Re: [Wikimedia-l] [WikimediaMobile] Fwd: "Among mobile sites, Wikipedia reigns in terms of popularity"

[Jon Robson]

Since you brought up this example the BBC news site used to have a
mobile and desktop site... just like we did.

Eventually, they got their mobile site to a good state, removed the
desktop site and used the mobile site:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31966686

It's worth pointing out we are a smaller amount of volunteers with a
far more complex ecosystem (extensions) so it's likely to take us much
longer.

On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 9:35 AM, Jon Robson  wrote:
> On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 2:07 PM, James Forrester
>  wrote:
>> On 11 May 2016 at 12:50, Michael Peel  wrote:
>>>
>>> Isn't it time to start moving to responsive mediawiki templates
>>> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design), rather than having a
>>> separate mobile interface/URL?
>>>
>>>
>>> For a practical example, see the BBC News website
>>> (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news), which is the same website on all devices, it
>>> just rescales the content/navigation/layout to suit the device. (Try
>>> resizing your web browser on your computer to the size of a mobile web
>>> browser to see what I mean.)
>>
>>
> Since you brought up this example the BBC news site used to have a
> mobile and desktop site... just like we did.
>
> Eventually, they got their mobile site to a good state, removed the
> desktop site and used the mobile site:
> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31966686
>
> It's worth pointing out we are a smaller amount of volunteers with a
> far more complex ecosystem (extensions) so it's likely to take us much
> longer.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [WikimediaMobile] Fwd: "Among mobile sites, Wikipedia reigns in terms of popularity"

[Jon Katz]

Hi,
For those of you following who I haven't worked with before, I am the lead
product manager for the reading team.

I think James is right that the content is a primary barrier and its an
issue we are exploring across both reading and editing.  For what its
worth, this applies not just to the web but to all non-desktop usage,
including apps and 3rd party developers. I believe our 3rd meeting on the
topic is tomorrow morning and Moushira just posted this invitation to
participate more broadly on wiki:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Mobile_Friendly_Content.

Whether we end up getting rid of the mobile site or follow another path
towards unity is an open question.

Another big barrier to having a single site and one we have to address
regardless, is how we add advanced tools to mobile without crushing the
average user.  Over the years the desktop site has accumulated many useful
features/tools and this is reflected in the various rich options on the
desktop site. Mobile screen real estate, however, is much more limited and
the affordances are quite different.  So far, we have focused on a simple
experience because we know we can't mush the entire left-hand navigation
field into the mobile menu or provide the same list of 40+ settings that
are on desktop.  This has provided us with a remarkable experiment in
reading that at least anecdotally suggests most readers prefer a simpler
experience.

However, it does not yet work well for editors and certainly not for more
advanced contributions. So, we need to figure out how we can maintain the
pathway from reader --> contributor on mobile without generating a user
experience nightmare.  One of our big challenges in creating a unified
experience is figuring out how we move someone from a basic reading view to
a first-time editor view, to a power-user-genius view in a way that entices
a potential contributor and optimizes the experience for everyone else.
There are multiple options on the table here and I think it's going to be a
long conversation ;)

Thanks,

J

On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 2:25 PM, James Forrester 
wrote:

> On 11 May 2016 at 14:20, Michael Peel  wrote:
>
>> I'm hoping that having a responsive skin for the webpages isn't too far
>> off, though?
>>
>
> Reading can answer that better than I; however, making the skin itself ​is
> only part of the issue – you also would want to scrap m.wikimedia.org
> *etc. *​Right now, the mobile sites have to make massive changes to the
> content to make it fit on​ a mobile screen (and even then can't fix some
> things, like tables). Giving mobile users a responsive skin whilst the
> contents weren't appropriate wouldn't make anyone happy. Until the contents
> of at least most the millions of pages of Wikimedia wikis' projects are
> mobile-safe, we can't reasonably get rid of the mobile "site".
>
> J.
> --
> James D. Forrester
> Lead Product Manager, Editing
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
> jforres...@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
>
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