Mobile design/Uploads/status

Last update on: 2013-06-monthly

2013-01-monthly
This month, the mobile web team finished up work on the watchlist feature and kicked off a 3-month sprint on photo uploads. The focus in January was on developing basic uploading infrastructure: uploading images to Commons under a single Creative Commons license. We also built out the UX/UI design for a call to action on articles lacking images in the lead section. Through this workflow, users can upload an image to Commons and add a thumbnail of the image to the appropriate article on their local Wikipedia or sister project, in one simple step. We also developed a mobile uploads page where contributors can see their recent uploads and potentially donate more images from their mobile device to Commons. These features are currently live on the Beta mobile site and are set to be released to the full mobile site in February.

2013-03-monthly
In March, we added the ability to easily upload a lead image to articles that lack one in the stable version of the mobile site. We also deployed a workaround for an issue we discovered with heightened security features in some newer browsers that make logging in to all the projects via CentralAuth impossible in certain circumstances; that had prevented a number of users from being able to upload photos via the mobile site. We are now well on our way to reach our goal of 1000 unique uploaders/month by the end of the fiscal year. Check out the mobile app dashboard to see mobile contributions via the website and via apps. Also of note: we've added thumbnails of lead images from articles in the mobile watchlist view, as well as a "last modified" timestamp on articles in the stable version of the mobile site. We are currently focusing on some performance enhancements for the mobile site. In April we will graduate the "uploads dashboard" feature from beta to stable, will further refine our photo upload features, and will expose a feature to identify articles on subjects near your current location to the beta version of the site.

2013-04-monthly
In April, we experimented with a login/signup call to action for logged-out users from our in-article upload feature. This resulted in a huge spike in new user contributions; however, the quality of the uploads was lower than anticipated, and the quantity of inappropriate uploads was a burden on the Commons community. In light of this, we disabled the login/signup call to action, allowing only existing Wikimedians to see and use the upload feature. We are still on target to reaching our fiscal year target of 1,000 unique uploaders a month and, when gated to existing users, the quality of the uploads has vastly improved: 3/4th of the files are retained on Commons, as compared to less than 1/4 when brand-new users were uploading. To create a more focused uploading workflow and let mobile uploaders discover more articles to illustrate, we also created a Nearby view on the beta site, showing users a list of articles near them and highlighting the ones that need images. We expect to release this to the full mobile web site next month.

2013-05-monthly
This month, we've pushed the 'Nearby' view to the stable version of the mobile site. Now, with a location-aware device, you can easily identify articles close to your current location. We've also made ongoing improvements to photo uploads and the photo upload experience, including improved messaging around image quality and copyright requirements for new uploaders in the beta version of the mobile site. The upload features in general have been a great success, as we've sustained over 1000 unique uploaders over the last two months. We are continuing to experiment in the beta version of the site with improvements to article editing, an improved reorganization of site navigation, Echo notifications, talk pages, and simplifying discovery of article actions (eg editing and watching). We plan to launch these beta features over the course of the next month.

2013-06-monthly
This month, we focused on improving education around uploads, including an interactive Commons tutorial and first-time user copyright and scope check. We also released our "Nearby" feature to production, allowing users to find articles near them that are in need of images, take photos and upload them via mobile.