Hi.
There's a fairly straightforward request to add an API/Developer/Developer Hub link to the footer of Wikimedia wikis, near the "Disclaimers", "Mobile view", etc. links: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33464.
This should be fairly trivial to implement, but I wanted to check if there were any objections to such an idea. The basic rationale for including such a link is that other sites such as Twitter and Facebook and Wordnik have similar links. This kind of link encourages viewers to become involved in development for the project (e.g., Wikipedia), as opposed to the MediaWiki logo, which serves a somewhat different purpose/functionality.
Assuming there aren't any objections to the idea, the only remaining question seems to be where to point such a link. Brandon suggested https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Help. I'm wondering if there's an "API basics" FAQ or something similar on mediawiki.org that could be included in whatever landing page is chosen. Something that includes common questions about the API such as "What formats are available?", "Do I need an API key?" (which I think is a pretty major question to answer, given how many other APIs I've come across work), "How can I get started developing for Wikimedia wikis?", etc. Does anyone know if such a page exists already?
MZMcBride
On 18.09.2012, 5:04 MZMcBride wrote:
Hi.
There's a fairly straightforward request to add an API/Developer/Developer Hub link to the footer of Wikimedia wikis, near the "Disclaimers", "Mobile view", etc. links: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33464.
This should be fairly trivial to implement, but I wanted to check if there were any objections to such an idea. The basic rationale for including such a link is that other sites such as Twitter and Facebook and Wordnik have similar links. This kind of link encourages viewers to become involved in development for the project (e.g., Wikipedia), as opposed to the MediaWiki logo, which serves a somewhat different purpose/functionality.
Assuming there aren't any objections to the idea, the only remaining question seems to be where to point such a link. Brandon suggested https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Help. I'm wondering if there's an "API basics" FAQ or something similar on mediawiki.org that could be included in whatever landing page is chosen. Something that includes common questions about the API such as "What formats are available?", "Do I need an API key?" (which I think is a pretty major question to answer, given how many other APIs I've come across work), "How can I get started developing for Wikimedia wikis?", etc. Does anyone know if such a page exists already?
Project:Help is for end-users, none of them knows or should know what an API is.
Why shouldn't end users know? Some end users are able to use an API. I prefer to not take the pedantic 'dont break your pretty little head on our API' route On Sep 18, 2012 8:15 AM, "Max Semenik" maxsem.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On 18.09.2012, 5:04 MZMcBride wrote:
Hi.
There's a fairly straightforward request to add an
API/Developer/Developer
Hub link to the footer of Wikimedia wikis, near the "Disclaimers",
"Mobile
view", etc. links: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33464.
This should be fairly trivial to implement, but I wanted to check if
there
were any objections to such an idea. The basic rationale for including
such
a link is that other sites such as Twitter and Facebook and Wordnik have similar links. This kind of link encourages viewers to become involved in development for the project (e.g., Wikipedia), as opposed to the
MediaWiki
logo, which serves a somewhat different purpose/functionality.
Assuming there aren't any objections to the idea, the only remaining question seems to be where to point such a link. Brandon suggested https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Help. I'm wondering if there's
an
"API basics" FAQ or something similar on mediawiki.org that could be included in whatever landing page is chosen. Something that includes
common
questions about the API such as "What formats are available?", "Do I
need an
API key?" (which I think is a pretty major question to answer, given how many other APIs I've come across work), "How can I get started developing for Wikimedia wikis?", etc. Does anyone know if such a page exists
already?
Project:Help is for end-users, none of them knows or should know what an API is.
-- Best regards, Max Semenik ([[User:MaxSem]])
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 3:04 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Hi.
There's a fairly straightforward request to add an API/Developer/Developer Hub link to the footer of Wikimedia wikis, near the "Disclaimers", "Mobile view", etc. links: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33464.
This should be fairly trivial to implement, but I wanted to check if there were any objections to such an idea. The basic rationale for including such a link is that other sites such as Twitter and Facebook and Wordnik have similar links. This kind of link encourages viewers to become involved in development for the project (e.g., Wikipedia), as opposed to the MediaWiki logo, which serves a somewhat different purpose/functionality.
Assuming there aren't any objections to the idea, the only remaining question seems to be where to point such a link. Brandon suggested https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Help. I'm wondering if there's an "API basics" FAQ or something similar on mediawiki.org that could be included in whatever landing page is chosen. Something that includes common questions about the API such as "What formats are available?", "Do I need an API key?" (which I think is a pretty major question to answer, given how many other APIs I've come across work), "How can I get started developing for Wikimedia wikis?", etc. Does anyone know if such a page exists already?
