tomac(a)google.com>
Date: Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Subject: [Wiki-research-l] pageviews.js—A JavaScript Client Library for the
Wikimedia Pageviews API for Node.js and the browser
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities <
wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: Analytics List <analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Dear all,
First and foremost, thanks for making the Wikimedia Pageviews API
available; your work is highly appreciated and super useful! As a
modest "thank you", I am happy to release the JavaScript client
library pageviews.js for Node.js and the browser to make working with
this API easy for JavaScript developers. Please find the code and all
instructions at [1]. The library adds some convenience functions
(getting batch pageviews and limiting the number of results) that were
inspired by Dan Andreescu's Python library [2] and is Promise-based:
===
var pageviews = require('pageviews');
// Getting pageviews for a single article
pageviews.getPerArticlePageviews({
article: 'Berlin',
project: 'en.wikipedia',
start: '20151201',
end: '20151202'
}).then(function(result) {
console.log(JSON.stringify(result, null, 2));
}).catch(function(error) {
console.log(error);
});
// Getting top-n items ranked by pageviews for multiple projects
pageviews.getTopPageviews({
projects: ['en.wikipedia', 'de.wikipedia'], // Plural
year: '2015',
month: '12',
day: '01',
limit: 2 // Limit to the first n results
}).then(function(result) {
console.log(JSON.stringify(result, null, 2));
}).catch(function(error) {
console.log(error);
});
===
On a more technical note—trying to be a good citizen [3]—the client
library sets an identifying User-Agent header in Node.js mode.
However, trying to set the corresponding X-User-Agent (note the "X-")
header from a browser context (XMLHttpRequest cannot override the
browser's intrinsic User-Agent for security reasons), this fails with
an error message "Request header field X-User-Agent is not allowed by
Access-Control-Allow-Headers in preflight response". Maybe you could
change your CORS settings and include X-User-Agent in your
Access-Control-Allow-Headers?!
Hope this is useful.
Thanks,
Tom
--
[1] pageviews.js: https://github.com/tomayac/pageviews.js
[2] python-mwviews: https://github.com/mediawiki-utilities/python-mwviews
[3] User-Agent requirement: https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/?doc
--
Dr. Thomas Steiner, Employee (blog.tomayac.com, twitter.com/tomayac)
Google Germany GmbH, ABC-Str. 19, 20354 Hamburg
Geschäftsführer: Matthew Scott Sucherman, Paul Terence Manicle
Registergericht und -nummer: Hamburg, HRB 86891
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Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Replacing mobile-tech with mobile-l (internal mobile-tech list
discontinued).
On Tuesday, December 22, 2015, Nuria Ruiz <nuria(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Team:
>
> As part of our effort of converting eventlogging mysql database to the
> tokudb engine we need to stop eventlogging events from flowing into the MobileWikiAppShareAFact
> table, we are using this one table to see how long the conversion will take
> in order to plan for a larger outage window.
>
>
> Let us know if data should be backfilled as it can be, we anticipate
> events will not flow into table for the better part of one day.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nuria
>
>
>
Interesting, if lengthy essay:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cullen328/Smartphone_editing
The author's assertion "In my experience, many productive mobile
device editors prefer the desktop site" is actually open to empirical
testing. Has anyone every tried to find out the percentage of edits
from mobile devices that use the desktop version?
These observations on the talk page about the shortcomings of the
mobile web interface for curation purposes are also worth reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Cullen328/Smartphone_editing#PamD.2…
--
Tilman Bayer
Senior Analyst
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
