Wikimedia Apps/Team/iOS/Archive/Notifications

Overview
Mobile devices are deeply personal, integrating into your day, filling your attention and always on hand.

During our strategic alignment of Reach and mobile. Reading team strategy of experimenting on our native iOS app, our “official” platform, with new forms of engagement and mobile-centric features that make the app useful on a repeat basis (in the jargon “retention”).

notifications are a key part of most content apps and even many reference apps have them (dictionary word of the day, etc). In a world where attention is determined not just by a web search engine but by what appears on the lock screen of your phone, being part of that may be a vital way to keep our amazing trust of free culture and information visible in our mobile world, and continue to provide a viable alternative to commercial sources of information. Wikipedia’s role as fact-checker and deep dive source for news content was recently highlighted by a study from the Knight foundation and the Foundations recent analysis of the impact of Prince’s death on-wiki and on social media in relation to Wikipedia as a go-to source of information in times of high demand for reference material on specific people, places or events. Notifications and widgets provide a way to channel that interest directly to Wikipedia, bypassing the need for aggregators or search engines.

What if just by looking down you could read what Wikipedia says about the place you are standing? What if readers learned about a major world event on your tablet over you morning coffee from a free neutral source, with a transparent curation history and no transit through Apple or Google’s servers. what if each time a new POTD is selected on commons, or the featured article on en, hundred of thousands of people get excited and start reading the work of dedicated, amazing editors and photographers…

dangerous feature. The last thing we want to do is interruptt or annoy readers — we can easily avoid, but means we will have a long development process with more on wiki talk, qualitative design research [link], design and development iteration and beta testing.

Also many people may be concerned about privacy, but luckily both major mobile platforms provide a way for the app itself to “send” the notification. This means no data ever transits Apple’s servers, and the users notification preferences and history are no different, from a privacy perspective, than their in-app reading history.

See pushipedia for an example of this done well already on web.

General principles:

- total user control/localized data (opt-in, all done locally, and not “pushed” by central system — only requests for content to WMF and Wikidata servers and those are https)

- locally sent and not reliant on Apple infrastructure

- subject to our privacy and license terms

- on-wiki driven: either via existing Special pages, geotags, reading/editing behavior (pagviews and edit rate APIs) and Wikidata

Development plan:

- Mentioned in Q2 of 15/16, now committed to prototype/test in Q1 of 16/17.

- Dependent on Nearby development (link to wiki), also need to address some highly requested items, like find in page (link to phab) and better access to random (link to phab)

- Design research

- On wiki consultation

- Beta test within Q1 of 16/17

- Release a first public version of some notification and/or widget in Q2

Featured Article
Potentital stories:

1) educated non-fiction lover likes to queue up interesting things based on content notifications (sports, news) for commute with no wifi

2) loves the featured articles in his own language, so like knowing when a new one has been posted right on his phone, save for later

Curation: Featured article from the project’s main page

Triggers:

- when new FA posted (tie to watch list for logged in users?)

- on en “daily” at a certain time?

Pros:

Cons:

==Today in History==

Potentital stories:

1) history buff, can’t stand social media notifications or SMS, but likes to start his day with a set of notifications from reference/education apps

(way too specific/niche?)

2) science nerd girl who learns about hedy lamar from seeing her event on timeline

Curation: Special day page, outside en?

Triggers:

on day/time

on update of Main page section on en

Pros:

Cons:

==Commons POTD==

Potentital stories:

1) loves to see the beatiful pictures appreciates theirs no ads, likes to save and share the best ones with his friend

2) commons contributor who loves to see what is picked each day, and makes it his lock screen if its particularly cool

Curation: commons editors

Triggers:

on update

on day/time

Pros:

Cons:

==In the News==

Potentital stories:

1) knew he died, but seeing in the news makes Indian woman interested in why did people admire Muhammad Ali, I’ll save it for later and learn more about him

2) older man learns about election results in his ancestral homeland because of Wikipedias global scope, catches up on the latest and really appreciates the NPOV, uses references links to find new news sources for current events in his home country he didn’t know

Curation: newsbox editors on main page for language

Triggers:

on update (i.e. watch list)

on day/time if available

on page views

on social media mentions

Pros:

Cons:

METADATA DRIVEN

==Nearby==

Potentital stories:

1) Saved pages “tour”

2) learning something new about a place near your train station (page views trigger)

Curation: geodata API and wikidata

Triggers:

location + saved

location + page views threshold (top % of page views in language?)

location + article quality threshold (only Good or Feature quality?)

location + wikidata category (“monument”,”museum”,”train station”)

Pros:

Cons:

==Trending==

Potentital stories:

1) learning something is happening you otherwise would not have..

2) terrorist attacks in paris is being heavily edited

2) guy likes to be in the know in pop culture discussions and like the

Curation: pageviews API

Triggers:

time/date

as soon as available

page view threashold

Pros:

Cons:

WATCHING — likely out of scope for v1 due to dependencies on Reading Lists, Watchlists or Echo, smaller user base and impact - Maybe should be main focus of v2, after cross wiki out and stable?

==Save Pages Changes==

Potentital stories:

1) saved a news topic

Curation: user

Triggers:

page saved locally has an edit or threshold count of edits

Pros:

Cons:

==Watchlist/Echo==

BIG CAUTIONARY NOTE ABOUT THIS ONE

Potentital stories:

1) watching a page that recently removed some questionable favorable material, get notified of a change, open the app and check

Curation: user

Triggers:

echo notification pushed

Pros:

Cons:

=Notification Center Widgets=

“Extension” allows us to provide access to Wikipedia in the OS layer and connect more deeply with power users, and ensures that we control curation, privacy and code license, rather than ceding that space to Apple or a private competitor.

==Nearby==

Potentital stories:

1) Waiting to meet a friend in a cafe in paris and learning about a place near you from your home screen, switching between english and french to improve your french

2) learning something new about a place near your train station (page views trigger)

Curation: geodata API, Pageviews and wikidata

==Trending==

Potentital stories:

1) Likes to see what people are interested in/reading about in spanish, living in the US, keeps him connected

2) Trusts wikipedia more than the news, likes to hear it first directly from the wiki

Curation: page views API (and edit rate ideally)

==Today in History==

Potentital stories:

1) history buff on vacation, reading Today on iPad lock screen by the fire, finding an event that interests

2) looking at the calendar on the today screen, sees someone famous shares my moms birthday today, and it turns out they went to the same school, I wonder if she knew that, I’ll send her this article

Curation: Special day page, outside en?

==Commons POTD==

Potentital stories:

1) middle aged woman in europe  appreciates seeing a beautiful photo in her today screen everyday without being tracked or registering or anything

2) likes to share the best pictures with his son

Curation:

==In the News==

Potentital stories:

1) news junkie wakes up and reaches for his phone and reading Today on phone when he wakes up, appreciates that its non-commercial, global and neutral

2) likes having wiki in with his other info sources because its less us politics focus, less sensational, knows his reading is private/non-commercial

Curation:

[OUT OF SCOPE FOR VERSION 1]

==Save Pages Changes==

Potentital stories:

Curation: user

==Watchlist/Echo==

Potentital stories:

Curation: