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
Hello all,
As mentioned previously, the current version of the Android app contains an
A/B test where it presents "read more" suggestions to the user, based on
(a) the standard "morelike" query, or (b) the new "opening_text" query.
Here are the results from the last ~10 days of the test[0]:
- The clickthrough rate using the default morelike query is (and has been)
around 15%.
- With the new opening_text query, the clickthrough rate decreases to about
12%:
[image: Inline image 1]
Therefore, it seems that the new query has a nontrivial negative effect on
CTR :(
We'll plan on removing this test in the next release of the app, but we'll
be happy to plug in a different or updated query, if it will be of further
use to Discovery.
[0]
https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/spreadsheets/d/1BFsrAcPgexQyNVemmJ3…
(queries embedded as comments in the headers)
--
Dmitry Brant
Senior Software Engineer / Product Owner (Android)
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
Cross post in case you don't follow wikitech-l. See you soon!
-Adam
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Adam Baso <abaso(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 2:33 PM
Subject: December 2016 CREDIT Showcase in a week
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hello all -
The next CREDIT showcase is a week from today - Wednesday, 7-December-2016
at 1900 UTC (1100 San Francisco).
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CREDIT_showcase
If you have a demo, please add it here:
https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CREDIT
Last month there were demos on offline, IFTTT, and File properties search &
new WDQS visualizations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmfqtP3pr2Y&t=47
We welcome demos from Wikimedia community members and staff alike - from
polished features to something you just got working last night. Hope to see
you soon!
If you would like to invite anyone to CREDIT, feel free to use this
template.
*Hi <FNAME>*
*I hope all is well with you! I wanted to let you know about CREDIT, a
monthly demo series that we’re running to showcase open source tech
projects from Wikimedia’s Community, Reading, Editing, Discovery,
Infrastructure and Technology teams. *
*CREDIT is open to the public, and we welcome questions and discussion. The
next CREDIT will be held on December 7th at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 19:00 UTC. *
*There’s more info on MediaWiki
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CREDIT_showcase>, and on Etherpad
<https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CREDIT>, which is where we take notes and
ask questions. You can also ask questions on IRC in the Freenode chatroom
#wikimedia-office (web-based access here
<https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23wikimedia-office>). Links to
video will become available at these locations shortly before the event.*
*Please feel free to pass this information along to any interested folks.
Our projects tend to focus on areas that might be of interest to folks
working across the open source tech community: language detection,
numerical sort, large data visualizations, maps, and all sorts of other
things.*
*If you have any questions, please let me know! Thanks, and I hope to see
you at CREDIT.*
*-YOURNAME*
Hello,
Fast on the heals of last weeks major release, we just pushed a first beta
of our next update (v5.3.1) to our TestFlight beta testers. This release
addresses some crash issues with Explore loading/refresh, prevents repeat
pushes of the same notification, and adds Wikidata descriptions for news
items.
Additionally this version adds an Announcement card to the Explore feed.
Similar to the CentralNotice system on the web, this will allow us to
insert short announcements into the Explore feed. The first use of this
will be to ask app users to participate in a quick survey (1 question)
about why they use the app, to help inform our plans going forward.
Thanks,
Josh Minor
PM, Wikipedia for iOS
Hi,
Changes on MobileFrontend have being merged deprecating jscs & jshint and
instead using eslint.
See https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/320406/ and followup patches
This means there are some subtle changes to coding style, and more
importantly that running grunt eslint:fix will now run eslint automatically
fixing the code style issues in most cases.
Have a look at the patches to get a feel about the changes, and remember to
update to master and re-run npm install to get the new tools ready.
Cheers.
Hello mobile Wikimedians,
A major update to the Wikipedia app for iOS is now available in the App
Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wikipedia/id324715238?mt=8
Version 5.3.0 includes a long list of improvements and new features,
including:
- Get rich notifications about topics Trending In the News
- Improved VoiceOver support for the visually impaired and VoiceOver
support added to widgets
- 支援簡繁中文自動轉換 / 支持简繁中文自动转换
- Support for auto transliteration between Simplified and Traditional
Chinese for Chinese Wikipedia
- Switch to RESTBase endpoint for the Explore feed, resulting in faster
load times with less network bandwidth
- Improved Random article experience to make it easier to fall down the
rabbit hole
- Use 3d touch actions to save and share links from anywhere in the app
- Support for Top Read and Continue Reading widgets on iOS 9
- Show more precise licensing information in image galleries
- Improved presentation of references and citations
We had a lot of help on this version, with major props to the Android and
Services teams for their work creating the new Explore feed API. It rocks!
And, as always, huge thanks to the volunteers who contributed code or
testing help (and especially the crew that came in person to our
Accessibility hack day). Contributors in this version included: digdog,
josve05a, anirudh24, kotarofujita, amire80, dmcglinchey2779 and eyeino
Thanks,
Josh Minor
PM, Wikipedia app for iOS
Forwarding.
Pine
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia(a)gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 12:42 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Pebble smartwatch tool for finding Wikipedia
photo opportunities
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Thanks everyone for the feedback!
I just published version 1.3; Albin added Wikidata support to the
wmflabs API, and Diderot now queries Wikidata if no nearby
unillustrated articles are found on Wikipedia.
(You can also now customize the color of the time text.)