I am not aware of such pages, but think a developers page should also have something about dumps and they might also be interested to know they can customize Wikipedia with user css, JavaScript, gadgets, etc. Information about the API is good too and maybe reporting a bug. :)
Cheers, Katie
MZMcBride
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
how about here : http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Contents
... and add in any resources that may be missing to those pages.
with kind regards, dan
On Sep 18, 2012, at 9:37 AM, aude wrote:
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 3:04 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Hi.
There's a fairly straightforward request to add an API/Developer/Developer Hub link to the footer of Wikimedia wikis, near the "Disclaimers", "Mobile view", etc. links: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33464.
This should be fairly trivial to implement, but I wanted to check if there were any objections to such an idea. The basic rationale for including such a link is that other sites such as Twitter and Facebook and Wordnik have similar links. This kind of link encourages viewers to become involved in development for the project (e.g., Wikipedia), as opposed to the MediaWiki logo, which serves a somewhat different purpose/functionality.
Assuming there aren't any objections to the idea, the only remaining question seems to be where to point such a link. Brandon suggested https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Help. I'm wondering if there's an "API basics" FAQ or something similar on mediawiki.org that could be included in whatever landing page is chosen. Something that includes common questions about the API such as "What formats are available?", "Do I need an API key?" (which I think is a pretty major question to answer, given how many other APIs I've come across work), "How can I get started developing for Wikimedia wikis?", etc. Does anyone know if such a page exists already?
I am not aware of such pages, but think a developers page should also have something about dumps and they might also be interested to know they can customize Wikipedia with user css, JavaScript, gadgets, etc. Information about the API is good too and maybe reporting a bug. :)
Cheers, Katie
MZMcBride
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
-- Board member, Wikimedia District of Columbia http://wikimediadc.org @wikimediadc / @wikimania2012 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
"dan entous" d_entous@yahoo.com wrote in message news:75E303E6-3EC7-4A17-824E-C3D8D3378021@yahoo.com...
how about here : http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Contents
... and add in any resources that may be missing to those pages.
with kind regards, dan
I would much rather it went to a new page, dedicated for this exact purpose. Manual:Contents is the contents page for the manual, and I can see that once this is implemented there will be feature creep which will move it away from its original purpose.
One of the hubs might be appropriate ([[mw:User hub]], [[mw:Sysadmin hub]] or [[mw:Developer hub]] - all of which need some tlc), but perhaps we need a new more-tightly-focussed page that spans user-types.
Personally, I would recommend that we create [[mw:Get involved]] if it is about general MW involvement or perhaps [[meta:Developer hub]] if it's more WMF focussed (or has that all moved to mw.org now - I am not so clear about the distinction as I used to be).
- HappyDog
(cross-posted to https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33464)
This is a great idea but we would really need to build several new pages ideally with links to the API sandbox, code samples. This is a big project in itself. The landing page should be close to something like Flickr [1] and should detail why someone would want to be a developer, the sort of things they can develop and with what skill set and should give a brief but interesting overview of apps/sites that use the API or extend mediawiki in drastic ways. Part of said page should be about inspiring people to develop with us rather than elsewhere.
I'm happy to use my 20% time to work on this with people. Just give me a shout offlist.
[1]http://www.flickr.com/services/developer/ On Sep 18, 2012 4:49 AM, "Mark Clements (HappyDog)" gmane@kennel17.co.uk wrote:
"dan entous" d_entous@yahoo.com wrote in message news:75E303E6-3EC7-4A17-824E-**C3D8D3378021@yahoo.com...
how about here : http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/**Manual:Contentshttp://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Contents
... and add in any resources that may be missing to those pages.
with kind regards, dan
I would much rather it went to a new page, dedicated for this exact purpose. Manual:Contents is the contents page for the manual, and I can see that once this is implemented there will be feature creep which will move it away from its original purpose.
One of the hubs might be appropriate ([[mw:User hub]], [[mw:Sysadmin hub]] or [[mw:Developer hub]] - all of which need some tlc), but perhaps we need a new more-tightly-focussed page that spans user-types.
Personally, I would recommend that we create [[mw:Get involved]] if it is about general MW involvement or perhaps [[meta:Developer hub]] if it's more WMF focussed (or has that all moved to mw.org now - I am not so clear about the distinction as I used to be).
- HappyDog
(cross-posted to https://bugzilla.wikimedia.**org/show_bug.cgi?id=33464https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33464)
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Jon, if you want to take the lead on this, go ahead. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Sumanah/ApiDocsImprovement has some thoughts that Ben Lobaugh had put together (including the Flickr example) in case you find those useful.
