[Wikitech-ambassadors] [Wikitech] Improvements on the search results

[Deborah Tankersley]

...with apologies for cross-posting, but this is cool stuff! :)

--

deb tankersley

Program Manager, Engineering

Wikimedia Foundation

-- Forwarded message --
From: Léa Lacroix 
Date: Thu, Apr 5, 2018 at 1:35 AM
Subject: [Wikidata] Improvements on the search results
To: "Discussion list for the Wikidata project." <
wikid...@lists.wikimedia.org>


Hello all,

Some improvements have been made by the Search team at WMF on Special:Search
 (the page that is loaded
when you type something in the search field and press enter, for example).

   - The string that you typed is highlighted in bold in the label of the
   results
   - The number of bytes is no longer displayed, instead you can see the
   number of sitelinks and statements
   - The code is now using the same indexing as completion search, which
   should improve relevancy and better control over ranking

If you have any question or find a bug, feel free to ping user:Smalyshev
(WMF) .
Cheers,

-- 
Léa Lacroix
Project Manager Community Communication for Wikidata

Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de

Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.

Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.

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[Wikitech-ambassadors] Fwd: Turn mapframe for English Wikipedia? We’re ready if you are

[Deborah Tankersley]

...with apologies for cross-posting.

--

deb tankersley

Program Manager, Engineering

Wikimedia Foundation

-- Forwarded message --
From: Joe Matazzoni 
Date: Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 7:41 PM
Subject: Turn mapframe for English Wikipedia? We’re ready if you are
To: wikitec...@lists.wikimedia.org
Cc: Deborah Tankersley 


In October 2017, English Wikipedia community members approved an RfC
requesting implementation of mapframe
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_159#Should_we_ask_for_mapframe_to_be_turned_on?>
[1]—a feature that enables contributors to easily display dynamic maps on
article pages.  At the time, there was some question about whether
technical support for the maps service would be available long term, and
the Foundation asked that the community stand by. I’m writing now to say
that those questions have been answered, and a small team will be assigned
for routine maps maintenance.

So, unless we hear from the English Wikipedia community that the consensus
on adding mapframe has changed since last year’s RfC, we plan to move
forward in April 2018. You can read more about this plan and leave comments
on Village Pump [2]. If you foresee any issues, let us hear from you.
Otherwise,
happy mapping!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(
technical)/Archive_159#Should_we_ask_for_mapframe_to_be_turned_on?

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(
technical)#Turn_on_mapframe?_We%E2%80%99re_ready_if_you_are

*Joe Matazzoni*
Product Manager, Collaboration
Wikimedia Foundation
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[Wikitech-ambassadors] Update on Discovery Projects

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hi everybody,

(With apologies for cross-posting...)

You may have seen the recent communication [1
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/June_2017_changes>]
about the product and tech tune-up which went live the week of June 5th,
2017. In that communication, we promised an update on the future of
Discovery projects and we will talk about those in this email.

The Discovery team structure has now changed, but the new teams will still
work together to complete the goals as listed in the draft annual plan.[2]
A summary of their anticipated work, as we finalize these changes, is
below. We plan on doing a check-in at the end of the calendar year to see
how our goals are progressing with the new smaller and separated team
structure.

Here is a list of the various projects under the Discovery umbrella, along
with the goals that they will be working on:

Search Backend

Improve search capabilities:

   -

   Implement ‘learning to rank’ [3] and other advanced machine learning
   methodologies
   -

   Improve support for languages using new analyzers
   -

   Maintain and expand power user search functionality

Search Frontend

Improve user interface of the search results page with new functionality:

   -

   Implement explore similar [4]
   
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Testing#A.2FB_test:_Add_.27explore_similar.27_pages_and_categories_for_search_results>
   -

   Update the completion suggester box [5]
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CirrusSearch/CompletionSuggester>
   -

   Investigate the usage of a Wiktionary widget for English Wikipedia [6]

Wikidata Query Service

Expand and scale:

   -

   Improve ability to support power features on-wiki for readers
   -

   Improve full text search functionality
   -

   Implement SPARQL federation support

Portal

Create and implement automated language statistics and translation updates
for Wikipedia.org

Analysis

Provide in-depth analytics support:

   -

   Perform experimental design, data collection, and data analysis
   -

   Perform ad-hoc analyses of Discovery-domain data
   -

   Maintain and augment the Discovery Dashboards,[7] which allow the teams
   to track their KPIs and other metrics

Maps

Map support:

   -

   Implement new map style
   -

   Increase frequency of OSM data replication
   -

   As needed, assist with individual language Wikipedia’s implementation of
   mapframe [8] <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps/how_to:_embedded_maps>

Note: There is a possibility that we can do more with maps in the coming
year; we are currently evaluating strategic, partnership, and resourcing
options.

Structured Data on Commons

Extend structured data search on Commons, as part of the structured data
grant [9] via:

   -

   Research and implement advanced search capabilities
   -

   Implement new elements, filters, relationships

Graphs and Tabular Data on Commons

We will be re-evaluating this functionality against other Commons
initiatives such as the structured data grant. As with maps, we will
provide updates when we know more.

We are still working out all the details with the new team structure and
there might be some turbulence; let us know if there are any concerns and
we will do our best to answer them.


Best regards,

Deborah Tankersley, Product Manager, Discovery

Erika Bjune, Engineering Manager, Search Platform

Jon Katz, Reading Product Lead

Toby Negrin, Interim Vice President of Product

Victoria Coleman, Chief Technology Officer


[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/June_2017_changes

[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2017-2018/Draft

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_to_rank

[4]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Testing#A.2FB_test:_Add_.27explore_similar.27_pages_and_categories_for_search_results

[5]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CirrusSearch/CompletionSuggester

[6]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Testing#A.2FB_test:_Add_Wiktionary_widget_to_search_results_page

[7] https://discovery.wmflabs.org/

[8] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps/how_to:_embedded_maps

[9] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data
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[Wikitech-ambassadors] New search results feature

[Deborah Tankersley]

In the ongoing effort to improve the discoverability of all the world's
knowledge, the Discovery team is proposing an enhancement to the search
results page on Wikipedia (Special:Search). [1][2]

The goal of this feature is to display related content for each individual
search result returned from query, so that even when the search result
itself isn't maybe entirely useful, perhaps its related content would be.

