Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Updates

: Plans and conversations about the deployment across the Wikimedia wikis

 *  Visual refinements.  We have completed the list of visual refinements. We planned to complete these before the deployments across more wikis.  These changes included work on link colors, icons, and overall look and feel of Vector 2022.  We welcome feedback and questions on any of these changes.  Write to us on the project talk page.
 *  Decision of the English Wikipedia community through the Request for Comment.  For the past two months, we have been discussing with the English Wikipedia community. English Wikipedians have identified issues blocking the deployment of Vector 2022 on their home wiki.  They have also requested that the decision on the deployment be made through the Request for Comment process.  Our draft is now available.  We're planning to launch the RfC on Wednesday, September 21.  If you edit English Wikipedia, we encourage you to take part!
 *  Deployment plans across other projects.  We are planning deployment conversations across all of the other Wikimedia projects. We will first begin with the smallest wikis.  By the smallest, we mean smaller than top 30 largest active communities.  We hope to complete this during the first week of October, 2022.  Then, we will begin conversations on medium to large-size wikis.  Dates will depend on the consensus across individual communities.
 * More community-facing activities
 * We have posted a new essay on the Diff blog. It has a title [ https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/08/18/prioritizing-equity-within-wikipedias-new-desktop/ Prioritizing equity within Wikipedia's new desktop].  The essay is about why and how different groups of users were represented throughout the process of building Vector 2022.
 * We have published the expanded Frequently asked questions page. Take a look and tell us if it's useful.  Soon, we will make it possible to translate it.
 * We also display banners encouraging to try out Vector 2022. The banners are only visible for logged-in users having Vector legacy (2010), the current default skin.

: Wikimania, visual refinements, and more changes
Having the structural changes to the features done, we are finishing development of Vector 2022. In particular:


 * We are working on the visual refinements. We will be changing the styles, link colors, font size, content area width, and more.  This is based on the results of the feedback we received from our last round of prototype testing.
 * We are releasing updates to the table of contents (ToC) based on the feedback we've received from communities. These updates will make the ToC easier to use on smaller and larger screens.  There will be more customization than before.  Over the next few weeks, you will see the following changes:
 * The table of contents will be collapsible at all screen sizes
 * Once collapsed, the ToC will be available at the top of the page, next to the article title, as well as in the sticky header
 * The Editing team, whose focus is currently on improving talk pages, has added an "add topic" button to the sticky header on talk pages. This will make it easier to start a new topic on a talk page from any part of the page, without having to scroll to the very top.  See their project page for more information on this change and the project overall.

We have also continued discussions on how to make Vector 2022 the default for more communities. Your feedback is helping us make the skin better. We appreciate that. Let's meet again! On Saturday August 13, we are having a session at Wikimania, and a separate meeting for questions and answers right after that.

: Page title/tabs switch
We are deploying one of our latest updates. The page title will be displayed above the tabs such as,  ,  ,  , or.

With this change, we are improving two things. First, we are making it clear that the items in the tabs are related to the the page that's being viewed. It's becoming apparent when we put the page title first. This change also makes switching languages easier. It moved the language button into an even more prominent position at the top of the page. Learn more on Phabricator.

We have been introducing this change in small steps. Since the last days of June, it's been available to all users opted into the Vector 2022 skin, and some early adopter wikis. During the week of July 4, the change will become visible on all the early adopter wikis.

In addition to that, our next office hours will be on July 26 instead of July 12. This will allow us to prepare the communication about making Vector 2022 the default across more wikis. We are also working on better language support for office hours in the future. More information on this coming soon!

: Table of Contents is available
We have deployed the new table of contents. It makes it easier to gain context of the contents of a page and navigate the page without needing to scroll to the top.

It is currently available to three groups of users. First, all who use Vector 2022 and are not on our pilot wikis. Second and third - 50% of logged-in users of Hebrew and Basque Wikipedias. Next week, we will be A/B testing the table of contents across the rest of our pilot wikis. We would like to check if there's a decrease in the need to scroll to the top of the page.

Before all that, we prepared a series of prototype tests with both readers and editors. To read more about how we worked on the feature based on feedback, please see the project page.

