Pcoombe (WMF)

Welcome to Meta!

Hello Pcoombe (WMF), and welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Wikimedia Forum (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). Happy editing!

-- 23:29, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your help with testing the UK fundraiser. Victuallers 15:40, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

2 queries

Please see;

• Talk:Fundraising_2011#Paypal_donation_link_error
• Talk:Fundraising_2011#Talk:Fundraising

Cheers, Chzz 21:06, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Chzz, will look into these. Pcoombe (WMF) 21:33, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Dark patterns

The other day, I noticed an interesting discussion, talking about the fact that the Oxfam 'Donate' box *defaults* to 'monthly' / regular donations rather than single ones - e.g. [1]. It's possibly debatable, but worth thinking about. The page where I read about it is: [2]. Chzz 21:29, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, I discovered the darkpatterns wiki the other day too, but haven't had chance to properly explore it yet.

That's a nice idea, but in practice kind of tricky because at the moment we can only do recurring donations via PayPal. Which a) isn't most people's preferred method and b) doesn't have as good support for international currencies. We might still test it at some point though, perhaps just in the US at first. I know that Wikimedia UK are going this route, providing monthly donations as the default option, but they are able to support Direct Debits which are very popular in the UK. Pcoombe (WMF) 21:40, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm English/in England, and almost everything is DD. I didn't know that it was less common in the USA. But yes - it's something to consider. I imagine some people would find it annoying to default to that, but OTOH I imagine it'd bring in a lot more ongoing donations.

I actually find the current link to "Monthly_donations/en" to be confusing - because after clicking it, there's no indication on that page that it is 'monthly' or anything, except that the final link is "Make a monthly donation". What I mean is... it's odd that it still just says "Make your donation now" so it seemed to me like clicking had just repeated the same page. Chzz 23:25, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Yep, we're working on overhauling that page as it has a number of issues, but it's currently on hold whilst we launch the rest of the fundraiser. Pcoombe (WMF) 01:22, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Good.

I also suggest some link to "Ask questions/comments about the fund-raising". I've noted several users today who have either wanted to report a problem making a dontation, or just wanted to contact WMF and ask something - but it's confusing for them to find how to do that. There's only the FAQ, and users can get frustrated trying to follow links to find out how to get in touch; I really think it needs a better help-function. One typical example comment is here - but it's not just that; it's the same thing when users have troubles making the payment, or whatever. Chzz 07:26, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

We've added our support email address problemsdonating@wikimedia.org to all the pages (this is probably better than a wiki page as many donors won't be familiar with editing, plus we already had the message translated). Hope this helps. Pcoombe (WMF) 15:36, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

There is still no email, or any other 'help' link, on the page that I am seeing - [3] - possibly it is different for UK. (Also, the donation doesn't seem to work; I get "There has been an error connecting to the Direct Debit page, please try again, or contact customer services on support@smartdebit.co.uk". Chzz 04:03, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

It is indeed different for the UK, we've asked the Chapter about putting a contact email on their first page as well. I didn't have any problems donating, perhaps try again now? If it still doesn't work you can contact richard.symondswikimedia.org.uk. Pcoombe (WMF) 09:54, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you (I'm sure you're busy) but, five days on, the UK page still has no means of asking questions [4] - and users are indeed trying to ask all kinds of things, but struggling to know how. Chzz 08:56, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Email address updates

Hi Peter,

I saw that you were changing the donate email address, is this a global change, and do you need help with making the changes on WMF Wiki too?

The Helpful One 19:44, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I think I've got all of them but if you spot any that still need changing that would really be living up to your name :) Peter Coombe (WMF) 20:18, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Heh, having 2 legitimate accounts can't be easy! So just to confirm, you'd like donations@wikimedia.org changed to donate@wikimedia.org on all the templates on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki, such as I have done in this edit? The Helpful One 20:25, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah, it's okay. I'll do those templates because I have AWB set up ready. But if you spot donations@wikimedia.org anywhere else please do update it. It isn't crucial, both email addresses work, we just want it to be consistent. Peter Coombe (WMF) 20:36, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Fundraising 2011/Improvement

Hi, thank you for your work on Fundraising 2011. Now that I noticed you made the page of improvement requests into a redirect to talk:Fundraising 2011([5]), can you tell me where you replaced/archived requests from info-ja, which we input as respond of inquiry what kinds of requests we'd got during the campaign, so that we at otrs volunteering team may trace them? Thanks, --Aphaia (talk) 00:56, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the help

Hi Peter. Thanks for the help (pun intended). Just read about your Fellowship to help improve the help system on Wikipedia. Just wanted to say this is a great idea and a serious undertaking. I have to thank you for taking on such a monumental task and I'm looking forward to your improvements. Thanks and all the best to you. 64.40.54.80 14:52, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Comment on the help questionnaire

Hi Peter,

I assume you are the one who set up the questionnaire on Wikipedia’s help pages: https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8uFecCwmOU6h7es. (If not, please correct me.)