We would like your early feedback on this new feature—more information can
be found on MediaWiki about the explore similar functionality and testing
can be done in your own browser, using step by step self-guided testing
instructions. [3][4]


Cheers,

The Discovery Search Team


[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery#Search
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Search
[3]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/explore_similar
[4]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/self-guided_testing

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deb tankersley
irc: debt
Product Manager, Discovery
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[Wikitech-ambassadors] New A/B test for sister project search results

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hello,

tl;dr - we’re running a second test for displaying sister projects in the
search results (with new link highlights) on 8 wikis for a week; starting
today, with apologies for sending to multiple email lists.

As a follow up to a recent A/B test
 that the Discovery Search
 team conducted,
we’ll be running a second test  for
displaying sister project search results in a sidebar on several wiki’s
search engine results page (SERP) - starting today. You can read the draft
report

or browse the next two paragraphs for the biggest concerns.

We realized that when we display the results from the sister projects, it
might not have been intuitive to our visitors that there were links that
could be clicked to go to individual articles and to additional search
results, so, we’ve added blue links
 to the results.

We also discovered that the smaller wikis in which we had originally chosen
to test on, might not have had enough relevant results in their sister
projects to be displayed. To remedy that, we reached out
 to the community and added 4
larger wikis along with the original 4 wikis, to test on. The list is as
follows: Persian, Italian, Catalan, Polish, Russian, French, German, and
Arabic.

Here are a few links that will not affect our testing, but will demonstrate
the new test display:

   - cawiki: https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=
   manifestaci%C3%B3&fulltext=1&cirrusUserTesting=recall_
   sidebar_results&searchToken=66xv5qgi97musdtybgwik11sk#manifestaci%C3%B3
   

   - dewiki: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=
   regenbogen&fulltext=1&cirrusUserTesting=recall_
   sidebar_results&searchToken=44wgqit3kykji2o1cxtaxlzcs#regenbogen
   

   - arwiki: https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%D9%82%
   D9%88%D8%B3+%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B7%D8%B1&fulltext=1&
   cirrusUserTesting=recall_sidebar_results&searchToken=
   bxfe1fnvj7sav1nue56hpjt69#%D9%82%D9%88%D8%B3%2B%D8%A7%D9%84%
   D9%85%D8%B7%D8%B1
   


You can edit the url to change the search term and also change to a
different Wikipedia. For example, try this url for “apple pie” on enwiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=apple+pie&fulltext=1&;
cirrusUserTesting=recall_sidebar_results&searchToken=
8mavijx36f9cl26l6k2v2o11l#apple%2Bpie

Let us know what you think!

Cheers from the Discovery Search Team
--
deb tankersley
irc: debt
Product Manager, Discovery
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Re: [Wikitech-ambassadors] Translation thanks

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hi Youssef,

Yes, I believe that is the best way - thanks so much for your help! :)

Cheers,

Deb


--
deb tankersley
irc: debt
Product Manager, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation

On Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 6:42 PM, youssef massour  wrote:

> Dear Deborah,
> As i understand from the alphabetical list of languages [4
> <https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special%3AMessageGroupStats&x=D&group=wikimedia-portals&language=ru>],
> i creat an account and translate some words, i hope it's the best way
> best regars
>
> 2017-01-24 21:59 GMT+00:00 Deborah Tankersley :
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> We want to thank everyone who have translated the text of the
>> Wikipedia.org <https://www.wikipedia.org/> Portal page - it looks great!
>>
>> Here's an image that we used recently during the Discovery team's
>> quarterly review. It displays the portal page with the browser's primary
>> language set to Armenian. [0
>> <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Discovery_Quarterly_Check-in_Q2-Q3_2016-2017.pdf>]
>> [1
>> <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia.org_with_primary_browser_language_in_Armenian.png>
>> ]
>>
>> We've just added more text to be translated to translatewiki and we
>> humbly ask for your help again. We would like the legal language (located
>> in the portal page footer) [2 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T153764>]
>> and a new section for the mobile apps [3
>> <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T154350>] to be translated.
>>
>> For anyone who'd like to view which text has already been translated and
>> what still needs translating, you can view the alphabetical list of
>> languages [4
>> <https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special%3AMessageGroupStats&x=D&group=wikimedia-portals&language=ru>]
>> by percentage untranslated here [5
>> <https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special%3AMessageGroupStats&x=D&group=wikimedia-portals&language=ru#sortable:2=asc>
>> ].
>>
>> Thanks to everyone that has helped in the past and in the future!
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Discovery Portal Team
>>
>> [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Discovery_Quarte
>> rly_Check-in_Q2-Q3_2016-2017.pdf
>> [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia.org_wi
>> th_primary_browser_language_in_Armenian.png
>> [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T153764
>> [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T154350
>> [4] https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special%3AMessag
>> eGroupStats&x=D&group=wikimedia-portals&language=ru
>> [5] https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special%3AMessag
>> eGroupStats&x=D&group=wikimedia-portals&language=ru#sortable:2=asc
>>
>> --
>> deb tankersley
>> irc: debt
>> Product Manager, Discovery
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
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[Wikitech-ambassadors] Translation thanks

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hello,

We want to thank everyone who have translated the text of the Wikipedia.org
 Portal page - it looks great!

Here's an image that we used recently during the Discovery team's quarterly
review. It displays the portal page with the browser's primary language set
to Armenian. [0
]
[1

]

We've just added more text to be translated to translatewiki and we humbly
ask for your help again. We would like the legal language (located in the
portal page footer) [2 ] and a
new section for the mobile apps [3
] to be translated.

For anyone who'd like to view which text has already been translated and
what still needs translating, you can view the alphabetical list of
languages [4
]
by percentage untranslated here [5

].

Thanks to everyone that has helped in the past and in the future!

Cheers,

Discovery Portal Team

[0]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Discovery_Quarterly_Check-in_Q2-Q3_2016-2017.pdf
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia.org_wi
th_primary_browser_language_in_Armenian.png
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T153764
[3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T154350
[4] https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special%3AMessag
eGroupStats&x=D&group=wikimedia-portals&language=ru
[5] https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special%3AMessag
eGroupStats&x=D&group=wikimedia-portals&language=ru#sortable:2=asc

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Re: [Wikitech-ambassadors] [discovery] Request for testing / early adoption of new cross-wiki search results

[Deborah Tankersley]

Thanks for the comments about the RTL wikis - during prototyping and
testing, we'll be paying close attention to the layout to be sure we don't
have weird things happening!

