Wikipedia now lets you edit articles from your mobile phone

The Wikimedia Foundation has launched support for editing the free encyclopaedia through mobile phones. You can now log in and edit Wikipedia through its mobile site.

Ramkumar Iyer|Jul 27, 2013, 17:24:34 IST

I have no doubts about the fact that people who edit Wikipedia are doing great work. They take time out to contribute to humanity as a whole by sharing their knowledge or skills, and that’s a great thing. However, almost everyone I know who edits Wikipedia is a little annoying, and I have no idea why. Well, this piece of news is bound to make more people annoying for me: the Wikimedia Foundation has launched support for editing the free encyclopaedia through mobile phones.

Wikipedia’s mobile site now shows a pencil icon beside articles and subheads if you’re signed in. The mobile site’s interface has remained unchanged otherwise. Once you click on the pencil icon, you’re taken to the mobile editing interface, which is pretty straightforward. Just like on the desktop version, the mobile editor lets you preview any changes you’ve made to an article before you save them. The official Wikipedia app currently doesn't have this feature, though. caption

The new pencil icon beside subheads, and the mobile editor's interface.

The Wikimedia Foundation said one of its main reasons to facilitate editing on mobile devices was the fact that more than 15 percent of all users that accessed Wikipedia did so via mobile devices. This comes as no surprise as an increasing number of people are using their smartphones and tablets to look up information and access the Internet. And given the accelerated growth of the smartphone and tablet markets, that figure is only set to rise.

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Wikimedia is also considering adding more features to the mobile editor, including support for VisualEditor, a new visual interface for editing Wikipedia. VisualEditor effectively removes the need to learn the complex wiki markup language, thereby making editing simpler for both new and experienced editors.

This is quite a welcome addition, but we hope Wikimedia also upgrades Wikipedia’s mobile site and smartphone app. The mobile website is not very easy to navigate, and the app is nothing more than a bad browser for the mobile site.

By Ramkumar Iyer

Behind his cold and drowsy exterior is the still cold but slightly less sleepy Ram. He's essentially paid to be our own personal grammar nazi. He tends to take his job a little too seriously, so you may sometimes see him running around punching his colleagues in the arm for typos and grammar mistakes. Some of his favorite topics to find mistakes in are games and open source stuff like Linux, but he also maintains a fleeting interest in smartphones. He also loves Michael Jackson's Heal the World the same way a little girl loves cockroaches.