Social media plugins
Social media plugins are easy ways of sharing content with other people via social media platforms. The most common way is a Share or Like button. This page discusses the possibility to integrate social media plugins into Wikimedia projects.
Solutions
[edit]- Extensions (none currently used on Wikimedia wikis)
- mw:Extension:WikiShare (mw:User:Dantman/Post to social media feeds)
- mw:Extension:Share
- mw:Extension:AddThis and other extensions
- mw:Extension:Widgets with Widget:AddThis and other widgets
- mw:Extension:Shariff
- mw:Extension:TweetANew
- mw:Extension:WebToolsManager
- User Scripts
- Wikimedia implementations
- Some wikis have manually added it to the sidebar, e.g. Bahasa Indonesia Wikipedia. (added in id:MediaWiki:Sidebar)
- Some Wikinews use a template at the top or bottom of every article: e.g. English Wikinews (added in n:en:Template:Social bookmarks -- see d:Q17589552 for similar)
- English Wikipedia's Signpost newsletter uses a default-collapsed "Share" template on each newsletter-article
- Semi-related
- Some wikis have generic links (i.e. not for sharing custom-per-page-links) to the local community's group-page(s)
- Some have it as part of the Sitenotice, e.g. pt.wikibooks, id.wikipedia, az.wikipedia, ka.wikipedia, and many others,
- Some just have links on their Mainpage, e.g. ru.wikivoyage, ar.wikipedia, bn.wikisource, bn.wikipedia, and many others.
Discussions
[edit]- English Wikipedia: WP:Perennial proposals#Share pages on Facebook, Twitter etc.
- Bugs/Tasks
- 2008, phab:T18691: "RFC: Section header "share" link" (formerly: "Section headings should have some clickable anchor for passing links" / "RFC: Section headings should have a clickable anchor")
- 2011, phab:T29027: "Share" button (tools) in Wikipedia
- 2012, phab:T35820: A Twitter button next to every article title
- 2012, phab:T42456: UploadWizard: add social sharing feature after upload
- 2014, phab:T64811: Review and deploy TwitterCards extension for proper display
- 2015, phab:T120487: Cite : Share : Export (Consolidate and replace a variety of items on the sidebar)
- 2017, phab:T142048: Add hover-card like image (og:image) to open graph meta data (which enabled image previews for links shared from MediaWiki on social media sites like Facebook)
- Mailing list highlights
- 2009, Wikimedia-l: Sharing Wikimedia pages on Facebook, etc.
- 2011, Wikimedia-l: "share in Facebook/Twitter/etc" icon
- 2012, Wikimedia-l: Editor retention implies social features
- 2013, Wikimedia-l: "Tweet this page" from some or all sites???
- 2015, Wikitech-l: Stance on Social Media
Arguments
[edit]This section lists some arguments that have been brought up in the discussions.
Pro
[edit]- Share button allow easy sharing of Wikimedia's content; widely distributing the content serves our mission.
- Some users enjoy sharing the content they read (or create!) with their friends, it's a feature often requested by both readers and editors.
- Increasing readership, also increases the pool of potential editors
Con
[edit]- Privacy concerns: This is only a problem if we were to embed the externally-provided JavaScript widgets, but nobody wants that.
- This point could be further weakened by implementing a "2 click solution"
Complexities
[edit]- Placement. Where do the links go? It's another user-interface element – Wikimedia sites already have too much UI clutter.
- Selection. It's difficult to define "a set of social media sites that Wikimedia will have plugins for". Excluding any social media services (out of the dozens-to-hundreds in existence) might be seen as contrary to our neutrality policies.
- We already do something similar with tools like GeoHack and Special:BookSources (ISBN search).
- You could even refine it by building a service like AddThis yourself, but under WMF privacy policies. Not too difficult.
- We already do something similar with tools like GeoHack and Special:BookSources (ISBN search).
- Some users feel that we should not allow social media plugins because that would make Wikipedia itself a social network. This point is highly disputed.
- Icons. The services' icons are the most recognizable element for users, but would be the most eye-catching/distracting addition in our mostly-text interface.