2019:Community Growth/Advanced mobile contributions

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Community Growth/Advanced mobile contributions

Description

In the past, the majority of essential editing and contribution workflows were not available on mobile, severely limiting the ability of contributors to participate outside of their desktop devices.  Over the past year the Readers Web Team at the WMF has been working to change that. This effort, which started with our research during the last Wikimania, has resulted in Advanced Mobile Contributions mode - an opt-in experience on the mobile website that brings the mobile experience closer to parity with desktop. Editors can now navigate through many complicated workflows in familiar ways, as on desktop.  History pages, Talk pages, and other Special pages and tools are readily accessible, and have been modified to work well on a mobile device.

We would like to share the outcome of our work at Wikimania - to present Advanced Mobile Contributions mode and its functionality, gather feedback from folks who are already using it, and discuss ways in which we can spread awareness to other contributors who have not yet tried it out. We also want to focus on the the future of the feature by discussing open questions such as:

• In which ways can new editors benefit from the functionality we’ve built?
• Which portions of this functionality might be useful for all all logged-in users?
• How might exposure to contribution experiences encourage folks to start contributing and editing?
• What might a future look like where there are separate experiences for “new editors” and “advanced editors”? Is that a future we want to work towards?

Relationship to the theme

The organisers of the community growth space believe that the space will address the following Sustainable Development Goals:

• 9 Industry, innovation and infrastructure
• 10 Reduced inequalities
• 11 Sustainable cities and communities
• 16 Peace, justice and strong institutions
• 17 Partnerships for the goals.

This session will address the conference theme — Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals — in the following manner:

This session will address the conference theme Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals by focusing on reducing the inequalities among our volunteer communities (SDG 10).  Moving towards parity between the functionality of our mobile and desktop editing and contributing experiences ensures that the ability of editors and contributors across the world to make meaningful contributions to our sites is not restricted by their ability to access a desktop device.  We believe that increasing the ease of contributions of mobile will increase participation within emerging economies, leading to a growth of local content and a shrinking of the knowledge gap.

Relationship to the space

The organisers of the space and the community have identified a number of topics they wish to address in this space. Please explain how your proposal its into these topic areas.

As a reminder, the proposed topics are listed at 2019:Community Growth

This session will address the topics of the Growth space in the following manner:

We believe that expanding the editing capabilities of the mobile site will directly affect our communities by reducing the barriers to participation associated with access.

Session outcomes

At the end of the session, the following will have been achieved:

1. Present the Advanced mobile contributions (AMC) project to Wikimania participants
2. Discuss how AMC was built with a focus on community feedback and collaboration
3. Discuss and collect opinion on the future of AMC - did we reach our goal of empowering mobile contributions, as well as making Vector use on mobile less necessary? As well as the questions listed above.

Session leader(s)

OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

User:AHollender_(WMF)

Session type

Each Space at Wikimania 2019 will have specific format requests. The program design prioritises submissions which are future-oriented and directly engage the audience. The format of this submission is a:

• Panel with audience Question & Answer session
• Teaching session
• Conference presentation

Requirements

The session will work best with these conditions:

• Room: If possible, we would like a medium-sized classroom with a projector and screen.  The session will be split into two portions - a presentation of Advanced Contributions Mode followed by a discussion and brainstorming session.  

• Audience: We welcome all Wikimedia contributions of all skill sets, with a focus on people who currently edit or contribute from their mobile devices or are interested in doing so in the future.  

• Recording: We think both portions of the session would be useful to have recorded for use by contributors who were not able to go to Wikimania

• Time requested: 1hr

Relationship with the organisers of the space

The organisers of the community growth space wish to provide any necessary support to presenters and participants that they may need and also wish to have an active role in shaping the content of the space to maximise the benefit of all attendees. Please let us know if you would appreciate any help, and if you consent to constructive suggestions from the organiser team that would allow the largest amount of people to share and benefit from each other's contributions.

• I would be interested in receiving help in shaping my submission: YES
• I consent to the organisers of the space contacting me to discuss alternative ways to present my knowledge (for example, merging two proposals into a common presentation, a panel debate instead of a lightning talk, etc.), or ways to modify and improve my proposal (for example by ensuring a gender diversity on panels) : YES
• If my proposal is not selected for a presentation, I would be interested in presenting my proposal in the form of a poster in the Community Growth space: YES
• I consent to my proposal being proposed to organisers of other spaces if it would be a good cross-over topic or if it fits better into the other space's scope: YES