[Wikimedia-l] Software projects a chapter could take on

[Sumana Harihareswara]

Subject: was Re: About the concentration of resources in SF (it was:
"Communication plans for community engagement")

I hope Erik doesn't mind if I jump in here and give my opinion.  I'm
also cc'ing Markus from WCA to highlight that I'd love to hear his
opinion here.

Chapters are especially well-placed to do Wikimedia-related development
because the people of chapters already know a lot about what their
communities need.  For instance, if the people who edit WMF sites for
your language have to do a lot of tedious work to maintain the main
page, you could translate and insert the template that helps automate
that, which some volunteers wrote for Tamil Wikipedia:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2013-May/000263.html
 If the Wikipedia in your language doesn't have the "Comments in Local
Time" gadget that "changes UTC-based times and dates, such as those used
in signatures, to be relative to local time", you can localise and add
this gadget to your wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Comments_in_Local_Time

Chapters who have never taken on any MediaWiki-related software projects
before should probably take a look through
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects .
The projects listed are good for students and first time contributors,
and the MediaWiki development community is ready to give guidance -- for
each Featured Project Idea you see a mentor who's agreed to shepherd new
contributors who want to work on it.  You are invited to work on any of
these items.  The estimate of how long it would take for you to complete
one of these items strongly depends on how much skill the developer
already has in PHP/JavaScript/jQuery/CSS, responding to code review,
asking for help when stuck, and learning from the answers.  But we
expect that a college-level student with some experience in PHP could
potentially do any of the Featured Project Ideas as a three-month project.

Also on that page, "Raw projects" are interesting ideas that have been
proposed but might lack definition, consensus or mentors.

And I see Erik has replied in another message so I should read that
before I continue. :)

-- 
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation

Sun, 28 Jul 2013 08:17:57 +0200, Michał Buczyński wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> +1 to this question.
> 
> If we learn that there are items where we are invited to the MediaWiki and some estimates how many e.g. developerdays we would need to finance so we know it is possible.
> 
> However, we should mind that most of the chapters are not really development houses and we are lacking experience in this area.
> 
> michał.
>  
>  28 lipca 2013 5:41 Craig Franklin <cfranklin at halonetwork.net> napisał(a):
> 
> 
>> > 
>>> > > Hi Erik (and whomever from WMDE),
>> > 
>> > For the benefit of chapters that are interested in this space, can you
>> > offer any examples of projects that are of an appropriate size and type for
>> > a chapter to take on? I think that most chapters* would be willing to help
>> > out in the software development space if we got a bit of direction on how
>> > we could be the most useful.
>> > 
>> > Cheers,
>> > Craig Franklin
>> > 
>> > * Keeping in mind that my chapter probably wouldn't have the capacity to
>> > start anything in this space for at least another twelve months.
>> > 
>> > 
>> > On 27 July 2013 09:57, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> > 
>>> > > On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 2:39 PM, rupert THURNER
>>> > > <rupert.thurner at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > >
>>>> > > > If WMF is serious about letting development activities grow in other
>>>> > > > countries this might be taken into account in FDCs allocation policy.
>>> > >
>>> > > For my part, I'm happy to offer feedback to the FDC on plans related
>>> > > to the development of engineering capacity in FDC-funded
>>> > > organizations. I'm sure Wikimedia Germany, too, would be happy to
>>> > > share its experiences growing the Wikidata development team. I'd love
>>> > > to find ways to bootstrap more engineering capacity across the
>>> > > movement, as so many of our shared challenges have a software
>>> > > engineering component. If any folks on-list want to touch base on
>>> > > these questions at Wikimania, drop me a note. :)
>>> > >
>>> > > Erik
>>> > >
>>> > > --
>>> > > Erik Möller
>>> > > VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation