Hi everyone,
I mopped up a bunch of Brion's time and expertise earlier this week, did some futzing, discussed it a little with ArchCom, and and came up with a set of working areas that are reflected on Phab[1] and on mediawiki.org[2]
Here's the list that's posted in Phab: - Content format [T119022] - This is about the format of our data, with a primary emphasis on the future of Wikitext & markup (or possibly, the future of eliminating it). The central problem in this area: "how do we make manipulating our data easier and more useful" (both for humans and computers)
- Content access and APIs [T119029] this is about getting our data in-and-out of the system (e.g. rest.wikimedia.org). The central problem in this area: "how do we make accessing and distributing our data easier and more useful?"
- Collaboration [T119030] this is about how we work together. Central problem: "how do we scale editing our code up to populations similar to editing our projects, proportionally increasing our positive impact and productivity?"
- Software engineering [T119032] this is about building and delivering high quality code. Central problem: "how do we build high-quality software that we can dramatically increase the number of people that can understand it while increasing the reliability and maintainability of Wikimedia sites?"
- User interface presentation [T119162] improving our user interactions. Central problem: "how to we make our software look and feel joyful to use?"
We have some initial nominees (mostly from ArchCom) to lead up the selection process, but really, now is the time to demonstrate a combination of volunteer spirit and leadership if you would like to influence outcomes for the better. My initial nominations were a combination of gut feel and nominees not saying "no". :-)
Please head to Phabricator and comment in the specific areas about your vision about what we should emphasize at WikiDev 16.
Rob
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T119018 [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit_2016/Scope#Working...
My initial reaction is just that the "user interface presentation" split feels unnatural. Almost every other working area requires real input from the "user interface" side. Just to pick a single example for each:
* Content Format -- what should the UI for "editing templates" look like? (T114454) * Content access & APIs -- what parts of our UI should be "baked in" to our content APIs? (ie, default thumbnail size? stub article cutoffs?) * Collaboration -- the UX is at least half the task here (T112984) * Software engineering -- Integrating CSS-preprocessing and templating mechanisms, say.
The process at [[mw:Wikimedia_Developer_Summit_2016/Scope#Working_Areas]] states, "We may end up having Phab projects for each of these working areas, assigning each WikiDev '16 proposal to one primary area. For some proposals, it may be good to put them in multiple projects, but let's try to resist that urge."
That's probably a good idea for most of the working groups, but it may be wise to be more accommodating with "user interface presentation". We'd want to ensure that we have adequate "design and UX" representation on all the proposals which could possibly need it. --scott
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