Comments on: Most people read Wikipedia on desktops, but mobile and tablets present huge potential

By: lgruwell

lgruwell — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:49:29 +0000

There is a growing number of people in the developing world and low income communities everywhere that access the Internet exclusively through mobile phones and do not have regular access to Internet connected PCs. Some call this the “Mobile Only Generation.” When we call mobile a threat, I think we miss the point that accessing Wikipedia via a mobile phone is sometimes not a choice, but the only option for financial reasons for a lot of people.

By: Tilman

Tilman — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:28:54 +0000

H-stt, you are right that editing on mobile devices is a challenge, but the Foundation has been fully aware of it for quite some time, and is working to tackle the problem. For example it is mentioned as a major concern in the 2011-12 annual plan ("threatened by the shift to mobile, because it is not easy to edit on a small screen") and the subject of a previous posting by Mani on this very blog: "Supporting user requests for mobile features, even editing". And people have been doing some hard thinking about how mobile users could be enabled to make useful contributions. It's not the right situation for writing long articles, but there might be other relevant and necessary tasks that can be supported better, like categorizing images, fixes that involve editing smaller parts of an article, or reviewing new articles. Mobile editing is also on the agenda of the India Hackathon that is starting in Mumbai a few hours from now. As for the concern that improving read access "shifts this relation in a very negative direction", increasing the number of readers does not harm contributors in any way - actually, many of them would argue it is a good thing if more people read what they write. Mathematically speaking, it's not the ratio that counts, but the absolute number of editors - keeping the denominator small does not increase the numerator ;) Besides, "the users, the authors, the community" are actually moving towards mobile access themselves.

By: The Problem with Flattr | Non-Commercial Use

The Problem with Flattr | Non-Commercial Use — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:47:32 +0000

[...] elsewhere. It’s not just India and Brazil that have these problems, of course – even Japan is mostly serviced by basic, non-smart phones – and the result is that the only causes likely [...]

By: h-stt

h-stt — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:04:13 +0000

Sounds great, doesn’t it? It’s not. Mobile access to Wikipedia is read-only. There is no way to contribute to Wikipedia from a phone or tablett. So expanding the mobile access only brings readers, not users.

If the 100-10-1 rule is basically true, then pushing mobile access shifts this relation in a very negative direction.

So know what you are doing, think hard before investing resources into mobile computing and keep connected with the users, the authors, the community.