On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 3:02 PM, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The current mobile site and the current Android app
reflect a major step
backward in terms of attributing the authors of Wikipedia content.
In February 2012, I initiated discussions that resulted in both the mobile
site and the Android app clearly stating in the footer that the content was
written by "volunteers like you," with a link to the page history, and
thereby, the user accounts of all users.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34673
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35616
While a mere link to the desktop site's history screen was considered
sufficient, by the WMF's then-general counsel, to meet the letter of the
law (of the CC BY-SA license), what we discussed in those tickets was how
the WMF could exceed what is legally required, in order to demonstrate to
the world what it looks like to properly attribute the contributors of
content who require attribution as part of their choice to create content
for free.
In those 2012 discussions, WMF staff also acknowledged that there were
benefits to going even further in that direction, by pulling the page
history into the mobile view/app itself.
However, in 2014, both the mobile site and the Android app have footers
that lack any mention of the authors of the article, merely inserting a
link that says: "Desktop" (on the mobile site, which is still a click away
from "history") and "Last updated June 29" (on the Android app).
Pete, before making such strong public statements condemning our products,
it might help to use them :) Both the new native apps and the mobile web
site offer a mobile-friendly page history (like this one:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:History/Babe_Ruth). On the apps
it's accessible from the footer, and on the web view the link is given an
extremely prominent place in the UI, at the top of all articles (the "Last
edited by.." line).
I'd recommend you follow the WMF blog to stay abreast of our work on this
and other mobile features, since we wrote about this back in May:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/02/the-wikipedia-editors-behind-the-curta…
Is the WMF is serious about honoring the copyright licenses Wikipedia's
contributors work under, which require attribution, both technically and in
spirit?
Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 2:34 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 10:37 AM, Andy Mabbett
<andy(a)pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
It's interesting to read that claim in the
content of my "aversion" to
the unexpected removal of the very useful 'nearby' feature from the
Android app [1].
(...)
[1] Promoted by the WMF at the time of its
launch:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/29/wikipedia-nearby-beta/ and widely
reported in the press.
Apologies for the thread-split, but this is OT from the original thread.
This blog post actually referred to the Mobile Web, where the feature
continues to be available (without a map view):
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby
The new Android app isn't simply an upgrade of the last version, it's
a complete re-write in native code -- one which by all accounts has
been extremely well received. In determining the feature set, the team
looked at core functionality they really wanted to deliver in the
first release, and iterated on that based on user feedback during the
beta.
We are in the lucky position to now have a team of three full-time
developers working on the app to make it continually better. You can
see the most recent code changes here:
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/apps/android,n,z
And a more understandable view of the current sprint in Trello:
https://trello.com/b/5DhKhjmW/mobile-app-sprint-35-article-usability-enhanc…
So you can expect a pretty fast pace of change.
The team prioritized features that were highly requested and popular
among users. The "nearby" feature in the old app also relied on third
party infrastructure, which makes us a bit uncomfortable from a user
privacy and principles perspective. Our plan is to build out our own
OpenStreetMap infrastructure later this year which will help in
further developing such geo-functionality.
CCing Dan (PM for Apps) in case he wants to weigh in on the roadmap.
Erik
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Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
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