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,
The Foundation's iOS team today published a minor update to the app store,
available here:
https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=32471523…
This update fixes a couple bugs for iOS 12 users, especially when opening
links from Siri search results or other apps. iOS 12 users are encouraged
to update to this version.
Thanks to our testers and translators for their contributions. If you'd
like to sign up to help beta test future versions, you can now sign up
directly here:
https://testflight.apple.com/join/Z0AU0KXC
Thanks,
Josh Minor
PM, Wikipedia for iOS
Howdy,
The Readers web team at the Wikimedia Foundation is working on improving
the contribution features on the mobile website. [0] The team is working
on showing pages that are currently unavailable on mobile. We are starting
by designing improvements to the mobile navigation. We want your feedback
on the latest navigation prototype. If you have a moment, please visit the
project page and try out the demo on your mobile device. [1] Then help
answer a few questions about your experience.
Thank you!
[0] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Advanced_mobile_contributions
[1]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Advanced_mobile_contributions/Na…
Yours,
Chris Koerner
Community Relations Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi all,
We've just released version 2.8.3 of the Commons Android app to all users.
:) The new version is available for download on the Google Play Store[1] as
well as F-Droid[2].
The update includes fixes for most of the high-priority bugs in the app,
including failed uploads and overwrites. Additionally, we have several new
features, notably:
- When you upload an image to an item on the map of "Nearby places that
need pictures", the image will be automatically added to that Wikidata item
- Browse other images on Commons via the new "Explore" feature
- View your achievements and upload statistics (by tapping on the trophy
icon next to your username)
We are aware that there are a few recent issues that need resolving, namely
crashes for users on Android 8.1 and above, and issues with date templates.
Those will be fixed ASAP in v2.9.
Thank you all for your patience as we work on these! More details and
screenshots can be found in my blog post[3]. Feedback, bug reports, and
suggestions are always welcome on our GitHub page[4].
Best regards,
Josephine / misaochan (project maintainer)
[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.free.nrw.commons
[2]: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=fr.free.nrw.commons
[3]:
https://cookiesandcodeblog.wordpress.com/2018/08/10/commons-app-version-2-8…
[4]: https://github.com/commons-app/apps-android-commons/issues
<tl;dr>: Read https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/Mentors and
add your name to the mentors table and start tagging #GCI-2018 tasks.
We'll need MANY mentors and MANY tasks, otherwise we cannot make it.
Google Code-in is an annual contest for 13-17 year old students. It
will take place from Oct23 to Dec13. It's not only about coding:
we also need tasks about design, docs, outreach/research, QA.
Last year, 300 students worked on 760 tasks supported by 51 mentors.
For some achievements from last round, see
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/03/20/wikimedia-google-code-in-2017/
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 some smaller 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?
Note that "beginner tasks" (e.g. "Set up Vagrant") and generic
tasks are very welcome (like "Choose and fix 2 PHP7 issues from
the list in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T120336" style).
We also have more than 400 unassigned open #easy tasks listed:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/HCyOonSbFn.z/#R
Can you mentor some of those tasks 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. Read
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/Mentors
, ask if you have any questions, and add your name to
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/2018#List_of_Wikimedia_mentors
(If you have mentored before and have a good overview of our
infrastructure: We also need more organization admins! See
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/Admins )
Thanks (as we cannot run this without your help),
andre
--
Andre Klapper | ak-47(a)gmx.net
https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
Hello all,
This is the monthly update from the Readers team at the Wikimedia
Foundation for August 2018.
Feedback and questions are encouraged.
==Discussions==
=== Apps===
* The Android team has been hard at work on a limited beta test of a
subset of echo notifications in the app, designed to encourage repeat
contributions. [0] Check out the full update on our |project page. [1]
* iOS released a major redesign of the app's Explore feed, adding the
ability to customize the content on your home screen and make it
easier to mix content from across languages. [2] A small follow-up bug
fix update will be released early next week. iOS also made progress on
design research on Wikitext editing: Watch our project page for
updates soon.[3]
=== Web ===
* Web team have begun compiling a list of common problems that they
wrestle with trying to make our content mobile friendly. The end
result is
Recommendations for mobile friendly articles. [4] These are
recommendations not guidelines and some are more feasible/easy to
change then others. We ask that you raise awareness and contribute to
the talk page with any questions, suggestions you have.
*Web has updated the Advanced mobile contributions project page and
shared outcomes from Wikimania interviews. [4]
* We are close to running an A/B test for mobile friendly page issues
- you can get a sneak preview on our staging instance which will
present the new treatment 50% of the time. [5]
=== Reading Infrastructure ===
* Maps
** Upgrading OS to Stretch (continued)
** Added Stretch testing instance (deployment-maps04) to the Beta Cluster
** Upgrading node-mapnik to 3.7.2 (mapnik 3.0.20)
** Posted the August 14, 2018 update on Status of map styles [6]
** Start regenerating low-zoom levels monthly
** Improving tooling for invalidating cached map tiles
*Services
** Ran Android announcement for the new multi-language search and feed
issue in multiple languages
** PCS media endpoint:
*** Updated to be ready for <audio> tags (Previously Parsoid used
<video> tags for audio)
*** Added language code for descriptions and artists
** PCS mobile-html endpoint:
*** Made some improvements in the presentation of the content, but
still more to come
*** Making change to CSS in page library to fix an infobox issue, also
present in the native apps due to infobox collapsing. [7] [8]
** REST Mobile endpoints have been removed from non-Wikipedia projects
(T201103#4490994) [9] (Platform team)
* Other
** (with MediaWiki Platform team) Added support for skin-specific
selector to TemplateStyles
=== New Readers ===
* New Reader updates can be found at Meta. [10]
[0] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Notifications
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Android_editing_features#17_August_2018
[2] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wikipedia/id324715238?mt=8
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Recommendations_for_mobile_friendly_articles
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Advanced_mobile_contributions
[5] https://reading-web-staging.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Pharmacovigilance…
[6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Maps/Status_of_map_styles
[7] https://github.com/wikimedia/wikimedia-page-library/pull/158
[8] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T201381
[9] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T201103#4490994
[10] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers/Updates
---
Subscribe to receive theses updates as on-wiki notifications or opt-in email.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Newsletter:Readers_Monthly
The archive of all past updates can be found on MediaWiki.org:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Status_updates
Yours,
Chris Koerner
Community Relations Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation
