(sorry for cross-posting!)
Hello all,
We’re running a session at next week’s Wikimedia Technical Conference
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technical_Conference/2019> around
the topic: Developer Productivity and onwiki tooling - userscripts,
gadgets, templates, modules <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T234661>.
For this we’re looking for more input from folks who won’t be at the
conference.
The goal of the conference is to identify changes to tooling and processes
to support Wikimedia developers in working more efficiently. One aspect of
that is to explore what makes it currently difficult for technical
contributors working with templates, modules, userscripts and gadgets, and
to discuss what could be improved or done differently.
It would be wonderful if you could share your experience and comment on the
following 2 questions in the phabricator ticket for the session
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T234661> (or send me an email, and we’ll
add it to the phabricator ticket):
1.
What is your background, what do you do as a technical contributor?
2.
In what way your productivity as a technical contributor is affected in
the context of on-wiki tooling (what slows you down, what makes your life
complicated, what helps you …)?
To give you two examples (made-up):
1.
I am a volunteer developer and have developed several user scripts for
frwiki.
2.
When I’ve developed a userscript, I don’t know how many people are
copying the code to use my script. When I make changes to the script,
others often still have older versions. When people report bugs, I need to
first find out which version they are using which is very time-consuming.
1.
I am a developer of Wikibase extension, WMDE staff member
2.
When I develop a new feature in Wikibase, I am often informed AFTER the
feature has been released that Wikidata gadgets had been broken. Then I
need to stop my current tasks, go back to my previous work and change the
feature. This makes the process of my work on new features longer.
Many thanks for your support!
The developer productivity and onwiki tooling session crew
--
Birgit Müller (she/her)
Director of Technical Engagement
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>