Wikipedia Android App Is Coming, You Can Help Get It Here Faster

Wikipedia is finally getting around to expanding beyond the site and also on modernizing the experience. And, just like with everything else about the site, Wikimedia, the foundation that runs Wikipedia and other related projects, is asking for help from volunteers.

Specifically, it's working on a app version of the site, for now only for Android, to make it easier for people to get information on the go.

It's nothing fancy, just a reformat of the site with some native capabilities thrown in, it's built on HTML5 and CSS3 and uses PhoneGap to convert that into a native app.

Wikimedia is close to debuting the Android app, but it's not quite ready yet, which is where you come in.

Wikimedia is looking for talented coders to start hacking what's been done already, fix bugs, suggest improvements, clean up code, port the app to other platforms and so on.

"Over the last month, we’ve been hard at work building a Wikipedia Android app for our users and partners that prefer apps over the mobile web," Tomasz Finc, Director of Mobile and Special Projects at Wikimedia, wrote.

"It’s built with the PhoneGap framework and makes use of HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript to power all of its features. Many thanks to our partners at Nitobi for getting us here," he explained.

"We’re getting close to our first market release and we’d love to get more developers to hack on the code with us," he said.

There is a GitHub set up for the project, but there are plans to move it to a dedicated git repository hosted by Wikimedia.

For now, Wikimedia is looking for contributors to improve the code and help with the project moving forward. So if this is something that sounds good to you, it's simple to get involved. What's more, Wikimedia is hiring people to work on this sort of stuff.

While contributions to the site may be slowing down, the fact, much of what should be on Wikipedia is already there, at least for the English language. But better ways of surfacing it are welcomed. Wikipedia is also looking for help on several other projects, like a mobile photo uploader, a media slideshow for the site and so on.