The idea is good, but I got stuck on the third question, "And how satisfied were you with the help you found on these topics?", as there was no way to answer "Don’t remember/Don’t want to answer". I’ve used several of the help sections mentioned but some of them I haven’t looked at for a very long time and I simply cannot remember to what degree I was satisfied with them. I tried to just skip the ones I couldn’t answer in a good way but the page would not let me move on without answering all questions.

Making a good questionnaire, with the right combination of questions and answer options, is a tricky thing, much trickier than it seems. One of the difficulties is to give the users a set of answer options that actually covers all their varied answers. Very often, adding a "Don’t know / Cannot answer / Prefer not to answer" option helps covering that last part that you might have missed. Is that something that could be added to the survey (even if that would probably mean you had to analyze the two questionnaire versions separately)?

Best regards, Eliashedberg (talk) 06:15, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. If you can't remember, it's fine to just select "neutral". I don't really want to change the survey at this stage since quite a few people have already completed it. the wub "?!" 15:28, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Category cleanup

Stuff like this warms my heart. Thanks for taking the time to keep things organized! -Pete F (talk) 20:47, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

p.s. I see you tried in vain to bring in Cat-a-lot. I usually use HotCat for stuff like this, but for bigger projects have found AWB to be a great tool. It would be great to compare notes on the easiest ways to go about it some time. -Pete F (talk) 20:49, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks fellow Pete! Sorting out the fundraising pages has been on my to-do list for a while. I have actually been using AWB for them, after all my attempts at Cat-a-lot failed. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 21:07, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Cool. I did a lot of categorization work here about a year ago, mainly on Wikimania-related pages but also on organizing things by geography and by year. If you ever want somebody to talk through a categorization question with, let me know -- I know I came across things where two minds would probably have been better than one! -Pete F (talk) 21:13, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Help test better mass message delivery

Hi. You're being contacted as you've previously used global message delivery (or its English Wikipedia counterpart). It doesn't feel so great to be spammed, does it? ;-)

For the past few months, Legoktm has built a replacement to the current message delivery system called MassMessage. MassMessage uses a proper user interface form (no more editing a /Spam subpage), works faster (it can complete a large delivery in minutes), and no longer requires being on an access list (any local administrator can use it). In addition, many tiny annoyances with the old system have been addressed. It's a real improvement! :-)

You can test out MassMessage here: testwiki:Special:MassMessage. The biggest difference you'll likely notice is that any input list must use a new {{#target:}} parser function. For example, {{#target:User talk:Jimbo Wales}} or {{#target:User talk:Jimbo Wales|test2.wikipedia.org}}. For detailed instructions, check out mw:Help:Extension:MassMessage.

If you find any bugs, have suggestions for additional features, or have any other feedback, drop a note at m:Talk:MassMessage. Thanks for spamming! --MZMcBride (talk) 05:25, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Beginning of MassMessage, end of EdwardsBot

Hi. You're being contacted as you're listed as an EdwardsBot user.

MassMessage has been deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. For help using the new tool, please check out its help page or drop a note on Meta-Wiki.

With over 400,000 edits to Wikimedia wikis, EdwardsBot has served us well; however EdwardsBot will no longer perform local or global message delivery after December 31, 2013.

A huge thanks to Legoktm, Reedy, Aaron Schulz and everyone else who helped to get MassMessage deployed. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:36, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Bitcoin

Hi. There have recently been a lot of inquiries about Bitcoin on FWF. Maybe you have received some via email. This seems to be caused by this and this reddit thread. Can you give any more information about why you don't consider it safe? I don't really know much about BTC, but it is an interesting concept. PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:55, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, we have indeed received emails about bitcoin. We're keeping an eye on it, but have no plans to implement it during this fundraising season. Our team are working flat out at the moment, and we would have to investigate it with our legal department before doing anything. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Request for feedback on my GSoC'14 proposal

Hi Pcoombe,

I am planning to work on the project titled "Tools for mass migration of legacy translated wiki content" this summer under Google Summer of Code. I have drafted a proposal for the same over the past few weeks. This project is going to help the translation adminstrators like you in a great way, as it would completely automate the tedious manual task of preparing a page for translation and then importing the translations into the Translate extension. You can check the proposal page for detailed information on how I plan to accomplish this.