Cheers,

Deb


--
deb tankersley
Product Manager, Discovery
irc: debt
Wikimedia Foundation

On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 9:03 AM, Trey Jones  wrote:

> Huji, thanks for the reminder about RTL wikis, which is always welcome.
>
> To expand on Deb's answer, searchers are randomly chosen to see new
> results in our A/B tests, so you can't volunteer yourself as a user. Unlike
> a beta feature, where motivated and knowledgeable users opt in, the random
> tests give us a better idea of how average users will react to the proposed
> changes.
>
> Deb (& Jan), have we looked at how the current design will work on RTL
> wikis? (With Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew being the three biggest by volume,
> according to a glance at the dashboards.) Some designs, like the result
> list on the side, may need extra design work to be made RTL-friendly.
>
> —Trey
>
> Trey Jones
> Software Engineer, Discovery
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
> On Sat, Nov 12, 2016 at 9:04 AM, Deborah Tankersley <
> dtankers...@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Huji, to answer your question - this will be a short series of
>> tests on Wikipedia that will display additional relevant search results
>> across wikis in the same language to a selected number of users that fall
>> into our bucketing schema. Not everyone will see the new results every time
>> if they land on a search results listing page.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Deb
>>
>>
>> --
>> deb tankersley
>> Product Manager, Discovery
>> irc: debt
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 6:11 PM, Huji Lee  wrote:
>>
>>> I think it would be best if we test it in at least one RTL wiki. I will
>>> mention this in the VP of Persian Wikipedia (FA WP).
>>>
>>> If it is meant to only be shown for select users and has no impact for
>>> others, I am wiling to volunteer myself as a tester.
>>>
>>> Huji
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 6:03 PM, Deborah Tankersley <
>>> dtankers...@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> The Discovery Search team is looking for a few language specific
>>>> Wikipedia sites that would be interested in helping with A/B testing for
>>>> cross-wiki search results. These tests would evaluate if adding search
>>>> results across wiki projects in the same language would be useful,
>>>> relevant, and are of interest to users.
>>>>
>>>> We've written up the details
>>>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements> [1],
>>>> came up with a multitude of designs
>>>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Design>
>>>> [2], and had many conversations on both talk pages and with our own
>>>> internal Design team. We have also outlined the initial tests
>>>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Testing>
>>>>  [3]
>>>> that we'd like to run.
>>>>
>>>> These planned A/B tests would run for about a week and would only be
>>>> shown to a small subsection of users that visit the Wikipedia(s) that the
>>>> tests are running on. The analyzed results of these tests will be posted on
>>>> wiki so that everyone can see how they did in terms of usage and adoption
>>>> of the test group.
>>>>
>>>> We would like to know if there are any particular Wikipedias that would
>>>> want to help us test these new search results across projects in their
>>>> language. Interested community members might want to post something to
>>>> their project's Village Pump to build consensus. Wikipedias that are
>>>> related culturally or linguistically would also be of interest.
>>>>
>>>> Please post on our testing talk page
>>>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Testing>
>>>> [4] if there are any questions, concerns, or volunteers!
>>>>
>>>> Thanks!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_
>>>> Improvements
>>>> [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_
>>>> Improvements/Design
>>>> [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wi

Re: [Wikitech-ambassadors] Request for testing / early adoption of new cross-wiki search results

[Deborah Tankersley]

Thanks, Huji, to answer your question - this will be a short series of
tests on Wikipedia that will display additional relevant search results
across wikis in the same language to a selected number of users that fall
into our bucketing schema. Not everyone will see the new results every time
if they land on a search results listing page.

Cheers,

Deb


--
deb tankersley
Product Manager, Discovery
irc: debt
Wikimedia Foundation

On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 6:11 PM, Huji Lee  wrote:

> I think it would be best if we test it in at least one RTL wiki. I will
> mention this in the VP of Persian Wikipedia (FA WP).
>
> If it is meant to only be shown for select users and has no impact for
> others, I am wiling to volunteer myself as a tester.
>
> Huji
>
> On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 6:03 PM, Deborah Tankersley <
> dtankers...@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> The Discovery Search team is looking for a few language specific
>> Wikipedia sites that would be interested in helping with A/B testing for
>> cross-wiki search results. These tests would evaluate if adding search
>> results across wiki projects in the same language would be useful,
>> relevant, and are of interest to users.
>>
>> We've written up the details
>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements> [1],
>> came up with a multitude of designs
>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Design>
>> [2], and had many conversations on both talk pages and with our own
>> internal Design team. We have also outlined the initial tests
>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Testing>
>>  [3]
>> that we'd like to run.
>>
>> These planned A/B tests would run for about a week and would only be
>> shown to a small subsection of users that visit the Wikipedia(s) that the
>> tests are running on. The analyzed results of these tests will be posted on
>> wiki so that everyone can see how they did in terms of usage and adoption
>> of the test group.
>>
>> We would like to know if there are any particular Wikipedias that would
>> want to help us test these new search results across projects in their
>> language. Interested community members might want to post something to
>> their project's Village Pump to build consensus. Wikipedias that are
>> related culturally or linguistically would also be of interest.
>>
>> Please post on our testing talk page
>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Testing>
>> [4] if there are any questions, concerns, or volunteers!
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>>
>> [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements
>> [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_
>> Improvements/Design
>> [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_
>> Improvements/Testing
>> [4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Cross-wiki_Search_Re
>> sult_Improvements/Testing
>>
>> --
>> deb tankersley
>> Product Manager, Discovery
>> irc: debt
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
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[Wikitech-ambassadors] Request for testing / early adoption of new cross-wiki search results

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hello,

The Discovery Search team is looking for a few language specific Wikipedia
sites that would be interested in helping with A/B testing for cross-wiki
search results. These tests would evaluate if adding search results across
wiki projects in the same language would be useful, relevant, and are of
interest to users.

