On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 3:52 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]. 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
--
Bryan Davis Wikimedia Foundation <bd808(a)wikimedia.org>
[[m:User:BDavis_(WMF)]] Sr Software Engineer Boise, ID USA
irc: bd808 v:415.839.6885 x6855