As you would be an end user of this tool, it would be great if you could go through the proposal and provide feedback/suggestions. Your feedback would definitely help me improve the proposal as well help in creating an even better tool. You can do the same on the discussion page of the proposal or reply here, whichever is convenient for you. I look forward to hearing from you! Thank you!

P.S: I need to submit the proposal to Google by March 19, 2014.

BPositive (talk) 13:16, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Petition extension

Hi. What kind of petitions would it be used for? WMF-internal decisions? PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:14, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

The aim is to run a petition in the next few months calling for more mobile operators to give free access to Wikipedia (Wikipedia Zero). I don't think there are any WMF uses planned other than that, but decided to build it as a re-usable extension in case some other MediaWiki users find it helpful in future. Peter Coombe (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 17:51, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Talk:CentralNotice/Calendar#Wikimania_banner_not_in_compliance

Please disable this banner immediately. I'll wait 60 minutes. --Nemo 08:12, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Question on removing a CNBanner and CNCampaign

Hi. I wonder how can I remove a campaign from Special:CentralNotice (not archiving). If I understood correctly, one should be deleting the banner, but it doesn't work either ([6]). How can I get rid of all old stuff and all the wikipages created by that centralnotice? (texts, translations, etc...) Best regards. -- M\A 15:38, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi @MarcoAurelio:. You can delete a banner using the Delete button at the bottom of the banner edit page (next to Clone and Save). You can't delete campaigns though, only archive them. Then they will no longer show up in the list of campaigns by default. Peter Coombe (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 12:34, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Possibly Weird Fundraising Idea

Hello, I realize that I might be suggesting this in the wrong place, if so it would be great if you could point me in the right direction. I'm also not sure if anything like this has been done before, like i said in the title it might be a bit weird or off the wall. The basic idea would be to put a banner similar to one of these at the top of UFC event pages the day of the event. The pages generate a fair amount of traffic on that single day (Example 1 Example 2 Example 3) and i believe it might be a great day to remind people they can support wikipedia. I can break down some stats if you would like, but one example would be UFC 193, just on the day that the even took place the article for the event and the biography articles for the fighters that participated had 988,625 combined views. My feeling is that if we catch people right on the exact day that they are enjoying the sport they are reading about they might be more apt to make a donation to wikipedia than on another random day. Food for thought, thanks for reading. Kevlar (talk) 19:53, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

@Kevlar: Thanks for the suggestion. I've copied it to our fundraising ideas page so that other people can chime in. Peter Coombe (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 23:30, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Request to create a banner

Hello Pcoombe,

The photography contest Wiki Loves Earth organized last May is nominated for the "web event of the year" of the 9th edition of Morocco Web Awards

http://marocwebawards.com/mwa9/wiki-loves-earth-morocco/

Is it possible to create a banner for a 7-day period at CentralNotice to encourage people to vote ?

Cordially, --Reda benkhadra (talk) 15:03, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Reda, I see you already asked User:Romaine and User:Jseddon (WMF). They are probably better able to help you with this, I'm afraid I don't have much time to work on things outside of Fundraising. Peter Coombe (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 16:08, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Share your experience and feedback as a Wikimedian in this global survey

Hello! The Wikimedia Foundation is asking for your feedback in a survey. We want to know how well we are supporting your work on and off wiki, and how we can change or improve things in the future. The opinions you share will directly affect the current and future work of the Wikimedia Foundation. You have been randomly selected to take this survey as we would like to hear from your Wikimedia community. To say thank you for your time, we are giving away 20 Wikimedia T-shirts to randomly selected people who take the survey. The survey is available in various languages and will take between 20 and 40 minutes.

Take the survey now!

You can find more information about this project. This survey is hosted by a third-party service and governed by this privacy statement. Please visit our frequently asked questions page to find more information about this survey. If you need additional help, or if you wish to opt-out of future communications about this survey, send an email to surveys@wikimedia.org.

