subject:"Re\: \[Wikitech\-l\] Proposal\: Wikitech contributors"


On 04/04/2013 01:45 AM, Quim Gil wrote:

As far as I can see it is impossible to solve the puzzle without
changing something and upsetting someone.


Well, no. There is always a possibility.

We can detach the Wikitech contributors prototype development from any 
content migration and leave mediawiki.org undisrupted during this first 
phase.


Wikitech has the basic software we need to build a prototype quicker and 
easier. Life in mediawiki.org would continue as it is. Everybody would 
be welcome to join the experiment but nobody would be forced to.


If/when the prototype is ready we can discuss about next steps with a 
better common understanding.


http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Wikitech_contributors#First_phase 
has been edited accordingly.


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http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-04 Thread Waldir Pimenta

Keeping a single wiki seems to be the most sensible approach. I agree with
Erik that there are good ways to separate different types of content, such
as namespaces, and I agree with Yuri that wikitech is the best choice of
name, since it is a superset of mediawiki.
I think we should agree on this first, and then decide whether we want the
more ambitious, SMW-powered features (I am for them as well, btw).

--Waldir

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 8:10 AM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> If feasible, I would at the end of the day still argue in favor of a
> single consolidated technical wiki. I realize calling that wiki
> mediawiki.org is not ideal, but beyond the domain name, a lot can be
> done to provide reasonable divisions (namespaces, navigation, etc.),
> so that MediaWiki the product and other Wikimedia technical projects
> and processes are clearly distinct.

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 8:58 AM, Yuri Astrakhan 
wrote:
> If we are not happy with the URL, lets come up with another one, or decide
> that wikitech is the preferred name, and redirect everything there.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-04 Thread Marc A. Pelletier

On 04/04/2013 10:04 AM, K. Peachey wrote:
> Plus we already have another system that is getting worked on and
> rolled out to a few of the production wikis that will seem to do
> similar features (based on comments in this thread already).

I'm honestly not familiar enough with Wikidata to be able to tell how
applicable it'd be to wikitech/mwm.  My understanding of it is from a
Wikipedia editor's point of view and I see it as "The place where data
is stored in a language-independent manner and can be used by all
content wikis in a way that resemble SMW without redundancy".

It's not clear to me that mixing our technical data with the
encyclopedic data is reasonable; or that we aren't going to be causing
trouble if we try.  Does it support some namespace-equivalent to
segregate different data sets?

-- Marc

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-04 Thread K. Peachey

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:59 PM, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:
> So yeah; perhaps SMW has issues that makes deployment to the bigger
> content wikis problematic, but rejecting it for the smaller data-based
> ones on a kneejerk is, at best, misguided.

It wasn't knee jerk the time it was discussed, and a few subsequent.
There was some known problems with the code, Most of these should be
cleaned up now since ryan is willing enough to run it on labs.

Plus we already have another system that is getting worked on and
rolled out to a few of the production wikis that will seem to do
similar features (based on comments in this thread already).

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-04 Thread Marc A. Pelletier

On 04/04/2013 03:22 AM, Jeroen De Dauw wrote:
> "SMW will make any wiki uber-complicated and explode". This certainly does
> not include concerns with deployment on the big WMF project wikis, which
> should be taken seriously.

As a point of anecdotal data, I've used SMW with success at two of my
past employers for semiautomated documentation of machine rooms and
related documentation.

Being able to make templates (mostly autofilled by facter) that allowed
queries like "how much power is being used by rack C7" and "what boxen
are currently still running Hardy" on our ops wiki, alongside the
human-written documentation, was /invaluable/.

This looks a lot like the scope of mwm and wikitech.

So yeah; perhaps SMW has issues that makes deployment to the bigger
content wikis problematic, but rejecting it for the smaller data-based
ones on a kneejerk is, at best, misguided.

-- Marc

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-04 Thread Mark A. Hershberger

On 04/04/2013 03:22 AM, Jeroen De Dauw wrote:
> I fully agree with you when speaking about Wikipedia or whatnot. SMW, like
> any software, has it's issues. Knowing these I think it'd be a bad idea to
> try to deploy it on Wikipedia or Commons or whatever in its current state.

Thank you for this.  I still don't understand all the issues involved,
but knowing that someone with intimate familiarity with SMW thinks it
isn't appropriate for large WMF deploys helps.

I'm still wondering about wikitech/MW.o, but it looks like Quim Gil has
asked the SMW community for input on that front, so I'm happy.  (Not
that my happiness should be anyone else's goal.)

Mark.

-- 
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   compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors


On 04/04/2013 12:10 AM, Erik Moeller wrote:

If the migration is merited, it is likely merited irrespective of
whether we use SocialProfile, LQT, SMW, SMF, etc.


In theory yes, but in practice there are some associations:

* Contributors and the docs relevant for them should be in the same place.

* Semantic MediaWiki is required to prototype and implement the features 
proposed for contributors in the quickest and simplest way. Unless 
someone has a better idea.


* http://mediawiki.org has the docs but not SMW.

