Since the Page Previews feature was launched in 2018, Wikipedia readers have been able to access useful context on articles without ever having to leave a Wikipedia page. Page Previews helps readers by showing a snippet of information on a hyperlink to another Wikipedia article — ensuring readers can gather additional information without having to open multiple articles.
Building on the usefulness of Page Previews on Wikipedia, the Inuka team at the Wikimedia Foundation created a new feature for other websites on the internet — Wikipedia Preview — to expand beyond our projects and share that usefulness with other websites around the world.
How Wikipedia Preview works
Imagine you are reading an article from your favorite news site about wildlife in the Central African Republic. You come across a term you don’t know. Wikipedia Preview allows you to tap the new term on your phone, or hover over it on your desktop computer, and see a small popup with text describing the term alongside helpful visuals. Go ahead and try it with the hyperlinked Central African Republic text above.
See an example of Wikipedia Preview in action:
As more people around the world look to Wikipedia as a trusted place for free knowledge, we want to ensure readers can access Wikipedia content in places that are most useful to them. This is a key element to the movement’s commitment to knowledge equity and to innovate in free knowledge.
Designed as a mobile first experience, Wikipedia Preview brings knowledge from Wikipedia to meet readers where they are, providing important context about topics when they need it. For readers who want more information, the full Wikipedia article is just a click away.
Partners using Wikipedia Preview so far
As we launch Wikipedia Preview, we are working with three partners who are the first to use the new feature: BeEd, Good News From Indonesia, and Right for Education (R:Ed).
- BeEd is an affordable, pedagogically-focused and customizable resource for school and professional education. To support schools and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, BeEd proactively opened all access to their Learning Management System for free, a demonstration of their shared commitment to free knowledge.
- Good News From Indonesia (GNFI) is an independent, positive information-sharing platform about all good news in Indonesia. As part of its mission to share positive news to build optimism among Indonesian people, GNFI has published articles about the work of the Wikimedia Indonesia Chapter to preserve the regional languages of Indonesia.
- Right for Education (R:Ed) is an online educational resource developed for Africans. Combining cultural and practical articles, R:Ed provides a wide range of content about locally relevant topics such as business, technology, finance, news, and more. R:Ed currently provides free access to information to nearly seven million people, 99% of whom are based in Africa.
Wikipedia Preview is available across all language Wikipedias, and partners currently leverage Wikipedia Preview featuring content from English and Bahasa Indonesian Wikipedia.
How to use Wikipedia Preview on your website
Wikipedia Preview is available for websites that use WordPress. It can also be integrated on websites using the code available on the git repository. We will continue to improve the new Wikipedia Preview feature and make it more robust as we receive feedback from Wikimedia community members and users all over the world.
There are two ways you can bring Wikipedia Preview to your website:
- If your site is powered by WordPress, you can install the plugin here
- Follow the instructions on github to integrate it on your website
Learn more about Wikipedia Preview on the project page, and let us know what you think on the project talk page. If you would like to explore additional collaboration opportunities with Wikipedia Preview, including guidance and oversight from our Partnerships team, please contact partnerships@wikimedia.org. The Partnerships team is working with partners in Latin America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa to leverage Wikipedia Preview with primarily mobile audiences.
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