We've written up the details
 [1],
came up with a multitude of designs

[2], and had many conversations on both talk pages and with our own
internal Design team. We have also outlined the initial tests

[3]
that we'd like to run.

These planned A/B tests would run for about a week and would only be shown
to a small subsection of users that visit the Wikipedia(s) that the tests
are running on. The analyzed results of these tests will be posted on wiki
so that everyone can see how they did in terms of usage and adoption of the
test group.

We would like to know if there are any particular Wikipedias that would
want to help us test these new search results across projects in their
language. Interested community members might want to post something to
their project's Village Pump to build consensus. Wikipedias that are
related culturally or linguistically would also be of interest.

Please post on our testing talk page

[4] if there are any questions, concerns, or volunteers!

Thanks!


[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements
[2]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Design
[3]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Testing
[4]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Testing

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[Wikitech-ambassadors] Latest search updates

[Deborah Tankersley]

After extensive testing over the last several months using a new search
query scoring method called BM25 (Best Matching) [1], we recently completed
a limited
​production ​
release to the following top languages: English, German, Spanish, Russian,
Portuguese, French, Italian, Polish, Dutch and Arabic. This new release is
replacing the older search method called tf-idf (term frequency-inverse
document frequency) [2].

We have
​additional
 testing to do [3,4] to figure out if BM25 will work in languages that
don’t use spaces in-between their words
​,​
i.e.: Japanese, Chinese, etc.

The Discovery team announces much of
​our​
 completed work in weekly status updates [5
​, 6​
], but some of the work isn’t actually obvious to anyone who uses our
search engine
​ - t​
hat is because it isn’t actually ‘live’ until a complete re-index of the
servers occur. We’ve created a recurring ticket in Phabricator [
​7​
] to keep track of the work that goes live
​ in production​
after a re-index, such as the one we’ve also just completed. A few
​ highlights​
of the
​recent ​
​re-index
 are implementing ascii-folding for the French language and
​fixing
 several
​ bugs​
for French ÿ, and Russian ’Е’ and 'Ё' when
​those characters are ​
entered in a search query.

Cheers from the Discovery Search Team!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okapi_BM25
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf
[3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T147495
[4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T147501
​[5]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery#Updates​
[
​6​
] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/Status_updates
[
​7​
] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T147505


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[Wikitech-ambassadors] New functionality: cross-wiki search results

[Deborah Tankersley]

The Discovery Search Team wants to enable search results
​on Wikipedia ​
that will include articles
​ ​
gathered across
 all sister wiki
​​
 projects – within the same language –
but we need your feedback.​

​​

​Please read t
he specifics of how this new functionality
 [1]
might work
​ ​
and
​ add​

​comments, concerns,
 or alternative ideas for design options

 [2]
​ on the talk pages​
.
​

See an image

[3]
that shows one of many example display options that have been mocked up,
after considering what other wiki communities have done.

Thank you for your time
​ and c
heers from the Search Team!​


[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements
[2]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Design
​
​[3]
*https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Search_results_page-enwiki_right-hand-box-general-projects.png
*


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[Wikitech-ambassadors] Opening the door to a new look...a Wikipedia.org Portal Page Update

[Deborah Tankersley]

Everyone who uses the wikipedia.org  [1] portal
is familar with the look of the page: a beautiful puzzle globe encirled by
the top ten viewed languages; a long list with Wikipedias in hundreds of
languages that can all be read and explored; the search box that can make
queries in nearly any language; and a compilation of related Wikimedia
projects.


Over the last eight months, the Wikimedia Foundation's Portal team
 [2], part of the
Discovery
department  [3], has
been busy improving the discoverability of information within the portal to
make it more contemporary and easier to use.

To start, we’ve updated the search box. When you are entering a query, you
will now see images and metadata that correspond to your search

[4], and you're also free change the search language without leaving the
page.

We’ve also optimized the portal site, making it load faster by utilizing
smaller sized images and streamlining the page code.

A fairly inconspicuous change to the page will immediately detect your
browser’s preferred (or default) language and rearrange the top ten links
to display those languages first, along with the remaining top ten viewed
wiki’s by language, around the globe.

In this example

[5], The Free Encyclopedia is displayed in Portuguese, since it is the
browser’s first preferred language and English is the second.

Here is a helpful site
 [6] that
explains how to change your preferred language on various browsers.

We’ve also added sister project descriptions

[7], located in the page’s footer, which will hopefully spark curiosity as
to what a person might find when they visit those individual projects.

The look and feel of the long list of every available language wiki (sorted
by article count) has been modernized and placed inside an elegant drop down

[8]. This new feature makes finding your language wiki a bit easier on the
eyes as well as providing easy access on any device.

We hope you enjoy using the new portal page! You can view a short video

[9] that shows some of these new features.

*And, if you don’t quite remember what the old Wikipedia portal site looked
like before we made any changes, here’s a reminder
 *[10].

Cheers from the Discovery Portal Team!

[1] https://www.wikipedia.org/
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery
[4]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia,org-searchbox_highlight-Aug2016_screenshot.png
[5]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWikipedia.org-globe-sorted-languages_screenshot.png
[6] https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-lang-priorities
[7]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia.org-sister-projects-text_screenshot.png
[8]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia.org-language-dropdown_screenshot.png
[9]
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Wikipedia.org-new-layout_movie-Aug2016.ogg
[10] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia.org-01Jan2016.png


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[Wikitech-ambassadors] Fwd: [discovery] Stripping Question Marks From Wiki Searches is Now Live!

[Deborah Tankersley]

Forwarding...

-- Forwarded message --
From: Trey Jones 
Date: Thu, Aug 4, 2016 at 1:25 PM
Subject: [discovery] Stripping Question Marks From Wiki Searches is Now
Live!
To: A public mailing list about Wikimedia Search and Discovery projects <
discov...@lists.wikimedia.org>


*Stripping Question Marks From Wiki Searches*
*Do you ask questions on Wikipedia? Would you like better results?*

*Summary:* Because the large majority of question marks are used to ask
questions by users unfamiliar with bash-style wildcards
, the default behavior
for CirrusSearch will now be to ignore question marks (replacing them with
a space). Escaping them with a backslash (\?) will preserve their wildcard
meaning. Regular expressions in *insource:* will not be affected and should
not be escaped. This option can be modified on a per-wiki basis if needed
(see $wgCirrusSearchStripQuestionMarks

).


