Wikimedia Mobile engineering

Mission

The Wikimedia Mobile Engineering Department, a part of the Wikimedia engineering team, is responsible for creating, growing, and evolving how the diverse set of Wikimedia projects use mobile technologies. We do this through a diverse set of teams and projects focusing on mobile web, iOS and Android apps, and Wikipedia Zero.

Mobile

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  Tomasz Finc, Director Of Mobile

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  Juliusz Gonera, Software Engineer(Web)

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  Ryan Kaldari, Software Engineer(Web)

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  Arthur Richards, Senior Software Engineer(Web)

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  Jon Robson, Senior Software Engineer(Web)

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  Max Semenik, International Software Engineer(Web)

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  Monte Hurd, Software Engineer(Apps)

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  Yuvaraj Pandian, International Software Engineer(Apps)

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  Brion Vibber, Lead Software Architect(Apps)

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  Yuri Astrakhan, Senior Software Engineer(Partner)

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  Adam Baso, Senior Software Engineer

Teams

• Mobile web works primarily on Mobile Frontend, a MediaWiki extension providing a mobile web front-end to MediaWiki sites including Wikipedia. The mobile interface of a Wikimedia project can be reached by visiting langcode.m.X.org (where X is the name of a Wikimedia project). This project constitutes a number of sub-projects which include mobile web editing, a visual editor on the Mobile Frontend and structured profiles.
• Mobile Apps
• Wikipedia Zero

Projects

Bringing in new users

• Photo uploads including: Mobile Photo Upload A simple mechanism for users to upload photos from mobile devices, either directly to Commons or via a Wikipedia article or other front-end to Commons (Status). And Wikimedia_Apps/Commons app developed by Wikipedia for Android and iOS which helps users upload media directly to Wikimedia Commons, the free image repository of Wikipedia. Users can upload multiple files and add categories (Android only so far) and share uploads through their favorite image sharing sites. Users can also upload media directly to commons through Wikipedia's mobile version. Contributions to Commons can help illustrate the world’s largest encyclopedia and make knowledge come to life for millions of readers around the globe. Wikipedia has launched campaigns like Wiki Loves Monuments encouraging expert Commons users and people new to Wikimedia projects alike to contribute to high-need content areas. Have a look at what we have been up to, here.

• Mobile wikitext editing started on mobile web in beta on Jan 2013 and was released to stable on July 2013. It is also slated to appear in the new release of the Wikipedia app

• Mobile onboarding is aimed at onboarding new users acquired through mobile channels. Find user research here.

 

An Open Letter to Wikipedia by the students of Sinenjongo High School.

• Wikipedia Zero is an initiative of the Wikimedia Foundation to enable mobile access to Wikipedia free of data charges in developing countries. The objective of the program is to reduce barriers to accessing free knowledge—one of the largest barriers being cost of data usage. The Wikipedia Zero initiative is based on partnerships with mobile phone operators, whereby the operator agrees to deploy a version of Wikipedia in such a way that their users do not need to pay for data access. Follow the Wikimedia Q&A PAge and the Wikipedia Zero blog for detailed information on the project. Follow our developments in this project, here.

• The Wikipedia S40 J2ME app is designed for use on features phones (primarily Nokia Series 40) that enables efficient reading of Wikipedia. Despite the fact that J2ME is a dying platform for mobile apps, it is still prevalent in many parts of the world on a wide variety of feature phones. Recent feedback from mobile operators in India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America indicate a high preference for a J2ME app over Android apps and browser-based experiences.

• Wikipedia Over SMS and USSD: This project aims at providing access to Wikipedia over SMS and USSD using an open source project called Vumi.

