On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 3:52 PM, Daniel Moisset dmoisset@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]. Instead of just a few wikiwidgets like now it could be something commonplace in CS related articles. I also see this as an opportunity to get people from visualization communities closer to the wikipedia community. And I also see this as an improved experience for visitors, given that the walnut gives the flexibility to users of modifying and creating alternate versions of algorithms and visualizations.
So, in short, I'm sending this here to see if the community shares this interest on moving forward into this direction; specifically if there's interest on this (I'm more than happy about doing the development work myself). I'm new here so I'm not even sure if this is the right mailing list, feel free to redirect me if I'm at the wrong place :)
As a bit of context, I'd like to clarify a few things that I assume might be relevant for you... I'm not at all an active member in the mediawiki/wikipedia development community, and a very minor wikipedia contributor; I'm mostly just a heavy wikipedia user. But I've been an active participant in many open source project and free software communities for more than 15 years, so I am quite aware that my invitation will raise many concerns about the dangers of integrating an external app that you don't control. I know because I'd have those concerns if I was in your place. With that in the open I'd like to hear about what we can do to ease those concerns; if you like the general idea, we're really open to explore possibilities like releasing code, data, licensing terms on content, or whatever you think is needed to make this possible.
Thanks for your time,
D.
[1] Just so you have a reference, having an interactive animation about the langton's ant example took me a bit about 40 minutes; 50 in total if you count the second visualization I made for density of visits when a friend asked "are some locations more important than others?"
The high level and non-negotiable needs for integration with Wikipedia or the sister projects would be: * Freely licensed client (OSI approved license) * Offline animated image rendering solution for user-agents that can't/won't use the client * Ability to host freely licensed "models" on Commons * No client interaction with servers not managed by the Wikimedia Foundation on behalf of the larger Wikimedia movement.
Ideally the authoring tools would also be freely licensed and capable of being integrated with MediaWiki under the same hosting terms listed for the client.
The bar is lower for creating an extension that would allow non-Wikimedia wikis powered by MediaWiki to integrate with your hosted service. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Developing_extensions and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker for how you and your team could get started in that direction.
Bryan