Thank you! --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 22:25, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Deletion backlog at WMF wiki

Hi Peter. Hope that you're doing well. There's a bit of a backlog in wmf:Category:Deletion_requests (200+ pages). Last time I remember you handled the cleanup. Could you do it again this time as well? Thanks. Regards, —MarcoAurelio (talk) 10:57, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Okay, all done for now. Peter Coombe (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 14:29, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! Best regards, —MarcoAurelio (talk) 14:16, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Fundraising/Translation/Ways to Give new

Hi! Please be more accuracy with updating source code for translatable pages (see page history with my fixes).

1. If item was not been changed or was been updated slightly, please don't remove translation markers with numbering. Otherwise, new elements are created, and all previously translations are lost.
2. If the existing paragraph should be divided, then just do it without touching the markup. A new translation element will be created for the new paragraph, and the previous translation will be marked as obsolete.

---Kaganer (talk) 22:21, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Sorry about that, thank you very much for fixing it! Peter Coombe (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 09:54, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Question about translation

Hello, how can anyone help with translating https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:CountryNope into other languages? https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Elitre_(WMF)#Question_about_translation Can you create the correct page for https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LandingPage&country=RU&uselang=ru to display the text in Russian, if we give you a translation (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/U:Iluvatar/landing)? --Sunpriat (talk) 01:35, 10 July 2018 (UTC) Probably it will be useful to configure the translation of the message into other languages, as the link for donations is available from many wikis and this message is shown to several countries (for example, Russia (russian lang), Iran (persian lang), Libya (arabic lang) and others). --Sunpriat (talk) 16:18, 10 July 2018 (UTC) Сreated phab:T199255 --Sunpriat (talk) 17:46, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I have replied on the Phabricator task. Apologies for the delay! Peter Coombe (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 18:47, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Translations for Fundraising/Translation/Problems donating

Hi, you may want to set zh as one of the translatable languages, instead of zh-hans. This is because translation to zh-hans has been disabled on meta, and Chinese translations are done in zh. -★- PlyrStar93 _{→Message me. ←} 17:03, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the information, I have done this. Peter Coombe (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 17:10, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

CentralNotice

Hi Peter, I see that you are more or less online now. Could you please have a look at CentralNotice/Request/Wikimarathon 2019 for UKWP and set up the campaign? The campaign is already prepared https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNotice&subaction=noticeDetail&notice=WMUA_Wikimarathon_2019 and needs only two tiny changes:

• enable it (ready but not enabled at Special:CentralNotice)
• adjust dates (26 Jan 00:00 to 31 Jan 00:00), i.e. move by one day.

This is unfortunately very urgent: this is a short campaign and we really need to have it live at Ukrainian sunrise, i.e. in a couple of hours. Thank you very much in advance — NickK (talk) 01:08, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

@NickK: Apologies, I had actually logged off for the night before this message. Looks like Seddon was able to help you with this though. Peter Coombe (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 18:39, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

@Pcoombe (WMF): Thank you for your answer, and it's fine (you were the latest active CN admin, that's why I contacted you). Yes, Seddon helped us by enabling it except dates (it will still expire one day early). Can you please fix it if you have time? Thanks — NickK (talk) 19:27, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

@NickK: Done. Peter Coombe (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 20:41, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Perfect, thank you very much! — NickK (talk) 23:36, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

The button “Donate” leads to the deleted page.

Hello, Pcoombe (WMF)!

On foundation.wikimedia.org, there was a page foundation:Сделать пожертвование to which I was brought to from ru.wikisource.org’s button “Donate” today. Could you please make the redirection to the general disclaimer about donations from Russia as the following below?

#REDIRECT[[donate:Special:FundraiserRedirector]]

To check the brocken link, please open https://ru.wikisource.org/ and then click on "Пожертвовать".

Thanks!
Pacha Tchernof (talk) 11:07, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting this @Pacha Tchernof, the redirect has been added now. Peter Coombe (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 12:16, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, @Peter Coombe (WMF)! — Pacha Tchernof (talk) 12:21, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Missing tuning sessions in Fundraising navbox

Hi, an edit of yours adding the Fundraising navbox came up in my watchlist ... could you edit the navbox so the latest Tuning sessions are included? At the moment, all the 2021/22 ones show as redlinks, even though three of them are available. Best, Andreas JN466 19:32, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks @Andreas, I had noticed that too. It's using a module to try and automatically generate the links, will see if I can fix it. Peter Coombe (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 19:35, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Okay, I edited the module to support the new filename format as well as the old one. Just waiting for the 2021-22 Q3 file to be renamed to match. Peter Coombe (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 21:52, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

