Leitores/Experiência do leitor/Listas de leitura

Para apoiar os leitores das wikis em seus objetivos de aprendizado com a Wikipédia, queremos experimentar permitir que eles salvem artigos em uma lista para leitura posterior, ajudando-os a organizar seus conhecimentos e, ao mesmo tempo, a desenvolver uma prática de curadoria de conteúdo que possa abrir caminho para futuras contribuições à Wikipédia.

Mockup of save article feature on desktop English Wikipedia

Mockup of saved articles page on desktop English Wikipedia

Contexto

Queremos garantir que a Wikipédia seja útil para leitores ativos. À medida que trabalhamos para ampliar nosso alcance a uma nova geração de leitores, é importante também garantir que nossos leitores atuais, aqueles que já dedicam tempo ao site, continuem a encontrar valor na Wikipédia. Queremos ajudar esses leitores não apenas a ler a Wikipédia tranquilamente, mas a se envolver em um aprendizado mais profundo que seja útil para seus objetivos de conhecimento e para a vida cotidiana. Acreditamos que isso ajudará a criar um relacionamento mais pessoal com a Wikipédia, que, no futuro, poderá levar à realização da primeira edição ou ao envolvimento no movimento.

Acreditamos que uma parte importante dessa transição da leitura para o aprendizado será permitir que os leitores comecem a selecionar por conta própria os artigos e conteúdos de que possam precisar posteriormente. Isso pode significar várias coisas diferentes – salvar um artigo para ler mais tarde, destacar uma frase que chama a atenção, salvar trechos de artigos para formar uma coleção de conhecimento e muito mais.

Um segundo benefício dessa abordagem é que, ao organizar e interagir ativamente com o conhecimento para seu próprio aprendizado, os leitores não apenas adquirem esse conhecimento, mas também desenvolvem o hábito de interagir ativamente com a Wikipédia, o que pode tornar uma futura transição para atividades como a edição menos intimidante.

Ao pensar em oportunidades de curadoria, queremos primeiro explorar a abordagem mais simples: permitir que os leitores salvem um artigo em uma lista para ler mais tarde.

Antecedentes

Reading lists exist and are already highly utilized on the Wikipedia Apps . Recursos de curadoria, como listas de leitura e abas, estão entre os mais usados e solicitados nos aplicativos para Android e iOS, com pedidos antigos para permitir a sincronização entre dispositivos, incluindo o Google Play. There is a longstanding Community Wishlist request from 2021 to have the apps reading lists available on mobile and desktop. Este projeto nos permitirá experimentar a implementação desses tipos de recursos na web para computadores e dispositivos móveis, possibilitando a sincronização e o uso em diferentes plataformas.

Beta feature rollout results

Of the 1620 total surveys we received during the time the beta feature was active [April – June 2026]:

• 1509 were positive (93.1%), 111 were negative (6.9%).
• 28% of comments included open-ended feedback (submitted across many languages).

Main themes and requests we received as open-ended feedback:

• 26% of the comments were just general praise [ie, "I like this"]

The most requested feature update is the ability to organize reading lists into folders, collections or categories, similar to what the mobile apps allows.

Other requested additions:

• Other sorting options
• Ability to add notes
• Sharing and exporting
• Support more namespaces, rather than just articles

Most of the negative feedback was about the watchstar being displaced from the navigation, which is something we are working to address.

Cronograma

Fase 0 (julho – agosto de 2025): Identificar o problema

Passos:

1. Collect qualitative and quantitative feedback from readers and communities through user research, metrics, and external trends.
2. Apply data to identify the problem we need to solve.

Problema que identificamos:

• Both new and existing readers aren't returning to Wikipedia as often as we would like them to, and pageviews to our projects are declining.
• We don't currently have many ways for readers to personalize or curate their experience on Wikipedia.

Ideias iniciais e opiniões

Inicialmente, organizamos conversas presenciais com apresentação de ideias de design e demonstrações da função na Wikimania 2025, em Nairobi, e na WikiCon América do Norte 2025, em Nova Iorque, para solicitar comentários, bem como online no Discord da Wikipédia em inglês. Também discutimos isso na wiki, nos fóruns Village Pump das wikis piloto em questão.

Os riscos associados a este projeto dos quais temos conhecimento incluem:

• Confusion between reading lists and watchlists
  • Editors may mistake the reading list feature for a new or duplicate version of the watchlist.
  • The star icon is already associated with the watchlist; adding another similar icon or button may reinforce confusion.
  • The reading list and watchlist icons appear next to each other, potentially making it harder to distinguish functions at a glance.
• Impact on editor experience and onboarding
  • Over-differentiating reader and editor interfaces risks creating barriers for newcomers transitioning from reading to editing.
  • Editors value a consistent interface across reading and editing modes.