This is a great idea but we would really need to build several new pages ideally with links to the API sandbox, code samples. This is a big project in itself. The landing page should be close to something like Flickr [1] and should detail why someone would want to be a developer, the sort of things they can develop and with what skill set and should give a brief but interesting overview of apps/sites that use the API or extend mediawiki in drastic ways. Part of said page should be about inspiring people to develop with us rather than elsewhere.
I'm happy to use my 20% time to work on this with people. Just give me a shout offlist.
It should definitely link to the Annoying little bugs page as well. It contains a decent selection of bugs that new developers can fix.
Not 100% sure the scope of this page though. Was it meant to attract just extension, gadget, et. al developers? Or was it also meant to attract developers for the core as well?
Thank you, Derric Atzrott
On 09/18/2012 12:44 PM, Derric Atzrott wrote:
It should definitely link to the Annoying little bugs page as well. It contains a decent selection of bugs that new developers can fix.
Not 100% sure the scope of this page though. Was it meant to attract just extension, gadget, et. al developers? Or was it also meant to attract developers for the core as well?
Thank you, Derric Atzrott
To help new developers get into MediaWiki core and extensions, there's https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker (which does of course link to Annoying Little Bugs). To help new developers get into the web API, there's https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Tutorial and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API although I know these aren't as great as the API documentation that Meetup, Etsy, Flickr, and similar sites provide. To help new gadget developers, there is https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gadget_kitchen . And to help new developers discover various cross-Wikimedia tech projects, there is https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_developer_hub .
Just wanted people to know so they don't reinvent the wheel. :)
Just wanted people to know so they don't reinvent the wheel. :)
Along that vein, there are the ever popular skin manual [0] and extension manual [1].
[0] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Skins [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Extensions
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 9:51 AM, Sumana Harihareswara sumanah@wikimedia.org wrote:
And to help new developers discover various cross-Wikimedia tech projects, there is https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_developer_hub .
Just wanted people to know so they don't reinvent the wheel. :)
My 2c: the "Wikimedia developer hub" page on meta should be the starting point. Let's not create yet another "central" page. If we do end up bikeshedding our way to a different URL, please someone make sure there's a redirect from the page above to the new page rather than keeping the old one around out of nostalgia.
Rob
Hi,
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 1:11 PM, Rob Lanphier robla@wikimedia.org wrote:
My 2c: the "Wikimedia developer hub" page on meta should be the starting point. Let's not create yet another "central" page.
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
PS: when a bug report is advertized in a mailing list it is more useful to have the discussion archived around the bug report - do you agree?
At the danger of derailing/forking the conversation...
My preference with bugzilla is to only raise bugs when the outcome is clear. The test I use is if I gave a bug to a newbie could they pick it up and fix it without any questions. If it's not clear I'd start a mailing list conversation with the outcome of cutting a new bug with decisions made.
My worry with using bugzilla as the place of discussion is that a bug can get extremely confusing - especially when people have differing views.
The result of this is a manageable bug list for the mobile site [1] which could one day be empty and is much more manageable.
[1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?list_id=147228&field0-0-0=bug...
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 1:31 PM, Quim Gil quimgil@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 1:11 PM, Rob Lanphier robla@wikimedia.org wrote:
My 2c: the "Wikimedia developer hub" page on meta should be the starting point. Let's not create yet another "central" page.
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
PS: when a bug report is advertized in a mailing list it is more useful to have the discussion archived around the bug report - do you agree?
-- Quim
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 2:50 PM, Jon Robson jdlrobson@gmail.com wrote:
At the danger of derailing/forking the conversation...
Your answer makes sense, thank you. I didn't want to kill the discussion either...
Can we agree on this:
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
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.
Rob
I think we should point to a developer hub but the current one needs to be massively revised! On Sep 19, 2012 4:51 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.
Rob
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I really wish I could just got to http://developer.wikimedia.org/ and/or http://developer.wikipedia.org
--tomasz
On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 5:07 PM, Jon Robson jdlrobson@gmail.com wrote:
I think we should point to a developer hub but the current one needs to be massively revised! On Sep 19, 2012 4:51 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.
Rob
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Without wanting to take away from the value of this suggestion, I'll just point out that there's also not a link to "Become an Editor" either. ("Create an account" doesn't really count, lots of people have accounts who never edit.) I'll be the first to admit I'm in awe of the brain power on this list, so this may be assuming too much of the intellect of developers generally, but it's been my observation that those who are smart enough, and interested enough, to write code....usually find their way around pretty well.
I think RobLa's point is well taken, though. Decide what you want to say to prospective developers, and make sure the landing page is welcoming and useful, before you send anyone there.
Best, Risker
On 19 September 2012 20:12, Tomasz Finc tfinc@wikimedia.org wrote:
I really wish I could just got to http://developer.wikimedia.org/ and/or http://developer.wikipedia.org
--tomasz
On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 5:07 PM, Jon Robson jdlrobson@gmail.com wrote:
I think we should point to a developer hub but the current one needs to
be
massively revised! On Sep 19, 2012 4:51 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.
Rob
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Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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I'm afraid that my opposition is rather frivolous, but is the ratio of developers to laymen enough to justify adding the "extra" burden? It seems some others have noted that if we include a developer hub, we can't stop there. I could propose a research hub, a librarian hub, a photographer hub. A developer outreach program might be better as it's unlikely anyone ever even reads the links at the bottom. On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 6:03 PM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Without wanting to take away from the value of this suggestion, I'll just point out that there's also not a link to "Become an Editor" either. ("Create an account" doesn't really count, lots of people have accounts who never edit.) I'll be the first to admit I'm in awe of the brain power on this list, so this may be assuming too much of the intellect of developers generally, but it's been my observation that those who are smart enough, and interested enough, to write code....usually find their way around pretty well.
I think RobLa's point is well taken, though. Decide what you want to say to prospective developers, and make sure the landing page is welcoming and useful, before you send anyone there.
Best, Risker
On 19 September 2012 20:12, Tomasz Finc tfinc@wikimedia.org wrote:
I really wish I could just got to http://developer.wikimedia.org/ and/or http://developer.wikipedia.org
--tomasz
On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 5:07 PM, Jon Robson jdlrobson@gmail.com wrote:
I think we should point to a developer hub but the current one needs to
be
massively revised! On Sep 19, 2012 4:51 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.
Rob
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On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 6:15 PM, Mono monomium@gmail.com wrote:
I'm afraid that my opposition is rather frivolous, but is the ratio of developers to laymen enough to justify adding the "extra" burden? It seems some others have noted that if we include a developer hub, we can't stop there. I could propose a research hub, a librarian hub, a photographer hub. A developer outreach program might be better as it's unlikely anyone ever even reads the links at the bottom.
I don't see the slippery slope. All Wikimedia activities depend on a thriving technical ecosystem. I strongly support the idea of surfacing entrypoints for engineers (whether they want to work on our stuff, or their own stuff) more prominently, as many other major websites do.
Making the open source nature of our projects more easily discoverable is a Good Thing.
+1 for redirecting developers.wikimedia.org and developer.wikimedia.org to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hub as well.
On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 1:22 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
+1 for redirecting developers.wikimedia.org and developer.wikimedia.org to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hub as well.
Submitted in https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#q,Ifa3c5e9988da162b2dde65e66bcb180f96161783,...
I also added develop.wm.o and did them all for wikipedia.org too. (waiting for review so we can still change the set of domains later and of course they're always subject to change even after deployed)
-Jeremy
On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 6:22 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Making the open source nature of our projects more easily discoverable is a Good Thing.
Indeed, but mixing public APIs with 1001 open source possibilities tends to make more happy the smaller circle of insiders and free software developers than the average developers just willing to build their great app or service. For instance, Twitter, Facebook etc are actually pushing open source projects themselves, but they don't mix those in their developer pages unless you dive deep and almost knowing what you are looking for.
In the same footer there is an icon "Powered by Mediawiki". For the sake of simplicity we could direct app developers to the API through the new "Developers" link and use the Mediawiki brand & homepage as an umbrella for all the open source collaboration, which is mostly what the Wikimedia/Mediawiki Developer Hubs are about. Did someone mention that there is also an initiative to revamp the mediawiki.org homepage?
Please consider that what seems obvious for you is not obvious at all for a newcomer in a hurry or someone thinking what will be her next app about. Grasping that "Wikimedia" is not a typo and understanding what it means is already a big step. And then getting the Mediawiki thing is another step further. We need to simplify all this, at least for newcomers. The risk of them thinking "uff, I'll have a better look another day" is pretty high.
On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 10:40 PM, Quim Gil quimgil@gmail.com wrote:
For instance, Twitter, Facebook etc are actually pushing open source projects themselves, but they don't mix those in their developer pages unless you dive deep and almost knowing what you are looking for.
Can I haz Facebook tarball? In seriousness, the utter open sourceness of our codebase is what sets us apart, so we should make it clear pretty prominently on our dev hub. For most platforms, cool open source side projects notwithstanding, the API/SDK is all you get to talk to the core platform - in our case you get the platform itself. So I don't agree that we should point folks to the API first, and to the platform second.
With that said, I agree that the dev hub currently is pretty much inside baseball and we should try to make it more understandable if we prominently link it from every footer of every page.
Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 2:11 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
the utter open sourceness of our codebase is what sets us apart, so we should make it clear pretty prominently on our dev hub.
(...)
With that said, I agree that the dev hub currently is pretty much inside baseball and we should try to make it more understandable if we prominently link it from every footer of every page.
Alright, let's move onto the next round: which dev hub?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_developer_hub http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hub
mediawiki.org is a better default landing place for developers than Meta, do you agree?
Is it worth considering the merge of both pages, as it has been suggested?
And in any case the API should be promoted upfront. Now the Meta hub has no mention (I could find) while the dense MediaWiki hub features the link if you are patient to find it (or you use the search, as I did).
-- Quim
On 20 September 2012 08:54, Quim Gil quimgil@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 2:11 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
the utter open sourceness of our codebase is what sets us apart, so we should make it clear pretty prominently on our dev hub.
(...)
With that said, I agree that the dev hub currently is pretty much inside baseball and we should try to make it more understandable if we prominently link it from every footer of every page.
Alright, let's move onto the next round: which dev hub?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_developer_hub http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hub
mediawiki.org is a better default landing place for developers than Meta, do you agree?
Is it worth considering the merge of both pages, as it has been suggested?
And in any case the API should be promoted upfront. Now the Meta hub has no mention (I could find) while the dense MediaWiki hub features the link if you are patient to find it (or you use the search, as I did).
Of course, we already have a link to the mediawiki.org front page on every page we serve - that's what the "Powered by MediaWiki" button links to. There, the four most prominent links are:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Installation * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Configuration * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker
I assumed that the point of this additional link was to take people to our API because we already use our bully-pulpit to ask for more developers quite strongly, but people who want to use us as a service need to dig further to even know we have one. If all we're doing is duplicating the general "hey, you're a techy person" link with another text label, this exercise will have lost its value.
J.
James Forrester wrote:
On 20 September 2012 08:54, Quim Gil quimgil@gmail.com wrote:
Alright, let's move onto the next round: which dev hub?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_developer_hub http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hub
mediawiki.org is a better default landing place for developers than Meta, do you agree?
Is it worth considering the merge of both pages, as it has been suggested?
And in any case the API should be promoted upfront. Now the Meta hub has no mention (I could find) while the dense MediaWiki hub features the link if you are patient to find it (or you use the search, as I did).
Of course, we already have a link to the mediawiki.org front page on every page we serve - that's what the "Powered by MediaWiki" button links to. There, the four most prominent links are:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Installation
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Configuration
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker
I assumed that the point of this additional link was to take people to our API because we already use our bully-pulpit to ask for more developers quite strongly, but people who want to use us as a service need to dig further to even know we have one. If all we're doing is duplicating the general "hey, you're a techy person" link with another text label, this exercise will have lost its value.
Hi!
Sorry for starting this thread and then disappearing for a bit; it's been a busy week.
I've taken the (wonderful!) comments in this thread and on bug 33464 and synthesized them into a requests for comment here: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?curid=99106.
To address your point specifically, the "Powered By MediaWiki" button is a bit of promotion (or advertising, branding, whatever) for the MediaWiki software. What we're discussing here is something different. Based on how other sites behave, I think there's a reasonable expectation that if you want to figure out, generically, how to get involved, looking in the footer of the Web site is a reasonable place to start.
Most of my thoughts are in the RFC now on mediawiki.org, but my big revelation earlier this week was that I don't think we really have an audience problem as some have suggested. The people we want to attract are all developers (which is why I suggested using "Developers" as the link text).
That said, I think the first step in the landing page should be to split _by motivation_:
* are you wanting to re-use Wikimedia wikis' content; or * are you wanting to contribute code to Wikimedia/MediaWiki?
From there, you can sub-divide based on programming language, component
(user interface, ops, etc.), and a bunch of other variables. My mock-up for the tree/matrix/wizard is here: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?oldid=585564#Blueprint.
MZMcBride
So I had a brainwave about this over the weekend. The home page for the developer page should act like a personal appeal only with __developers__ as the writers.
I think a personal touch is a great way to explain to a would be developer to why they should care about our apis and our codebase. Hearing from real people with real problems that they are solving in the real world would be an extremely inspiring way to get new people involved
I think the home page should be written as a personal appeal to a new developer from ALL developers with links in the right places to the right thing. I think this should also be followed up by a randomised personal appeal from a developer himself - we should mix these between app developers, bug wranglers, feature developers, volunteers, employees etc etc
I've knocked up a first version here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Hub
In future I'd love to see banners ads asking people to donate development time pointing to these pages or at least see the donation page inform people that they can help in other ways.
Is anyone else excited about this idea or is it just me...?
On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 9:15 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
James Forrester wrote:
On 20 September 2012 08:54, Quim Gil quimgil@gmail.com wrote:
Alright, let's move onto the next round: which dev hub?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_developer_hub http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hub
mediawiki.org is a better default landing place for developers than Meta, do you agree?
Is it worth considering the merge of both pages, as it has been suggested?
And in any case the API should be promoted upfront. Now the Meta hub has no mention (I could find) while the dense MediaWiki hub features the link if you are patient to find it (or you use the search, as I did).
Of course, we already have a link to the mediawiki.org front page on every page we serve - that's what the "Powered by MediaWiki" button links to. There, the four most prominent links are:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Installation
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Configuration
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker
I assumed that the point of this additional link was to take people to our API because we already use our bully-pulpit to ask for more developers quite strongly, but people who want to use us as a service need to dig further to even know we have one. If all we're doing is duplicating the general "hey, you're a techy person" link with another text label, this exercise will have lost its value.
Hi!
Sorry for starting this thread and then disappearing for a bit; it's been a busy week.
I've taken the (wonderful!) comments in this thread and on bug 33464 and synthesized them into a requests for comment here: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?curid=99106.
To address your point specifically, the "Powered By MediaWiki" button is a bit of promotion (or advertising, branding, whatever) for the MediaWiki software. What we're discussing here is something different. Based on how other sites behave, I think there's a reasonable expectation that if you want to figure out, generically, how to get involved, looking in the footer of the Web site is a reasonable place to start.
Most of my thoughts are in the RFC now on mediawiki.org, but my big revelation earlier this week was that I don't think we really have an audience problem as some have suggested. The people we want to attract are all developers (which is why I suggested using "Developers" as the link text).
That said, I think the first step in the landing page should be to split _by motivation_:
- are you wanting to re-use Wikimedia wikis' content; or
- are you wanting to contribute code to Wikimedia/MediaWiki?
From there, you can sub-divide based on programming language, component (user interface, ops, etc.), and a bunch of other variables. My mock-up for the tree/matrix/wizard is here: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?oldid=585564#Blueprint.
MZMcBride
On 24/09/2012 13:35, Jon Robson wrote:
So I had a brainwave about this over the weekend. The home page for the developer page should act like a personal appeal only with __developers__ as the writers.
I think a personal touch is a great way to explain to a would be developer to why they should care about our apis and our codebase. Hearing from real people with real problems that they are solving in the real world would be an extremely inspiring way to get new people involved
I think the home page should be written as a personal appeal to a new developer from ALL developers with links in the right places to the right thing. I think this should also be followed up by a randomised personal appeal from a developer himself - we should mix these between app developers, bug wranglers, feature developers, volunteers, employees etc etc
I've knocked up a first version here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Hub
In future I'd love to see banners ads asking people to donate development time pointing to these pages or at least see the donation page inform people that they can help in other ways.
Is anyone else excited about this idea or is it just me...?
That is an intriguing concept that could indeed work quite well to get people interested, but how many will remain interested after they encounter gerrit?
Is anyone else excited about this idea or is it just me...?
That is an intriguing concept that could indeed work quite well to get people interested, but how many will remain interested after they encounter gerrit?
I can't actually say I like this idea a whole lot. Here's why: * Personal appeals have to be well written in order to work. A poorly written personal appeal will not actually appeal to someone and may in fact turn them away. * We use personal appeals for the fund raising drive. I think using them here as well, especially when we have these [1] going on every year is a bad idea. * A personal appeal on a page like this is a wall of text. We need to be very careful not to elicit the "TL;DR" response from people. ** On a similar vein: This page needs to be fairly appealing in appearance, like the MediaWiki.org homepage is, or people will leave.
In my experience, programmers are very practical pragmatic people. I don't think that a personal appeal is the best way to appeal to them. At least not how the idea is currently presented. The Mediawiki.org homepage does a better job of getting my hyped to use Mediawiki right now.
[1]: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wikipedia-fundraising-campaign
That is an intriguing concept that could indeed work quite well to get people interested, but how many will remain interested after they encounter gerrit?
That's a separate problem.. haha!
Derric - in reply to your concerns... just a few points 1) The mediawiki homepage puts ME off. This is mainly because I'm more interested in doing things with the data on wikipedia rather than the software that runs Wikipedia. I think this is the problem we are trying to solve - there are many different types of developers out there and we need something generic to appeal to as many of them as possible.
