14 DAY TRIAL // The world is going mobile and Wikipedia is doing the same. Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind the site, has been working on several mobile tools, including the Wikipedia mobile app. This is Wikipedia though, so the mobile site is not neglected, in fact, the site gets new features first.
Wikipedia is more than just consumption though, the site wouldn't exist without contributors, so Wikimedia is looking at ways of enabling users to contribute from the mobile devices as well.
The first such feature is a watchlist, which allows users to keep track of changes to their favorite pages or the pages they're interested in.
The watchlist is already available to any registered user on the desktop site, now it's becoming available for mobile users as well.
"The watchlist is the backbone of Wikipedia’s quality. Most people don’t realize that the articles they read are constantly being modified, sometimes hundreds of thousands of times, by volunteer contributors from all over the world," Wikipedia explained.
"Wikipedia users who have an account can keep track of these changes by adding pages they care about to their watchlist," it added.
To use the watchlist you need to login or register, another new feature for the mobile website. The ability to log into Wikipedia from the mobile site should be a welcomed addition to existing editors.
The hope is that people will get more involved, keeping an eye out for vandalism or erroneous changes, or finding out when some new info comes in.
Wikimedia also hopes that the feature will spur people to contribute more and maybe even make some users realize that they can edit Wikipedia as well.
The watchlist button is now featured prominently on every mobile Wikipedia page, so there's no missing it.
This is just a first step though, Wikipedia is working on ways of enabling people to add photos and even make small edits to articles from their phones and tablets.
