Wikipedia

User:Pelagic/Incubator/Case study: Adding knowledge from Apple News to Wikipedia

< User:Pelagic‎ | Incubator

[TODO find appropriate essay template, or maybe something more fitting]

Getting information from app to app, and into a Wikipedia article, isn't as easy as it might be. This page looks at current workflows and (hopefully will) develop an idea to make it easier.

Background

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Sometimes, when I have time to kill, instead of reading Wikipedia I'll open a news source and catch up on the latest. Sure, you could argue about whether aggregators like Apple, Google, and Facebook are having a positive or negative influence on the media landscape. But for myself as a consumer, if I'm out-and-about with just my phone in my pocket, Apple's News app is a handy way to browse content from multiple reliable outlets in one place. Apple News is also a good example to discuss here, because it adds some extra wrinkles to the process.

Occasionally, a news article will make me think "are there some Wikipedia articles that should be updated to include this new information"? Perhaps it's something that didn't have a reliable source and now the media is picking up on it. Or a new scientific paper which is relatable enough to get attention in the lay press. Personally, I don't have a good feel for political or business topics, so for this case study I'll use a scientific topic: fresh-water skin disease (FWSD) in Burrunan and other dolphins.

Instead of picking a Wikipedia article that needs improvement and searching for sources, there is an opposite approach that maybe doesn't get enough credit: pick a good source, and follow from that to related sources and to target Wikipedia articles. And creating new articles shouldn't be the only goal: adding a new section to an existing article, or even just a sentence, is still valuable.

In this case, FWSD probably does deserve an article, but being recently described and newly named, there mightn't yet be enough material for notability.

The News URL

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Apple news translates URLs into its own format, so my article is

The page served from that address uses javascript to sniff your browser. If it detects iOS or macOS, it will redirect you to the app:

  • applenewss://apple.news/A5XoXky2nTtKiuaNsqIqCWw

and otherwise, unless you're a social media bot, it will redirect you to

(If you are a social media bot, then the page already contains meta tags for og:image, twitter:description, etc.)

Apple doesn't seem to do anything to save stories against link-rot, so there's no advantage to using the apple.news URL in Wikipedia. Instead we want to link to the original article (ABC in this case).

In the News app, when I tap the sharing sheet and choose another application like Mail or Notes, it's the apple.news URL that gets shared. The is an action for Open in Safari that lets me get the abc.net.au URL on the iOS device. I can then use Safari's sharing sheet to send the desired URL wherever. Otherwise I can send the original URL to another platform like Windows to let the web browser there process the javascript and take me to the original article. Either way, at some stage in the process, I'm going to have to open it in a browser.

Save for later

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I might not have time to to the research and editing straight away, so I'd need to save the URL somewhere. I could save the story in the News app, leave it open in a browser tab, email the URL to myself, save it in Notes, add it to a to-do page in Wikipedia user space, or even park it on an article's talk page.

Transfer to another device

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A small phone screen isn't the easiest editing environment, so I might want to continue on a tablet, laptop, or PC. Saved Stories in the News app don't appear to synch to iCloud, they are local on the device. If the target is another iOS device, then I could AirDrop the URL via BlueTooth. Otherwise, many of the "save for later" approaches work cross-device (notes, email, Wikipedia page).

Sample workflows

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  • News → open in Safari → open Wikipedia web in another tab → copy details across (insert reference, paste, etc.).
  • News → Notes. On another computer, log in to iCloud web → Notes → copy details → Wikipedia web in another tab.

Imagine a better way

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  1. Wikipedia app has a "Sources" or "References" list, similar to its Reading Lists.
  2. Wikipedia app is registered to receive URLs in iOS, so that it appears in the sharing sheet for relevant apps.
  3. When you send a URL to Wikipedia, instead of opening it with an embedded browser, it adds the details to your References list.
  4. The app automatically runs javascript to get the redirect, or otherwise extracts the correct target from the page source.
  5. The app automatically feeds the URL through Citoid or similar and saves the resulting Cite template along with the URL. Perhaps there could be an extra field for Comments/Notes.
  6. From the references list, you can open the URL in a browser, copy the URL, or copy the saved ref/cite wikitext.
  7. The References list is available on Wikipedia mobile and desktop web also.

Workflow:
On device: News → share → Wikipedia → save.
Later, on Wikipedia (web or app): go to References list → copy pre-formatted Cite → paste into article.

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