More banner problems

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T336353

It looks like whoever this survey provider is has an unstable server. This link keeps intermittently failing on their end with ERROR 500 (Internal Server Error). The last 4 times I tried, it failed twice. Haven't turned off the campaign yet; any idea if a support ticket is open with this provider? Pings to @Itzike and JBrungs (WMF): who are listed on the notes. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:06, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @Xaosflux, I've disabled the banner again and will follow up with Jullienn. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 13:12, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Wikimedia apps newsletter-June 2023

Introducing the Second Issue of the Wikipedia Mobile Apps Newsletter!

Discover the latest updates, features, and improvements in our newsletter. Stay informed and enhance your mobile Wikipedia experience. Enjoy the read!

iOS

From April. to June 2023:

Significant progress was made on the iOS platform. Version 7.2.2 was released on May 10, and version 7.3.0 was released on June 1.

These updates included various improvements, such as simplified state restoration, which improved many of the performance issues we heard about through our support email and app store. We also worked to release a page protection notice on the editor, enhanced reliability of widget data fetching, color updates, and bug fixes. Additionally, we continue to make progress on a native watchlist functionality, Talk page image support, full page editing and enhancements to our native source editor, and language updates.

Android

From April. to June 2023:

We focused on completing our work on our updated design component library, bringing it up to date with the latest Material Design 3 guidelines. You can now view images on talk pages.

We have successfully concluded the experiment on machine-assisted article descriptions and would like to highlight our gratitude to our dedicated volunteers. We are excited to announce that we will be sharing the outcomes of the experiment next month.

Community meetings

• In May, our team member Marina Azevedo participated in the Wikimedia Hackathon, a yearly event held this year in Athens, Greece, aimed at fostering connections among the global technical community. The event provided opportunities for hacking, engaging in technical discussions, and discovering innovative ideas.

• The upcoming meeting between the Wiki Mentor Africa Initiative and the Wikipedia Mobile Apps Team will be an important event covering several key aspects. These include exploring the history of the apps, discussing the roadmap for future development, addressing open questions, conducting comprehensive feature reviews, and providing clarity on frequently asked questions (FAQs).

This meeting promises to be a valuable opportunity for collaboration and innovation, with the shared objective of improving the mobile Wikipedia experience.

We are excited and willing to arrange meetings with other community members who are interested. You may also contact us at aramadan@wikimedia.org to arrange such gatherings.

Existing news

There are upcoming opportunities to provide feedback on various tasks related to patrolling. These include offering input on image recommendations, specifically on Android, as well as providing feedback on new diffs in iOS and answering questions about updated watchlist designs; if you are interested in participating, please reach out to me.

You can subscribe to this newsletter from here.

--ARamadan17:45, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Wikimedia apps newsletter-August 2023

Presenting the Third Edition of the Wikipedia Mobile Apps Newsletter!

Explore the freshest news, enhancements, and additions in our newsletter, keeping you in the loop for an enriched mobile Wikipedia journey. Dive into the content and make the most of your reading!

iOS

From June to August 2023

• We released version 7.3.1 on July 12, with highlights:
  • Fixed character counter in article description editor.
  • Added Gurene, Wayuu, and Angika languages to our language list.
  • Addressed automatic theme switching bug and performed cleanup for performance fixes.
• We're progressing on upcoming features:
  • Redesigning diff view: The "Diff View" displays changes in a Wikipedia article over time, showing additions, deletions, and edits for easy comparison between different versions helping you track content evolution and updates.
  • Coming in 7.4.0:
    1. Unleash the power of "Undo" and "Rollback" with updated diff pages!They let you revert changes made to an article back to a previous version, helping you fix mistakes or unwanted edits quickly.
       As we move one step closer to bringing Watchlist to the iOS app we are aiming to release it in September. We've refreshed our diff pages and added the option for experienced editors to roll back destructive edits. You can check out the updated diff page by tapping "View Edit History" in any article.
    2. A warm welcome to the Tachelhit language Wikipedia!
    3. Connect across language variants with updated codes! When you venture into articles of different language variants, particularly Chinese and Serbian, you should find a smoother experience when using variant codes.

Remember, your feedback powers our journey. You can be a part of our quest to create the ultimate Wikipedia experience by reporting bugs, quirks, or even your magical moments. Reach out through iOS-support@wikimedia.org.