2) I agree personal appeals need to be well written - but I feel we have lots of expertise around to help us with that if that is something we want to do
3) Agreed with presentation - the wall of text approach doesn't work. I should have stated in my original mail that people should focus on the text itself rather than presentation. I would expect us to reuse the fundraiser presentation style. There is no way this alone would suffice.
4) I don't think this would attract so many memes - several reasons - one it is a link on the bottom of the page and out of most of people's view - two we don't even have to show photos - we could show people's avatars or the apps/extensions people have built instead.
Also if we do attract memes maybe that is a measure of success as it shows we are successfully attracting people to our developer page ;-)
On 24/09/2012 15:41, Jon Robson wrote:
That is an intriguing concept that could indeed work quite well to get people interested, but how many will remain interested after they encounter gerrit?
That's a separate problem.. haha!
Derric - in reply to your concerns... just a few points
- The mediawiki homepage puts ME off. This is mainly because I'm more
interested in doing things with the data on wikipedia rather than the software that runs Wikipedia. I think this is the problem we are trying to solve - there are many different types of developers out there and we need something generic to appeal to as many of them as possible.
- I agree personal appeals need to be well written - but I feel we
have lots of expertise around to help us with that if that is something we want to do
- Agreed with presentation - the wall of text approach doesn't work.
I should have stated in my original mail that people should focus on the text itself rather than presentation. I would expect us to reuse the fundraiser presentation style. There is no way this alone would suffice.
- I don't think this would attract so many memes - several reasons -
one it is a link on the bottom of the page and out of most of people's view - two we don't even have to show photos - we could show people's avatars or the apps/extensions people have built instead.
Also if we do attract memes maybe that is a measure of success as it shows we are successfully attracting people to our developer page ;-)
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Brief appeals, with a bunch of big linkey thingies to categories of thingies! It could work! Thingies make everything better. Mainpage needs more thingies too. Or perhaps less. Or maybe just better ones. I guess my point is I agree about 1, although for me it's more just because it's ugly and confusing than anything else.
- The mediawiki homepage puts ME off. This is mainly because I'm more
interested in doing things with the data on wikipedia rather than the software that runs Wikipedia. I think this is the problem we are trying to solve - there are many different types of developers out there and we need something generic to appeal to as many of them as possible.
I want to add something a little more general to this point. I think we can avoid appealing to _people_ in this page, and instead appeal to _actions_. I wrote about it on the RFC [0], but I'll repeat myself briefly here.
I don't think that throwing people into buckets (i.e., appealing to types of developers) is a useful way to think about this. If you want to *make MediaWiki better*, we send you to a more specific page about how to develop, translate, code review, and document. If you want to *set up or change a MediaWiki site*, we send you to a page with documentation on configuration, performance tweaks, and extensions. If you want to *use MediaWiki sites*, we send you to a page with editing help, information about user permissions, how to use the interface, and so on. We could split this up further, or differently. We could include the same link in multiple pages (e.g., pages about extensions could go in many categories).
My point is, I think we could accomplish much the same, maybe more, without lumping people together, when we actually mean to group actions.
[0] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Requests_for_comment/MediaWiki.org_Main_...
On 25/09/12 05:35, Jon Robson wrote:
I've knocked up a first version here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Hub
I moved it to
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Jdlrobson/Developer_Hub
I don't think your proposed text is appropriate, since it portrays MediaWiki as a WMF project. There's a difference between being a MediaWiki developer and being a WMF developer. Your text reads like a WMF job advertisement.
Maybe something like that could be on wikimediafoundation.org.
-- Tim Starling
On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 12:35 PM, Jon Robson jdlrobson@gmail.com wrote:
I've knocked up a first version here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Hub
( I hope you were abusing Capitalized Title just to sit next to the current hub, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_%28capitalization... )
That mass of donation text doesn't work for me. But a short developer story and image could go at the side, next to an actual Developer hub intro, which would be something like
* Run Wikipedia's MediaWiki software yourself, it's free * Contribue to the MediaWiki software, it's open * Explore the data on Wikimedia's sites with our API, it's remixable * Find out about WMF software projects, they're awesome too
__TOC__
General developer news (not just MediaWiki releases but API, mobile, other projects)
The rest of the page is or could be like the current page on the MediaWiki software.
Hi,
On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 12:35 PM, Jon Robson jdlrobson@gmail.com wrote:
The home page for the developer page should act like a personal appeal only with __developers__ as the writers.
I'm not sure about the concept of personal appeal for APIs and open source projects. They should be objectively appealing in the first place. Once the most attractive facts are effectively explained we can spice them up with showcases and personal experiences.
In order to attract and keep new developers we want to strive for maximum simplification in the Developer Hub. What pearls with hook do we have for newcomers?
