User talk:Sheriff U3

Tabbed Browsing

• In July, we released the first iteration of Tabbed Browsing to all users.
• Our 30-day A/B test showed mixed but promising results: while logged-out user retention gains were modest compared to Android, survey feedback was overwhelmingly positive (93% rated the feature “Neutral to Very Satisfactory”).
• We continued improvements throughout August and September, including a design review for “More Dynamic Tabs,” a new tab controller, and bug fixes such as inconsistent tab sizing on iPad mini and tooltip issues.

Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review

• Work continued on Year in Review upgrades, with spikes exploring features such as sharing entire reviews, custom app icons, and showing which geographies users read about the most.
• We also began preparing overall app data to share richer collective insights.

Navigation Refresh

• We improved code behind the History tab and recent searches to prepare for future navigational changes.

Other iOS Updates

• Released several app versions (7.8.1 through 7.8.3), with smoke tests completed.
• Resolved numerous bugs including crashes (tooltips, gestures, search), iPad layout issues, and visual problems with captions, Quick Facts, and images in Dark Mode.
• Added a new REST endpoint for remote configuration and upgraded fundraising configurations to support A/B testing.
• Verified continued compatibility with multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Customizable Donation Reminder Experiment

• In August, we launched the Customizable Donation Reminder experiment in Italy. The reminder will allow users to decide if they want to be reminded to donate, and how often.

Activity Tab Experiment

• By September, we finalized core modules, onboarding, instrumentation, and validation tasks needed for the A/B test of the new Activity Tab against the Edit Tab.
• This marks a major step toward testing whether an Activity space can improve multi-day engagement and retention.

Bug Fixes & Improvements

• Fixed crashes with image gallery long-press, saved article syncing for Chinese, edit previews, and special links.
• Addressed rendering and Dark Mode issues affecting math tags, GIFs, and citation numbers.

Other Android Updates

• We released a new beta and conducted multiple regression tests to ensure stability.
• We added a general-purpose remote configuration REST endpoint, aligned with iOS.
• Continued technical debt cleanup, including removing allowMainThreadQueries and adding suspend to DAO functions.
• Upgraded fundraising configuration to support A/B testing.

Cross-Platform

• Both apps upgraded fundraising A/B test support and created a shared remote configuration REST endpoint.
• We began tracking Account Vanish events on iOS and Android for privacy features.

Looking Ahead

This quarter marked a big step forward on Tabbed Browsing, Activity Tab, and Year in Review — three projects aimed at making Wikipedia more personal, navigable, and engaging. We also advanced donation experiments and backend improvements to support future flexibility.

Make sure you’re subscribed to this newsletter to stay in the loop — and thank you for being part of the journey!

ARamadan-WMF 02:12, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Year in Review 2025

Throughout October and November, the team made final updates to the Year in Review feature, preparing it for its early December release.

Key improvements included:

• Updating the Total Edits slide to represent global edits across all Wikimedia projects.
• Running usability tests, which showed strong user interest in personalized slides—especially reading patterns, top articles, categories, and geo insights.
• Preparing the A/B test that will allow some logged-out users to view personalized content.

We also added fundraising banner suppression for users who donated in the past 250 days, so that users who may have donated from the Year in Review do not see a banner.

Tabbed Browsing (Tabs)

We continued work on the New Tab Experience and ran the A/B/C test for recommendations within the tabs overview.

The experiment concluded on November 18 and showed:

• Recommendations increased pageviews and new tab openings. However, they did not improve multi-day usage or overall retention.
• “Because you read” recommendations performed better than “Did you know.”
• Group C had slightly higher satisfaction and lower dissatisfaction.

Next steps:

• Scale the new tab experience, including “close all tabs,” to all users.
• Do not scale recommendations yet until after further investigation.

Activity Tab (iOS)

Work continued on Activity Tab V2, preparing to test it against the existing History tab. Updates included:

• Integrating learnings from Android’s successful Activity Tab experiment.
• Building new onboarding, instrumentation, and module behavior.
• A first version was released in early December.