Historical context: A previous Wikimedia project (“Gather”) explored public article lists and was discontinued due to unresolved community concerns, including moderation burden and lack of community buy-in. Any future consideration of public lists will first thoroughly review this history and involve active community consultation.

Fase 1 (agosto de 2025 – janeiro de 2026): Validar se as listas de leitura são úteis

Passos:

1. Discuss reading list feature with communities and iterate design based on conversations.
2. Design simple on-wiki experiment for reading lists on desktop.
3. Run experiment for 2–4 weeks.
4. Turn feature off.
5. Analyze data.
6. Report back on results and proposed next steps.

Perguntas que esta fase irá responder:

1. Are reading lists useful to readers?
2. Should we continue working on reading lists?
3. Should we test reading lists as a beta feature?
4. Should we bring reading lists as a default to wikis?

Avaliação de hipóteses: A hipótese estava correta?

• ✅ If yes → continue
• ❌ If no → stop the project and document what we learned.

Fase 1: resultados do experimento

Our primary success metric was the clickthrough rate (CTR) on the save article icon. CTR measures how often readers engage with the feature, helping us understand whether people notice it and choose to use it. Typical web CTR is between 1-5%. On English Wikipedia, we observed a clickthrough rate of 0.88% for the “save” button in the reading list experiment. Because saving an article reflects a specific intent — returning to that article later — we did not expect engagement rates comparable to more general navigation actions.

Our experiment was intentionally limited in scope to non-editor users in order to avoid interfering with existing editing and moderation workflows. In this test, a randomly selected half of logged-in users who met the criteria below were assigned to the treatment group, where they saw the Reading List feature: (1) active in the last 3 months, (2) 0 edits, (3) zero watchlist items (except for user page and user talk page), and (4) zero existing Reading List tables. The remaining half were assigned to the control group, where they experienced the current interface.

As a result, exposure to the experimental feature was relatively low. This was expected given the narrow audience segment, and it also reflects a broader challenge: for readers who do not edit, there are currently few reasons to log in, since most logged-in functionality on Wikipedia is designed for editors.

Additionally, we found that users that engaged with the feature had substantially higher rates of internal referral – that is, they landed on the page from another page on Wikipedia. This tendency indicates that users who are naturally more invested in Wikipedia find more value in the feature.

Based on these results, we plan to move forward with the feature and continue to collect data and information.

We are planning on trying this out as a beta feature for logged-in readers in two phases. In the first stage, we would run it on five pilot wikis the week of April 6, 2026 – Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese. Then after two weeks of monitoring and fixing any bugs, we would roll out to all other wikis the week of April 20, 2026.

In order to improve the exposure rate to average readers, we will opt all new users signing up for an account into the beta feature. For existing users, they would have to go in and turn on the beta feature to see it.

We will be collecting feedback via QuickSurvey on whether beta users find it to be useful.

Fase 2 (janeiro – abril de 2026, se o experimento for bem-sucedido): Levar as listas de leitura para as wikis

Passos:

1. Discuss bringing the feature as a beta feature or full feature for logged-in users.
2. Design and implement any changes required.
3. Design and implement additional functionality if required.
4. Bring feature to wikis for logged-in users.
5. Capture both quantitative and qualitative feedback from users via on-wiki QuickSurveys
6. Discuss communicating about the feature with logged-out users so they can create an account to use it.

Perguntas que esta fase irá responder:

1. Did reading lists perform as well in reality as they did in the experiment?
2. Are there any changes or customizations necessary for reading lists?
3. Do reading lists on web work well with reading lists on the apps?
4. Are users satisfied with the feature?
5. What other functionality do they hope to see for the next iteration?

Avaliação do lançamento: O recurso funcionou conforme o esperado em produção?

• ✅ If yes → continue
• ❌ If no → stop the project and document what we learned.

Phase 3 (April – June 2026 if beta rollout is smooth): Show reading list bookmark to logged out mobile web readers as an experiment to drive account creations

On mobile web browsers, logged out users who are in the experiment group will see a bookmark inviting them to create an account in order to save pages that are of interest to them.

Steps:

1. Identify how frequently readers are creating accounts using the existing watchstar button that is visible to logged-out users on mobile web.
2. Design an A/B experiment that compares account creation rates between the standard watchstar and a bookmark icon that is shown to logged out users.
3. Launch the experiment to a limited audience on German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, and Urdu Wikipedias (from May 18 through June 18).
4. Share out learnings regarding effectiveness of encouraging readers to sign up for accounts.