On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 4:50 PM, Rob Lanphier robla@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 4:36 PM, Quim Gil quimgil@gmail.com wrote:
If the primary target are app developers then http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page + improvements is probably a better target. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hub
See full reasoning at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33464#c8
Generally, we want a single link that encapsulates everything a developer might be interested in (Gadgets, MediaWiki extensions, the web API, data dumps, bot infrastructure like pywikipediabot, MediaWiki core development, generally volunteering, etc). API:Main_page (for better or worse) is focused on our web API.
By trying to make everybody happy we risk not making happy anybody.
Application developers and Wikimedia/Mediawiki contributors are very different types of profiles with very different goals. The initial proposal of this thread was to follow the path of major sites offering visibly a link to their API in order to increase and diversify the use of their data and services in the hands of third party developers. I personally agree that such visibility is missing and a link to the API main page would be a good and simple start. This is also a clear incentive to improve the API pages, a plan that seems to be in the ToDo list at least since January.
The Wikimedia Developer Hub could be visibly featured in the API page in order to redirect those willing to know more about other interesting stuff for developers around Wikimedia projects and the MediaWiki context.
Maybe one day the Wikimedia Developer Hub will be just great, not confusing at all for application developers and other profiles? Great, then we an agree to change the link. Easy. But as for today polishing a bit the API main page seems a more feasible task and would do wonders for all those app developers.