User:ASherman (WMF)/sandbox

How can we make Wikipedia more interactive for readers?

The WMF's Reading team focuses on building an inclusive reading and learning experience for our readers across different platforms. Photo by Lia Chang, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Last week, the Wikimedia Foundation's Reading team kicked off a reading consultation on mediawiki.org (the wiki that hosts technical details and conversations) in order to collect answers to the question of "How can we make Wikipedia more interactive for readers?". The target is to gather ideas from our broad and diverse community that includes our editors, who create Wikipedia, our readers, as well other web or product enthusiasts.

Interactivity has been one of the themes that were requested by users in a general community consultation carried out by the Wikimedia Foundation last year. While the theme of interactivity is broad, and might not be easy to define, we are breaking it down into simpler components:

• In terms of content, how could Wikipedia content be made more interactive in order to make learning about your subject of interest more easy?
• In terms of users interaction, how can we bridge the gap between readers and editors to help both groups learn more about each other and to help readers better understand how Wikipedia works?

In this consultation, we are looking forward for lessons to learn from the process, including how easy it is for newbies to fill in a form through desktop and mobile. While we are still working on enhancing our mobile editing experience, below we are attaching snapshots of how to add your ideas through the mobile interface. Below is a quick demo of how to add ideas if you are checking the link from your phone and you aren't logged in, i.e you don't have a Wikimedia account.

If you have an idea that you think can help make interaction with content and other users on Wikipedia more effective, please check the link here and add your idea. You can even start with just a concept and others can add to it (it is a wiki ;). Someone from our team will discuss your idea or get in touch with you (if you are logged in). You can always revisit your idea and continue the discussion on the talk page for that idea. For general comments or questions feel free to write to reading wikimedia.org

It has been over a week already, and so far we have received 20 ideas that suggest alternative ways of how information could be displayed on Wikipedia. Take a look at those and feel free to discuss or add your new idea. This consultation is expected to run for 4 weeks. Towards the end, we will promote the ideas that seem to have the most promise to discuss how can we move forward.

We're looking forward to your revolutionary ideas and input.

Moushira Elamrawy, Community Liaison

Wikimedia Foundation