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[Epic] Experiment Reader Footnote Click Intent
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Description

The Technical Wishes team is currently working on improving references in Wikipedia.

With this experiment we aim to test the following assumption:

Most readers on desktop who click on a footnote marker do NOT intend to navigate to the reference list. They are satisfied with viewing all the bibliographic information and details in the pop-up/in-line (e.g. Reference Previews).

If the assumption is true, we will:

  1. Change the behavior when clicking on a footnote to show the Reference Previews pop-up instead of flying users down to the reference list, where there is a high chance that they get disoriented and cannot go back to the spot in the article where they left off.
  2. Reduce investments in improving the reference list for readers, particulary for sub-referencing.
  3. Venture into acquiring a deeper understanding of contributor needs towards the reference list.

Audience:

  • all readers (logged-in, logged-out, incl. temp accounts, bucket counts )
  • desktop only
  • on wiki's with Reference Previews turned on and with existing translations:
    • large: dewiki, svwiki
    • medium: fawiki, hiwiki
    • small: fywiki, sowiki
  • Traffic allocation for all wikis in treatment group: 10%

Duration:

  • 1 - 2 weeks

UX for Treatment Group:

Metrics:
see here (internal doc) for metrics

  • % of footnote clicks that do not lead to a navigation to the reference list via the pop-up link.
  • Reference list visits per page view
  • TOC clicks to ‘references’ per page views

DEV Estimation
M

DEV Notes
cite-footnote-content-interaction-experiment

Event Timeline

There are a very large number of changes, so older changes are hidden. Show Older Changes
Restricted Application added subscribers: Huji, Aklapper. · View Herald Transcript

removed frwiki and plwiki to reduce ammount of experiments being run simultaneously on these two wikis.
See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Readers/Reader_Growth/Mobile_page_previews

Change #1300739 had a related patch set uploaded (by WMDE-Fisch; author: WMDE-Fisch):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Improve click intent event logging and exposure tracking

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1300739

Change #1300739 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Improve click intent event logging and exposure tracking

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1300739

Change #1302629 had a related patch set uploaded (by WMDE-Fisch; author: WMDE-Fisch):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@wmf/1.47.0-wmf.6] Improve click intent event logging and exposure tracking

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1302629

Change #1302629 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@wmf/1.47.0-wmf.6] Improve click intent event logging and exposure tracking

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1302629

Change #1305064 had a related patch set uploaded (by WMDE-Fisch; author: WMDE-Fisch):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@wmf/1.47.0-wmf.7] Improve click intent event logging and exposure tracking

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1305064

Change #1305064 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@wmf/1.47.0-wmf.7] Improve click intent event logging and exposure tracking

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1305064

Change #1306316 had a related patch set uploaded (by WMDE-Fisch; author: WMDE-Fisch):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Fix async loading in footnote click interaction experiment

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1306316

Change #1306316 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Fix async loading in footnote click interaction experiment

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1306316

Change #1306710 had a related patch set uploaded (by WMDE-Fisch; author: WMDE-Fisch):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@wmf/1.47.0-wmf.8] Fix async loading in footnote click interaction experiment

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1306710

Change #1306711 had a related patch set uploaded (by WMDE-Fisch; author: WMDE-Fisch):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@wmf/1.47.0-wmf.9] Fix async loading in footnote click interaction experiment

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1306711

Change #1306710 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@wmf/1.47.0-wmf.8] Fix async loading in footnote click interaction experiment

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1306710

Change #1306711 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@wmf/1.47.0-wmf.9] Fix async loading in footnote click interaction experiment

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1306711

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-07-01T07:20:56Z] <mszwarc@deploy1003> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1306710|Fix async loading in footnote click interaction experiment (T415904)]], [[gerrit:1306711|Fix async loading in footnote click interaction experiment (T415904)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-07-01T07:23:01Z] <mszwarc@deploy1003> wmde-fisch, mszwarc: Backport for [[gerrit:1306710|Fix async loading in footnote click interaction experiment (T415904)]], [[gerrit:1306711|Fix async loading in footnote click interaction experiment (T415904)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-07-01T07:28:15Z] <mszwarc@deploy1003> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1306710|Fix async loading in footnote click interaction experiment (T415904)]], [[gerrit:1306711|Fix async loading in footnote click interaction experiment (T415904)]] (duration: 07m 19s)

Change #1306968 had a related patch set uploaded (by WMDE-Fisch; author: WMDE-Fisch):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Fix how to check the treatment group

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1306968

Change #1306970 had a related patch set uploaded (by WMDE-Fisch; author: WMDE-Fisch):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@wmf/1.47.0-wmf.9] Fix how to check the treatment group

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1306970

Change #1306968 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Fix how to check the treatment group

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1306968

Change #1306971 had a related patch set uploaded (by WMDE-Fisch; author: WMDE-Fisch):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@wmf/1.47.0-wmf.8] Fix how to check the treatment group

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1306971

Change #1306970 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@wmf/1.47.0-wmf.9] Fix how to check the treatment group

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1306970

Change #1306971 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@wmf/1.47.0-wmf.8] Fix how to check the treatment group

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1306971

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-07-02T07:09:20Z] <wmde-fisch@deploy1003> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1306970|Fix how to check the treatment group (T415904)]], [[gerrit:1306971|Fix how to check the treatment group (T415904)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-07-02T07:11:28Z] <wmde-fisch@deploy1003> wmde-fisch: Backport for [[gerrit:1306970|Fix how to check the treatment group (T415904)]], [[gerrit:1306971|Fix how to check the treatment group (T415904)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-07-02T07:16:15Z] <wmde-fisch@deploy1003> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1306970|Fix how to check the treatment group (T415904)]], [[gerrit:1306971|Fix how to check the treatment group (T415904)]] (duration: 06m 55s)