New subject: [Wikimedia-l] Developer Portal is launched! Discover Wikimedia’s technical areas and how to contribute

15 Jun 2022

Hi All,

We are happy to announce the launch of the Wikimedia Developer Portal
<https://developer.wikimedia.org/> - a centralized entry point for finding
technical documentation and community resources across Wikimedia’s key
technical areas.

The Developer Portal project
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal> is
part of a broader initiative to improve the discoverability and overall
quality of key technical documentation. Work on this project began in July
2020 and included research and feedback rounds
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal/History>,
designing a content strategy
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal/Content_strategy>
and user journeys
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal?tableofcontents=1#User_journeys>
to help people navigate and achieve their tasks, technical implementation
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal/Implementation>
of the portal, developing a documentation review process
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation/Review_template>, and
updating key documents.

Wikimedia’s technical documentation spans a wide range of technologies, is
distributed (and often duplicated) across mediawiki
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki>, wikitech
<https://wikitech.wikimedia.org>, code repositories or other places, might
or might not be up-to-date, and serves multiple audiences.

This complex landscape can make it hard to find the information you need.
The goal of the Developer Portal is to make it easier for developers and
other technical contributors to:

   -

   Find the key documentation they need for common developer tasks.
   -

   Discover available tools and technologies.
   -

   Learn how to get started in Wikimedia technical areas.

At its core, the Developer Portal is a navigation tool. It is an index of
categorized links to key sources of technical information. These sources
are hosted primarily on wikis—the portal itself contains no actual
documentation.

A major part of this project includes reviewing and updating the documents
linked from the Developer Portal - the actual documentation (examples:
Localisation <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Localisation>, Communication
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Communication>, Cloud Services introduction
<https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Cloud_Services_introduction>).
This work will continue over the next year while also investigating how to
improve and scale the process.

The Developer Portal is a project by the Developer Advocacy team within the
Technical Engagement group at the Wikimedia Foundation and has been
developed by a project team of technical writers, engineers, and developer
advocates (Alex <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:APaskulin_(WMF)>,
Andre <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:AKlapper_(WMF)>, Bryan
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:BDavis_(WMF)>, Sarah R
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:SRodlund_(WMF)>, Tricia
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:TBurmeister_(WMF)>).

The long term goal is to step-by-step move towards a future where
Wikimedia’s technical documentation is discoverable, accurate,
standardized, and continuously updated. Yes, this is big :-) — and yes, it
will take a while. Hope you join us in realizing this collective effort of
making it easier for people to contribute to the code and technical spaces.

Thank you <3

This project would not have been possible without the support, knowledge,
ideas and feedback of many! A huge thanks to:

   -

   the members of WMF and WMDE engineering teams who participated in
   exploratory interviews early in the process,
   -

   everyone who provided feedback at Hackathon 2021 & 2022, via private
   messages, on the Project page

<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal/Content_Draft/Feedback>
   or gave input or help on Phabricator tasks
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/4941/query/all/>
   -

   Developers and community members who participated in multiple rounds of
   user testing

<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal/History#User_research_and_testing>
   -

   the Design Strategy team
   <https://design.wikimedia.org/strategy/index.html> at the Foundation for
   helping us with designing a research study and recruiting a diverse group
   of users to test the final version of the site
   -

   people who helped with key doc improvements and content reviews: Haley
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:HLepp_(WMF)>, Kamil
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:KBach-WMF>, Komla
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:SSapaty_(WMF)>, Nick
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Quiddity_(WMF)>, Srishti
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:SSethi_(WMF)>
   -

   translators and translatewiki.net community, especially Abijeet
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:APatro_(WMF)>, Niklas
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nlaxstrom-WMF>, and Verdy_p
   <https://translatewiki.net/wiki/User:Verdy_p>
   -

   People who helped us with steps towards production and deployment:
   Alexandros <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:AKosiaris_(WMF)>, Andrew
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:AndrewBogott_(WMF)>, Brian
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:BKing_(WMF)>, Ryan
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:RKemper_(WMF)>, Valentin
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:VGuti%C3%A9rrez_(WMF)>

We hope that this new resource will be fun to explore and ultimately be
useful for your work.

If you are interested in learning more about the thinking behind the user
journey design for the Developer Portal, please see the blog post on Diff
<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/06/15/illuminating-pathways-to-technical-documentation/>.
For more information about the technical implementation and design
principles, please see the corresponding post on the techblog
<https://techblog.wikimedia.org/2022/06/15/new-discovery-tool-for-technical-documentation/>.
All key information is also available on the project page
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal> of the
Developer Portal.

Feedback, ideas and questions are more than welcome on the talk page of the
project
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal>.
Let's keep discussions in one place. :-)

Birgit & the Developer Portal project team

-- 
Birgit Müller (she/her)
Director of Technical Engagement

Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>