Thank you for being a vital part of our community... Happy exploring!

Android

From June to August 2023:

• We've been finishing up our work on Image Recommendations (a new Suggested Edits task where you'll be able to add images to articles that are currently unillustrated). We plan to release the feature by September.
• We are beginning development on Patroller Tasks (a new Suggested Edits task for patrolling recent edits for vandalism). You can read about the usability testing we’ve conducted for the feature on the project page on MediaWiki.
• On a note of gratitude, we extend our heartfelt appreciation to the dedicated individuals who participated as graders for Machine Assisted Article Descriptions. Your invaluable contributions have significantly contributed to the advancement of our projects, and we look forward to your continued collaboration as we push the boundaries of Wikipedia's capabilities.

Community meetings

On July 30, 2023, the Wikimedia Apps Team had a fruitful meeting with the group behind the Wiki Mentor Africa Initiative. Over 100 participants joined on Zoom, with others watching the YouTube live stream. The presentation covered the Apps' history, roadmap, open questions, feature reviews, and FAQs. Valuable feedback was shared, enhancing the apps' development and user experience. These collaborative engagements are vital to building a more inclusive Wikimedia platform. I am enthusiastic about recreating this experience with other communities; please navigate to the last paragraph to know how to initiate such engagements.

On August 17, the spotlight was on the Apps Team at Wikimania as we presented "There’s an App for that: a mobile-native way to interact with the movement". We appreciate everyone who tuned in virtually to explore the future of interaction with the Wikimedia movement through our innovative mobile app. If you missed it or want to revisit the content, you can find the presentation slides at this link.

We're excited to share that Jazmin Tanner, the Apps Lead Product Manager, contributed to the session titled "Supporting Moderators at the Wikimedia Foundation." As we diligently worked on refining the patroller feature on the apps, Jazmin provided valuable insights that contributed to discussions on enhancing the experience for both moderators and users.

The next office hour

Our upcoming office hour is scheduled for October. Further information regarding the specific date and time will be provided in our forthcoming newsletter.

We are excited and willing to arrange meetings with interested community members.

You may also contact us at aramadan@wikimedia.org to arrange such gatherings.

And you can subscribe to this newsletter from this link.

~~ ARamadan-WMF10:16, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikimedia apps newsletter – October 2023

Revealing What's Inside the Fourth Edition of the Wikipedia Mobile Apps Newsletter!

Discover the latest updates, improvements, and new content in our newsletter, ensuring you stay informed for an enhanced mobile Wikipedia experience.

iOS

From the end of August to October 2023

• The iOS suggested edits feature, originally successful on Android, is now being developed for iOS. This expansion aligns with the Product & Technology organization's goals for the 2023–2024 fiscal year, with a specific target of increasing mobile contributions by 10% without reversion. This move responds to the growing demand for a similar content creation and maintenance tool on Apple devices.
• The team released 7.4.1 in August, which included:
  • The ability to Undo and Rollback edits on Diff Pages!
  • The addition of Tachelhit Language Wiki.
  • We also improved language variants for Chinese and Serbian languages.
• In October, 7.4.2 was released, which included the following:
  • Watchlist on iOS: We've heard your requests! You can now access your Watchlist through Settings → Account → Watchlist. Add new items to your Watchlist via the new overflow menu in the Article View. Take actions on edits by clicking a username on the Watchlist view, or take actions like "Thank" on the diff screen of an edit in your list.
  • Article Section Sharing: Want to send someone to a specific section in an article? Click a section in the table of contents and then click "Share" via the article overflow menu.
  • Bug Fixes to ensure you can swipe without the app freezing and that the navigation bar doesn't shrink or disappear.

Thank you for volunteering developers Serguitar, jhsoby, agray, Nikki, TiagoLubiana.dijkstra.and revolter for their contributions to this release.

Android

From the end of August to October 2023

• The team is actively working on reinstating the nearby feature due to the high volume of requests we've received. You can find comprehensive tracking details for this effort on Phabricator T347201.
• We have released the Image Recommendation feature to the Wikipedia Beta.
• We have been working on developing the Patroller Tasks, and most of the screens have passed the design reviews.
• Bug fixes and minor improvements:
  • Fixed possible crashes on Android 14 devices.
  • Fixed some view styles related to the Material Design, which includes toolbar and dialog.
  • Introduced more text-highlighted features to the search results across the app.
  • Introduced the Wikitext keyboard support to the talk page interfaces.

