Hiya lovelies! I hope September has been treating you well. As those of you who've been following our Technical Updates series already know, this will be the second of two update blogs this month. If you're now here, this is the place to be in case you'd like to get a quick overview of what's been happening on the platform. I'll be sharing a selection of bug tickets that have been fixed between the previous tech blog and now, as well as inform you about general changes and experiments we may be or will be running. The comment section remains a good place for you to let us know if you're encountering a certain issue (in which case, please share some links and ideally even a video or screenshot about what the issue is) or if you have general feedback to share or something to ask us. Alright, let's see what's going on!
Suggested Pages banner on light (left) and dark (right) theme
Earlier this week, from the desk of the UGC team came the release of the Suggested Pages feature as a wiki-wide product. When on desktop, someone with less than 5 edits on a wiki making an edit on that wiki will be shown a banner in the down-left corner showing five other pages that they could edit next. This feature came to be after the experimental phase showed that this helpful incentive (albeit now modified a bit based on user feedback) increased edits made by 7.45%. Read more about the Suggested Pages product release and give feedback.
Over the past week, the FANDOMBot has been (re)adding the new Template:StructuredQuote to wikis to ensure that everyone has the latest version of the template. If you're unsure on how to work with this template, you can find more information on the structured quotes help page, or you can reach out to your assigned CM if you have one or otherwise contact Fandom Staff or Lostris directly. This marks the completion of a first step in our bigger project around Structured Content, although we continue working and improving on the functionality. Please test it out and let us know what you think of it!
Recent Fixes[]
On wikis requiring accounts to be both autoconfirmed and emailconfirmed and an account it already emailconfirmed, the received error about the lack of being autoconfirmed no longer incorrectly mentions email confirmation.
[New A/B Test] Updated user registration form - As has been said a few times on other Tech Blogs before, many small changes put together can have a big impact. Under that guise, we'll be running an A/B test to see if we can increase the registration success rate by bringing the registration form UI closer to industry standard and adding a number of usability and accessibility improvements. Some of the changes include updated username, email, and password field design, markers indicating mandatory input, and an updated birth date input field. A/B testing means that we'll be comparing the performance of the changes visible to group B against the current version visible to the control group A. This test will run for a week on all the logged out users using desktop on English wikis only. Stay tuned for a more in-depth blog about this experiment that will be published next week. You'll be able to find it linked on the main page.
[New Security Measure] Introducing blocking Content Security Policy (CPS) rules for Thumblr on all wikis - After running some successful tests, a blocking CSP rule for Thumblr has been enabled for all wikis. This security measure will allow us to block certain images and review if they have malicious code injected and limit what exactly can be read by the browser from those files. With this measure, we can prevent private data from being stolen through these images.
[Rerun Experiment] Impact Notification Experiment rerun - Last month, we ran an experiment showing users the impact their edits had on visitors by sending them a notification with a pageview snapshot. The idea behind it was to make edits feel more rewarded by showing them their impact and thus enticing them to continue helping out. However, we ran into some issues accurately collecting data from the control group, prompting us to rerun this experiment, starting sometime next week. That said, we made some modifications to the test based on the received user feedback. The biggest changes are that only content namespace edits trigger a notification and that you'll be able to opt-out of receiving this notification via the Notifications tab on Special:Preferences. Stay tuned for more details about this in the experiment release blog you can find linked on the main page.
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.
