Wikipedia.org Portal brainstorming ideas for future

The ideas presented here were discussed during an informal brainstorming session about future work for the Wikipedia.org portal; held on April 20, 2016. Additional thoughts and ideas are always welcome!

Agenda:

 * 1) How do we feel about the work that we've committed to this quarter?
 * 2) What do we think needs to be worked on as a close follow-on into next quarter?
 * 3) How do we see the Portal evolving over the next year?

Ideas for the Portal:

 * display news content from other wikis


 * suggest interesting topics ("I want to see most read articles in [category]")


 * social trending - display latest 3 (tweets, tumblr, instagram, etc) posts with #wikipedia


 * social sharing - make it easy for folks to share content presented on the portal


 * picture of the day


 * breaking news articles ("what's happening right now in [country]?")


 * work with fundraising to figure out a way to use the portal for donations
 * (not all the time, timely campaigns?)


 * display content relevant for our best guess of the location the user is browsing from


 * Search for 'images' or 'books' or 'news'
 * tabbed search results by project? Wikipedia | Commons | Wikivoyage | etc..


 * Encourage visitors to edit
 * or how to become an editor
 * put edit buttons on all the things!


 * use iOS app "feeds" feature for inspiration


 * Allow users to customize the feeds
 * default should be really simple, but customizing would increase the likelihood that I would come back regularly
 * not having ads helps here.


 * Display search results on the portal itself
 * search results - shown on the portal page (not immediately move to a different search page)?


 * add in something for editors/contributors?


 * Portal searches could take users to an experimental UI for wp


 * maybe add in something in search results to go to the article in edit mode

Ideas for UX work - not on the Portal:

 * type-ahead on wiki


 * metadata in search results on wiki


 * language detection while typing in a search box


 * Making the Go button behave without surprises


 * Present search results more attractively


 * improve commons searching

Needs for the Portal:
Find out why users come to the Portal and don't do anything.
 * Surveys:
 * talk with users to ask how/why they use the Portal
 * try to communicate with those users that bounce from the portal page and discuss why they bounce


 * Analytics from A/B tests:
 * will tell us a lot!