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 mobile Wikipedians,
This weekend we released our first beta of the next major version of
Wikipedia for iOS, v.6.0.0.
This update includes a user controllable Explore feed. Now you can choose
which content from which languages you see each day. The new feed has also
been visually updated to make it easier to navigate, discover interesting
things to read and save them for later.
This version also includes many other navigation and design improvements,
including promoting Search to be a main tab of the app.
We're excited to bring you these changes, driven by your feedback and user
research. But we still want to hear from you. If you are already a beta
tester, please download this major update and "Send Feedback" via
TestFlight to let us know what you think. Or if you are not a tester please
sign up here to become one:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfW7zFnUDYABvHLWlFclZ7OJEK82WjVIjs…
Thanks,
Josh Minor
PM, Wikipedia for iOS
Cross post. mediawiki-api-announce is highly recommended if you write code
consuming the Action API.
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Brad Jorsch (Anomie) <bjorsch(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 8:43 AM
Subject: [Mediawiki-api-announce] BREAKING CHANGE: Some missing parameter
error codes are changing
To: <mediawiki-api-announce(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
It was noticed[1] that the error messages for "missing parameter" errors
were not including the module prefix, for example a query to
action=query&list=search could complain that the "search" parameter must be
set when the actual parameter name is "srsearch". This extends to the error
code, which in this example is "nosearch" rather than "nosrsearch".
This is now fixed, and should be deployed to Wikimedia sites with MediaWiki
1.32.0-wmf.15 and later. See
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.32/Roadmap for a schedule.
If your client is checking for specific missing parameter error codes, it
may need to be updated for the changed codes.
[1]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T200155
--
Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
Senior Software Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation
_______________________________________________
Mediawiki-api-announce mailing list
Mediawiki-api-announce(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-api-announce
Hi everyone,
We've released our latest update to the Wikipedia Android app
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia&hl=en>, now
available on the Google Play store. (For devices without Google Play
services, you may download
<https://releases.wikimedia.org/mobile/android/wikipedia/stable/wikipedia-2.…>
the app directly)
Here are the highlights from this update:
* *Multi-language support*: you may now select multiple languages
simultaneously to be your preferred languages in the app.
** When searching for a term within the app, you can easily switch between
preferred languages to see results in that language.
** The Explore feed now shows content in all of your preferred languages.
Customization of the feed has been expanded to include per-language
preferences for each type of feed content.
** When first installing the app, it automatically detects your languages
based on your system settings and keyboard locales.
* Per-platform app packages: when downloading or updating the app from the
Play Store, it will download an APK specifically tailored to your device's
platform. This reduces the download size from ~24MB to about ~*10MB*.
* Added a preference in Settings to restrict downloading reading list
articles only when on Wi-Fi, to conserve mobile data usage.
* A whole lot of miscellaneous bug fixes to improve stability and
performance (full change log
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/APAW/history/master/;r/2.7.237-…>
).
Cheers,
--
Dmitry Brant
Senior Software Engineer (Android)
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