Other Projects

Project	Description	Status
Open Street Map	OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world.	Status
Mobile support in MediaWiki core	Building native mobile-device support in MediaWiki by porting critical components of Extension: MobileFrontend to core and building additional functionality as needed.	Status
Mobile default for sister projects	Migrating our sister projects to default to their own mobile interfaces.	Status

Get Involved

Readers and Editors

• Report any issues you encounter casually browsing to our feedback list.
• Become a Wikimedia Beta tester and try out new features.
• Help us expand our currently set of tested browsers.
• Test the Wikimedia mobile projects in the languages you know and report any issues.
• Help translate the mobile user interface and apps by volunteering at translatewiki.
• Promote the Wikimedia Mobile engineering/imported/Mobile projects among your friends and Wikimedia fellows through Twitter, Facebook and other social networking tools.
• Browse not only Wikipedia but our sister sites on mobile and send us feedback.
• Try the app for: iOS, Android, or BlackBerry.
• Check the App Catalog to find more mobile apps developed by third parties relying on Wikimedia content.
• Help us brain storm what features you need most on mobile.

Developers

• If you receive any errors, report it on Bugzilla.
• Go through the repositories at Github and Gerrit and try out the code.
• Report and fix bugs in our beta sites.
• Help us write automation tests.
• Join us at irc.freenode.org #wikimedia-mobile and get involved and talk about our current projects.

Contact Us

• Talk and discuss our current projects at #wikimedia-mobile^connect.
• Follow us @WikimediaMobile on Twitter.
• Join the MediaWiki technical mailing list [email protected].
• Follow the Wikimedia Tech Blog

List of projects

Project	Description	Project lead & team	Status
Wikimedia Apps	[edit] Wikimedia Mobile Applications for iOS, Android, and new platforms	[edit] Tomasz Finc, Yuvi Panda, Jon Robson, Phil Chang & Brion Vibber	[edit] [add new] Status: (2013-12-monthly) The team added saved pages, article navigation, and language support to the mobile Wikipedia app. During the quarterly planning meeting, it was decided to postpone photo uploads from our market release plan in favor of text editing.
Commons App	[edit] An iOS and Android app that allows you to upload media to Commons.	[edit] Tomasz Finc, Brion, Yuvi, Shankar	[edit] [add new] Status: (2013-11-04) A large change set was made to the iOS Commons app including: Selectable licenses (3 most common licenses) Swipe to delete categories on yet-to-be-uploaded images Already-uploaded images now display license details iOS 7 compatibility - large number of visual updates Bug fix for images occasionally appearing out of order Gallery picker shows newest images at top Complete visual refresh of settings page and image details slider overlay Upload button remains onscreen while editing image title / description Delete button moved to bottom of image details slider overlay Better image pinch-zoom performance Double-tap to zoom image Two-finger single tap to reset image zoom Better internationalization support (via Autolayout) Better landscape and iPad support More consistent navigation bar back buttons More consistent settings, info and picture-of-day attribution icons Debug mode is hidden by default from settings
Wikipedia Zero	[edit] Free and zero rated access to Wikipedia through our partners	[edit] Tomasz Finc (Director of Mobile, Engineering); Carolynne Schloeder (Director of Mobile, Programs), Dan Foy (Tech Manager), Yuri Astrakahn, Adam Baso	[edit] [add new] Status: (2013-12-monthly) During the last month, the team implemented a global landing page redirector for mobile Wikipedia website access, added support for staged configuration submittals, enhanced interstitials based on input from the field from Wikipedia Zero markets, amended compression proxies support, analyzed USSD/SMS service and partner launch-related access, and added general bugfixes. The team also worked toward a generic JSON configuration extension for use by extension like ZeroRatedMobileAcces, and started on an HTML5 webapp proof of concept as an option for rebooting the Firefox OS app.
Mobile web projects	[edit] Features and design work on the Wikimedia MobileFrontend mobile gateway	[edit] Kenan Wang, Jon Robson, Juliusz Gonera, Ryan Kaldari, Max Semenik, Arthur Richards, Michelle Grover, Vibha Bamba	[edit] [add new] Status: (2013-12-monthly) We've been working on finishing the redesign of the overlays. Additionally we've continued work on mobile on-boarding. The "Keep going" feature has been changed to a workflow that asks users to add blue links and includes a tutorial. This is consistent with what we've learned about how guiding users helps accomplish more edits, and it fits into more of micro contributory workflow that we want to experiment with. We've also worked on an A/B test displaying an edit guider for users signing up from the left nav menu. This is mirroring the edit guider that displays for users signing up through the edit call to action. It also is consistent with the behavior that the desktop site will be displaying to users as a result of the OB6 A/B test.