Hi all, over the past few weeks, the reading web team has made some releases and improvements we would like to share:
- New Header for the Mobile Web [1]
We have just released a new header on the mobile web! Our goal is to raise awareness among readers that the content we are providing is coming from Wikipedia or related projects using clear branding. Low brand awareness was one of the key findings during the research performed by the New Readers team [2]. According to their findings, user were often not aware that they were reading Wikipedia, and sometimes confused it for a search engine or social media platform [3]. An increase in brand awareness could therefore lead to increased readership and retention.
- Page Previews Stage 0 deployment
The Page Previews (aka Hovercards) [4] feature is now live on the following wikipedias: Russian, Italian, Greek, Catalan. We will continue with rollouts on Hungarian and Hebrew wikipedias as a conclusion of stage 0. Currently, we are in the process of consulting communities about the next stage of rollouts.
- PageImages restricted to the lead section [5]
Before, PageImages were being drawn from the first instance of an image within the page. This led to a majority of the images set from outside of the lead section to be out of context or to not properly represent the subject of the article. With this change, the PageImage for an article will be drawn from the lead section and infobox only, to ensure that the most accurate image is always used.
Thank you and let us know if there’s any questions, concerns, or any other feedback!
- Olga
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/Improve_site_branding
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers/Next_steps#Awareness
[3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimedia_Foundation_...
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Hovercards
[5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T152115