I have been drafting a proposal to attract new contributors, help them
settle in, and connect them to interesting tasks. It turns out that many
of these problems are not unique to new contributors. We suffer them as
well and we are just used to them.
The proposal has evolved into a deeper restructuring of our community
spaces. We're still drafting it, but a round of wider feedback is
welcome before opening the official RFC at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Wikitech_contributors
In summary:
*
wikitech.wikimedia.org would become the one and only site for our open
source software contributors, powered by semantic software and an
ontology of categories shared across wiki pages, Bugzilla and hopefully
Gerrit.
* Semantic user profiles would identify interests, project membership
and preferences so users could get notifications about specific topics.
* Nodes would automatically structure links to the key information about
a specific topic: wiki pages, events, news, projects, bug reports,
Gerrit changesets, related contributors, and people interested.
* All project teams, whoever is in them, would have a standard way to
report goals, members, tasks and updates.
The proposal includes a draft plan for a first iteration, including
contracting out some software development and redesigning part of
wikitech and
mediawiki.org.
Your feedback is welcome at the discussion page. I will be consolidating
there any feedback received here or through other channels. The official
RFC should follow pretty soon, maybe next week.
--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil