Brion -- Perhaps a couple of core MediaWiki techs can be actively involved in hacking days plans. I'm sure b6s would appreciate their input and energy; and it might be a good rule of thumb for future hacking days.

Also, if people who like hacking MediaWiki (or MediaWiki interfaces and skins) but aren't core developers or techs, want to get together and hack, that sounds like a good idea to me. This would be separate from an event designed for the core developers to hang out and have fun, but this doesn't mean they can't both happen.

--SJ

On Mon, 5 Feb 2007, Jakob Voss wrote:

Thanks for asking about the hacking days. You wrote:

...

We'd like to have the techs a little more involved in Hacking Days planning than last year; Ivan did a fantastic job at arranging a tech-themed mini-conference, but it wasn't really what we expected and I think it ended up less productive and more stressful and hectic than it should have been because of that.

Who should we be talking to on the program committee or whatever to make sure everybody's on the same page? I want everybody to both have a blast and get some stuff done at the same time. :)

Dear Mr. David Strauss,

May us have your suggesion on Hacking Days Extra 2007? If you have time, please leave some outlines of your advises to http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planning/Hacking_Days_Extra_2007

Thank you. :)

Sincerely, Mike

2007/2/6, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com:

I'd like to see if we can punch out some community collaboration systems to replace some rather ugly and complicated templates on Meta. For example, internationalization efforts could really use a system that allows people to register what translations they can do and automatically contact volunteers to help translation projects. If translations also happened in the system, it could export translation files in .pot and various MediaWiki-friendly formats for immediate use. Translation language priorities would be far simpler to establish. Even the workflow of creating, editing, and verifying translations could be encoded into the system. Maybe i18n.wikimedia.org?

I'd also like to create a citation- and source-tracking system where people can debate sources and interpretations in a central system. Right now, these debates are sprinkled over article and policy talk pages. Worse still, once the debates get archived, newcomers just repeat them. Maybe references.wikimedia.org?

These projects could be implemented as MediaWiki special pages or Drupal modules. (Other systems could work, too, but I'd have to learn them.) Hopefully SUL migration will be finished by WikiMania 2007 so users won't need new accounts for new systems.

2007/2/6, Jakob Voss jakob.voss@nichtich.de:

Like the years before the planning is pretty chaotic. The place to look up is

1.) This public mailing list 2.) The public, official Wikimania wiki http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/ 3.) The internal Wikimania2007 4.) irc://irc.freenode.net/wikimania

Actually, Taipei team also has a google group and a Trac for local communication in Chinese. It is not good for international communication of committees between different time-zone and languages. So, thanks to Mr. Voss, now we have a centralized, internal mailing-list on wikimania@lists.wikimedia.de for committees.

I heard of rumors that the board was talking about whether to have

hacking days at wikimania at all and there is no Ivan in the program committee nor any other person with enough time and experience to organize hacking days. There were only thoughts and maybes (see the page http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planning/Hacking_days that you just brought back to life), but noone who said "yes, I will organize hacking days". Organization is pretty slow because of communication issues (language, timezone, two wikis, unclear responsibilities, long lag in creating minutes, spare free time, ...) - at the moment I can only tell that there are no concrete plans of any hacking days at Wikimania 2007. :-(

Thanks again to Mr. Voss for pointing out the problematic part of collaborative works oversea.

The following paragraphs are just some thoughts without practical issues, dear readers on this mailing-list could just ignore them. :)

To answer the worries and even the rumors, let me try to provide some kind of evidences. Hacking days will be there and are on the way of the direction that Mr. Brion Vibber pointed out. It looks like only some thoughts and maybes because there are a lot of negotiations under-table, e.g. I personally have to send many invitations to potential developers to ensure that there's also interesting side-project track along with MediaWiki core development. I also pushes a local hacking days as planed on http://taipedia.info/mediawiki/index.php/TaiwanHackathon It's my fault to leave them private in our google group and Trac. Therefore the Taipei team is going to have more reports and announcements in English, to polish the "PR" part.

