On 6/25/15, S Page <sp...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > 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.wikimedia.org > [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Dev.wikimedia.org#Structure > [3] > https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/create/?projects=dev.wikimedia.org,documentation > [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/ > -- > =S Page WMF Tech writer > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
So at first, I had a little trouble wrapping my mind around the intended goals of this project. But I think I understand now. In essence, this is an advertisement aimed at programmers not associated with the Wikimedia movement, to use various Wikimedia APIs in their programming projects that are unrelated to Wikimedia. In a sense, targeting these programmers as a distinct group of users, and trying to convince them to use our "product". Is that right? If it isn't, may I suggest that this should be the intended purpose? If so, I think the content of the developer hub should have a little bit of a different focus. It should concentrate on things that make us unique, and things that are likely to have wide applicability and value outside of Wikimedia. First of all, the links at the beginning, should not go directly to the projects in question, they should go to pages explaining how to use those projects in question on the outside. If they wanted to just visit the wiki, they would have done that (Perhaps, this was already planned, and the current version is still just an early draft with not all the pieces in place yet?) Second, the existing showcased projects, seem to much like the sort of thing someone making a mobile Wikipedia App would want. Most people probably don't want article excerpts in their search results (I assume anyways). Most people aren't searching through a list of Wikipedia articles, unless they are wikipedia or related to wikipedia. But we do have one of the largest collections of (mostly) organized knowledge available for free (In both senses of the word). This is valuable, and quite unique on the internet. We should capitalize on this. Things like "Show a short snippet about this topic from Wikipedia" (+ a link to more information) could be quite useful to many people. After all lots of people have websites having pages about various things (In order for there users to rate, discuss, etc), maybe that'd want an easy to add widget explaining the topic at hand. Commons is another great resource because its information can be easily broken up into digestible parts like a single image (Which is much harder for a Wikipedia article). I think things like https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/PhotoCommons which would allow a website operator to quickly allow their users to add stock photos to whatever it is their users do, is a good thing to focus on. Wikidata seems almost custom made for the type of user who would like to add cusom knowledge to their website. The other thing that should definitely be on the dev hub, is probably a link to our terms. We should emphasize that you can use your data, and we generally don't track you the way a facebook like button does. That you don't need an api key or anyone's permission. Of course we should also state what you do need to do (Give credit/follow license, set a user-agent header) ----- However, I might be wrong about the intended direction of the dev hub (Also, the name is very confusing. The very fact that in [[mw:dev.wikimedia.org]], it states its not for MediaWiki "hackers" despite the fact that in our community (And particularly in the larger Wikimedia community), "developer" as a word is much more commonly used than the word "hacker" is, for what the document means by "hacker", should attest to the confusingness of the nomenclature). In particular the proposed persona's suggest a different target than what I commented above. To quote: > * Ankita, mobile developer willing to use Wikimedia data to enhance mobile > apps. > * Alberto, data scientist employed at an organization gathering and > releasing data that could be synced with Wikimedia's. > * Reetta, cultural activist working on mass-upload activities for public > institutions. > * Yanhui, academic researcher needing a massive data set to sustain his > thesis. I think these four users have too broad an interest to be effectively handled by one hub (maybe). I think the focus should be mostly on "Ankita", with a somewhat prominent link to the research hub for Yanhui. If the goal is truly to focus on people who are not Wikimedians, than "Alberto" seems mostly out of scope, as syncing data with Wikimedia is inherently interacting the the Wikimedia community (Unless you mean syncing data unidirectionally away from Wikimedia). I'm not sure what to make of "Reetta". If they are uploading to commons, than they are clearly involved in the Wikimedia community, and furthermore, if we are requiring our glam coordinators to build bots from scratch with the API, we are failing in other ways (but that's a side topic for another email). If you mean in another direction, it seems somewhat unlikely that a cultural institution would want to mass upload commons to somewhere else, but even if they did, I would still consider that to be an activity quite integrated with the Wikimedia community (Or should be). Thanks, Bawolff _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