When people ask *how old is tom cruise?* on Wikipedia they almost certainly
don’t expect the question mark in *cruise?* to match an additional letter.
They aren’t looking for the words *cruised, cruiser, * or *cruises—*but
that’s what they get, and it keeps them from finding the information they
are really after.

Search on Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects) includes a lot of
features that most users don’t know about. Most require special keywords,
and some even require specialized knowledge, such as familiarity with
regular expressions. It’s pretty difficult to invoke these special features
by accident.

But search also supports two particular bash-style wildcards without any
special syntax: *** will match any number of characters, and *?* will match
exactly one. Asterisks do come up from time to time, but people use
question marks all the time—because they like to ask questions!

A recent review of query-string features

called
out quotes and question marks as the two largest-impact predictors of
unsuccessful queries on Wikipedia. In a follow-up survey of queries with
question marks

in
six of the top ten Wikipedias (by search volume), most question marks are
being used to ask questions (the other four of the top 10 were not
reviewed). In all ten of the top ten, stripping final question marks
dramatically decreased the number of ?-final queries that got either no
results, or very few results (i.e., less than 3). The improvement was
around 10-45% for ?-final queries, depending on the wiki. The overall
impact is much more modest (less than 0.5%) because queries with question
marks are not terribly common.

As a result of this analysis, we’ve implemented a change to search which
will by default replace question marks with spaces (to preserve the word
boundaries they intend in queries like *how?why?*). This setting can be
changed on a per-wiki basis, and other options include (i) only stripping
question marks at a clear word boundary (such as before a space), (ii) only
stripping question marks at the end of the query, and (iii) leaving the
question marks alone.

For the rarer users who do use question marks as a one-letter wildcard,
when question mark stripping is enabled, question marks can be escaped with
a backslash (e.g., *wiki\?edia*) to preserve their original wildcard
meaning. Power searchers who use *insource:* won’t need to do anything
special; queries with*insource:* will not be modified.

Here's a screenshot
 of
the former question mark behavior, where it is treated as a wildcard.
Note that “living?” only matches the name “Livings”, leading to two very
unsatisfactory results.

Here's a screenshot
 of
the new question mark behavior, where it is ignored. Now the question
and part of the answer can be seen in the snippet for the very first
result, and all of the top three results seem relevant.

(Sorry I can't embed the screenshots—the mailing list won't allow messages
over 40K.)

Trey Jones
Software Engineer, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation

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[Wikitech-ambassadors] Wikipedia seeks to speak your language

[Deborah Tankersley]

Using language detection to search the right Wikipedia

Wikipedia readers speak many languages, so it’s not a surprise that
sometimes they search for phrases not in the language of the wiki that
they’re currently reading. This, unfortunately, can lead to poor search
results. A recent survey we completed on English Wikipedia identified
searches done in 40 different languages

 [1]!

The Wikimedia Discovery department
 [2] wants to help
people easily find what they are looking for. In order to do this, the
Discovery Search team is rolling out new language identification software
to the Wikipedia search engine.

This new software will detect when a search is unsuccessful, but appears to
be in a different language. When this happens, the search results page will
include results from the Wikipedia of the automatically detected language.
These new cross-wiki results will be displayed along with the local-wiki
results, if there are any. We’ve recently enabled the language
identification and search results for the English, French, German, Italian,
and Spanish-language Wikipedias.

The next group of Wikipedias to have language detection enabled will
includeIndonesian,
Japanese, Portuguese, and Russian

[3]. We
are investigating ways to bring language detection to more Wikipedias and
to other Wikimedia projects.

The Search team has other language detection ideas and plans in the works.
We’re thinking about ways to improve language detection with smarter
measures of confidence

[4].
We are also exploring detection of search in one character set while using
a keyboard from another character set. Early experiments with English and
Russian

[5]
are promising!

You can find technical details about our new language detection module
(TextCat) onMediaWiki.org  [6]. PHP
 [7] and updated Perl
 [8] libraries are also available
and the libraries include language models for dozens of languages.

You can also test the language detection using our online demo
 [9]. The demo lets you try all the
different language models on your own text. It also includes tutorials and
lots of additional information about TextCat’s internal workings.

Let’s get searching - now with language detection and better results! You
can read theblog post
 [10] and
more detailed information is here

 [11].

*Here's some nice screenshots of what it looked like before we added in the
language detection...[12]*



*and after we added in the language detection for a Russian query on
English Wikipedia [13]:*




*Thanks for reading - from the Discovery Search Team Gnomes!*


[1]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:TJones_(WMF)/Notes/TextCat_Re-optimization_for_enwiki#Other_languages_searched_on_enwiki
[2] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery
[3]
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:TJones_(WMF)/Notes/TextCat_Optimization_for_ptwiki_ruwiki_jawiki_and_idwiki
[4]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:TJones_(WMF)/Notes/TextCat_and_Confidence
[5]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:TJones_(WMF)/Notes/Typing_on_the_Wrong_Keyboard%E2%80%94Russian_and_English
[6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/TextCat
[7] https://github.com/wikimedia/wikimedia-textcat
[8] https://github.com/Trey314159/TextCat
[9] https://tools.wmflabs.org/textcatdemo/
[10] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/07/27/wikipedia-language-search/
[11]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_Seeks_to_Speak_Your_Language.pdf
[12]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AExisting-search_no-textcat.png
[13] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANew-search_with-textcat.png

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[Wikitech-ambassadors] Request for Feedback: Wikipedia.org to add mobile app download badges

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hello,

The Discovery Portal team would like to add Wikipedia app
 download badges near the
bottom of the wikipedia.org  portal page and
we're looking for your feedback.

These new app badges will link to a free download of the Wikipedia app for
Android and iOS mobile platforms and will be displayed just to those
visitors to the wikipedia.org portal page that are using a mobile device.

We hope that the app badges will provide an introduction to our visitors
who are interested in, or might prefer to use, the platform-native mobile
apps. It's an update that makes sense to the Portal team, but we wanted to
ask the community for feedback and suggestions.

