On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 10:09 AM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Under the redesigned grants scheme, WMF Project grants
might be able to
help with this kind of software development work for Commons and/or
Wikisource. I happen to know a developer here in Cascadia who might be
interested, either as an individual or in association with a Wikimedia
affiliate, in doing this kind of work on a grant or contract basis.
Pinging Kacie for comment about possible grant funding. (:
Hi Pine, thanks for the comment.
I understand what you mean, and I do believe there is space to work on
Wikisource via grants, BUT.
But I already did a Individual Engagement Grant in 2013 (with David Cuenca)
regarding Wikisource.
It was great, but IEGs don't give you staff time. So me and David used
Google Summer of Code, and we mentored 4 projects: if I'm not mistaken,
only one was really finished, meaning it produced concrete results on
Wikisource. Others stopped before (for example, two dedicated mediawiki
extensions were not put in production). Within the IEG, we made a big
survey among Wikisource communities, to develop a wishlist and a roadmap
for WS communities. We set up a Wikisource Community User Group. We talked
and talked. Bugs were and are reported, from years. Two weeks ago, we
convened the very first internationl Wikisource conference, in Vienna,
hosted by Wikimedia Austria (3 members from WMF were there, and we had a
great and productive time, reports will follow).
I've personally been involved in all of these efforts, so I've also seen
that real impact of Wikisource infrastructure (core WS extension, design,
interface, performance, development) has been minimal. I don't really want
to have this conversation here and now, but I have had a fair amount of
experience in this to say that until the WMF (or some affiliate big enough
and high enough in the software pipeline) commit to WS, change won't
magically happen by itself. We have practically one real volunteer
developer, and he's full of work to do (also, I already asked him if he
would like to receive a grant to work on certain issues, and he can't, and
he's the only one who could do that, thanks to his unique experience).
Grant works for little things, I'm afraid. Major change requires something
else.
Aubrey