For the question about experiences, since Tzu-Chiang, Frances and I work at Academia Sinica, we do have held several international confereces in last four years. Mr. Jakob Voss has also invited as the committee of WikiSym, I personally believe it is because that he is competence.

However, the Taipei team does not have experience on Wikimania. Wikimania is unique and young, clearly not many persons already have good experiences to do it.

So, it's my fault again that did not recruit Mr. Ivan Krstic at very first time. I did read Mr. Krstic's posts on the mailing-list and people's feedbacks about last year's Hacking Days, and the reason why I did not ask for help from Mr. Krstic early is because of the nature of Eastern, or more specificly, Taiwanese; you know, it's just like a culture shock: I think too much to decide not bothering too many people and embarrass to ask whom had received some negative feedbacks (although they're small) -- I'm afraid to make people unconfertable. Well, all of those thoughts are just mistakes, we still appreciate deeply with Mr. Krstic's helps, especially we are trying to build Indico for CfP of this year.

The last thing I have to say is, about the time issue. I know myself it that kind of person who is too naive to pending reports and announcements until "everything" is ready. It conflicts to the law of open source: release early, release often. That's the main reason why I use Trac to tracking my tasks and apply the design of Hacking Days plan to a local event first: I do believe it will be a kind of "test" to avoid more risks on Wikimania Hacking Days.

It's my lesson to walk in the fine line between this ideal approach and my childlike nature. Thank you for all your suggestions and kindness. Hope we will learn to be professional and make Wikimania 2007 successful.

Cheers, Mike

Dear Mr. Vibber and Ms. Ayers,

Let me reply your advises one by one in the following, along with Ms. Ayers' statements.

2007/2/12, phoebe ayers brassratgirl@gmail.com:

a) have more excellent formal technical talks and panels in the main program -- but this means that all of you interested in the subject will have to *submit* talks :) (the cfp will be open soon, hopefully).

WIKIWYG and CLEF WiQA funders have both accepted my invitation. That is, we will have at least these two topics in the main conference program. For CfP, web maintenance team is trying to establish Indico and getting helps from Ivan, hopefully it will be open soon, yes.

For more concrete technical programs of main conference, we are roughly following past Wikimania topics and then polish them. Basically I am trying to organize human resources from Web API perspectives. This is also current direction of Hacking Days "Extra," i.e. the parallel track of Hacking Days beyond MediaWiki itself.

b) if the core developers want to plan a closed, invite-only meeting,

they should be able to do so before or after the main conference (getting in touch with the accomodation/registration coordinator would probably be a good idea for timing issues) but this wouldn't be the same thing as a general hacking days.

For MediaWiki core development, it is an invite-only hack-athon. We would like to invite MediaWiki committers formally via MediaWiki foundation later, and keep it self-organized by developers themselves. What we can do for MediaWiki core developers is preparing a quite space with high-speed network, confertable seats, enough foods and drinks, etc.

For more closed meetings before or after the main conference, coordinators may provide clear information about suitable places to meet and to stay. For example, if developers want to have a BOF in the evening, we may order the best cafe with beers and wireless for them.

c) we need good ideas in how to integrate ideas from the tech talks,

the more limited meeting, and those with interest in hacking mediawiki into a smaller, more open hacking days.

To hold a parallel Hacking Days "Extra" with realistic productivity, we need a series of "unit tests" to prove the "design" of Hacking Days plan. That's why I also take charge of a local hacking days and an open source conference in Taipei. They are http://taipedia.info/mediawiki/index.php/TaiwanHackathon (in English) and http://osdc.tw/ (in Chinese), respectively.

I am looking forward to any concrete question (and even challenge) about what's the best "evaluation" method to ensure the Hacking Days can reach good coverage and accuracy both.

I know there are also a lot of arguments on this mailing list and wikitech-l. The replies are going to appear soon.

Cheers, Mike