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
Hi
The whole Kiwix team is proud to announce the first release of Kiwix JS
for Windows (mobile) devices. It is available in the Microsoft app
store: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/store/p/kiwix-js/9p8slz4j979j
Kiwix JS for Windows runs on all recent Windows OSes but is in
particular thought for Windows Mobile and all Windows based mobile users
for whom we had so far no solution.
The app has been developed in the last 6 months based on the Kiwix JS
code base already used in Kiwix Firefox and Chrome Web extensions. It is
not fully featured like Kiwix for Android or iOS and is a bit slower...
but it is still really easy to use and can read all ZIM files.
We really hope it will find its public and that we will be supported
with feedbacks.
Regards
Emmanuel
--
Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more
* Web: http://www.kiwix.org
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiwixOffline
* more: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication
The Readers web team will be deploying a new feature this week to make it
easier to download PDF versions of articles on the mobile website. [0]
Providing better offline functionality was one of the highlighted areas of
focus based on the generative research done by the New Readers team in
Mexico, Nigeria, and India. Over the past year, the New Readers and
Readers Web teams created a prototype for mobile PDFs which was evaluated
by user research and community feedback [1]. As the prototype evaluation
received positive feedback and results, we went forward with development.
[2]
For the initial deployment, the feature will be available to Google Chrome
browsers on Android with support for other mobile browsers to come in the
future. For Chrome, the feature will use the native Android print
functionality where users can choose to download a webpage as a PDF.
Mobile print styles will be used for these PDFs to ensure optimal
readability for smaller screens. [3]
The feature will be available starting Wednesday, Nov 15. For more
information, see the project page on MediaWiki.org. [0]
[0] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/Mobile_PDFs
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers/Offline
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers/Offline#Concept_testing_for_mob…
[3]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/Print_Styles#Mobile_Pri…
--
Olga Vasileva // Product Manager // Reading Web Team
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Hello mobile Wikimedians,
This afternoon we released a minor update to the App Store:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wikipedia/id324715238?mt=8
This version adds an improved article preview experience (for 3d touch
users), a fix for pull-to-refresh issues and other small fixes and
stability improvements.
As usual, thanks to our testers, translators and code contributors, we
couldn't do it without you.
Thanks,
Josh Minor
Hello mobile Wikimedians,
This morning the iOS app team pushed a beta version of our upcoming release
to test users on TestFlight.
This version adds an improved article preview experience (for 3d touch
users), improvements to graphs and charts in dark/sepia mode, and a fix for
pull-to-refresh issues.
If you are a beta user, please update and let us know if you have any
issues.
If you'd like to become a beta tester please sign up here:
https://goo.gl/forms/IpYAOhoIvnVyBB4f2
Thanks,
Josh Minor
Hello,
The slide deck from today's quarterly metrics presentation of the Wikimedia
Foundation's Readers team (which is an appendix to the main quarterly
check-in presentation) has been published. [1] [2]
This deck gives an overview of the core metrics regarding readership of
Wikimedia sites and including data about search, maps, and the Wikipedia
portal from the Discovery team.
[1]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWikimedia_Foundation_Readers_metr…
[2]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAudiences_2_check-in_Q1_October_2…
--
deb tankersley
Product Manager, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation
