Wikimedia Apps/Office Hours

Background

With the continuous progress that we have been making during the past couple of years in the apps team, we found that it’s a must to have two-way communication channels with the users. That’s why a Community Relations (now Movement Communications) Specialist dedicated to the team joined us during mid of 2022 and started to represent us in Wikimedia’s events.

We think it’s time now to start organizing and having office hours with users, where we can listen to live comments, suggested features and present our roadmap and upcoming projects.

Office Hours

February 2024

We hosted two synchronous community consultations & recorded a third where we shared the Edit Patrol workflow/ Anti Vandalism, 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: English recording, recording with Spanish interpretation(passcode: za2.jeE8).
- Chinese - shared via asynchronously: recording, slides, transcripts: Simplified, Traditional

October 2023

The next office hour will be 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 from the following: https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/83695206107

Feel free to share your questions and thoughts about Wikipedia’s mobile apps here in this section, 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.

Also, we can provide Arabic and French interpretations if we get +7 sign-ups for each language here before the 3rd of October.

If you'd like a one-day reminder before the meeting, simply add your username, and we'll ensure you don't miss it.

We will be waiting for you all!

You can add your thoughts, questions and usernames as follows:

1. Is it possible to think of Diversification of development resources/support from just binary Supported-Notsupported? --Zblace (talk) 10:55, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you @Zblace, for sharing this question with us; it's noted and will be presented to our product manager for discussion during the meeting.

ARamadan-WMF (talk) 14:42, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

So, Is this inquiry specifically related to the apps? because all of the things we have built are supported, if not we’d sunset it. If this pertains to Desktop or Mobile Web, please inform me, and I will direct it to the appropriate individual. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 08:31, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2. Not sure if this is the right forum for suggestions ... but I'd like to mention two improvements to the mobile UI. (1) Grouping changes by page in the mobile watchlist. (2) Mobile edit lacks an option to view changes before saving. YBG (talk) 03:39, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for sharing your ideas, @YBG! This is a great place to speak your mind.

We'll chat about both of these suggestions in our online meeting. We're really glad you're involved, and we're excited to talk about these topics. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 15:07, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In the past few weeks, I’ve started using the reply feature on talk pages and am finding it very intuitive and very useful.

One improvement idea: an edit option, available only on the very latest post and only to that editor, so typos could be fixed without having to edit the whole section. YBG (talk) 05:16, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is very good to be heared; is this about the Android app or the iOS app?

On the Android app we’ve made it possible to edit an entire talk page, so that you can fix an error. We are working on this improvement for the iOS app. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 08:34, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, there are two ways to do this. One is by pressing the right and left icons once in a diff view. The other is to go to the article and then revision history, they will see all of the changes to that specific article. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 17:40, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

3. Will be at the meeting.... Anupamdutta73 (talk) 12:33, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @Anupamdutta73,

We would love to finally meet you after volunteering in the previous app projects!

ARamadan-WMF (talk) 09:49, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

4.they Should be an awareness on the app usage, and the app is not really user friendly, the font is not bold enough and more features should be provided, and if it can have a voice reader to listen online User:Obedmakolo (talk) 13:56, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Obedmakolo,

These points will be included in the presentation, thank you for your participation!

ARamadan-WMF (talk) 09:48, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

When you say app usage, are you looking to know how frequently the app is used worldwide or what your specific app usage?

Have you tried changing the font size through the toolbar theme options, or are you hoping to have all text bold?

Thank you for the feedback about the voice reader, we will consider it sometime in the future. Check this answer for how to listen to Wikipedia on iOS. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 08:35, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, if you want specific features in the app, tell us. We'll check if we're already working on them. If not, we can create tickets to keep track of them, and you can see how they're doing on our tracking system, Phabricator. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 08:41, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

5. Will be at the meeting ... hope for Arabic interpretations.--حبيشان (talk) 18:15, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @حبيشان,

Great, see you at the meeting! and if we got +7 signups we can prepare the Arabic interpretation for sure.

ARamadan-WMF (talk) 09:46, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

6. Hello, will be there. Hopefully my suggestions have been included in the topics. Jarrod Baniqued (talk) 09:38, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hey @Jarrod Baniqued,

Thanks for confirming your participation!

Could you let us know if your suggestions were related to the iOS watchlist or other areas of the app? We want to make sure we cover your feedback during the discussions.

ARamadan-WMF (talk) 09:45, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t think my suggestions were on the watchlist. They were better integration of iOS autocomplete/spell check into the app, better cursor + find and replace integration, and edit buttons for subheadings on the app. Apparently they’re lower priority. Jarrod Baniqued (talk) 12:17, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I will make sure they got covered during the meeting.

ARamadan-WMF (talk) 12:48, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We are currently working to improve the iOS editor. I’ve tagged you in the ticket.

We hope you will try it out once its released on Beta so that we can ensure your ideas are included in that body of work. Find and replace does exist in the app, are you hoping to see it done differently? let us know so we can create your suggestion in a Phab. ticket for the future. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 08:44, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

7. I'd love to know if and when there will be an visual editor in the app. -- Discostu (talk) 06:41, 10 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We are currently working on improving the iOS editor, if you are an iOS user, please subscribe to this ticket to test out the new editor and give us feedback once we finish development.

As far as Visual Editor, it would take several years to build VE specifically. VE on Desktop and Mobile Web took several years of development from a dedicated team. It isn’t completely off the table, and we understand the value of VE, we just haven’t been given clearance to prioritize a multiyear effort for bringing a native WSYWIG editor to the apps. However, we will continue to explore ways to get closer to a better editing experience in the apps. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 09:09, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

8. I'm looking forward to the meeting, no matter the discussion topic. I'm not sure if this is the best place for this sort of inquiry, but I noticed that sometimes pages with a high volume of edits do not show the most recent page version. This is most noticeable on this enwiki page. Clovermoss (talk) 17:18, 20 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We got you, Clovermoss, and always happy to see your notes.

This issue includes this task: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T274359

which happens because of the cached responses that the apps get from the apis, which do not keep up with the rate at which an article is edited if it is a heavily edited article. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 17:30, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

9. looking forward for the meeting, Muhammed amine benloulou (talk) 23:45, 20 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Summary

The meeting turned out to be a productive discussion between the apps team and the attending community members and users. You can find details on all the topics covered in this presentation deck.

March 2023

We started to announce our first office hours during the first week of March 2023 as follows:

Hey all,

I would like to invite you to the first office hour for the mobile apps team in 2023.

It will take place on the 24th of March at 5 pm UTC. You can check your zone’s exact time through this zone stamp.

The host will be Jazmin Tanner, Lead Product Manager of the apps team, with a number of our software engineers.

You can join at the mentioned time through this link: https://meet.google.com/aww-miri-kik.

And the meeting will be recorded.

You can add your questions and thoughts about Wikipedia’s mobile apps here, and the last date to add your input will be on the 20th of March at 12:00 UTC.

We will be waiting for you all!

Summary

The office hour started on time with a number of our community users, the following points were discussed:

History of apps
App partnerships
Work Prioritization
Roadmap
Custom learning and Discovery
Quick but impactful contributions
Meaningful connections
Platform reliability
Tracking
FY 23-24

You can know more from our presentation deck. See also our office hours.

There were also some questions from the attendees about the differentiation between the road map of the Android VS. the iOS one, the nearby feature for the Android and the beta versions too.