If you're interested in finding out more, please visit this page
 to
read more details and view the draft mocks. Constructive feedback, thoughts
and ideas can be added and discussed on the talk page
;
and additional information about the portal can be found here
.


Cheers,

Deb
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Re: [Wikitech-ambassadors] Wikipedia.org portal update - browser language detection and new A/B test

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hi Romaine,

Yes, the search box on the wikipedia.org portal only shows results for the
language that you're currently searching in (which can be changed by
selecting a new language in the dropdown located in the search box). We
don't yet have the ability to search in all wikis at once but we'd like to
have that capability in the future.

I agree completely with your second point, the language question is a
difficult one. We have so many English readers that the search box is used
quite a bit on the portal, but quite a few other visitors click on one of
the primary language links around the globe and then (presumably) do their
search on that particular wiki. We visualize this information on our Portal
Dashboard <http://discovery.wmflabs.org/portal/#action_breakdown>, if
you're curious to find out more.

We fully intend to use translatewiki.net to help with our sister project
descriptive text once we get the framework setup on the Portal side to
incorporate the push files from translatewiki as they get updated.

Thanks again for the questions and compliments! :)

Cheers,

Deb








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On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 6:33 PM, Romaine Wiki  wrote:

> Hi Deb,
>
> Thanks!
>
> I just realised that also the search bar is based on detected language.
> This is logic, but at the same time I miss the option to search in all
> Wikipedias at once, instead of only the one language.
>
> The question about the language is a bit complex for me, especially the
> second part/option of the question. I am just thinking that if I visit an
> internet café or I use the laptop from an other language speaking friend, I
> would like the option to read the page in my own language, instead of the
> browsers language. Of course the detected language is a good starting point
> for most people.
>
> If I visit the portal page and I see a search option, and I do want to
> search something, I would try the search on the portal page. (But I am 100%
> sure that other people see their own language mentioned first and click on
> it.)
>
> About the to be translated text from sister projects, can
> translatewiki.net be used as for many other translations of system
> messages?
>
> Thanks for the work! :-)
>
> Romaine
>
>
>
>
> 2016-06-07 17:51 GMT+02:00 Deborah Tankersley :
>
>> Hi Romaine,
>>
>> We're glad you like the new page functionality! I've opened up a ticket
>> <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T137215> to fix the Dutch phrase
>> translation typo, thanks for letting us know. :)
>>
>> For your comment about adding in an option to change the language, I'm
>> curious about something, as this has come up before. Would you prefer to
>> use the portal page in the language that is detected (as we do now) or in a
>> different language but not actually searching on that language's wiki?
>>
>> For instance, if your preferred language is Dutch: would it make sense
>> for you to click on that language link on the portal page to go to
>> nl.wikipedia.org and then do a search? Or, even if the browser's
>> language is detected as Dutch (nl) would you rather use the portal page to
>> search in a different language, like English?
>>
>> Yes, thanks for asking, the sister project links will be translated and
>> we have a ticket <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T136441> open to get
>> that started. We wanted the descriptive text to be visible on the page to
>> give more insight into the sister projects, even though we don't have the
>> text translated yet.
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Deb
>>
>>
>> --
>> Deb Tankersley
>> Product Manager, Discovery
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 5:13 AM, Romaine Wiki 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Deb,
>>>
>>> Great improvement!
>>>
>>> Looking at the page, I only notice one major error. My language is Dutch
>>> (nl), and so my browser/computer system is set that way. However the phrase
>>> is spelled wrong: it says: "De vrieje encyclopedie" while it should say "De
>>> vrije encyclopedie". So: vrieje -> vrije. "vrieje" is not a Dutch word. Can
>>> this be fixed?
>>>
>>> Further I would recommend one thing to be added to the page. Because
>>> large parts of the word visit Wikipedia through internet cafés and
>>> computers elsewhere, I would suggest in the top right/left corner an option
>>> to change the language.
>>>
>>> And one final question: will the bottom section of the page also be
>>&g

Re: [Wikitech-ambassadors] Wikipedia.org portal update - browser language detection and new A/B test

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hi Romaine,

We're glad you like the new page functionality! I've opened up a ticket
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T137215> to fix the Dutch phrase
translation typo, thanks for letting us know. :)

For your comment about adding in an option to change the language, I'm
curious about something, as this has come up before. Would you prefer to
use the portal page in the language that is detected (as we do now) or in a
different language but not actually searching on that language's wiki?

For instance, if your preferred language is Dutch: would it make sense for
you to click on that language link on the portal page to go to
nl.wikipedia.org and then do a search? Or, even if the browser's language
is detected as Dutch (nl) would you rather use the portal page to search in
a different language, like English?

Yes, thanks for asking, the sister project links will be translated and we
have a ticket <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T136441> open to get that
started. We wanted the descriptive text to be visible on the page to give
more insight into the sister projects, even though we don't have the text
translated yet.


Cheers,

Deb


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On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 5:13 AM, Romaine Wiki  wrote:

> Hi Deb,
>
> Great improvement!
>
> Looking at the page, I only notice one major error. My language is Dutch
> (nl), and so my browser/computer system is set that way. However the phrase
> is spelled wrong: it says: "De vrieje encyclopedie" while it should say "De
> vrije encyclopedie". So: vrieje -> vrije. "vrieje" is not a Dutch word. Can
> this be fixed?
>
> Further I would recommend one thing to be added to the page. Because large
> parts of the word visit Wikipedia through internet cafés and computers
> elsewhere, I would suggest in the top right/left corner an option to change
> the language.
>
> And one final question: will the bottom section of the page also be
> translatable?
>
> Thanks!
> Romaine
>
>
>
> 2016-06-07 0:05 GMT+02:00 Deborah Tankersley :
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> The Discovery team recently updated the wikipedia.org portal page to
>> detect what the visitor's browser's preferred language(s) are and then
>> arrange the language links around the globe to match those language
>> preferences.
>>
>> Earlier this year, we ran a successful A/B test
>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal_A/B_testing#A.2FB_test:_browser_language_detection_.28completed.29>
>> that proved promoting our visitor's preferred languages resulted in
>> increased visibility and interest into these projects. Also, the display of
>> '*The Free Encyclopedia*' phrase is now localized to the visitor's first
>> preferred browser language. If there isn't a translation available, the
>> phrase will be displayed in English (view a screenshot
>> <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWikipedia_portal_top_10_links_re-sort.png>)
>> as it currently is today.
>>
>> Additionally, a new A/B test
>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal_A/B_testing#A.2FB_test:_languages_by_article_count_.28in_progress.29>
>>  will kick
>> off this week to determine if the listing of languages by article count can
>> be displayed in a more modern and streamlined way without decreasing usage
>> of the links. Our goal is to promote easy scrolling through the long list
>> of languages by article count, but in a dropdown format while also
>> providing greater discovery of the sister wiki project links.
>>
>> More information on past and future work can be found on the wiki page
>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal> as well as the
>> sprint <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-portal-sprint/>
>>  and backlog
>> <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-portal-backlog/>
>>  boards. We're always interested in receiving constructive feedback from
>> the community: if you have a question or comment, please start a discussion
>> on the talk page
>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikipedia.org_Portal>.
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Deb
>> --
>> Deb Tankersley
>> Product Manager, Discovery
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
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[Wikitech-ambassadors] Wikipedia.org portal update - browser language detection and new A/B test

