sharing an article on Facebook

[Amir E. Aharoni]

Hello,

Some of you may be familiar with sharing links on Facebook.

If i try to share on Facebook an article from Wikipedia in Hebrew or in
Arabic, the Facebook interface offers to add a thumbnail not from the
article, but from the main page of that Wikipedia. The summary text
describing the link is also taken from the main page and not from the
article.

It may have something to do with the non-ASCII title of the article: for
example, the Hebrew article about Haifa [1] has this problem, but the Hebrew
article about Extreme Programming,[2] with an English title, is OK. However,
it does not happen with non-ASCII titles on en.wp; for example "Ça m'énerve"
is OK.

Whose should fix it: Facebook or Wikipedia? Are there any differences in
definitions in this regard between en, ar and he?

Thanks in advance.

[1] http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%97%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%94
[2] http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Programming
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87a_m%27%C3%A9nerve

--
אמיר אלישע אהרוני
Amir Elisha Aharoni

http://aharoni.wordpress.com

"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
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I tried adding both your first and third links to my profile and facebook
was happy to attach them. All foreign symbols look correct. The problem, as
one would suspect on a site that entertains 1e6*n users, is not with
facebook.

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 12:42 AM, Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.aharoni@...> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Some of you may be familiar with sharing links on Facebook.
>
> If i try to share on Facebook an article from Wikipedia in Hebrew or in
> Arabic, the Facebook interface offers to add a thumbnail not from the
> article, but from the main page of that Wikipedia. The summary text
> describing the link is also taken from the main page and not from the
> article.
>
> It may have something to do with the non-ASCII title of the article: for
> example, the Hebrew article about Haifa [1] has this problem, but the
> Hebrew
> article about Extreme Programming,[2] with an English title, is OK.
> However,
> it does not happen with non-ASCII titles on en.wp; for example "Ça
> m'énerve"
> is OK.
>
> Whose should fix it: Facebook or Wikipedia? Are there any differences in
> definitions in this regard between en, ar and he?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> [1] http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%97%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%94
> [2] http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Programming
> [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87a_m%27%C3%A9nerve
>
> --
> אמיר אלישע אהרוני
> Amir Elisha Aharoni
>
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>
> "We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@...
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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[Amir E. Aharoni]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 08:46, Brian <reflection@...> wrote:

> I tried adding both your first and third links to my profile and facebook
> was happy to attach them. All foreign symbols look correct. The problem, as
> one would suspect on a site that entertains 1e6*n users, is not with
> facebook.
>
>
On the first link - did you see an image that appears in the article itself?

--
אמיר אלישע אהרוני
Amir Elisha Aharoni

http://aharoni.wordpress.com

"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
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[Angela-5]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 5:42 PM, Amir E. Aharoni
<amir.aharoni@...> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Some of you may be familiar with sharing links on Facebook.
>
> If i try to share on Facebook an article from Wikipedia in Hebrew or in
> Arabic, the Facebook interface offers to add a thumbnail not from the
> article, but from the main page of that Wikipedia. The summary text
> describing the link is also taken from the main page and not from the
> article.

I see the same problem for he, ar, el. Also for en if I try
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/العربية> I get pictures for the main
page, not for the page that redirects to. However, if I shorten the
URL to http://bit.ly/2u4hlw it shows the correct pictures.

Angela

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[Amir E. Aharoni]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 15:07, Angela <beesley@...> wrote:

>
> On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 5:42 PM, Amir E. Aharoni
> <amir.aharoni@...> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Some of you may be familiar with sharing links on Facebook.
> >
> > If i try to share on Facebook an article from Wikipedia in Hebrew or in
> > Arabic, the Facebook interface offers to add a thumbnail not from the
> > article, but from the main page of that Wikipedia. The summary text
> > describing the link is also taken from the main page and not from the
> > article.
>
> I see the same problem for he, ar, el. Also for en if I try
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/العربية> I get pictures for the main
> page, not for the page that redirects to. However, if I shorten the
> URL to http://bit.ly/2u4hlw it shows the correct pictures.

Thanks for confirming this.

I reported this to Facebook a few days ago, but i don't think that
it's possible to follow up bug reports there like in Bugzilla. So i
want to at least be sure that the bug is not on our side.

--
אמיר אלישע אהרוני
Amir Elisha Aharoni

http://aharoni.wordpress.com

"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

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[Platonides]

Amir E. Aharoni wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 15:07, Angela <beesley@...> wrote:
>> On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 5:42 PM, Amir E. Aharoni
>> <amir.aharoni@...> wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> Some of you may be familiar with sharing links on Facebook.
>>>
>>> If i try to share on Facebook an article from Wikipedia in Hebrew or in
>>> Arabic, the Facebook interface offers to add a thumbnail not from the
>>> article, but from the main page of that Wikipedia. The summary text
>>> describing the link is also taken from the main page and not from the
>>> article.
>> I see the same problem for he, ar, el. Also for en if I try
>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/العربية> I get pictures for the main
>> page, not for the page that redirects to. However, if I shorten the
>> URL to http://bit.ly/2u4hlw it shows the correct pictures.
>
> Thanks for confirming this.
>
> I reported this to Facebook a few days ago, but i don't think that
> it's possible to follow up bug reports there like in Bugzilla. So i
> want to at least be sure that the bug is not on our side.

It's a problem at facebook.
Did you try with % encoded urls, (eg.
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%97%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%94 ) or only hebrew
ones? (eg. http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/חיפה ).


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[Amir E. Aharoni]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 19:03, Platonides <Platonides@...> wrote:
> It's a problem at facebook.
> Did you try with % encoded urls, (eg.
> http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%97%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%94 ) or only hebrew
> ones? (eg. http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/חיפה ).

Actually, most of the time i use a bookmark that runs some JS code
that shares the current site. In any case, the result is the same -
whether i use the bookmark or manually enter the URL with %'s or with
Hebrew chars.

--
אמיר אלישע אהרוני
Amir Elisha Aharoni

http://aharoni.wordpress.com

"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

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[Andrew Dunbar]

2009/10/16 Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@...>

> On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 19:03, Platonides <Platonides@...> wrote:
> > It's a problem at facebook.
> > Did you try with % encoded urls, (eg.
> > http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%97%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%94 ) or only hebrew
> > ones? (eg. http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/חיפה<http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%97%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%94>).
>
> Actually, most of the time i use a bookmark that runs some JS code
> that shares the current site. In any case, the result is the same -
> whether i use the bookmark or manually enter the URL with %'s or with
> Hebrew chars.
>
> I think it's a case of modern browsers behaving differently to older

browsers. Older browsers only supported encoded URLs with % as the URL/URI
standard is defined. But these are very user-unfriendly so modern browsers
now convert these URLs into something readable for people whose native
language does not use Latin script. I think Facebook only accepts URLs which
comply to the standard and not the userfriendly human readable ones
supported by modern browsers.

So it's no bug in Mediawiki and not really a bug in Facebook but it would be
a userfriendly improvement for Facebook to interpret non-Latin URLs just as
the modern browsers do.

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

> --
> אמיר אלישע אהרוני
> Amir Elisha Aharoni
>
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>
> "We're living in pieces,
>  I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@...
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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[Aryeh Gregor]

On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 2:57 AM, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail@...> wrote:

> I think it's a case of modern browsers behaving differently to older
> browsers. Older browsers only supported encoded URLs with % as the URL/URI
> standard is defined. But these are very user-unfriendly so modern browsers
> now convert these URLs into something readable for people whose native
> language does not use Latin script. I think Facebook only accepts URLs which
> comply to the standard and not the userfriendly human readable ones
> supported by modern browsers.
>
> So it's no bug in Mediawiki and not really a bug in Facebook but it would be
> a userfriendly improvement for Facebook to interpret non-Latin URLs just as
> the modern browsers do.

URLs containing non-Latin characters are standardized, and known as
IRIs.  Lack of good IRI support in today's Web should probably count
as a bug.

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