Social media plugins

Social media plugins are easy ways of sharing content with other people via social media platforms. The most common way is a Share or Like button. This page discusses the possibility to integrate social media plugins into Wikimedia projects.

Solutions[edit]

Extensions (none currently used on Wikimedia wikis)

User Scripts

w:en:User:TheDJ/Sharebox

Wikimedia implementations

Some wikis have manually added it to the sidebar, e.g. Bahasa Indonesia Wikipedia. (added in id:MediaWiki:Sidebar)
Some Wikinews use a template at the top or bottom of every article: e.g. English Wikinews (added in n:en:Template:Social bookmarks -- see d:Q17589552 for similar)
English Wikipedia's Signpost newsletter uses a default-collapsed "Share" template on each newsletter-article

Semi-related

Some wikis have generic links (i.e. not for sharing custom-per-page-links) to the local community's group-page(s)
- Some have it as part of the Sitenotice, e.g. pt.wikibooks, id.wikipedia, az.wikipedia, ka.wikipedia, and many others,
- Some just have links on their Mainpage, e.g. ru.wikivoyage, ar.wikipedia, bn.wikisource, bn.wikipedia, and many others.

Discussions[edit]

English Wikipedia: WP:Perennial proposals#Share pages on Facebook, Twitter etc.

Bugs/Tasks

2008, phab:T18691: "RFC: Section header "share" link" (formerly: "Section headings should have some clickable anchor for passing links" / "RFC: Section headings should have a clickable anchor")
2011, phab:T29027: "Share" button (tools) in Wikipedia
2012, phab:T35820: A Twitter button next to every article title
2012, phab:T42456: UploadWizard: add social sharing feature after upload
2014, phab:T64811: Review and deploy TwitterCards extension for proper display
2015, phab:T120487: Cite : Share : Export (Consolidate and replace a variety of items on the sidebar)
2017, phab:T142048: Add hover-card like image (og:image) to open graph meta data (which enabled image previews for links shared from MediaWiki on social media sites like Facebook)

Mailing list highlights

2009, Wikimedia-l: Sharing Wikimedia pages on Facebook, etc.
2011, Wikimedia-l: "share in Facebook/Twitter/etc" icon
2012, Wikimedia-l: Editor retention implies social features
2013, Wikimedia-l: "Tweet this page" from some or all sites???
2015, Wikitech-l: Stance on Social Media

Arguments[edit]

This section lists some arguments that have been brought up in the discussions.

Pro[edit]

Share button allow easy sharing of Wikimedia's content; widely distributing the content serves our mission.
Some users enjoy sharing the content they read (or create!) with their friends, it's a feature often requested by both readers and editors.
Increasing readership, also increases the pool of potential editors

Con[edit]

Privacy concerns: This is only a problem if we were to embed the externally-provided JavaScript widgets, but nobody wants that.
- This point could be further weakened by implementing a "2 click solution"

Complexities[edit]

Placement. Where do the links go? It's another user-interface element – Wikimedia sites already have too much UI clutter.
Selection. It's difficult to define "a set of social media sites that Wikimedia will have plugins for". Excluding any social media services (out of the dozens-to-hundreds in existence) might be seen as contrary to our neutrality policies.
- We already do something similar with tools like GeoHack and Special:BookSources (ISBN search).
  - You could even refine it by building a service like AddThis yourself, but under WMF privacy policies. Not too difficult.
Some users feel that we should not allow social media plugins because that would make Wikipedia itself a social network. This point is highly disputed.
Icons. The services' icons are the most recognizable element for users, but would be the most eye-catching/distracting addition in our mostly-text interface.