Experiment Announcement: Mobile Drawer Variations
Hello all!
Last month, we launched a Mobile Drawer experiment for logged out users. (Read more about it here!) Based on data and feedback, we're ready to test new variations on how the Drawer appears.
Experiment Name: Mobile Drawer: Variants
Test Launch: Thursday, July 18
Test Closes: 1 week
Will Be Tested On: 12% of logged out users (each variant will be shown to 3%)
Hypothesis: We believe the Mobile Drawer provides a convenient way for users to engage with Fandom's offerings. By testing variants, we aim to find the most impactful and engaging version.
Variants: We will be running four variants of the Mobile Drawer:
- V1: Compact on page load, slides open on scroll.
- V2: Compact on page load, remains compact.
- V3: Default on page load, compacts on scro…
Technical Updates: July 12, 2024
Eyo, my lovely people. Time keeps flying by. Feels like yesterday that I posted the last tech blog for June, and now we're already 2 weeks further, so I'm here with the first tech blog of July! As you know, we use these technical update posts to keep you all in the loop of what's happening on the platform by providing you with insights on some of the bugs that got fixed, changes we rolled out, and experiments we're running. If there's anything not clear or you have something to report, don't hesitate to reach out in the comments!
- 1 Notable Changes
- 2 Recent Fixes
- 3 Development Updates
- 3.1 Engagement
- 3.2 News & Ratings (N&R) team
- 3.3 User-Generated Content (UGC) team
- Announced in May already but in effect since this week, non-emailconfirmed accounts are n…
Overviewing Fandom's Policies Regarding Political Content
As you may well know, the United States, where Fandom is headquartered and where the majority of our community lives, is having a Presidential election this fall.
It’s not Fandom’s role to discuss an election, so we’re not going to do so. Adjacent to that, though, is the topic of today’s blog, which is an overview and reminder of Fandom’s rules about politics and its role on the Fandom wiki platform.
One of the core strengths of Fandom wikis is that they are, most prominently, encyclopedic reference sites about the topics they cover across gaming and entertainment. What brings users to Fandom wikis is a shared celebration of a common interest, and that’s the fandom itself – whether you want to look up a piece of information, contribute conte…
Tweak Announcement: More protection for wikis aimed at children
Hello hello,
At Fandom we're committed to fostering a safe and inclusive online environment for everyone, especially our younger users. As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance child safety, we're excited to announce an important change coming to our platform on Monday. This change was anticipated in some of our Tech Updates in May, but it's time to give more details.
When creating a new wiki, you have the option to designate it as "for kids," which activates special protections to ensure that participating users have verified their accounts and are properly identified. The Fandom staff can also add this label later, the admins can request it by contacting us.
Up until now, users without verified email addresses have been able to contribute …
Experimentation Announcement: Suggested Pages
Hey everybody!
We have been publishing information about the experiments and tweaks in the Fandom Stars Wiki. After some conversations, we have decided to move the blog posts into Community Central to make them more visible to our users and give all of you the possibility to ask questions, make suggestions, and follow the changes.
This blog post is about a new experiment that we will run in the upcoming weeks.
- Experiment name: Suggested Pages
- Test Launch: Next week
- Test Closes: 3 weeks
- Will Be Tested On: New editors - to push them towards becoming loyal editors - and regular editors - to keep them active -
- Hypothesis: Providing editors with a call to action and links to potentially relevant pages after each edit, will increase editor retention and nu…
Tweak Announcement: Closed Wiki Page Design Update
If you've visited our Closed Wiki page recently, you might have noticed it's been feeling a bit... well, closed off from the rest of Fandom. We heard your feedback, and we're excited to announce that a major refresh is underway! Our UX team is transforming this page to reflect the vibrant Fandom brand and say goodbye to that little remnant of the Monaco skin on Fandom in the middle graphic. Sorry, Monaco!
Tweak: Closed Wiki page design update
Launching: Next week
Premise: The Closed Wiki page is undergoing a much needed redesign. The update aims to modernize the page's aesthetic, aligning it with the current Fandom brand identity.
Designs
Tweak Announcement: Unification of Others Like You
Yesterday, I posted a blog announcing design changes to the Popular Pages & Recent Images widgets. We received the results for the Other Like You experiment and have turned the design change live to all users.
Tweak: Unification of Others Like You
Launching: Today!
Premise: We are unifying the designs of these widgets - instead of having similar but different designs, they will have the same design with differing content depending on the widget.
Data: Similarly to the other Unification of experiments, we did not see a massive pageview increase (we saw a slight one, though!), but that is okay because it was not our goal. However, unlike the other two experiments, we tested multiple variants - one with the new design, and one with the new design…
Tweak announcement: Unification of Popular Pages and Recent Images Widget Designs
Last month, I announced an experiment we were running to unify the widgets designs for the Popular Pages and Recent Images widgets. As I mentioned in the blog, this is part of our broader effort to make Fandom widgets more visually consistent.
The experiment is complete, and I'm back to announce the rollout!
Tweak: Unification of Popular Pages & Recent Images widget designs
Launching: The new design for Popular Pages went live last week, and the new design for Recent Images will go live this week.
Premise: We are unifying the designs of these widgets - instead of having similar but different designs, they will have the same design with differing content depending on the widget.
Data: In some experiments, our primary goal isn't always to increas…
Testing Announcement: New Ways to Embed Interactive Maps on Pages
Hello everyone!
While we’re currently running the third iteration of the experiment to track progress in maps, I’m here to announce another planned enhancement to this interactive feature for every community. Since the end of March, we already announced we were working in parallel, to both experiment with features like progress tracking, but also adding native enhancements to the Interactive Maps tool and for all the communities. The first one was the option to use the full screen to display a map, and we’re currently starting to test how we can embed maps on pages in different ways.
Project Name: New Ways to Embed Interactive Maps on Pages
Test Launch: June (Tentative) *
Type: Early Testing with Voluntary Communities
Will Be Tested On: All logged…
Tweak Announcement: Quizzes on Discussions, Articles, or Both
Hi all!
You're hearing a lot from me this week, but hopefully that is a good thing! Today, I am announcing a change we are making to Quizzes. Please look below!
Tweak: Quizzes will be shown on Discussions, Articles, on both
Launching: June 13, 2024
Premise: Previously, Quizzes could only be either enabled and displayed in both Articles and Discussions, or completely disabled for the entire wiki. However, we received feedback from various communities requesting the option to show Quizzes only in Discussions and not in Articles. In response, we have now implemented the ability to enable Quizzes exclusively in Discussions, exclusively in Articles, in both, or to disable them entirely.
If you would like to see this change on your wiki, please either c…