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Create Year in Review reading list & A/B test
Closed, ResolvedPublic3 Estimated Story Points

Description

Background

The team is A/B testing offering users a reading list based on Year in Review with the goal of deepening engagement and increasing retention of readers.

Requirements
  • ✅ Available only to logged-in users
  • ✅ Only show to people after they have viewed at least 1 slide of the Year in Review
  • ✅ Show dialog on the next open of the app after viewing Year in Review (on any app view: article, ✅ explore, etc)
    • ✅ Create > Reading list automatically appears in Saved
    • ✅ No thanks > dismisses dialog
    • ✅ "Learn more" link leads to the Reading list section of the FAQ on MediaWiki in the browser
    • Stop showing entry point after March 31, 2026
  • ✅ Only show to people who have at least 5 articles in their History for 2025
  • ✅ Do not show to people who have Year in Review turned off in Settings
  • Run as an A/B test: 50% of eligible users receive reading list, 50% of eligible users do not
  • ✅ Display the "New" marker on the reading list once it is saved
    • ✅ Remove the "new" marker after someone has opened the reading list from Saved (2nd official view)
  • How articles are selected
    • ✅ Show the articles they read the longest (in Minutes) during 2025 from their history
    • ✅ Show a maximum of 25 articles, minimum of 5 articles
  • ✅ After the reading list is saved, it should operate like any other reading list (Title and description in Figma)
Designs

https://www.figma.com/design/DHj33gafvUmkiUahLSJgIM/Android---%3E-Year-in-Review-v3?node-id=689-5624&t=S9w5CofRreCrHEQp-0

Related Objects

Event Timeline

Dbrant set the point value for this task to 3.Oct 23 2025, 5:49 PM

If the Create Year In Review Reading List dialog doesn’t appear even after all requirements are met, it’s likely because the user is in a different A/B test group. In that case, go to the developer settings and change the Yir Reading List Test Group option to 1.

If you’d like to test it again, please reset the Year in Review feature by toggling it off and back on from the settings.

(leaving note for my future self)

The default sort state is "Sort is by name", and because our list named "Year in Review 2025" it appears at the bottom for English, and at varying positions in other languages depending on translations.

I'm considering two options for addressing this

  1. rename list to 2025: Year in Review so it appears higher in the sort for all languages
  2. Update the default sort behavior to be "Sort by date created (newest)
ABorbaWMF subscribed.

Working for me on 2.7.50557-r-2025-11-14, on OnePlus 8 on Android 13, and Pixel 6 on Android 16. Tested both groups

Show dialog on the next open of the app after viewing Year in Review (on any app view: article, ✅ explore, etc)

I have to force-close the app after to get the dialog to show upon opening the app again after looking at Year in Review - is that expected @WRai-WMF ? What happens if someone only backgrounds the app for a while?

I'm also having trouble getting the prompt to show up on article view (I can only ever get it on explore)

I have to force-close the app after to get the dialog to show upon opening the app again after looking at Year in Review - is that expected @WRai-WMF ? What happens if someone only backgrounds the app for a while?

Yes, this is expected behavior. If the app stays in the background for a long time and the system clears it from memory, opening it again will count as a fresh launch, and the dialog will appear. However, if the user only backgrounds the app briefly and the system doesn’t remove it from memory, the dialog won’t show until the app is either force-closed or naturally cleared from memory.

I'm also having trouble getting the prompt to show up on article view (I can only ever get it on explore)

Demo. To test this behavior, you’ll need to close the app (same logic as above) and then reopen it using a Google Wikipedia link in order to see the dialog appear on the article page.