Hiya, lovely people! In this first of two blogs of August, spaced two weeks apart, I'll walk you through some of the more public-facing bug fixes, platform changes, and experiments that may be ongoing or will be upcoming. The comment section is also an excellent opportunity to ask questions or raise awareness about something that's on your mind regarding Fandom. Remember that when you're reporting something to include a link to where you're experiencing the issue, a screenshot if it is something visible, as well as steps to reproduce your issue. With all that said, let's dive in!
The category and help tooltip was misaligned and unnecessary scrollbars appeared upon opening them within the Interactive Maps VisualEditor.
Deleting a page on select wikis resulted in "Fatal exception of type LogicException" error.
The template parameter collapsing option for the 2010 source editor had an inconsistent user interface.
Visiting Special:SocialActivity for the first time that day could trigger "Fatal exception of type "TypeError.""
Editing a page using the mobile skin caused the infobox image to disappear, requiring a null edit to restore it.
WikiText didn't work within captions of embedded Interactive Maps on mobile.
Syntax highlighting in the 2017 VisualEditor - source mode no longer causes text to be misaligned.
Taking moderation actions within an already deleted Message Wall or Article Comment thread no longer gives an error.
Fixes in Development[]
The current width value of embedded Interactive Maps only takes the map size into account and not the container. A fix is in the works to have the width reference the entire container (i.e the map, the padding, and the border).
[Feature Tweak] With the imminent site-wide release of the map marker progress tracking, the need for unique marker IDs becomes more apparent, otherwise markers with the same ID will mirror each other, i.e. marking one as done will also affect the other. The ID itself can be whatever you want, though a character limit of 64 needs to be observed, lest you won’t be able to save your changes.
[Rerelease] OpenWeb advertisement fixed: Fandom remains committed to providing a better ad experience for users and a more transparent communication about it. Earlier this week, we fixed an old advertisement that we started using last year, i.e. the OpenWeb ad, which distinguished itself by being interactive. However, when it was first released, it was sticky for 7 seconds on the right rail. A negative impact on page load times was recorded, and thus the ad was taken down. After working out the issues, we're now reinstating this ad in its old placement on the right rail above the Popular Pages widget, but it is no longer sticky.
Opened (top) and collapsed (bottom) version of the desktop drawer
[Experiment] Desktop Drawer: Although we are still analyzing results from the several mobile drawer experiments, we have already documented positive results for user engagement. Building on that, we believe a similar drawer for desktop will lead to a similar experience. Running for two weeks from August 8th, the desktop drawer will show typical right rail widgets such as “Others like you also viewed”, “Popular pages”, “Recent images”, and even the Fan Feed in a collapsible drawer. The experiment will affect 3% of the logged-out users. Read more about the Desktop Drawer experiment
[Experiment Variant] Mobile Drawer - Persistent User Setting: Experiments with a mobile drawer are not new, though we continue to build on previous findings to find the winning combination. Earlier this week we released another experiment variant testing a new functionality: the mobile drawer will remember if a user expands or collapses for the remainder of the session. The experiment will last a week and affect 9% of logged-out users (each variant will be shown to 3%). Read more about the persistent user setting for the Mobile Drawer experiment
[Concluded Experiment]: Mobile Notifications Move for logged-out users: Under the premise of “the next big thing will be a lot of small things”, an experiment was held to move the wiki sitenotice and Fandom survey announcements under the bell icon for anonymous users in order to be another measure to declutter their experience. It ran for one week from July 29th, so we are now in the process of analyzing the data to decide how to proceed. Read more about the Mobile Notifications Move experiment
Example of how the editing impact statistics notification shows pageviews
[New Experiment] Impact Notification: People often like to know that what they do matters. With that idea in mind, this experiment will show editors the impact their edits are having in terms of pageviews in hopes that it will inspire them to make more edits and return to the wiki. For 2 weeks, one of two variants will be shown to 1/3rd of our users with a message in the bell notification drawer. Read more about the Impact notifications experiment
[Experiment Concluded]: A month ago, the Suggested Pages experiment was launched, its premise to entice users who made an edit to continue to make more. While we definitely heard the criticism about its reach and lack of content control, which are points to be reviewed and redefined before productizing, the experiment improved the number of edits by 7.45%.
That's it for the past weeks! Per usual, if you encounter something that feels off about the platform, please report it by sending in a bug report, reach out to your Community Manager, contact the Product Support Owner on their Wall/talk page, or just simply sound off in the comments here. Remember to include a link to where you're experiencing the issue, a screenshot if it is something visible, as well as steps to reproduce your issue. As always, thank you for helping us by continuing to communicate. Happy editing, everyone!
Lostris is a Senior Product Support Manager. When not online, she lives to travel, play roller derby, and escape the world by watching anything that has a good plot, good acting, and preferably a ton of sassy one-liners.
