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,
Welcome to the first in a reoccurring monthly update from the Reading
department at the Wikimedia foundation. Here we'll provide a quick summary
of things that are currently being worked on. An archive of past activity
can be found on Mediawiki.org. Feedback and questions are welcome.
== Web ==
=== New print styles for the mobile web ===
Based on the findings of the New Readers team, we learned that users are
increasingly getting information online, and then sharing or consuming it
offline. In terms of mobile devices, this often means taking screenshots of
useful information, or saving the article as a PDF to read later on their
phones. Our older print styles did not account for reading on mobile
devices - they focused on paper printing. We will update our print styles
for mobile devices to account for offline consumption, making them easier
to read and navigate, as well as accounting for missing crucial information
such as article title and branding.[0]
=== Moving the lead section before the infobox on the mobile web ===
Over the past few quarters, we've been focusing on the top of the article
experience on the mobile website. One of the identified issues was that,
for articles which contained an infobox, users were exposed to the infobox
content prior to having an overview of the subject of the article itself.
To improve on this issue, we've moved the lead section of each article so
that it appears before the infobox on mobile, allowing readers to have
access to the main content of the page earlier. This change is now live on
all projects. Before, [0] After [1]
=== Completing related pages deployment ===
Since March 30, 2017, we have been running a test on enwiki on the related
pages feature. Over the past month, we collected data and analyzed the
performance of the feature.[2] Based on the results, we completed the
deployment of the feature on mobile English Wikipedia.
== New Readers ==
* The New Readers team is deep in beginning pilots to address the barriers
that were identified as highest priority through deep research in 2016.[3]
You can see deeper, cross-team updates at m:New Readers/Updates. [4]
* For Reading, we're supporting the Android and Web teams in developing
deeper support for readers who have internet sometimes, but want access to
some content when they're offline or don't want to spend the data to read.
To see a summary of that work, check out m:New Readers/Offline.[5]
== Multimedia ==
* In addition to bugfixes and maintenance, the team has been evaluating the
pre-release version of 3D model file support and collecting feedback via
the Commons Village Pump.[6] During the forthcoming month the team will be
prioritizing and working on 3D tasks in anticipation of a future launch.[7]
== Other Noteworthy Stuff ==
* Following April's Q3 quarterly check-in, we examined core readership
metrics for the same timespan in a followup presentation.[8] [9]
[0]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/Print_Styles#Mobile_Pri…
[1]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Mobile_website,_older_version_of_infobo…
[2]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Lead_paragraph_before_infobox_example_-…
[3]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/Related_pages#Metrics_a…
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers/Findings
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers/Updates
[6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers/Offline
[7]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2017/05#Pre…
[8] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/3d/
[9]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Reading,_Comm_Tech_%26_TPG_Quarterly_Ch…
[10]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Reading_metric…
---
The archive of all past updates can be found on MediaWiki.org:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Status_updates
Yours,
Chris Koerner
Community Liaison - Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation
Cross-posting!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Lani Goto <lgoto(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, May 31, 2017 at 10:07 AM
Subject: CREDIT showcase, Wednesday 7-June-2017
To: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Hi!
I'd like to welcome you to join us at the CREDIT showcase next week,
Wednesday, 7-June-2017 at 1800 UTC / 1100 Pacific Time. We'd like to see
your demos, whether they're rough works in progress or polished production
material, or even just a telling of something you've been studying
recently. For more information on the upcoming event, as well as recordings
of previous events, please visit the following page:
<http://goog_1968694156/>
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CREDIT_showcase
And if you'd like to share the news about the upcoming CREDIT showcase,
here's some suggested verbiage. Thanks!
*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 showcaseopen 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 June 7th at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 18:00 UTC. *
*There’s more info on MediaWiki, and on Etherpad, 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). 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*
--
Lani Goto
Project Assistant, Engineering Admin
--
Lani Goto
Project Assistant, Engineering Admin
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-posting.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Adam Baso <abaso(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, May 3, 2017 at 2:00 PM
Subject: CREDIT videos from April and May 2017 posted
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi all - in case you missed them, the demos from CREDIT last month and
today are up.
April 2017
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CREDIT_showcase/2017-04-05
Neslihan Turan, Wiki_Radio (for Android)
Jan Drewniak, Wiktionary definition widget for search results
May 2017
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CREDIT_showcase/2017-05-03
Željko Filipin, Selenium tests in Node.js
Enjoy!
-Adam
Hello mobile Wikimedians,
The WMF's iOS team is excited to announce version 5.4.1 of Wikipedia for
iOS is now available on the App Store
<https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wikipedia/id324715238?mt=8>!
This version contains no new features but makes significant changes
internally to reduce the resources used by the app. Updating users should
see the app use less disk space, background battery and bandwidth,
particularly users with large histories or large saved page libraries.
Thanks to all the testers who helped us with one last push! Also thanks to
volunteer Julbod for his code contributions.
Cheers,
Josh
PM, Wikipedia for iOS
Crossposting!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Lani Goto <lgoto(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 10:19 AM
Subject: CREDIT showcase, Wednesday, 3-May-2017
To: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Hi!
I'd like to welcome you to join us at the CREDIT showcase next week,
Wednesday, 3-May-2017 at 1800 UTC / 1100 Pacific Time. We'd like to see
your demos, whether they're rough works in progress or polished production
material, or even just a telling of something you've been studying
recently. For more information on the upcoming event, as well as recordings
of previous events, please visit the following page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CREDIT_showcase
And if you'd like to share the news about the upcoming CREDIT showcase,
here's some suggested verbiage. Thanks!
*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 May 3rd at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 18:00 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*
--
Lani Goto
Project Assistant, Engineering Admin
--
Lani Goto
Project Assistant, Engineering Admin
Hello,
The iOS team has recently pushed a release candidate beta of the Wikipedia
app to our TestFlight users.
This version contains no new features, but makes major improvements under
the hood. These changes should result in the app using less resources (disk
space and background battery, especially) and also be faster and more
stable. Although we've pushed a couple betas of this version, we still need
more help testing these important changes.
*If you are a Wikipedia iOS beta tester, please install the 5.4.1 version
from TestFlight! We need YOUR help.*
If you are not a beta tester, but would like to be one, please sign up here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfW7zFnUDYABvHLWlFclZ7OJEK82WjVIjs…
Thanks,
Josh
Product Manager, Wikipedia for iOS
