Rupert,

I might suggest that a point in time analysis can sometimes create the self fulfilling prophecy issue you talk about, although sometimes it's good to simply verify if assumptions hold (you know, the whole "everyone knows that!" kind of stuff). What I find to be interesting in the case of thinking forward is the trajectory of the answers. If we're seeing users are losing interest or gaining interest in something, it may behoove action.

I agree editing is compelling, although there are lots of compelling things to go after for better reading/consumption/learning experiences.

Regarding editing, there's a bit of discussion starting from https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2015-July/082571.html about future plans on mobile web editing. As is you can get a VE experience on tablet in the mobile website. But it's generally wikitext for mobile devices otherwise.

One note on saving - the Wikipedia apps have save-for-offline capabilities for Wikipedia; there some projects like Kiwix that focus on offline content as well. At times people have voiced interest in more advanced offline capabilities for the Wikipedia apps.

-Adam


On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 3:12 PM, rupert THURNER <rupert.thurner@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

This is an interesting discussion. Imo, the unique selling point of Wikipedia is the editing.  A known fact is that mobile data rates are expensive in many countries. Also known is the number of smartphones existing and the number of computers.

Connecting the above with my own behaviour is sufficient to conclude three important use cases ;-) first, read on the phone. Currently good enough. Second, write on the phone, current support close to catastrophic. Third, save articles to take away, ie offline. Non existing.

Therfore I think measuring what is used, as well measuring what would be needed is quite pointless. The result would be that things working sufficiently well will be overweight, kind of self fulfilling prophecy.

Best,
Rupert

On Aug 18, 2015 9:46 PM, "Jon Robson" <jdlrobson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 9:13 PM, Corey Floyd <cfloyd@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > Definitely interesting… not too surprising that there has been a bump in
> > mobile reading over that past few years - seeing as everyone's phone screens
> > are twice as big as they were in 2012. Anecdotally, I am more likely to read
> > on my phone now than I was a few years ago (I always used to reach for my
> > iPad before I had an iPhone 6).
> >
> > When reviewing these stats, we should keep in mind the primary use case of
> > Wikipedia - a reference. While it is true that some will read significant
> > portions of a book or a blog posts on their phones, most people aren't
> > looking to read a Wikipedia article from top-to-bottom. Some will read a
> > section or 2, while many others will only need to ready the first paragraph
> > to get the answer that they need.
>
> I definitely think we need to test this assumption. I wonder if this
> is something the QuickSurvey could be used to measure e.g. a simple
> question "What are you here for?" (although results might get skewed
> by quick lookups having no time to do a survey). I'm not sure it is.
> Personally I read much more than the lead section (I tend to use
> Google quick facts for those quick lookups).
>
> Thoughts welcomed on how we could work this out.
>
> >
> > So even as the number of "long form readers" increases on mobile, that might
> > not directly translate into more "full article Wikipedia readers" on mobile.
> >
> > I definitely believe we should continue improving our mobile reading
> > experience - it will only become more important as these numbers increase,
> > however we shouldn't draw to many conclusions from this article as the
> > content being discussed is quite different.
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 12:31 PM, Tilman Bayer <tbayer@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Forwarding to the public list too.
> >>
> >>
> >> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> >> From: Tilman Bayer <tbayer@wikimedia.org>
> >> Date: Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 9:40 PM
> >> Subject: Interesting WSJ article: "The Rise of Phone Reading"
> >> To: Internal communication for WMF Reading team
> >> <reading-wmf@lists.wikimedia.org>
> >>
> >>
> >> Some food for thought - it's probably not entirely surprising in 2015,
> >> but this article collects a lot of information showing that the
> >> assumption "few people want to read long texts on a phone" is too
> >> simplistic:
> >> http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-phone-reading-1439398395
> >>
> >> TLDR from our perspective: Smartphones are becoming a major venue for
> >> reading ebooks, ie. really long-form texts, more than was predicted a
> >> few years ago. ("In a Nielsen survey of 2,000 people this past
> >> December, about 54% of e-book buyers said they used smartphones to
> >> read their books at least some of the time. That’s up from 24% in
> >> 2012.") One reason is convenience - “The best device to read on is the
> >> one you have with you"/"Most people who read on their phones toggle
> >> back and forth between devices, using whichever is closest at hand
> >> when opportunity strikes". Another is that screen sizes are getting
> >> bigger.
> >> Also has some bits about how book publishers react to this, which may
> >> of course be less applicable to us.


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