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hello,

The Discovery team recently updated the wikipedia.org portal page to detect
what the visitor's browser's preferred language(s) are and then arrange the
language links around the globe to match those language preferences.

Earlier this year, we ran a successful A/B test

that proved promoting our visitor's preferred languages resulted in
increased visibility and interest into these projects. Also, the display of
'*The Free Encyclopedia*' phrase is now localized to the visitor's first
preferred browser language. If there isn't a translation available, the
phrase will be displayed in English (view a screenshot
)
as it currently is today.

Additionally, a new A/B test

will kick
off this week to determine if the listing of languages by article count can
be displayed in a more modern and streamlined way without decreasing usage
of the links. Our goal is to promote easy scrolling through the long list
of languages by article count, but in a dropdown format while also
providing greater discovery of the sister wiki project links.

More information on past and future work can be found on the wiki page
 as well as the sprint
 and backlog
 boards. We're
always interested in receiving constructive feedback from the community: if
you have a question or comment, please start a discussion on the talk page
.


Cheers,

Deb
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[Wikitech-ambassadors] Fwd: Wikipedia.org article statistics updated

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hello,

Just a quick note: the Discovery Portal team updated the articles by
language statistics on wikipedia.org this morning. I've uploaded a small
screenshot to Commons

that displays the new numbers.


Cheers,

Deb
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[Wikitech-ambassadors] update: wikipedia.org portal

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hello,

The Discovery Team recently added descriptive text to the Wikipedia.org
page footer in order to give visitors a better idea of what the sister wiki
projects are really all about. Check it out at www.wikipedia.org or view a
mobile screen capture here

.

We also wrapped up a quick, one question survey that ran for a week on the
portal to determine how visitors arrive at the page. The results showed
that many of the visitors arrive by clicking on a bookmarked link or by
typing in 'wikipedia' in their browser. We had many encouraging and
uplifting comments as well - see the full results here

.

In the coming weeks and months we'll be reaching out to many of those
survey takers who graciously provided their name and email addresses to
engage in deeper conversations on how they use the portal and Wikipedia in
general.

As always, more detailed information is available on wiki for the Wikipedia
Portal  and A/B testing
.

On behalf of our happy little Wikipedia.org Portal team,

Deb
--
Deb Tankersley
Product Manager, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikitech-ambassadors] [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia.org portal page update!

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hi Sam,

We're glad you're using the Portal page more than usual and we hope that
with upcoming future enhancements, you'll continue to enjoy it!

For your first question - we are currently focusing on the wikipedia.org
portal page at this time. We have no immediate plans to update the
individual wiki's with this code but that doesn't mean that anyone in the
community can't use our code to update another wiki to use the meta data
and images as we did, in the search results.

For your second question, we actually have a ticket
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T129627> open to look for input exactly
like that. When a user types in a few words that are not in the language
that has been previously selected, we're hoping to be able to switch to
that "new" language on the fly. I agree that it'll be a very neat feature
for us to have on the portal!

Thanks for your input!

Cheers,

Deb

--
Deb Tankersley
Product Manager, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 4:27 PM, Sam Klein  wrote:

> I'm using the portal much more these days!  Two thoughts, a few days in:
>
> = Is there a way to turn on thumbnailing on the individual language wikis
> too?
>
> = Auto-suggesting language based on charset would be nice.  when searching
> in multiple languages I always forget once to switch to the target language
> and end up getting search results for kanji on he.wp or for hebrew on ja.wp
>
> Thanks, SJ
>
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 4:25 AM, Michael Jahn 
> wrote:
>
> > I've played around a bit. Feels very cool!
> > Michael
> >
> > 2016-03-11 3:27 GMT+01:00 Deborah Tankersley  >:
> >
> > > Hello!
> > >
> > > I'm very pleased to announce that we've updated the Wikipedia.org
> > > <http://wikipedia.org/> portal page with a brand new search box that
> is
> > > more prominent and will now display meta data with images (as
> available)
> > in
> > > the search results (see attached image).
> > >
> > > This was a large effort by the Discovery Portal team to develop a
> > > JavaScript-only version of the language picker, so that JavaScript
> > enabled
> > > browsers will see all the new meta data. Alongside that effort, we also
> > > ensured that in JavaScript (JS) disabled browsers (or older Internet
> > > Explorer versions), our visitors won't have a bad experience when
> > choosing
> > > a language to search in. (Note: in older IE versions and JS disabled
> > > browsers, the type-ahead and meta data search results information will
> > not
> > > be displayed.)
> > >
> > > We also implemented a shorter language code (ie: EN for English, ES for
> > > Spanish, etc) to allow for more characters to be typed into the search
> > box.
> > > When a user toggles the language selector, the full language name will
> be
> > > displayed in the dropdown for easy finding of the language you prefer
> to
> > > search in. For the more technical minded - I've attached a screenshot
> of
> > > one of the ways we test our code, visually.
> > >
> > > We're interested in hearing your feedback or if you have any questions!
> > >
> > > On behalf of the very happy Wikipedia.org Portal Team,
> > >
> > > Deb
> > >
> > > --
> > > Deb Tankersley
> > > Product Manager, Discovery
> > > Wikimedia Foundation
> > > ___
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Leiter Kommunikation
> > Head of Communications
> >
> > Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
> > Tel. (030) 219 158 260
> >
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> >
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> > Gesamtheit des Wissens der Menschheit hat. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
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> unter
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> > Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.
> > ___

Re: [Wikitech-ambassadors] [discovery] Wikipedia.org portal page update!