Community meetings

We would like to invite you to an online meeting with the mobile apps team. It will take place on the 27th of October at 5 p.m. UTC (check your zone’s exact time).

The host will be Jazmin Tanner, the product manager of the apps team, with a number of our software engineers; you can join the meeting.

Feel free to share your questions and thoughts about Wikipedia’s mobile apps on the Wikimedia Apps/Office Hours page on mediawiki.org. We would love to hear from you. The last date to add your input will be on the 24th of October at 12:00 UTC. If you'd like a one-day reminder before the meeting, simply add your username on the same link, and we'll send you one.

We will be waiting for you all!

And you can subscribe to this newsletter.

-- ARamadan-WMF 09:46, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikimedia Apps newsletter – First quarter of 2024

Hello, and welcome to the app’s first newsletter in 2024!

It has been a long year; we published four editions of our newsletter, which you can go through all of them. In this edition, we will cover our work for the last quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024!

Android

• Edit Patrol (also known as Patroller tasks on Android) has been released to Beta testers with rollback rights on Test Wiki and Indonesian Wikipedia. We had a productive meeting with Indonesian users to introduce and discuss the new patrolling tasks feature on the Android app, as we provided a detailed presentation on the feature, and collected valuable feedback from the Indonesian community to enhance the user experience.
  For those interested, a meeting recording is available.
  We conducted outreach to Spanish, and French Wikipedia communities during February 2024.
• We hosted two synchronous community consultations & recorded a third where we shared the Edit Patrol suggested edit workflow, and showed designs for Saved messages and templates:
  • French - 21 February 2024 from 16-17 UTC. Recording with translation, slides.
  • Spanish - 28 February 2024 from 16-17 UTC. Recording, and slides.
• Places feature is back to the Wikipedia Android app!
  Places is a feature that allows you to discover articles by location.
  The iOS app was able to maintain the feature via use of Apple Maps, but it was necessary for Android audiences that we continue using an open source map.

iOS

• Suggested Edits on iOS prototype is in the experimental build. Instructions to test the feature can be found on this FAQ page.
  Alt text is text associated with an image that serves the same purpose and conveys the same essential information as the image.
  The app's product manager presented our team's work and prototype (iOS suggested edits) to the GLAM conference audience. All details can be found in the presentation's deck.
• It is now possible to donate using Apple Pay directly from the app.
• IOS Native Editor Improvement Development is out!
  You will be able to edit, find and replace, and insert links and images directly from Commons without any performance issues!
  Additionally, it is now possible to edit a full article page and a talk page.

In the current quarter, we aim to engage with editors from LATAM, Spanish-speaking regions, North America, and the Caribbean to test Suggested edits and the new native editor features.

Community meetings

• We participated in the GLAM conference in November 2023. All the details are mentioned in the iOS section of this edition from the newsletter.
• On December 1st of 2023, The Wikipedia Android team met with Indonesian users to introduce and discuss the new patrolling tasks feature on the Android app. The team provided a detailed presentation on the feature and collected valuable feedback. A meeting recording is available.
• We joined the Wiki Editoras Lx editathon on December 16th to gather feedback about an alt-text Suggested Edit task on iOS.
  Attendees were generally positive about the prospect of the feature. Experienced editors thought it could be a good task for on-boarding new editors, but also a more casual way of contributing for new editors.

And you can subscribe to this newsletter.

~~ARamadan-WMF04:42, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Fundraising testing process and results

Hi Peter, I hope you are well. I seem to remember seeing a long time ago that the whole testing process and results for A/B testing of subjects and copy of banners, emails etc was available somewhere, but I can't seem to find it anywhere. Would you know where to find it by any chance? Thanks in advance, happy to take it to email if easier. $yD! (talk) 13:30, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Replied via email. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 18:06, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Second quarter of 2024

Hello, and welcome to the app's second newsletter in 2024! In this edition, we will review our achievements and progress from the first half of 2024!

Android

• Edit Patrol is now available on production for all Wikis!
• Donation through G-Pay is now available within the app.

iOS

• "Add an image" suggested edit is available for all Wikis! It is available to all users with more than 50 edits.
• We now support full-page editing on Talk pages.

And you can subscribe to this newsletter.

