http://devhub.wmflabs.org is a prototype of the "Data and developer hub", a portal and set of articles and links whose goal is to encourage third-party developers to use Wikimedia data and APIs. Check it out, your feedback is welcome! You can comment on the talk page of the project page https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/dev.wikimedia.org , or file Phabricator tickets in the project dev.wikimedia.org [1].
Since December 2013 Moiz Syed and others discussed creating "a thing" to expose our APIs and data to developers. When S Page moved to WMF tech writer, he wrote some articles for this on mediawiki.org and with Quim Gil developed a landing page from the wireframe designs [2].
The prototype is using the Blueprint skin and running on a labs instance, but the articles are all regular wiki pages on mediawiki.org that we regularly import to http://devhub.wmflabs.org
Thanks to everyone who participated in the gestation of this idea! -- S Page and Quim Gil
== FAQ ==
Q: How can I feature my awesome API or data set? A: Create a task in the #dev.wikimedia.org and #documentation projects [3] with "Article" in the title. You can draft an article yourself, following the guidelines [4].
Q: Yet another site? Arghh! A: Agreed, T101441 "Integrate new Developer hub with mediawiki.org" [5]. It's a separate site for now in order to present a different appearance.
Q: But why a different appearance? Why a separate skin? Our competition for developer mindshare is sites like https://developers.google.com/ . We believe looking like a 2000s wiki page is a *deterrent* to using Wikimedia APIs and data. We hope that many third-party developers join our communities and eventually contribute to MediaWiki, but "How to contribute to MediaWiki" [6] is not the focus, providing free open knowledge is.
Q: Why the Blueprint skin? A: The Design team (now Reading Design) developed it for the OOUI Living Style Guide [7] and it has some nice features: a fixed header, and a sidebar that gets out of the way and combines page navigation and the TOC of the current page.
Q: So why not use the Blueprint skin on mediawiki.org? A: Agreed, T93613 "Deploy Blueprint on mediawiki.org as optional and experimental skin" is a blocker for T101441. We appreciate help with it and its blockers.
Q: I hate the appearance. A: That's not a question :) You can forget the prototype exists and view the same content at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Data_and_developer_hub
Q: What is "dev.wikimedia.org"? A: http://dev.wikimedia.org will be the well-known shortcut to the landing page. And dev.wikimedia.org is the project name for this "Data and developer hub".
Q: I thought dev.wikimedia.org was going to integrate source documentation/replace doc.wikimedia.org/enumerate all Wikimedia software projects/cure cancer, what happened? A: One step at a time. For now, its goal is, to repeat, "to encourage third-party developers to use Wikimedia data and APIs".
Q: Why are the pages in the API: namespace? A: That's temporary, they will probably end up in a dev: namespace on mediawiki.org that uses the Blueprint skin by default (T369).
Q: Where are the talk pages? A: It's a bug that the sidebar doesn't have a "Discussion" link (T103785). The talk pages on the prototype all redirect to the talk pages for the original pages on mediawiki.org, and Flow is enabled on them.
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/create/?projects=dev.wikime... [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Dev.wikimedia.org#Structure [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/create/?projects=dev.wikime... [4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/dev.wikimedia.org/Contributing [5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T93613 and its blockers [6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_contribute (a fine general entry point) [7] http://livingstyleguide.wmflabs.org/