Wikipedia today announced it has launched support for editing content on your mobile device. The first version of mobile editing, which requires a Wikimedia account, is available right now.
“For our first release, our primary goal was to create a fast, intuitive editing experience for new users and experienced editors alike, while still sticking with markup editing for now,” Wikimedia’s Juliusz Gonera explained. “We started simple so we could observe our users’ needs and expectations.”
Wikimedia today also revealed why it has finally decided to jump on the bandwagon: over 15 percent of Wikipedia’s users currently access the site on mobile devices. Furthermore, that fraction is growing, so the Wikimedia Foundation decided it had to “do more to let anyone with Internet access contribute to the sum of all human knowledge.”
To get started, you’ll need to sign up for a Wikimedia account if you don’t already have one; you can do so on desktop and mobile. Once you’re logged in, look for the pencil icon next to any section to make changes to it.
As you can see, the left-hand screenshot above features the pencil icon alongside the usual mobile interface. The right-hand screenshot meanwhile shows off the mobile editing interface, which let’s you preview your changes before saving, just like on the desktop.
Wikimedia first introduced the feature on its experimental beta site, where it says “an encouraging number of users” have tried it out. Now it’s finally available for all users (you can give Wikimedia suggestions and details of bugs on Twitter), and Wikimedia is already considering adding more advanced features, including Visual Editor integration.
See also – Wikimedia rolls out WYSIWYG visual editor for logged-in users accessing Wikipedia articles in English and Wikipedia Zero arrives in India, dropping mobile data charges for 60m Aircel subscribers
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