Wikimedia Apps/Reading lists/Share Project

This page talks about the Apps Team work to enable users to share reading list they create in the Wikipedia apps on Android or iOS.

It contains information about the goals of this work, the past efforts that have influenced it and why sharing reading lists is one of our priorities July 2022–December 2022.

To follow how this project is developing, the team recommends visiting and/or adding the updates section of this page to your watchlist. If you would like to be invited to conversations about specific topics, please notify us on this talk page.

Background
In early 2016, the Apps team updated their existing Saved Pages to a new feature called Reading lists. Reading Lists allowed users to put saved articles into folders and to label and make a basic description for their folders. The original feature design included the ability for logged-in users to sync their lists across devices, using the list storing capabilities of the Collections extension.

For reasons unrelated to the apps and their user's needs, these plans were paused. In early 2017 the Android team made a number of improvements to the Reading Lists feature, to make them easier to manage for users and solidify the offline saving elements, based on research identifying offline saving as a major area of focus for serving New Readers.

Reading lists has since become a popular feature, and there have been several requests over the years from the community to enable sharing reading lists with other users, and export reading lists to save to their device.

Objective
Our objective is to enable app readers to curate, save and share a collection of content that is interesting and relevant to them.

Hypothesis
We believe when users receive a reading list it will motivate them to read Wikipedia articles they may not have otherwise. Additionally, because the feature is only available in the apps, we believe the feature will increase installs of the Android and iOS apps.

Testing our Hypothesis
We will test our hypothesis by monitoring data in for the Android app in the following target growth regions:


 * Africa (Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Kenya, DR Congo, Angola, Nigeria and Ghana)
 * South Asia (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal).

These countries were selected based on data that shows disproportionate pageviews relative to active installs. Additionally, we took into consideration Smartphone usage in these countries relative to active installs.

Key Performance Indicators

 * At least 20% of initial users will engage with the feature again within 30 days after initial engagement
 * Increase pageviews in target growth markets by 5% within 90 days of release


 * Increase app downloads from target growth markets six months after release at a rate higher than the same time period the previous two years

Additionally, we will conduct usability testing. While we welcome feedback from all, we will especially be focused on the language wikis below based on languages used in our target growth countries in the Android app:


 * English
 * Arabic
 * Hindi
 * French
 * Bengali
 * Spanish
 * Portuguese
 * German
 * Urdu

We will quantitatively monitor if the feature increases pageviews of wikis that are notably visited in the app but not as frequently as the language wikis listed above:


 * Sinhala
 * Egyptian Arabic
 * Swahili
 * Persian
 * Nepali
 * Telegu

Based on our first experiment with Reading List, we made the following adjustments ahead of our next experiment release:
 * Identically named articles retained during reading list export T329805.
 * Optimized "MB indication" UI when importing a reading list T327909.
 * Hide filesize indicator on reading list import temporarily T328474.
 * Add an option to delete multiple lists T320999.
 * Optimized performance when importing a shared reading list T327907.
 * Expanded the export feature to multiple reading lists T319345.


 * We created an in-app feedback form for reading list users to provide feedback on Sharing and Receiving through a link T321524,T322088.
 * We built a workflow for sharing reading lists through the app T316836.


 * Fixed a bug where the reading list tip flashed when importing a reading list T324521.
 * Finished building a receiving workflow for shareable reading lists; all the designs are available here T316834.

We fixed a bug where identical articles were duplicated. T318319.

As we begin our work on Reading Lists, we experimented with the possibility of users seeing a preview of a reading list being shared on a web page.

The user story we considered was, “As a Wikipedia Android app user in Ghana, I want to share my reading list with a family member in the US that has an iOS device, so they can read the articles I've saved about Accra ahead of their trip home in December and see a preview before committing to download the app.”

The possible methods included T316837 :


 * Adding JavaScript to the MediaWiki page, this approach was determined to not be feasible because we can not add JavaScript to a MediaWiki and add JavaScript into Central Notice.
 * Creating an extension.
 * Use Portals.
 * Create a microsite.
 * Creating low-fi mocks to get input from users for sharing a reading list T313740.
 * Serious research has been done to check the desired flow of sending a . Wikipedia files and importing it is possible for sharing a reading list T316048.