KILL

WILLthe

small screen

Wikipedia?

No!But something

has to be done…

C C - B Y- S A : H T T P : / / W W W. F L I C K R . C O M / P H O T O S / G A R R Y K N I G H T / 7 0 0 3 1 7 8 8 5 7 / S I Z E S / L /

HTTP : / /WWW.NYT IMES .COM/2014 / 0 2 / 1 0 / TECHNOLOGY /W IK I PED IA - VS - THE - SMALL - SCREEN .HTML

”Only 20 percent of the readership of the English-language Wikipedia comes via mobile devices, a figure substantially

lower than the percentage of mobile traffic for other media sites, many of which approach 50 percent.”

People read more and more text on their mobile devices.

On mobile, people want to check facts quickly.

Most of the (good) articles in Wikipedia are long.

The solution

1000 character Wikipedia

= like conventional Wikipedia, but there is a character limit

in the articles.

P R O S

• Mobile user wants to do a quick check on a subject.

• Even in a well-written article the introduction in the beginning does not usually cover the key facts in the article.

• An analogy: abstracts in scientific articles.

• Easy to create high quality texts: the character limit is your friend.

H O W T O I M P L E M E N T ?

• As new service / startup / nonprofit?

• Mediawiki software (which Wikipedia runs on) is free and open software - it is easy to set up a new wiki with a character limit.

• As Wikimedia Foundation new project?

• As a separate ”language” in Wikipedia (like English vs. Simple English currently are)?

• As a new feature in Mediawiki and Wikipedia?

• On mobile browser, the 1000 character abstract is shown (with an option to tap to the full article.

– V E S A L I N J A - A H O

And: I don’t have time for this currently, please steal the idea if you think it’s good.