Topic on Talk:Wikimedia Apps/Android Suggested edits

Hi WMF folks! I just downloaded the Android app to try out this feature, and I have some feedback (mainly on the article descriptions feature, which is the one I've tried so far).

Overall, the design looks very modern and clean, so I hope it'll entice newcomers to start editing.

With the metrics at the top, it's very cool to see the editing streak count. The contributions count was confusing, though, since it said I only had 4500 edits, and I had to click through to infer that it was talking about only in the past 30 days and only in suggested edits areas. It also told me that my 0 image caption contributions had been seen 3000 times in the past 30 days, so something funny is happening there. Granted, this is more of an experienced editor problem, and we're not the target audience, but still, I could see someone not being happy when their count starts mysteriously dropping after a month of going up, or branching out to trying normal editing and wondering why their count doesn't go up from it. Why limit to 30 days and not including lifetime edits? Also, it'd be better (if processing power allows) to include the views for a page only in the days since someone made the edit there; someone who just edited a page hasn't had their work seen by those in the past.

Going into the suggested edit feed, it's confusing and limiting to not have the entire article available. One of the first articles I got was Richard Pennycook, which gave me a first paragraph of Richard John Pennycook CBE (born February 1964) was chief executive officer of the Co-operative Group.This wasn't enough, since to get to the standard [Nationality] [occupation] format for the short description, I needed to either see CBE spelled out as "commander of the order of the British empire", which didn't happen until farther down the page, or be able to click through on it. I didn't see any option to open the rest of the page (it took me a bit to figure out that you need to click "add description" first, then the tab at the bottom). I encountered a similar issue with Army Distinguished Public Service Medal, where I needed to be able to click through to confirm that it was an American military award. For Sir Thomas Taylor, 2nd Baronet, of Kells, not having the birth/death dates in the parentheses was a problem, since the preferred short description of Anglo-Irish politician (1686–1757) required them. People are going to want to have a description in mind by the time they click "add description", so I'd suggest either adding a way to view more from the initial screen, or making people click "add description" first before showing them any article text. Context is really important, so it'd be good to allow people to read more with only one click, not two, and to have it on the same page rather than opening in a new tab.

Beginning a short description with a (capitalized) nationality is an extremely common practice, so it was a little disconcerting to have it yell at me with a brown warning triangle every time that happens, even if it then let me publish anyways. I'd suggest loading a dictionary of proper nouns (or at least nationalities) into the software so it stops doing this.

Once I initially clicked the blue arrow, it took me a minute to realize I was just looking at a preview and needed to tap it again to save. Short descriptions don't require previewing, so I think this should just become one step.

I noticed that the descriptions were only being saved to Wikidata, not Wikipedia. This was after I had read the "your edit is live on Wikipedia" message (which is technically false), so it took me a sec to figure out what was happening. As you're likely aware, short descriptions on Wikipedia/Wikidata is an area that's had some controversy and is in some amount of flux due to the (imo deeply misguided) choice to fork the systems a while back. I'm guessing that you're having folks save to Wikidata because the descriptions there are less standardized than on Wikipedia (which really enforces the "short" part), which makes some sense, but also I predict that eventually the systems will be reunited, so it'd be good to train people how to just add short descriptions directly on Wikipedia. Currently, I couldn't easily find any guidance on what actually makes a good description, which newcomers will likely need.

Some of the pages in the feed seemed pretty minor, or likely to have short descriptions added automatically at some point. I'm curious how the feed is selected; are more trustworthy editors (as measured by experience/reversions) given more important pages? Is the feed tailored based on reading history, or are there plans to allow filtering it to specific categories?

I'll stop there for now since this message is already way longer than I thought it'd be, but I hope the above is useful!

I just checked out the other types of suggested edits, so some feedback on those.

For image captions, it's insanely hard (even as an experienced editor) to add good captions for images that don't already have thorough documentation. If they're in a different language or don't have good data (meaning a useful description), they should not be being surfaced. The only two possible outcomes are (a) editors get frustrated because they can't seem to help out, or (b) they take wild guesses about what the image is or otherwise add a caption that does more harm than good. This task could be useful for some images that have a thorough description but no caption, but it shouldn't go beyond that.

For image tags, I was often able to add very generic tags, but it was much harder to add specific tags, which are what would actually be useful. For instance, for commons:File:Gemeindebau Laaer-Berg-Straße 32.jpg, I was able to tag "apartment building", but we have a million pictures of apartment buildings. I lacked the context (from knowing German or being able to see the location metadata) that would've allowed me to tag the city as well or the specific building, which would be much more useful. As above, I'd suggest not surfacing photos that are described only in a foreign language. People will still probably be able to add something for such photos, but it's unlikely to be useful, and to the extent it removes photos from untagged categories, it could in some cases be worse than doing nothing.

Also, at one point I added some tags, published, then realized there was another one I should add. It should be possible to go back and make corrections or add further tags.

Thanks for reading all this feedback, and again, I hope it's helpful!

@Sdkb We're in the process of evaluating the work on suggested edits so far, so this is very appreciated. I haven't had time to properly read and think about it just yet, but we will take this into our considerations, and maybe get back to you later to follow up if we have questions.

You can see for example https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T271727 for some of the work on the Commons tags.