Other iOS Updates

• We ran a survey on the Explore tab launched to gather user feedback.
• OAuth adoption was explored by engineering and design.
• Bug fixes for login with 2FA, search in Saved, and other regressions.
• Compatibility testing completed for m. subdomain removal.

Activity Tab

By October, the Activity Tab experiment delivered strong results:

• Return rate for logged-in users increased by 11.6% compared to the previous Edit tab.
• Experiment had no negative impact on overall retention.
• Only 0.7% of users turned the feature off.

In November, we made several improvements, and then scaled the Activity Tab to all logged-in users.

Year in Review 2025

The team finalized core implementation, prepared for the December release, and:

• Updated the Total Edits slide to reflect global edits across projects.
• Prepared the A/B test for the Year in Review Reading List, which will offer a personalized reading list to some users.
• Conducted final usability reviews.

Customizable Donation Reminder – Experiment #2

We began development of the second donation reminder experiment, planned for December–March.

This experiment:

• Targets users who click “Maybe later” on fundraising banners.
• Tests a fully customizable reminder flow versus the current “Maybe later” behavior.
• Allows users to adjust reminder frequency, article-count triggers, and manage their reminder settings.

Other Android Updates

• We ran a survey on the Explore tab launched to gather user feedback.
• OAuth adoption was explored by engineering and design.
• Fixed issues with “Forgot your password” in Chinese, dark-mode rendering problems, punctuation-based errors, and navigation bugs.
• Added ISO currency codes to donation forms.
• Updated several settings and entry points to prepare for the fundraising season.

Release of Wikipedia Year in Review 2025

• Both Android and iOS teams released their Year in Review features on December 2, 2025!
• They were met with positive interactions on social media, and from the press.
• There were 2 articles written about the feature by The Verge and by Vice.

Activity Tab (iOS)

This quarter focused on scaling and improving the Activity Tab experience.

We released the Activity Tab to all users and continued refining it with:

• New editing insights, including all-time impact, recent activity, and views.
• Monthly highlights such as most viewed edits and contributions.
• Improved onboarding and empty states for different user types.
• Better navigation within reading history and timelines.
• Continued survey collection (extended through April).

We also fixed several issues related to saved article syncing, timeline, and deleting items.

Results from scaling

Our goal was to increase account creation by 5%. The results significantly exceeded expectations:

• Account creation increased by 91% after scaling.
• 25% of all new accounts were created through the Activity Tab.
• 18.5% of new users saved an article, and 2.9% made an edit.

We also observed stronger retention among Activity Tab users:

• 93.8% of logged-in users returned to the app.
• 91.8% of logged-out users returned.
• Compared to overall app return rates of 81.9% and 72.1%.

Learnings

• Personalization continues to drive account creation.
• Users are more likely to engage in reading than editing.
• Navigation changes need clearer communication.

Next steps

• Improve clarity around the History location in Search.
• Add clearer messaging and guidance, especially for logged-out users.

Liquid Glass

The team also focused on preparations for migrating the app to Liquid Glass, planned for April. We completed a gap analysis and audit, and then triaged and prioritized tasks.

Tabbed Browsing (Tabs)

• Adding “close all tabs” functionality.
• Highlighting the active tab.
• Introducing long-press previews.

Games

• iOS designs for the “Which came first?” game were completed.

Navigation Refresh

As part of ongoing improvements:

• History was moved into the Search tab.
• Adjustments are being made to better support logged-out users and reduce confusion.

Other iOS Updates

• Integrated hCaptcha into account creation for test wiki.
• Conducted Explore Feed audit and design groundwork.
• Fixed multiple bugs, including issues with search, saved articles, and donation flows.

Hybrid (Semantic + Lexical) Search

We began testing a new hybrid search experience that combines keyword-based and natural language search.

• The experiment is now available in beta for Greek, English and Portuguese Wikipedia.
• Users can opt in or out of the experience.
• This is part of Phase 1 of the Information Retrieval project.

Other Android Updates

• Continued work on hCaptcha integration for account creation on test wiki.
• Improved donation clarity by adding ISO currency codes.
• Updated image handling to match MediaWiki standards.
• Ran an A/B test for the Google Play product page (Japanese users).

