User:CKoerner (WMF)/Hovercard A/B test Italian Wikipedia post

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Upcoming Hovercards A/B test

The Reading web team will run an A/B test of Hovercards on Italian Wikipedia for users starting on 19 September. Hovercards allow readers to quickly understand a subject without leaving the current article they reading. With Hovercards, whenever a reader hovers over a link to another article, a short summary of the subject and an image (if available) is shown.

This test would run for up to 20 days and Hovercards would only be seen by 20% of anonymous visitors. Logged-in editors will not see any change to their preferences. Hovercards is currently a Beta feature editors can enable for testing.

We are running this test during a fundraising campaign to see if the use of Hovercards impacts fundraising. This campaign will run for anonymous users from 4 October to 1 November.

This is the second test of Hovercards during a fundraising campaign. The first test was on the Hungarian Wikipedia in June and July of this year. Early results of that test are on MediaWiki.org.

The Italian Wikipedia was chosen for a few reasons. It has a larger community and impact on fundraising than our last test. The fundraising team already had a scheduled campaign during this time. We have an active member of the community (and WMF staff member) Elitre helping provide support in Italian.

Once more, on 19 September the A/B test of Hovercards starts. Only 20% of visitors will see Hovercards. On 4 October the fundraising campaign will begin. On 9 October the Hovercards A/B test will end. On 1 November, the fundraising campaign will end and everything goes back to normal.

After the test is complete the Reading web team will analyze the results to better understand how Hovercards are used and how they impact fundraising. If you have any questions on concerns, please let me know.