Talk:Learning patterns/Edit 1 and Challenge 1

Recent massive decrease in participation edit

I fear that there's a new technical barrier for entering Wikimedia projects, that could be the cause of the masive drop of paritcipation in some countries (e.g. in Italy). This could be related to the massive shift from desktop computers to tablets and smartphones and the fact that Wikiemdia sites do not have a good enough support for mobile users. Soon, users of tablets will be redirected to use the mobile version of wikis, but we still have strong incoherences on the mobile view, notably because it is applying a specific CSS stylesheet that breaks many pages :

One example is that it changes the HTML box-model from the standard "content-box" (normally the default for HTML, and reaffirmed in HTML5) to enforce the "border-box" model (used on old versions of IE, or in browsers emulating the old IE6-compatibility "quirks-mode" everywhere (and this breaks many navigation templates or menus, and make many tables incorrectly adjusted, with contents disappearing or being truncated. This should have never happened and not so blindly. We can still develop wiki pages that will use multiple specific "box-model:" Such enforcement in the Mobile view is a return back in history (as if IE6 was supported on smartphones and tablets, when these modern devices have largely adopted the HTML5 standard or are converging to it, so that they should all use by default the "content-box" at page level !).

The Mobile view really "stinks" in its CSS as it does not even provide any helpful selector allowing to disable this undesirable behavior (it applies the box-model:border-box" to all elements in the page, so we need now to update many presentation templates to restore their expected layout, by adding style="box-model:content-box" to every box that has some non-zero borders or paddings. This is too much work when we have ,illions of pages to check now and maany quirky templates to update.

The Mobile view should have better enforced the style="box-model:content-box" on the same elements instead of style="box-model:border-box", and in a way that would still allow explicit styles in elements to set another box-model that will be inherited (by the cascade) without being overriden again in a subbox. So these enforcements in the Mobile sites' stylesheet should restrict themselves using class selectors allowing us to indicate that the content will continue to inherit the box-model that is needed.

There are also many more efforts to do to ensure that wiki sites are fully usable with the Mobile view, and notably for the millions users around the world that are abandonning their desktops for tablets and smartphones. Otherwise users will get rapidly bored being forced to use the desktop view which is readable but difficult to navigate and use on tablets and smartphones... so they will leave Wikimedia and will spend more time on other sites (notably mobile applications (we still don't have good applications for mobile platforms allowing improved navigation without the limitations of their generic web browser trying to adapt the content with many quirks. The Mobile view of Wikiemdia sites is just meant for basic browsers of these mobile devices, but it should still ensure that wiki pages use safe defaults, and notably the standard HTML5 defaults (otherwise the experience in mobile browsers will always have incompatible quirks).

The problem is really serious, as seen is Italian Wikipedia, but in fact all wikis are now experiencing a drop in participation: the technical barrier has become too huge and users can't wait when the web and mobile application stores now offers so many alternatives (notably for social networks).

We must go mobole, this is urgent. We must also i,plement rapidly a more "social" behavior for all our discussion areas and talk pages (the VisualEditor does not even work in the Mobile view ! We have spent too much energy on the VisualEditor, instead on focusing on the Mobile view of wikis, i.e. sites whose domain name is "project.m.wikimedia.org" or ""lang.m.wikiproject.org", with the "m." subdomain.).

And we still need a 'shorter domain naming for mobile versions of our wikis

But without it, we should urgently invest time and energy in creating officially supported applications for mobile OSes (at least iOS, Android, and Windows Phone) with a strong presence on their respective application store (AppStore, Google Play, Windows Market), with useful stuff that facilitate input on those devices (most browsers on mobile devices are only usable for reading, not really for contributing more than a short message like a Twit or a SMS : editing wiki pages in the Mobile view of our wikis with the integrate browser of the tablet or smartphone is almost impossible; we need applications for Android and iOS that allow easy input, by featuring a "Mobile VisualEditor" specifically tuned for the mobile OS platform).

So where is the official "Wikimedia" application for Android or iOS, featuring this integrated mobile editor and facilitating the navigation ? Can we just develop the Mobile view on the wiki server building all the interface itself, assuming incorrectly that mobile web browsers will fill the gaps for allowing easy input ?

And also facilitating discussions (we urgently need a new model for talk pages, using an extension still to choose (discussions in wiki code are a nightmare on mobile devices, this is severe problem because those trying to edit Wikiemdia sites on a mobile too frequently have their contributions immediately reverted, as they can't even discuss them).

verdy_p (talk) 10:15, 17 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

Questions and suggestions edit

Endorsement by the ED makes one sit up and take notice. And it's a central topic in the WMF's priorities.

Could I get feedback about whom this is pitched at? I'm presuming established editors of WMF sites, right?

The title is not very clear.

I could expand the LPtext—it's a little short to have the impact it deserves; but I'd need feedback on any suggestions I put for filling it out. Tony (talk) 09:42, 2 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

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