Mobile summaries

This document outlines ideas for a new mobile web feature intended to make content browsing easier on mobile, as well as to give mobile users an easy, lightweight entry-point into contribution.

Strategy

Intended user personas

Casual mobile reader

As a mobile reader, I want some context when I'm looking at lists of articles (e.g., in search, nearby, watchlist), so I have more clarity on the exact topics I'm looking at
As a mobile reader, I don't want to have to load a full new article just to get some background/context on something
As a mobile reader, I want to help clarify the context of articles I know about so I can be helpful for others looking for the same item

Product objective

Add more information to articles that is specifically useful to the mobile reading context
Empower casual mobile readers to make useful contributions via mobile

Priorities

Create new Wikidata descriptor field entries for articles lacking them
Edit existing entries
(potentially) flag existing entries as needing improvement

User experience

MVP

The wikidata descriptor field is shown next to article title for users looking at the mobile view on tablets (on the article, in search, nearby, and watchlist)
For articles lacking a descriptor, there is a placeholder CTA on the article
Logged in users can add a new descriptor after seeing an in-context tutorial on how to write a descriptor
Logged in users can edit existing descriptors
On articles with disambiguation built into their titles (e.g., "Sound of Music (album)", the parenthetical context is not displayed in the article (e.g., only "Sound of music" shows), in order to prevent user confusion from too many similar items in one area

Vandalism Considerations

If a user sees a vandal description, there should be a quick way of resetting it back to null state, since the edit can't be reverted using the edit history of the page.
Reverts to the description will not generate a notification even if a user is opted into Reverts.

Next steps

Show a wikidata disambiguation page instead of freeform Wikipedia disambiguation page when following hatnote dab link
Allow users to edit the fields from that page

Test plan

We can start by showing the MVP only on the mobile view on tablets in order to test the following hypotheses:

Mobile users will find this feature useful for reading/browsing
Mobile users will edit and add new descriptors
Contributions will be of reasonable quality