~~ARamadan-WMF11:53, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Third quarter of 2024

Hello, and welcome to the app's third newsletter of 2024! In this edition, we will highlight the accomplishments and progress made during July, August, and September 2024!

iOS Updates

• iOS Suggested edits project

Over 20,000 images have been added via the "Add an Image" feature across both iOS and Android! (T372954), good opportunity to try it yourself ;) This tool allows users to enhance Wikipedia articles by adding relevant images. It’s a great way to contribute and improve the visual experience for readers.

• Alt Text Experiment

The iOS team kicked off the Alt Text experiment to improve image descriptions for accessibility. This feature helps ensure that visually impaired users can better understand the content of images through descriptive text.

App screen for iOS App project page

• Navigation Refresh

The iOS App has been transitioning from a primarily reader-focused app, to an app that fully supports both reading and editing. After adding a number of editing features, the navigation system of the app needs to grow and change to support them and future additions. Improving our navigation will allow for more app users to discover editing features, and allow experienced users quicker access to their most-used tools. This refresh incorporates findings from usability testing with multiple variants of the App's navigation. The team is currently planning phased rollouts over the coming year to improve user experience. (Phase 1: T373714)

Android Updates

• Places

Improvements were made to the Places feature in response to user feedback, including larger cluster icons and a Wikipedia logo for articles without images (T371067, T370094). Also, the team is exploring designs to allow users to explore articles from multiple language wikis simultaneously and will adjust the zoom logic to show nearby locations upon launch (T352757, T368792).

• WikiTrivia Game

The team prepared for the WikiTrivia Game during a hackathon, selecting a data source and creating initial designs (T371508, T371510).

• Recommended Content

Work began on adding Recommended Content to search, iterating on design concepts and testing performance (T371613).

• Machine-Assisted Article Descriptions

The team is now engaging with several wikis to implement Machine-Assisted Article Descriptions based on prior experimental results.

• Sharing reading lists

Android users can now share reading lists with others, expanding community collaboration (T370703).

And some performance enhancements: Revision tags for app edits were successfully implemented (T366731, T366732).

The app now supports URL sharing on Pixel devices, thanks to volunteer developer contributions (T370020).

Stay tuned for future updates as we continue to enhance your Wikipedia experience! And you can subscribe to this newsletter.

--17:17, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Fourth quarter of 2024

Hello, and welcome to the app's final newsletter of 2024! In this edition, we’ll highlight the key updates and progress made during October and November 2024!

iOS Updates

Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review

In November, we released the first iteration of the Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review to users in Italy and Mexico, covering Italian, Spanish, and English Wikipedia! This experimental feature offers personalized insights based on reading, editing, and donation history for iOS app users for 2024. If this initial version is successful, we hope to improve upon it and make it available to everyone within the iOS app in January 2025. For more information on how your data is used and how to access your Year in Review, please visit the project page, or watch a short video demonstration of the feature.

Alt Text Experiment

The alternative text experiment concluded on November 4, and we are currently analyzing the results. The edits are being reviewed by accessibility experts and moderators active on the iOS app for additional feedback.

Preliminary results show that prompting users on an image they’ve just added leads to higher completion rates (18%) compared to unrelated images (6%). The overall revert rate for alt text edits was 3.4%, lower than the app’s average revert rate of 8.1%. We’ll decide next steps for this feature after completing the analysis.

Navigation Refresh

We completed the first phase of our Navigation refresh, and released a new profile menu into the production version of the app. Our work was coordinated in this Epic: T373714

Android Updates

Private Donor Recognition Experiment

We launched an experiment in France and the Netherlands, exploring the impact of private donor recognition on current and prospective donors. Users who donated through the app will see an active badge on the contributions page, while those who haven’t donated will see a prompt to do so. The experiment will run for 20 days, after which we will evaluate the results. This work was coordinated under Epic: T376303.

Rabbit Holes Experiment

The team began work on the "Rabbit Holes" experiment to increase retention among new readers. The experiment is designed to help users more easily discover and connect with content they are interested in. It is being coordinated under Epic: T378612.

Recommended Content in Search

The Recommended Content in Search experiment showed promising results. Personalized recommendations led to higher retention (86.5%) compared to non-personalized recommendations (64.9%), with positive feedback from users.

Places

We added a launcher shortcut for quicker access to the "Places" feature in the app. (T375367)

Looking Ahead

As we close out 2024, we’re excited about all the progress made and the work ahead in 2025. Keep an eye out for more updates and improvements we hope will enhance your Wikipedia experience!

Thank you for being part of this journey, and don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!

-- ARamadan-WMF 13:54, 20 December 2024 (UTC)