Moderator Tools/Content moderation on mobile web/Overflow menu

In the mobile web interface, by default administrators are not presented with any links to delete or protect a page. Users also cannot access the Move page button or other informational/utility links without switching to the desktop version.

Advanced Mobile Contributions overflow menu

By turning on Advanced Mobile Contributions (AMC), users can access a drop-down ‘overflow’ menu which includes Delete and Protect buttons for administrators, among other links such as Move and Wikidata Item for all editors. Users can see the overflow menu on user and user talk pages without turning on AMC.

Even with AMC turned on, administrators do not see a link to Block another user via this dropdown menu.

We want to make these tools more seamless for editors and administrators to access, and add the Block item to the menu when on user pages.

Options edit

We explored a few different options for this work.

  • We could make this menu visible to administrators by default, without needing to turn on AMC, to provide access to admin tools. As very active editors, administrators are unlikely to be confused or disrupted by the new menu. This may be more technically complex than simply making the menu visible to all editors.
  • We could instead make it visible to all logged-in users (delete/protect/block would not be visible to non-admins) without AMC. This risks confusing newer editors with unexpected links, but may be net-positive and is likely to be technically simpler.
  • We could also explore an in-between approach, where users only see the menu after making one or more edits for example. This may be more confusing because it may not be clear why and when the interface is changing.

See the updates below for more on how we evaluated these options and our final conclusion.

Updates edit

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2 months after rolling the overflow menu out to all mobile users, we've carried out some basic data analysis to evaluate the impact of our changes. Comparing the two months before to two months after:

Weekly... Overall change

(desktop + mobile)

Mobile change
Page moves -1.2% +15%
Page deletions +4% +35%
User blocks -11% +12%

We believe this shows that more content moderation is happening from mobile web, even when considering the overall change in these moderation actions!

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With T308570 ('change block' and 'unblock user' buttons) now complete, we've wrapped up our work on the overflow menu for the time being. We're moving on to work on preferences!

July 2022 edit

The overflow menu is now visible in all namespaces for all logged-in users. (T308675).

We are monitoring data on its usage, as well as overall activity data for mobile web, to understand the impact of this change.

We expect that the final task we'll work on for the overflow menu is adjusting the 'Block user' button contextually if the user is already blocked. (T308570)

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The Block button is now available on all Wikimedia projects for users with the 'block' user right (primarily administrators).

We carried out some user testing (T306873#7927166) and concluded that enabling the overflow menu for all logged-in users will not be significantly disruptive, and therefore we plan to make this change. (T308675)

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We've started by adding the user Block button to the Overflow menu on user and user talk pages (T307341)

We are also working on some additional data collection so that we can better understand how this menu is used (T307344, T306648)

In tandem with this, we want to do some user research to understand how new users experience this menu. Is it confusing for them? Do they explore the menu items and get lost in a page they didn't intend to visit? This will help us decide whether we should make the menu available to all editors, not just those with AMC turned on.

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This work will start with a few investigations to better understand our available options:

We have also been doing a small amount of data analysis and found that the 'Cite this page' button is by far the least clicked list element, at just 0.7% of interactions. We may consider removing this button from the list.