It's great if this catches on, but we need a way to express multiple authors. Could we have an "authors" field instead of "author", and use an array instead of a string? I would also prefer "keywords" to be an array instead of a comma-separated string.
It would also be great if the description could be fetched from the ~/.description file read at http://tools.wmflabs.org/ if not specified in the .json file. I would prefer to maintain a description of my tools in one place rather than in two. Perhaps maintainers could also be fetched automatically if not specified manually? Dan Michael On 13 August 2014 17:15, Hay (Husky) <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey everyone, > for those who attended Wikimania, i hope you all had a wonderful time! > > One of the things that i've talked about at Mania with a few people is > the current way of 'tool discovery', or rather, the lack thereof. > We've seen really cool things done by the community, but i have a > feeling many of the tools go by unnoticed, simply because nobody knows > that they exist. Maybe they've been send around here or posted on IRC, > but after the initial interest many of them are forgotten and lead a > lonely life on our virtual servers. > > I think this is especially problematic for non-community members for > whom the tools might be very useful. For example, as a Wikipedian in > Residence and GLAM advocate i have sent numerous mails with links to > the various GLAM tools made by Magnus, stats.grok.se, etcetera. > > But, you might say, we run all these knowledge sites called wikis > right? And there are some pages there that list tools, don't they? > You're right, the community has put some efforts in a few pages (1). > However, IMHO, a wiki doesn't lend itself to easy tool discovery: > > * The format on how to describe a tool is unclear, thereby leading to > both very long and very short descriptions. > * It's not possible to easily search for tools in a certain category > (e.g. 'GLAM' or 'editcount'). > * The categorization of tools leads to much clicking around, > distracting and confusing users. > * There's no way to sort results, for example by the number of people > using the tool. > > The biggest problem of all is the disconnection between the actual > code of the tool itself (hosted in a Git repo), and the description > advertising it. People update their tool to do something different (or > deprecate it), but they forget the documentation on the wiki, don't > remove it when the tool doesn't work anymore, etcetera. > > I believe we can, and should do better. > > THE PROPOSAL > > My proposal is to use the same mechanisms that already exist for > package managers such as NPM (2) or 'app stores', such as the Chrome > store (3). Basically this involes adding a small JSON file to your > project, including a few key properties such as 'title' and > 'description'. These files get indexed, and an easy to use frontend to > search to all the tools is provided to end users. You could imagine a > 'toolinfo.json' file to look something like this: > > { > "name" : "WikiDataQuery", > "description" : "An API for Wikidata items and properties.", > "url" : "http://wdq.wmflabs.org/";, > "keywords" : "wikidata, api, query", > "author" : "Magnus Manske" > } > > If you have a web-hosted tool, simply stick it in the root of your > tools directory so that it's reachable by the crawler. Whenever your > tool data changes, just update the file and the directory will > automatically update the directory site. > > The link to your toolinfo.json could be added to a Wiki page so that > it's easy to remove your tool from the directory or change the URL to > the JSON file. > > I'm a firm believer in putting code where your mouth is, so i've > hacked up a working tool directory here: > > http://tools.wmflabs.org/hay/directory > > Try searching for stuff, clicking on the labels. To add your own tool, > scroll the page down for instructions. > > Current this only lists my tools, but i hope that this directory will > soon grow with everything the Wikimedia community has to offer. > > I'm interested in your opinion in this proposal and, if you like it, > add a toolinfo.json to your project! > > Kind regards, > -- Hay / [[User:Husky]] > > 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools > 2: https://www.npmjs.org/ > 3: https://developer.chrome.com/apps/manifest > > _______________________________________________ > Labs-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/labs-l >
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