Wikimedia mobile engineering

The Wikimedia Mobile Engineering department, a part of the Wikimedia engineering team, builds and develops apps and creates programs for improving and creating mobile support for Wikipedia. It also aims at helping millions without proper internet access through computers, gain access to Wikipedia through wireless devices. Wikimedia is currently working with mobile service providers across the globe to help people gain access to Wikipedia at waived prices. Feel free to check out its roadmap and goals for the upcoming year.

Wikimedia Commons App
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.

Wikipedia Zero


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.

Mobile Web Projects
This project aims at developing the features and design of 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.

Geo Data Storage and API
GeoData extension for MediaWiki provides a structured way to store, retrieve, and quickly query GPS related information from MediaWiki. Coordinates added to articles are now stored separately in the database, as opposed to being stored arbitrarily in wiki markup. This makes it easy to query the coordinates of a particular page or a list of pages around a given set of coordinates. The Solr search engine is used for spatial queries, making the searches extremely fast. All the functionality is also available via the API, allowing developers to create tools that use this data.

J2ME App
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.

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.
 * Follow us @WikimediaMobile on Twitter.
 * Join the MediaWiki technical mailing list mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org.
 * Follow the Wikimedia Tech Blog