We also fixed several issues, including:

• Background re-login issues.
• Incorrect article titles in Year in Review.
• Reading list syncing problems.
• Translation and UI inconsistencies.

Explore Feed Refresh

Across both apps, we continued design and research work to rethink the Explore experience, with the design principles of:

• Retention before depth: reasons to come back matter more than any single deep read.
• Discovery through remixing: snippets and previews lead into articles, never replace them.
• Transparent personalization: "Because you follow..." not a black box.
• Calm, trustworthy browsing: productive and credible.

Design work continued on improving the Explore feed:

• Two visual directions were developed and wireframed.
• Different onboarding approaches were explored.
• User testing is being prepared.

Our current hypothesis is that a more personalized and structured feed will help users better understand its value and increase daily usage. User testing will help determine the direction to move forward.

Year in Review

• Both teams shared results on the Year in Review project pages (Android, iOS).

Future of Editing on Mobile

The Apps team has started conversations with communities to explore how editing should work on the mobile apps.

The goal is to better support both new and experienced editors, and to guide users toward the right editing tools.

Community input is welcome, and discussions are ongoing.

Liquid Glass migration

A major focus this quarter was the transition to Apple’s new Liquid Glass design system.

The team completed extensive design, infrastructure, and implementation work, culminating in the release of Wikipedia iOS 8.0.0 with Liquid Glass support. This represented one of the largest visual updates to the app in recent years and required coordinated work across navigation, interface components, theming, and platform-specific behaviors.

The Apps team plans continued modernization of the app’s design system and navigation patterns.

Activity Tab

Following the successful rollout of the Activity Tab earlier this year, the team continued refining the experience based on user feedback.

One recurring theme was confusion around the relocation of reading history. Some users believed history had been removed or required an account to access.

To address this:

• Additional guidance was added explaining that History is now available within Search.
• Search from article view was updated to provide easier access to reading history.
• Ongoing improvements were made to onboarding and user education.

Games

Development continued on the new "Which Came First?" daily trivia game.

The game became available on 11 June 2026.

Other iOS improvements

Additional work this quarter included:

• hCaptcha instrumentation and rollout preparation.
• Explore Feed Refresh design and infrastructure work.
• Performance improvements and stability updates.
• Resolution of numerous bugs affecting search, reading lists, login flows, article viewing, donations, widgets, and accessibility.

Hybrid Search

The Android team continued work on Hybrid Search, combining traditional keyword search with semantic search capabilities.

The experiment expanded to English, French, Portuguese, and Greek Wikipedias and completed its first MVP phase.

Games Hub

Android introduced a new Games Hub, providing a centralized location for games and interactive experiences within the app.

The hub lays the groundwork for future expansion of game-based engagement features, including the upcoming trivia experience.

Explore Feed Refresh

One of the largest initiatives this quarter was the rollout of Phase 1 of the Explore Feed Refresh on Android.

The redesign introduces a new Home experience built around two primary feeds.

Community Feed

The Community Feed highlights curated Wikipedia and Wikimedia content, including:

• Featured Article
• Top Read
• In the News
• On This Day
• Picture of the Day

For You feed

The For You feed introduces personalized content through:

• Article recommendations based on selected interests.
• Because You Read recommendations.
• Continue Reading suggestions.

Wikipedia 25th Birthday Reading Challenge

This quarter we launched the Wikipedia 25th Birthday Reading Challenge across Android and iOS.

The challenge included:

• Challenge enrollment experiences.
• Daily reading goals.
• Reading streak tracking.
• Challenge completion flows.
• Home screen widgets.
• App Store and Play Store promotional events.
• CentralNotice promotion.
• Instrumentation and analytics support.
• Translation support across target languages.

Following launch, the team implemented several improvements based on early feedback and usage patterns, while resolving onboarding and widget-related issues.

Early results showed encouraging participation, increased account creation, positive community reception, and opportunities for continued iteration.

Year in Review learnings

Following the conclusion of the 2025 Year in Review experience, both teams completed a comprehensive analysis of the feature.