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,
We have started using the wikimedia-android-data-client library(
https://github.com/wikimedia/wikimedia-android-data-client) to make
mediawiki api calls in the Commons Android app, replacing the legacy
library that we were using previously. Most of the authenticated calls
(i.e. login, upload, nomination for deletion, thank, notifications etc)
made to Commons wiki are working with the new library, but we are stuck
with a cross-wiki call to Wikidata. We are trying to call
`Service:wbcreateclaim` to create a claim on Wikidata but the call is
failing.
We have posted relevant http logs at
https://github.com/wikimedia/wikimedia-android-data-client/issues/21#issue-…
We would greatly appreciate it if could take a look at the logs and suggest
what we might be doing wrong. Is it because of some issue with cookies?
Because as far as we can see, as expected we are sending the params in POST
request body with application/x-www-form-urlencoded.
Relevant code:
https://github.com/commons-app/apps-android-commons/blob/backend-overhaul/a…
Relevant method call: service.postCreateClaim(entityId, snaktype, property,
value, "en", csrfTokenClient getTokenBlocking())
Thank you so much!
Best regards,
Josephine
(Note: This is only an early heads-up, to be prepared. Google Code-in
has NOT been announced yet, but last year, GCI mentors asked for more
time in advance to identify tasks to mentor. Here you are. :)
* 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?
Google Code-in (GCI) is an annual contest for 13-17 year old students.
GCI 2019 has not yet been announced but usually takes place from late
October to December. It is not only about coding: We also need tasks
about design, docs, outreach/research, QA.
Read https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/Mentors , add
your name to the mentors table, and start tagging tasks in Wikimedia
Phabricator by adding the #gci-2019 project tag.
We will need MANY mentors and MANY tasks, otherwise we cannot make it.
Last year, 199 students successfully worked on 765 tasks supported by
39 mentors. For some achievements from the last round, see
https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/02/20/partnerships-make-it-possib…
Note that "beginner tasks" (e.g. "Set up Vagrant") and generic
tasks are very welcome (like "Choose and replace 2 uses of
Linker::link() from the list in T223010" style).
We also have more than 400 unassigned open #good-first-bug tasks:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/3YnDUWYJfXSo/#R
Can and would you mentor some of these 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/2019#List_of_Wikimedia_mentors
Thanks (as we will not be able to run this without your help),
andre
--
Andre Klapper (he/him) | Bugwrangler / Developer Advocate
https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
