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
Hi everyone,
The Android team has released a new version of the Wikipedia Beta
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia.beta> app,
available now on the Google Play Store! Here are the highlights from this
update:
- New: app shortcuts ("Search", "Random", and "Continue reading"). Press
and hold the app icon on your home screen to access these shortcuts, and
even place the shortcuts themselves on your home screen.
- Improved speed of loading larger articles.
- Optionally dim images when using dark theme. Access this option in the
app settings, or in the Font and Theme dialog when reading an article.
- Streamlined designs and color scheme in Light and Dark mode.
- Improved management of reading lists.
- Fixed several issues with language variants, specifically with
Traditional and Simplified Chinese.
- Numerous additional bug fixes.
This release also contains patches from these repeat contributors:
- Jorge Casariego, IRC: Jcasariego, Github:
https://github.com/jorgecasariego
- Yashasvi, https://about.me/yashasvigirdhar
*Important note*:
We are planning for this release to be the last update that supports
versions of Android older than KitKat (that is, Android Jelly Bean and
below). After this update, users of Jelly Bean and below will still be
able to install our app from the Play Store, but it will be frozen at this
version, and will no longer receive updates.
Cheers,
--
Dmitry Brant
Senior Software Engineer / Product Owner (Android)
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
Congrats iOS team, awesome news! 🍎💕
On 28 Oct. 2017 10:42, <mobile-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Wikipedia for iOS named an Editor's Choice (Toby Negrin)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 08:42:31 +0000
From: Toby Negrin <tnegrin(a)wikimedia.org>
To: Cooltey Feng <cfeng(a)wikimedia.org>, sharan(a)wikimedia.org
Cc: Mobile-l <mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikimediaMobile] Wikipedia for iOS named an Editor's
Choice
Message-ID:
<CAAjh0Ew-ApAKtVMA=WY3tZoKEaJEk0RKf_O7p__H4uCR_O9Asg(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
This is really impressive and represents a lot of great work.
Congratulations to the iOS team!
-Toby
On Sat, Oct 28, 2017 at 06:36 <sharan(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Way to go team iOS ! 🍾
>
>
> On Oct 27, 2017 at 4:00 PM, <Cooltey Feng <cfeng(a)wikimedia.org>> wrote:
>
> Congrats!!!🎊
>
> On Fri, Oct 27, 2017 at 3:58 PM, Ramsey Isler <risler(a)wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Excellent! Congrats to everyone involved. :)
>>
>>
>> On Saturday, October 28, 2017, Joshua Minor <jminor(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello mobile Wikimedians,
>>>
>>> Today Apple named the official Wikipedia app an Editor's Choice. This is
>>> the highest level of recognition for an app by Apple, and gets us a
special
>>> badge and placements in the App Store. In their email to me about the
>>> change they explained that they wanted to recognize the great
improvements
>>> to the app on iOS and particularly our work on accessibility over the
last
>>> couple years.
>>>
>>> This is great recognition for the team's and volunteer contributor's
>>> work, but more importantly, puts Wikipedia in its rightful place as a
first
>>> class citizen on the App Store. Its an honor to build an app for
something
>>> as beloved and awesome as Wikimedia, and we're so gratified to see our
>>> efforts to make the Wikipedia app beautiful, and usefu,l to iOS users
>>> acknowledged like this.