-Sage
On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 5:22 AM, Magnus Manske
<magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
> Looks like a cool thing indeed! Any chance to expand that to Wikidata?
It's
> a superset of all Wikipedias, plus things like UK National Heritage sites,
> so it will give you many more candidates in some regions.
>
> On Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 10:30 PM Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi folks!
>>
>> I made something that I think is pretty cool: a watchface for Pebble
>> smartwatches that shows you the nearest unphotographed Wikipedia
>> article. I've been using it for about a month, and I'm really happy
>> with how it's turned out. I've taken a lot of photos for articles that
>> I wouldn't have otherwise.
>>
>> It's called "Diderot". If you have a Pebble, check it out:
>> https://apps.getpebble.com/en_US/application/57dc94602a6ea665510000f0
>>
>> A few neat things about it:
>>
>> * You can configure it for a number of different language versions of
>> Wikipedia
>> * It uses a wmflabs API by Albin Larrson which filters out articles
>> that have only a png or svg illustration, so you still see the
>> articles that have a map or logo but lack a real photograph.
>>
>> -Sage
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
_______________________________________________
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New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
Wikimedia is among the 17 organizations in Google Code-in (GCI) 2016!
GCI starts on November 28th. It's a contest for 13-17 year old students
working on small tasks and a great opportunity to let new contributors
make progress and help with smaller tasks on your To-Do list!
There are currently 13 open Mobile Apps tasks marked as easy:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/0pQOZawilr3q/#R
What we want you to do:
BECOME A MENTOR:
1. Go to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in_2016 and add
yourself to the mentor's table.
2. Get an invitation email to register on the contest site.
PROVIDE SMALL TASKS:
We want your tasks in the following areas: code, outreach/research,
documentation/training, quality assurance, user interface/design.
(Please note that translation tasks are not allowed.)
1. Create a Phabricator task (which would take you 2-3h to complete) or
pick an existing Phabricator task you'd mentor.
2. Add the "Google-Code-In-2016" project tag.
3. Add a comment "I will mentor this in #GCI2016".
Looking for task ideas? Check the "easy" tasks in Phabricator:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Annoying_little_bugs offers links.
Make sure to cover expectations and deliverables in your task.
And once the contest starts on Nov 28, be ready to answer and review
contributions quickly.
Any questions? Just ask, we're happy to help.
Thank you for your help broadening our contributor base!
andre
--
Andre Klapper | Wikimedia Bugwrangler
http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
*cough*
https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikishootme/
On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 12:30 PM <wsamuels(a)cuij.edu.cu> wrote:
> I made something that I think it´s good find you but I prefer you white me
> in Spanish because my English id very bad thanks you.
>
> ------------------------------
> *De: *"Pine W" <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com>
> *Para: *"mobile-l" <mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, "Wikimedia Commons
> Discussion List" <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> *Enviados: *Domingo, 6 de Noviembre 2016 3:47:32
> *Asunto: *[Commons-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia-l] Pebble smartwatch tool for
> finding Wikipedia photo opportunities
>
>
> Forwarding
>
> Pine
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *Sage Ross* <ragesoss+wikipedia(a)gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 3:29 PM
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Pebble smartwatch tool for finding Wikipedia photo
> opportunities
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> Hi folks!
>
> I made something that I think is pretty cool: a watchface for Pebble
> smartwatches that shows you the nearest unphotographed Wikipedia
> article. I've been using it for about a month, and I'm really happy
> with how it's turned out. I've taken a lot of photos for articles that
> I wouldn't have otherwise.
>
> It's called "Diderot". If you have a Pebble, check it out:
> https://apps.getpebble.com/en_US/application/57dc94602a6ea665510000f0
>
> A few neat things about it:
>
> * You can configure it for a number of different language versions of
> Wikipedia
> * It uses a wmflabs API by Albin Larrson which filters out articles
> that have only a png or svg illustration, so you still see the
> articles that have a map or logo but lack a real photograph.
>
> -Sage
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *Universidad de la Isla de la Juventud Jesús Montané Oropesa*
>
> *Dirección: *Carretera Aeropuerto Km , Isla de la Juventud, Cuba
>
> *Teléfono: *(+53) 046 324819 <+53%2046%20324819>
>
> *Sitio Web Nacional: *intranet.cuij.edu.cu
>
> *Redes Sociales: *Síguenos en Facebook
> <https://www.facebook.com/Universidad-de-la-Isla-de-la-Juventud-Jesús-Montan…>
> y Twitter <https://twitter.com/uijmo>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
Great job, Sage! I don't have a Pebble watch unfortunately, but the app
looks great. :)
@Rehman: The Commons Android app
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.free.nrw.commons> has a
somewhat similar "Nearby Places" features that displays a list of nearby
locations lacking photos. It's a new feature and needs quite a bit of
improvement (including switching to a different API, as our initial choice
of API turned out to have a few drawbacks), but it might be worth looking
into.
> On Sat, Nov 5, 2016, 9:04 PM Rehman Abubakr <rehman.wikimedia(a)live.com>
> wrote:
>
> This is great! It would be really cool if someone could write a similar
> Android mobile app...
>
>
>
> Thanks and regards,
>
> User:Rehman <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rehman>
--
Regards,
Josephine