Hello Marco, thank you for sharing your ideas.
On 04/22/2013 02:05 AM, Marco Jacopo Ferrarotti wrote:
Hi,
I'm pursuing a M.Sc. degree in Physics of Complex Systems (currently attending the 2nd year). I have a background in electronic engineering, I'm passionate in computer science and I'm looking for the possibility of being part of something that I've always admired.
My proposal regards ConceptualWiki: an extension to improve the usability of wikis as educational/study tools (a drag-and-drop interface to quickly built up conceptual maps from wiki articles).
I'm drafting the project here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:MaJac89/GSoC2013/ConceptualWiki
And I've submitted a bug report here: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47476
Hope you find it interesting, let me know if you have any question/suggestion for the project.
I'm not a good candidate to mentor or asess this project, but in any case I had time visualizing the features you are after. Yes, you describe them, even with some basic ASCII mockups but somehow I feel like not getting completely what you want to explain.
In any case, this project has potentially the risk of falling in the category of proposals that must convince Wikipedia. Either it is an extension that makes sense to 3rd party wikis (could be the case), or we agree that this could be an experimental prototype, or maybe it could be developed as a gadget (although it is perhaps too complex, having to store data somewhere).
Also, you should explain more about your skills and experience developing with PHP and Javascript. This doesn't look like an easy challenge.
All in all it feels quite risky for a GSoC project, also because we have now just a few days to discuss it and hope that a mentor wants to volunteer for it. In your situation I would wait a day or so to evaluate the feedback and then make a decision on betting on it or finding an alternative from the featured project ideas proposed at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2013
Thank you for your interest in contributing to Wikimedia!