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
Hello everyone,
Related pages feature has been in beta for over two months now, the future
of the feature depends on our discussions. While we currently don't have a
clear process for deciding collaboratively on an all languages product,
Alsee and the reading team have put together this document on meta [0], as
a request for comment, seeking comments and ideas on modifications
required, and how to further test the feature. In fact, we are not sure if
an rfc is the best strategy to move forward with product decisions, but
lets see how the discussion evolves, and we might explore the need for a
different process, as we move on with this one.
We managed to translate a brief introduction about the topic, please feel
free to fully translate the document and/or further promote the discussion
on your wiki. We are trying hard to avoid having an English centric
discussion for a feature that could be available across all language
projects, and while we don't have a clear solution for this, we are trying
this method as an experiment, where at least our communities can leave
comments in their preferred language if they aren't comfortable writing in
English but they can understand it.
Please check the page, help with translation or promotion in your
Wikipedia, and most importantly, comment on how you think it can evolve. :)
Lets see how this works!
All the best,
M
[0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Related_Pages
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Adam Baso <abaso(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 11:30 AM
Subject: Reminder: CREDIT showcase Wednesday, 6-April-2016
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hello world -
Reminder: the next CREDIT showcase will be 6-April-2016 at 1800 UTC (1100
SF).
Looking forward to your demos! Please see the following links for
information and to add your demo :)
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CREDIT_showcasehttps://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CREDIT
-Adam
Hello,
The WMF's iOS App team is glad to announce that version 5.0.2 of our app
has been released to the App Store[1]. This is an expedited bug fix to
address issues with links into the app. These issues were caused by the iOS
9.3 release and have hit many apps, causing links to fail or apps to stall
on startup[2]. Working with Apple we have incorporated their fix and the
issue appears to be resolved for our app (you may still see this with other
apps until iOS 9.3.1 is released).
In addition to more stable link handling we have a couple other small
improvements included:
- Fixed an issue where some "Read More" recommendations were hidden or
missing from article footers.
- Additional localizations from TranslateWiki.
Thanks,
Josh Minor
[1] - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wikipedia-mobile/id324715238?mt=8
[2] - This was caused by a change in how the OS handles links to sites with
large numbers of sub-domains (as we have for our languages). See also press
reports, such as: http://9to5mac.com/2016/03/27/some-users-reporting-iphone-
crashes-on-ios-9-3-when-tapping-links-in-safari-and-other-apps/
| Please accept our apology for multiple posting. THANK YOU |
***********************************************************************************
CALL FOR PAPERS
IEEE-ICDIPC2016
The Sixth International Conference on Digital Information Processing and
Communications
http://goo.gl/h1EDkR
April 21-23, 2016, Beirut, Lebanon
Submission Deadline: Feb. 6, 2016
***********************************************************************************
The proposed conference will be held at Faculty of Engineering – Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon. From April 21-23, 2016 which aims to enable researchers build connections between different digital applications.
*TOPICS OF INTEREST*
You are invited to submit original technical papers covering (but not limited to the following topics):
. Information and Data Management
. Social Networks
. Data Compression
. Information Content Security
. E-Technology
. Mobile, Ad Hoc and Sensor Network Management
. E-Government
. Web Services Architecture, Modeling and Design
. E-Learning
. Semantic Web, Ontologies
. Wireless Communications
. Web Services Security
. Mobile Networking, Mobility and Nomadicity
. Quality of Service, Scalability and Performance
. Ubiquitous Computing, Services and Applications
. Self-Organizing Networks and Networked Systems
. Data Mining
. Data Management in Mobile Peer-to-Peer Networks
. Computational Intelligence
. Data Stream Processing in Mobile/Sensor Networks
. Biometrics Technologies
. Indexing and Query Processing for Moving Objects
. Forensics, Recognition Technologies and Applications
. Cryptography and Data Protection
. Information Ethics
. Peer-to-Peer Social Networks
. Fuzzy and Neural Network Systems
. Mobile Social Networks
. Signal Processing, Pattern Recognition and Applications
. User Interfaces and Usability Issues form Mobile Applications
. Image Processing
. Sensor Networks and Social Sensing
. Distributed and parallel applications
. Social Search
. Internet Modeling
. Embedded Systems and Software
. User Interfaces,Visualization and Modeling
. Real-Time Systems
. XML-Based Languages
. Multimedia Computing
. Network Security
. Software Engineering
. Remote Sensing
*PAPER SUBMISSION*
Authors are invited to submit papers describing original, previously unpublished work, not currently under review by another conference, workshop, or a journal. Full papers (up to 6 camera-ready pages, Letter size, single space, Times Roman of font size 10, two columns format) should present novel perspectives within the general scope of the conference.
Accepted papers will be published in ICDIPC2016 proceedings and IEEE Xplore.
*GENERAL CHAIR*
Prof. Nazih Moubayed, Lebanese University, Lebanon
*HONORARY CHAIRS*
. Prof. Fawaz El-Omar, Lebanese University, Lebanon
. Prof. Rafic Younes, Lebanese University, Lebanon
*KEYNOTE SPEAKERS*
. Prof. Gerald Schaefer, Loughborough University, United Kingdom
. Prof. Meroune Debbah, Centrale Supelec, France
. Prof. Kamal Al-Haddad, École de Technologie Supérieure, Canada
. Prof. Abdallah Shami, Western University, Canada
. Prof. Abir Hussain, Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom
. Prof. Dhiya Al-Jumeily, Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom
. Prof. Tarek Hamel, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France
. Prof. Mohamed-Slim Alouini, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
*SPECIAL SESSION*
. Dr. Nadine Akkari, King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia
Title: Wireless Sensors Networks: Nano-scale Communications
*IMPORTANT DATES*
. Submission Date: Open from now until April 6, 2016
. Notification of Acceptance: April 8, 2016
. Camera Ready Submission: Open from now until April 11, 2016 (Last day for CR Submission)
. Last Day for Registration: April 11, 2016
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
*** You are invited to submit papers to this exciting event! ***
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Sincerely yours;
ICDIPC-2016 Team
Yallah! The tenth POTY (Picture of the Year) is running this year[1].
POTY features a set of superior quality preselected media files. Voters
will decide which one they like best.
I am happy to say it's the vote with most participation across the
Wikimedia to my knowledge. We usually have over 3000 eligible voters
(had 4504 in 2015) and a vote volume of over 50000 (had 130000 in 2013)
[2]. A small committee of 4(+-1) members and a great and helpful
community, organize every year's contest since 10 years.
Mobile usage is increasing and the mobile/web interface is getting more
awesome. So we are wondering what'd be the best way to port POTY App to
mobile or how to create one from scratch. Help in the following sectors
would be truly welcome:
- People interested in authoring a mobile voting application
- Helpful advice how to design such a mobile product
-- How to load scripts? Is [[MediaWiki:Mobile.js]] the only way to
achieve that?
-- Which libraries are additionally available; Which from Desktop are
missing?
-- A link to a good introduction into mobile development in general and
with MediaWiki.
-- Rillke
Picture of the Year Election's Committee[3]
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2015
[2]
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1X4VG9AWxmmhLfyRDFHUlEQWmoN09-GtEdxC…
[3]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2015/Committ…
Hi Folks,
The Reading team's Q4 goals for 2015-16 are posted on Media Wiki:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2015-16_Q4_Goals#Readi….
We arrived at these goals by taking the results of the Q4 brainstorming
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Quarterly_planning/Q4> and matching
them against our strategy, speed and strengths.
Below is a summary of what we aim to do in the April-June Quarter with more
context than what you see on our goals page. You will notice a lot of
cross-platform migration. That is no accident: we learn faster by
launching on one platform and then migrating the idea to others. The goals
are broken out by team or strategic theme.
*Community Tech: Community Wishlist items*
Ship features and fixes related to three wishes in the Wishlist Survey top
10
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey#The_top_10_w…>
*Infrastructure: two-factor authentication*The infrastructure team will
enable two-factor authentication
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_authentication> via AuthManager
on the Wikimedia cluster. The goal here is to add another layer of
security for accounts with important privileges.
*New Readers (was: "reach new users in the global south")*
*Web: decrease load time and cost for low-resource environments on mobile*This
will be accomplished through lazy loading
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_loading> of images, and cutting default
html size. This is in beta mobile channel by the end of this quarter and
we plan to measure results and roll out to all users over the course of Q4.
*Make a better encyclopedia experience*
*Web: hovercards*Specifically, enable hovercards
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Hovercards> as default for
logged-out desktop users on more than one wiki (this one is dependent on
community approval). Hovercards represent a faster way of browsing
Wikipedia that most readers prefer (as indicated by this survey
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Hovercards#Qualtrics_Survey_Re…>).
It has been in beta for more than a year and the mobile version was
recently launched to all users on our Android app. This is not as simple
as turning on a switch, there are several improvements that will have to be
made. One reason we are launching this is to clean up our beta site before
picking up any new work. This is arguably "New Readers" as well, due to the
performance gains from loading fewer pages.
A community initiated proposal is being discussed to enable this on English
Wikipedia. Please chime in!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Proposal:_…
*Android: launch the feed*This quarter, the iOS team launched a feed on the
app home screen and it looks great and early results suggest users are
responding well to it. The goal is to drive user retention by giving
readers a reason to open up Wikipedia even if they don't have a specific
query in mind. The Android team will also be implementing backend services
to support the feed across platforms.
*iOS: Universal links*"Universal Links" (aka deep links) provide convenient
re-entry to the app from links and OS search, but do not advertise or
promote the app. This is something that is already live on Android and
partially supported on iOS. It allows users who prefer the app to open it
from links or an OS query, since that is how most users get to Wikipedia.
*A Community of Readers (interactive Wikipedia)*
This is the third pillar that came out of our strategy process. No active
development work is planned here. Future direction for this part of our
strategy is currently being explored via a community consultation here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User_Interaction_Consultation
Your feedback or questions are welcome.
Thanks,
J
Hi everyone,
We've just released an updated version of the Wikipedia Android app[1][2],
rolling out as we speak to the Google Play store! Here are the highlights
from this update:
- Synchronize theme and font options across devices for logged-in users.[*]
- Restore and improve pinch-to-zoom functionality in image gallery.
- Update the Settings screen with Material design.
- Further improve memory usage and fix memory leaks on certain devices.
- Improve network data usage when retrieving certain thumbnails.
- Show link preview thumbnails even when only one or two are available.
- Miscellaneous bug and crash fixes.
Thanks to the following contributors for their patches:
* Maroloccio (@maroloccio)
* Paladox
* You?[3]
[*] On devices with Android versions earlier than Marshmallow (6.0), this
requires the app to ask for a new permission upon installing, namely the
"Identity" permission. This permission is necessary for any kind of
synchronizing interactions with remote accounts (a feature which we plan on
expanding in future updates). For more information, please refer to our FAQ
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Android_FAQ#Security_and_Perm…>
.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia&hl=en
[2]
https://releases.wikimedia.org/mobile/android/wikipedia/stable/wikipedia-2.…
[3]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/Wikipedia_Android_app_ha…
Cheers,
--
Dmitry Brant
Senior Software Engineer / Product Owner (Android)
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