>>>
>>>
>>> [image: Inline image 1]
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Mobile-l mailing list
>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Cooltey Feng
> Software Engineer
> Readers
> Wikimedia Foundation
> cfeng(a)wikimedia.org
> _______________________________________________ Mobile-l mailing list
> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mobile-l mailing list
> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>
--
-Toby
Way to go team iOS ! 🍾
>
> On Oct 27, 2017 at 4:00 PM, <Cooltey Feng (mailto:cfeng@wikimedia.org)> wrote:
>
>
>
> Congrats!!!🎊
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 27, 2017 at 3:58 PM, Ramsey Isler <risler(a)wikimedia.org (mailto:risler@wikimedia.org)> wrote:
>
> > Excellent! Congrats to everyone involved. :)
> >
> >
> >
> > On Saturday, October 28, 2017, Joshua Minor <jminor(a)wikimedia.org (mailto:jminor@wikimedia.org)> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Hello mobile Wikimedians,
> > >
> > >
> > > Today Apple named the official Wikipedia app an Editor's Choice. This is the highest level of recognition for an app by Apple, and gets us a special badge and placements in the App Store. In their email to me about the change they explained that they wanted to recognize the great improvements to the app on iOS and particularly our work on accessibility over the last couple years.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > This is great recognition for the team's and volunteer contributor's work, but more importantly, puts Wikipedia in its rightful place as a first class citizen on the App Store. Its an honor to build an app for something as beloved and awesome as Wikimedia, and we're so gratified to see our efforts to make the Wikipedia app beautiful, and usefu,l to iOS users acknowledged like this.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Mobile-l mailing list
> > Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org (mailto:Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org)
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
>
>
>
>
> Cooltey Feng
> Software Engineer
> Readers
> Wikimedia Foundation
> cfeng(a)wikimedia.org (mailto:cfeng@wikimedia.org)
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>
Hello mobile Wikimedians,
Today Apple named the official Wikipedia app an Editor's Choice. This is
the highest level of recognition for an app by Apple, and gets us a special
badge and placements in the App Store. In their email to me about the
change they explained that they wanted to recognize the great improvements
to the app on iOS and particularly our work on accessibility over the last
couple years.
This is great recognition for the team's and volunteer contributor's work,
but more importantly, puts Wikipedia in its rightful place as a first class
citizen on the App Store. Its an honor to build an app for something as
beloved and awesome as Wikimedia, and we're so gratified to see our efforts
to make the Wikipedia app beautiful, and usefu,l to iOS users acknowledged
like this.
[image: Inline image 1]
Howdy mobile Wikimedians,
The latest update for the Wikipedia iOS app is now available on the App
Store:
https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=32471523…
Version 5.7.0 includes major improvements to our sharing experience,
including a easier to read, and better attributed, "share-a-fact" card. We
also redesigned our first-time installer experience, based on user
research, to make it more informative and easier to navigate.
This version also includes a ton of bug fixes, including a handful of iOS
11 related issues. *If you use iOS 11 we recommend you update to this
version.*
Finally, this update is ready for iPhone X, so Wikipedia will look and work
great when they start selling them next week.
As always, thanks to our volunteer contributors, bug reporters, translators
and testers.
Cheers,
Josh
Google Code-in is an annual contest for 13-17 year old students. It
will take place from Nov28 to Jan17 and is not only about coding tasks.
While we wait whether Wikimedia will get accepted:
* You have small, self-contained bugs you'd like to see fixed?
* Your documentation needs specific improvements?
* Your user interface has small design issues?
* Your Outreachy/Summer of Code project welcomes small tweaks?
* You'd enjoy helping someone port your template to Lua?
* Your gadget code uses some deprecated API calls?
* You have tasks in mind that welcome some research?
Also note that "Beginner tasks" (e.g. "Set up Vagrant" etc) and
"generic" tasks are very welcome (e.g. "Choose & fix 2 PHP7 issues
from the list in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T120336 ").
Because we will need hundreds of tasks. :)
And we also have more than 400 unassigned open 'easy' tasks listed:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/HCyOonSbFn.z/#R
Would you be willing to mentor some of those in your area?
Please take a moment to find / update [Phabricator etc.] tasks in your
project(s) which would take an experienced contributor 2-3 hours. Check
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/Mentors
and please ask if you have any questions!
For some achievements from last round, see
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/02/03/google-code-in/
Thanks!,
andre
--
Andre Klapper | Wikimedia Bugwrangler
http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
Hello mobile wikimedians,
Today the Wikipedia iOS team released an initial beta of our upcoming
version, 5.7.0
This update includes:
- simpler, easier to use, sharing, including an updated design to our
share-a-fact cards
- a new first time user on-boarding based on user research about what
people need and want to know about the app when they install it the first
time
- support for iOS 11 Smart Invert accessibility mode, along with other
fixes for iOS 11 users
- support for the iPhone X form factor
- improved and expanded swipe gestures for sharing and saving articles
- a veritable cornucopia of small bug fixes and usability improvements
If you're already a tester, please install this update and let us know if
you encounter any issues.
Or, if you'd like to become a beta tester please sign up here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfW7zFnUDYABvHLWlFclZ7O
JEK82WjVIjs_dSzwIDM0Hnz31A/viewform
Thanks,
Josh Minor
Product Manager, Wikipedia for iOS