- An API to operate with precious Wikipedia data in your applications.
- Open source projects improving Wikipedia and looking for contributors.
- MediaWiki is the free, extensible and customizable technology that powers Wikipedia and thousands of other sites.
- Become a wikitech ambassador in order to test the fresh stuff and get involved.
Each entry would lead to THE reference page, from which the interested reader could dive in.
Each entry could feature already in the Developer Hub the best showcases:
- amazing apps using the API, - Wikipedia mobile, visual editor, article feedback. - amazing sites powered with MediaWiki. - amazing selection of ambassadors and contributors.
We do many other things, but they should be linkable from these main pillars. If you have a very important entry to add, which one in the list would you remove?
PS: still learning about how to contribute effectively to a RFC in conjunction with mailing list discussion and bug report. ;)
On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 11:59 AM, Quim Gil quimgil@gmail.com wrote:
Each entry could feature already in the Developer Hub the best showcases:
- amazing apps using the API,
- Wikipedia mobile, visual editor, article feedback.
- amazing sites powered with MediaWiki.
- amazing selection of ambassadors and contributors.
This really just highlights how much past MediaWiki we've gotten as a development community. This is especially true with the Wikimedia mobile apps like : Wiki Loves Monuments, Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc. Shifting from a home on MW.org to developers.wikimedia.org would easily allows to grow our volunteer community to accurately reflect the range of projects that we work on. Currently our mobile volunteers join us on IRC and are on our mobile specific wiki pages but we'd love to have a central place for all of this.
Does anyone have an issue broadening the topic base that we have on our tech hub?
--tomasz
On 09/25/2012 03:11 PM, Tomasz Finc wrote:
On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 11:59 AM, Quim Gil quimgil@gmail.com wrote:
Each entry could feature already in the Developer Hub the best showcases:
- amazing apps using the API,
- Wikipedia mobile, visual editor, article feedback.
- amazing sites powered with MediaWiki.
- amazing selection of ambassadors and contributors.
This really just highlights how much past MediaWiki we've gotten as a development community. This is especially true with the Wikimedia mobile apps like : Wiki Loves Monuments, Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc. Shifting from a home on MW.org to developers.wikimedia.org would easily allows to grow our volunteer community to accurately reflect the range of projects that we work on. Currently our mobile volunteers join us on IRC and are on our mobile specific wiki pages but we'd love to have a central place for all of this.
Does anyone have an issue broadening the topic base that we have on our tech hub?
--tomasz
I want to ensure that we cover the issues that we discussed last time, in the "Where to host wikimedia related software projects" discussion, and if wikitech.wikimedia.org is involved, ask Ops for their input as well.
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/272170
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/labs-l/2012-March/000081.html
On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 12:11 PM, Tomasz Finc tfinc@wikimedia.org wrote:
Does anyone have an issue broadening the topic base that we have on our tech hub?
I don't. MediaWiki.org has evolved to serve multiple functions:
- the primary hub for the development of MediaWiki, its APIs, extensions, etc.; - the primary hub for WMF engineering projects, even some which are separate but related (e.g. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Analytics/Kraken ) - the primary hub for hackathons and other events, even when they only partially relate to MediaWiki.
I suspect that it will also take on additional functions in the future:
- a central repository for gadgets; - (maybe) a central repository for Lua code and other Scribunto code.
I don't view this intermingling of purposes as inherently problematic. That's actually a much narrower scope than Meta, which tends to be defined as "everything else". Why not interpret MediaWiki.org to mean "Information about MediaWiki and other technical coordination relevant to Wikimedia"? Yes, MediaWiki serves third parties as well -- but much of the non-MediaWiki stuff we're talking about here is potentially interesting to those third parties as well.
Erik
Le 20/09/12 02:12, Tomasz Finc a écrit :
I really wish I could just got to http://developer.wikimedia.org/ and/or http://developer.wikipedia.org
The necessary Apache change is now in Gerrit:
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/24419
If we get consensus, we can get op to deploy that :)
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.
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 9:51 AM, Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah@wikimedia.org
wrote:
... And to help new developers discover various cross-Wikimedia tech projects, there is https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_developer_hub.
but the conversation seems to be zeroing in on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hubhttp://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hub
I don't understand the difference, I challenge anyone to explain it in less than ten words, so I propose the page on meta should become a soft redirect. Every additional page (and its associated talk page!) adds a cognitive and maintenance burden, hinders community, and diminishes focus, and two "Hubs" with indistinguishable names is a bicycle.
(The one true Developer hub can still have a section(s) about "other WikiMedia Foundation software projects besides the Mediawiki software")
-- =S Page software engineer on E3
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org