Social media plugins

Social media plugins are easy ways of sharing content with other people via social media platforms. The most common way is a Share or Like button. This page discusses the possibility to integrate social media plugins into Wikimedia projects.

Solutions edit

Extensions (none currently used on Wikimedia wikis)
User Scripts
Wikimedia implementations
Semi-related

Discussions edit

Bugs/Tasks
  • 2008, phab:T18691: "RFC: Section header "share" link" (formerly: "Section headings should have some clickable anchor for passing links" / "RFC: Section headings should have a clickable anchor")
  • 2011, phab:T29027: "Share" button (tools) in Wikipedia
  • 2012, phab:T35820: A Twitter button next to every article title
  • 2012, phab:T42456: UploadWizard: add social sharing feature after upload
  • 2014, phab:T64811: Review and deploy TwitterCards extension for proper display
  • 2015, phab:T120487: Cite : Share : Export (Consolidate and replace a variety of items on the sidebar)
  • 2017, phab:T142048: Add hover-card like image (og:image) to open graph meta data (which enabled image previews for links shared from MediaWiki on social media sites like Facebook)
Mailing list highlights

Arguments edit

This section lists some arguments that have been brought up in the discussions.

Pro edit

  • Share button allow easy sharing of Wikimedia's content; widely distributing the content serves our mission.
  • Some users enjoy sharing the content they read (or create!) with their friends, it's a feature often requested by both readers and editors.
  • Increasing readership, also increases the pool of potential editors

Con edit

  • Privacy concerns: This is only a problem if we were to embed the externally-provided JavaScript widgets, but nobody wants that.

Complexities edit

  • Placement. Where do the links go? It's another user-interface element – Wikimedia sites already have too much UI clutter.
  • Selection. It's difficult to define "a set of social media sites that Wikimedia will have plugins for". Excluding any social media services (out of the dozens-to-hundreds in existence) might be seen as contrary to our neutrality policies.
    • We already do something similar with tools like GeoHack and Special:BookSources (ISBN search).
      • You could even refine it by building a service like AddThis yourself, but under WMF privacy policies. Not too difficult.
  • Some users feel that we should not allow social media plugins because that would make Wikipedia itself a social network. This point is highly disputed.
  • Icons. The services' icons are the most recognizable element for users, but would be the most eye-catching/distracting addition in our mostly-text interface.

See also edit