Hey Magnus,
thanks! WDQ is now added to the directory. The cronjob should run every hour.

Having a list of tools as an array is something i've been thinking
about as well, will probably add that.

'Grouping' tools can be done by simply adding a category. Or do you
mean something else?

-- Hay

On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 5:56 PM, Magnus Manske

<magnusmanske@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Also: Can the directory detect arrays? For example, in the "wikidata-todo"
> tool, I have many smaller tools. I could make a file for each, but that
> seems overkill.
>
> Directory tool could do "object=>single tool", "array=>multiple tools in one
> file".
>
> Cheers,
> Magnus
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 4:53 PM, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske@googlemail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks Husky,
>>
>> I've added WDQ to try it. At what interval does it refresh?
>>
>> It might be helpful if I could structure (group) tools on the wiki page.
>> Does the directory ignore not-well-formatted lines (e.g. headings)?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Magnus
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 4:15 PM, Hay (Husky) <huskyr@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hey everyone,
>>> for those who attended Wikimania, i hope you all had a wonderful time!
>>>
>>> One of the things that i've talked about at Mania with a few people is
>>> the current way of 'tool discovery', or rather, the lack thereof.
>>> We've seen really cool things done by the community, but i have a
>>> feeling many of the tools go by unnoticed, simply because nobody knows
>>> that they exist. Maybe they've been send around here or posted on IRC,
>>> but after the initial interest many of them are forgotten and lead a
>>> lonely life on our virtual servers.
>>>
>>> I think this is especially problematic for non-community members for
>>> whom the tools might be very useful. For example, as a Wikipedian in
>>> Residence and GLAM advocate i have sent numerous mails with links to
>>> the various GLAM tools made by Magnus, stats.grok.se, etcetera.
>>>
>>> But, you might say, we run all these knowledge sites called wikis
>>> right? And there are some pages there that list tools, don't they?
>>> You're right, the community has put some efforts in a few pages (1).
>>> However, IMHO, a wiki doesn't lend itself to easy tool discovery:
>>>
>>> * The format on how to describe a tool is unclear, thereby leading to
>>> both very long and very short descriptions.
>>> * It's not possible to easily search for tools in a certain category
>>> (e.g. 'GLAM' or 'editcount').
>>> * The categorization of tools leads to much clicking around,
>>> distracting and confusing users.
>>> * There's no way to sort results, for example by the number of people
>>> using the tool.
>>>
>>> The biggest problem of all is the disconnection between the actual
>>> code of the tool itself (hosted in a Git repo), and the description
>>> advertising it. People update their tool to do something different (or
>>> deprecate it), but they forget the documentation on the wiki, don't
>>> remove it when the tool doesn't work anymore, etcetera.
>>>
>>> I believe we can, and should do better.
>>>
>>> THE PROPOSAL
>>>
>>> My proposal is to use the same mechanisms that already exist for
>>> package managers such as NPM (2) or 'app stores', such as the Chrome
>>> store (3). Basically this involes adding a small JSON file to your
>>> project, including a few key properties such as 'title' and
>>> 'description'. These files get indexed, and an easy to use frontend to
>>> search to all the tools is provided to end users. You could imagine a
>>> 'toolinfo.json' file to look something like this:
>>>
>>>     {
>>>         "name" : "WikiDataQuery",
>>>         "description" : "An API for Wikidata items and properties.",
>>>         "url" : "http://wdq.wmflabs.org/",
>>>         "keywords" : "wikidata, api, query",
>>>         "author" : "Magnus Manske"
>>>     }
>>>
>>> If you have a web-hosted tool, simply stick it in the root of your
>>> tools directory so that it's reachable by the crawler. Whenever your
>>> tool data changes, just update the file and the directory will
>>> automatically update the directory site.
>>>
>>> The link to your toolinfo.json could be added to a Wiki page so that
>>> it's easy to remove your tool from the directory or change the URL to
>>> the JSON file.
>>>
>>> I'm a firm believer in putting code where your mouth is, so i've
>>> hacked up a working tool directory here:
>>>
>>> http://tools.wmflabs.org/hay/directory
>>>
>>> Try searching for stuff, clicking on the labels. To add your own tool,
>>> scroll the page down for instructions.
>>>
>>> Current this only lists my tools, but i hope that this directory will
>>> soon grow with everything the Wikimedia community has to offer.
>>>
>>> I'm interested in your opinion in this proposal and, if you like it,
>>> add a toolinfo.json to your project!
>>>
>>> Kind regards,
>>> -- Hay / [[User:Husky]]
>>>
>>> 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools
>>> 2: https://www.npmjs.org/
>>> 3: https://developer.chrome.com/apps/manifest
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Labs-l mailing list
>>> Labs-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/labs-l
>>
>>
>
>

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