Now, we are working on the feature based on the feedback from users mentioned in the second paragraph. In particular:

We will track this in T307004 and will probably have the implementation ready within a few days.
 * ToC on narrower screens. We have increased the threshold for which the ToC currently hides to 1000px.  (See T306904 for more context).  This was to make it more comfortable to read on narrower screens.  This is a temporary fix, though.  The conversation about the best solution will continue in T306660.  By the end of April/early May we hope to have clear next steps on our preference of the options presented there.
 * We are beginning the work on reducing the margins for screens between 1000px - 1200px. This will make the table of contents smaller and create more space for text.

: Development of the Table of Contents
The results of our 3rd prototype testing showed an overwhelming support for the proposed table of contents. Based on that, the team focused on developing this feature. The new table of contents will be persistent - users will have access to it at all times. It will also make it easier to understand the context of the page. In addition to that, it will be possible to navigate to different parts of the page without having to scroll all the way back to the top. We are expecting to deploy the new table of contents to our pilot wikis in the first half of April.

: Page tools feedback
The team is beginning work on page tools (sometimes referred to as article tools). Our goal is to make it easier to distinguish the purpose of individual items within the sidebar. We are currently collecting feedback on our proposed prototype. We look forward to hearing your thoughts! Please go to our prototype testing page and fill out the form.

: Sticky header confirmed to decrease the need to scroll to the top of the page
From January 5 to January 31, 2022, we ran an A/B test. We wanted to assess the impact of deploying the sticky header. The test ran on 22 of our pilot wikis. Logged-in users who were assigned to the treatment group with the new skin version saw the sticky header. Users in the control group saw the old feature.

The primary goal of the AB test was to test our hypothesis. We had been expecting that the sticky header would decrease the need to scroll to the top of the page. Overall, we saw an average 15% decrease in scrolls per session by logged-in users on the 15 pilot wikis in the treatment group (with the new sticky header), compared to the control group (without the sticky header). On the remaining 7 pilot wikis, there was too little activity and we excluded them. The results indicate that our hypothesis was correct. Adding the sticky header to the page reduced the need to scroll to the top of the page significantly. [ https://jenniferwang-wmf.github.io/Web_sticky_header/ Read the full report].

: More pilot wikis
The Desktop Improvements are default on twelve more wikis. These are, above all: Moroccan Arabic, Indonesian, Thai, and Vietnamese Wikipedias, French Wikiquote, Portuguese and Polish Wikinews, Vietnamese Wikibooks, and MediaWiki wiki. In addition to these, we have enabled the changes on the Wikimedia Foundation-related wikis: Wikimedia Foundation Governance wiki, Collab wiki, and Strategy wiki. Currently, there are almost 30 pilot wikis. Among them, there are wikis of different scripts and sizes, written on all continents, and run both by the communities and the Foundation. We hope that soon, at least one Wikisource will be added to that list.

: Sticky header developments
The team has been working on building a sticky header. It will allow logged-in users to have access to important functionality (search, talk pages, history pages, language switching, and more) throughout the page. We have completed the development of the first version of the sticky header. Now, we are expecting to deploy an A/B test to the pilot wikis by the end of January. The header was based on the results of our user testing and volunteers' answers to the prototype testing.

: Language switching iteration
Earlier this year, we moved the language button to a more convenient location at the top of the page. However, the results of our A/B test indicated that the new location of the button might be difficult to discover in the following cases:


 * For users that are accustomed to the previous location of the language switching functionality
 * For users that tend to switch languages across multiple wikis. In the latter case, this created a situation where the language switching functionality was available in different locations depending on the wiki used and whether that wiki was a part of the pilot wikis.

To improve on these issues, we are changing the new language button. Our goal is to make it easier to find across all scenarios. We hope to release these improvements in January 2022.

: Prototype testing for the table of contents
Over the next few months, our main focus will be on making the table of contents persistent. Currently, the table of contents is available only at the top of the page. It is difficult to gain context on an entire article or page, or to navigate to individual sections, when outside the top of the page. We hope to make the table of contents easier to navigate through a page, as well as to understand its context.

We will be publishing our research, further documentation, and mockups, over the next few weeks. In the meantime, we welcome you to give us feedback on our current prototype on this page.