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hi David,

Thanks for the kind comments!

> It looks great, well done.


I've created a phabricator ticket
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T129748> for this comment:

> With my configuration, contents slightly overflow the page when using a
> window of between 481 and 560 px wide. I would increase the border between
> mobile and desktop view from 480 px to ~550 px (or would modify contents so
> that we didn't need to modify that limit).


I've also updated this ticket <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T129696>
with your screen shot:

> Having written a topic in the search box, the selected summary overflows
> the box after clicking.
>
> http://davidabian.com/screenshots/wikimedia/wikipedia-org-results-overflowing.png



I believe the license (and other icons that we don't display on the page)
are meant for browsers, app, etc that look for that type of information if
their site requires uses of it's display.

> While a license (CC BY-SA 3.0) is specified in the HTML
> (),
> no license is displayed to the user.


As for future work of this nature being completed on the wikimedia.org
portal site, that's TBD at this point. I'd like to investigate how much
traffic actually goes to that portal page (ticket
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T129750>).

Also - there is no set order of the sister project links at the bottom of
the page as far as aligning with other wiki pages listing the sister
projects.

Thanks again!

Cheers,

Deb

--
Deb Tankersley
Product Manager, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation

On Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 6:46 AM, David Abián 
wrote:

> It looks great, well done.
>
> However, I leave some comments:
>
> * With my configuration, contents slightly overflow the page when using
> a window of between 481 and 560 px wide. I would increase the border
> between mobile and desktop view from 480 px to ~550 px (or would modify
> contents so that we didn't need to modify that limit).
>
> http://davidabian.com/screenshots/wikimedia/wikipedia-org-485.png
>
> * Having written a topic in the search box, the selected summary
> overflows the box after clicking.
>
>
> http://davidabian.com/screenshots/wikimedia/wikipedia-org-results-overflowing.png
>
> * While a license (CC BY-SA 3.0) is specified in the HTML ( rel="license" href="//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">), no
> license is displayed to the user.
>
> And some questions:
>
> * Are you planning to make something similar with wikimedia.org?
>
> * Do you follow a specific order when linking to the sister projects? I
> see that wikipedia.org and wikimedia.org show the projects in a
> different order.
>
> Thank you!
>
> El 11/03/16 a las 19:18, Deborah Tankersley escribió:
> > Hello!
> >
> > I'm very pleased to announce that we've updated the Wikipedia.org
> > <http://wikipedia.org/> portal page with a brand new search box that is
> > more prominent and will now display meta data with images (as available)
> > in the search results (link
> > <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_searchbox_with_metadata.png
> >).
> >
> > This was a large effort by the Discovery Portal team to develop a
> > JavaScript-only version of the language picker, so that JavaScript
> > enabled browsers will see all the new meta data. Alongside that effort,
> > we also ensured that in JavaScript (JS) disabled browsers (or older
> > Internet Explorer versions), our visitors won't have a bad experience
> > when choosing a language to search in. (Note 1: in older IE versions and
> > JS disabled browsers, the type-ahead and meta data search results
> > information will not be displayed.)
> >
> > We also implemented a shorter language code (ie: EN for English, ES for
> > Spanish, etc) to allow for more characters to be typed into the search
> > box. When a user toggles the language selector, the full language name
> > will be displayed in the dropdown for easy finding of the language you
> > prefer to search in. For the more technical minded - I've also uploaded,
> > to Commons, a screenshot
> > <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sample_browsers_tested.png> of
> > one of the ways we test our code, visually.
> >
> > We're interested in hearing your feedback or if you have any questions!
> > (Note 2: My apologies for not getting this email out yesterday, but I
> > had had issues with size limitations of my screenshots.)
> >
> > On behalf of the very happy Wikipedia.org Portal Team,
> >
> > Deb
> > --
> > Deb Tankersley
> > Product Manager, Discovery
> > Wikimedia Foundation
> >
> >
> >

[Wikitech-ambassadors] Wikipedia.org portal page update!

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hello!

I'm very pleased to announce that we've updated the Wikipedia.org
 portal page with a brand new search box that is
more prominent and will now display meta data with images (as available) in
the search results (link
).

This was a large effort by the Discovery Portal team to develop a
JavaScript-only version of the language picker, so that JavaScript enabled
browsers will see all the new meta data. Alongside that effort, we also
ensured that in JavaScript (JS) disabled browsers (or older Internet
Explorer versions), our visitors won't have a bad experience when choosing
a language to search in. (Note 1: in older IE versions and JS disabled
browsers, the type-ahead and meta data search results information will not
be displayed.)

We also implemented a shorter language code (ie: EN for English, ES for
Spanish, etc) to allow for more characters to be typed into the search box.
When a user toggles the language selector, the full language name will be
displayed in the dropdown for easy finding of the language you prefer to
search in. For the more technical minded - I've also uploaded, to Commons,
a screenshot
 of one
of the ways we test our code, visually.

We're interested in hearing your feedback or if you have any questions! (Note
2: My apologies for not getting this email out yesterday, but I had had
issues with size limitations of my screenshots.)

On behalf of the very happy Wikipedia.org Portal Team,

Deb
--
Deb Tankersley
Product Manager, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation
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[Wikitech-ambassadors] Portal Improvements wiki page update

[Deborah Tankersley]

Hi all,

I've made multiple updates of text, images, ideas and more on the Wikipedia.org
portal improvements

page
on Meta, go check it out!

The page now displays what the Discovery Portal team has been working on this
quarter
:
what
minor improvements to the site that we've released into production and the
items we have coming up next. I've also updated the A/B test mocks

and
descriptions for clarity into our testing process.

Please let us know if there are any questions or concerns!

PS: I'm resending this email out to add the Wikitech-ambassadors email
list. :)


Cheers,

Deb

--
Deb Tankersley
Product Manager, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation
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