Hi Daniel, thank you for your interest in contributing to Wikimedia.
On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 11:52 PM, Daniel Moisset <dmoisset(a)machinalis.com>
wrote:
Hi,
I'm one of the developers of thewalnut.io, a platform for authoring
and
sharing algorithm visualizations. While working on a visualization of
Langton's ant, I ran into the WikiWidget at
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormiga_de_Langton and started looking at
how
you guys are doing these, given that it has some similarities to our work.
My idea is that by creating a wikiwidget that can somehow integrate the
content built in the walnut, assuming it gets incorporated into Wikipedia,
it would allow many people to easily create and add interactive
visualizations for algorithms into wikipedia articles with much less work
than now where each wikiwidget for each algorithm needs to be created from
scratch[1].
Sounds like a sensible idea that fits in our long term plan for promoting
alternative content formats supplementing text and images. Conceptually, it
also looks like a neighbor of
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph
A MediaWiki extension is probably the best approach for this, not only
technically but also socially. This is how the steps could look like:
1. Develop a prototype extension that works with the latest MediaWiki
stable version.
2. As soon as you have a minimally functional extension, share it here, all
the better if supported by a documentation page in
mediawiki.org, code
published in Wikimedia's Gerrit, and a test instance in Wikimedia Labs.
3. From there you will need users, feedback, and most probably bugfixes.
You might want to have your project in Wikimedia Phabricator. With a bit of
luck you will get contributors as well, for code and translations.
4. At some point you should feel ready for being deployed to Wikimedia
servers -- we have a process for that.
In more detail:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker
Bringing a whole new feature to one of the most visited and most creative
websites is not a simple task, but it is possible, and we have many
precedents of volunteer developers who made it with skill and perseverance.
I hope this effort fits in your personal and walnut's interests.
--
Quim Gil
Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil