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mobile apps do not link to authors/history of wikipedia article
Closed, ResolvedPublic

Description

In the Wikipedia app for Android, no information is provided about the license or authorship of the content. This is a violation of CC-BY-SA and sets a very bad precedent for other users of Wikipedia content.

License and Authorship info should be available in the options menu, preferably at the first (initial) level, and/or via a long-tab into the content (the latter could at some point show the author of the respective word - but that opens a whole new can of worms). The "About" page with info about the App would *not* be the right place, as it's counterintuitive and hard to find (we wouldn't accept that for other apps, would we?)


Version: 1.0.0 (Android)
Severity: critical

Details

Reference
bz34292

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Low.Nov 22 2014, 12:17 AM
bzimport set Reference to bz34292.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

I just found that the license *is* mentioned at the bottom of the page, but there's no link to the authors. This would be a good place to put that link too.

There appears to be a line at the very botton of which i can only see the top one or two pixels... maybe there *is* a link there? Then it's just a rendering bug. I'm viewing this on a vanilla Galaxy II.

  • This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 33912 ***

(In reply to comment #2)

  • This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 33912 ***

No. This is not a dupe of bug 33912. 33912 is about attribution of the application's author and the libraries used. This bug is about attribution the contributors of the wikipedia article shown.

These are different issues with different technical and UI requirements. Reopeneing.

After thinking about it for a bit: Just adding a link to the history at the bottom of the page, along with the link to the license, would probably work best. Please don't hide it in the "about" page. But an extra menu entry is probably not the best way either. So, just a link at the bottom. Thanks :)

Daniel, this is definitely on the list of things to do. The mobile team is grappling with some interface redesign at the moment - particularly dealing with a new navigation scheme (see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_design/Wikipedia_navigation). We will also be working out how the history interface should look on mobile devices.

Updating product as bug 35616 covers the mobile site

  • Bug 34673 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

philinje wrote:

Updating the title of this bug to reflect the app, since the site discussion is occurring in bug 35616.

The comment I just posted over there is relevant here too:

We are considering what to call this. In the new nav design, there will be a history function as currently exists in the apps (in the browser that is just a browser function). Lindsey's current idea is to make a new section heading called "Article history" which would then link to the View history page in the Desktop view. That will be somewhat jarring, but maybe the best solution for now.

Really this change applies more to the apps, and we definitely have confusing terminology to deal with there.

philinje wrote:

Also please note there is currently no footer in the apps.

I talked to Yuvi about this today in irc and we came to the conclusion that we should add a footer to the bottom of every page with the text 'Content provided by <a>these people<a> and available under CC BY-SA 3.0'
where the a tag signals a link to the correct page

We could potentially do the same for bug 35616

Would such text be suitable?

Sounds great to me! If you want to simplify a little, you could lose the word "available" -- how about:

Content provided by <a>these people</a> under the <a>CC BY-SA 3.0</a> license

Created attachment 10466
Screenshot of new minimal footer in the app

attachment iOS Simulator Screen shot 25-Apr-2012 10.46.03 PM.png ignored as obsolete

Currently reads 'From <a>these people</a>, provided under CC BY-SA 3.0'. Shortened because it fits on one line.

I'm also a fan of 'From <a>these people</a>, under CC BY-SA 3.0'.

I wouldn't worry too much about fitting it on a single line.
We can reduce font size for smaller resolutions to fit into one line.

Created attachment 10469
App footer with CC images

Attached:

iOS_Simulator_Screen_shot_26-Apr-2012_12.45.14_AM.png (480×320 px, 33 KB)

Comment on attachment 10469
App footer with CC images

I prefer this one, with sharper images (I made these by downsizing PNGs from teh CC site. They have vector images available that people with the proper software could convert into sharp images for us)

Comment on attachment 10469
App footer with CC images

I prefer this one, with sharper images (I made these by downsizing PNGs from teh CC site. They have vector images available that people with the proper software could convert into sharp images for us)

Created attachment 10470
App footer with CC text

Footer with text suggested by tfinc.

Attached:

iOS_Simulator_Screen_shot_26-Apr-2012_12.50.00_AM.png (480×320 px, 33 KB)

philinje wrote:

Attachment 10469 has the nicest text. I am not sure it is wise to use the icons only without the text CC-BY-SA. Also the icons take more space, not less.

Talking about this with Erik, he would prefer to see a list of the contributors, as opposed to the desktop view of View history. He said it would be easy to make an API call to get that list. How feasible is that as a quick project?

philinje wrote:

One more point: this is dependent on what happens with the text that currently appears as footer text.

(In reply to comment #19)

Attachment 10469 [details] has the nicest text. I am not sure it is wise to use the icons
only without the text CC-BY-SA. Also the icons take more space, not less.

Talking about this with Erik, he would prefer to see a list of the
contributors, as opposed to the desktop view of View history. He said it would
be easy to make an API call to get that list. How feasible is that as a quick
project?

So would I but thats not the fastest option to fix attribution. Let's provide the link and we can come up with a UI later.

philinje wrote:

Erik looked at both of these attachments and thought it was not obvious the icons could be linked. Michelle, one of our lawyers, had the same reaction.

In addition, I think the icons are not immediately obvious to most people.

Erik mentioned two must-haves:

  1. The CC-BY-SA 3.0 must link to the license text, which it already does.
  1. The word to use is contributors, not contributions. Authors is also acceptable.

philinje wrote:

How about this:

Article by contributors like you, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Contributors and CC-BY-SA 3.0 are links.

philinje wrote:

or maybe:

Article by contributors like you, provided under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Created attachment 10475
Footer screenshot with two lines

Attached:

iOS_Simulator_Screen_shot_26-Apr-2012_11.17.54_PM.png (480×320 px, 31 KB)

Yuvi, I like your latest quite a bit. Just one quibble: neither line is a complete sentence. If one gets a period at the end, the other should too (my preference):

Article by contributors like you.
Provided under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Or, no periods for either:

Article by contributors like you
Provided under CC BY-SA 3.0

philinje wrote:

Let's go with no period at the end of the first line.

I got rid of the periods. Should be merged in whenever jdlrobson gets the time :)