* http://wikitech.wikimedia.org has SMW but not the docs.


As far as I can see it is impossible to solve the puzzle without 
changing something and upsetting someone. The scenarios are:


1. Move the right content to Wikitech and experiment there with SMW. 
When Wikimedia has a better solution, take it.


2. Install SMW in mediawiki.org and experiment there. When Wikimedia has 
a better solution, take it.


3. Keep everything as it is. Wait for Wikidata, Flow and Global Profile 
to be ready to help us here.


4. Create a new website just for this.  :P

If you have a 5th please share it.


3 or 4 would be the usual choices out there. I believe we would be in 
trouble with any of both. I'm ambivalent between 1 or 2, only fearing 
that having so many strong & opinionated positions we don't end up 
trying a 2.5 headed for failure (another usual choice out there).


But I have hope in this discussion and our capacity to end up doing The 
Right Thing.


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Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-04 Thread Claudia Müller-Birn

Hi,

> I'm not at all concerned about the rate at which you iterate -- it isn't 
> about how fast you put out the shiny and new, but whether the assumptions 
> that motivate this big undertaking are testable and falsifiable. Before we 
> can say anything with confidence about what newcomers truly need, we need to 
> do some usability testing and research. Because newcomers are generally 
> voiceless, there is an unconscious tendency to project onto them a set of 
> subjective preferences and intuitions, and the only way around that is data.

I don't know if this is useful in this context but because of the term 
"usability testing" I thought this extension might be interesting for you: 
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:UIFeedback
  
This project is still under development and we haven't gotten through code and 
design review yet…

--Claudia 

> --
> Ori Livneh
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors


On 04/03/2013 08:27 PM, Ori Livneh wrote:

 Before we can say anything with confidence about what
newcomers truly need, we need to do some usability testing and
research. Because newcomers are generally voiceless, there is an
unconscious tendency to project onto them a set of subjective
preferences and intuitions, and the only way around that is data.


Ok, fair enough.

I will have this in mind in future edits to the proposal. Help defining 
data points is welcome at


http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Requests_for_comment/Wikitech_contributors#Measuring_success_25866

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-04 Thread Daniel Friesen

On Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:10:38 -0700, Erik Moeller   
wrote:



I think the potential migration of content to wikitech and the
potential use of certain MW extensions to improve the user experience
are legitimately separate issues.


Yeah. It seems like some are suggesting that some of these docs should be  
moved to wikitech because they would work better if SMW is available.  
While at the same time suggesting that not all the docs would be moved to  
wikitech.
Which quite frankly stinks of a conflict to me. Because I can see a lot of  
stuff on MW.org that would be better with SMW and would fall under the  
banner of things that are suggested would stay on MW.org.




It simply stands to reason that if we distribute a lot of content from
a large wiki to a much smaller one, the number of times that you'll
have to go back and forth between the two to find what you're looking
for will increase. API docs? Over here. Status update? Over there.
Extension installation docs? Over here. Specs related to the same
extension? Over there. Ping, pong. Ping, pong. The divisions may seem
logical to us, but for the confused technical contributor, things
could easily get a lot worse.

If feasible, I would at the end of the day still argue in favor of a
single consolidated technical wiki. I realize calling that wiki
mediawiki.org is not ideal, but beyond the domain name, a lot can be
done to provide reasonable divisions (namespaces, navigation, etc.),
so that MediaWiki the product and other Wikimedia technical projects
and processes are clearly distinct. Let's also not forget that we'll
have future potential for new MediaWiki-related technical contribution
that actually would fit very nicely under the mediawiki.org umbrella
(e.g. Lua script repository, gadget repository).


+1

More things fit under the MediaWiki (and related) umbrella than many here  
would admit.


I can understand Labs/Wikitech being another wiki for auth purposes. Like  
bugzilla uses another auth.


But beyond that I don't like the idea of it being used to split the  
documentation of related things even more making it harder to find.
It was hard enough eliminating the split of MediaWiki related  
documentation and projects onto Meta. And it STILL is. Wikidata is  
actually documenting a great deal of wikidata stuff including a lot of  
ContentHandler stuff on Meta instead of MW.org. And only putting small  
documentation on MW.org with almost no reference at all to the Meta pages  
where the original design ideas planned things.


And honestly. It would be kind of nice if we could link LDAP indirectly to  
MW accounts. And make it easy to point MW developers on MW.org to a  
special page on MW.org to setup the credentials they use to log into  
Gerrit to commit and comment on core.


--
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/]


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-04 Thread Yuri Astrakhan

I think we should consolidate wikitech and mediawiki. If wikipedia.org can
fit all the world's knowledge, how come we can't fit all our technical
know-how on one site? The fragmentation is unnecessary and arbitrary, it
confuses most newcomers and those not paying attention to the "proper
separation" between them.

The site should highlight and share the technology platform used at
Wikimedia Foundation.
*We need a site for everyone to look at, participate in, and replicate our
technology.*
Replication could be anything from the most basic MW installation to a
complete replica of our cluster.

If we are not happy with the URL, lets come up with another one, or decide
that wikitech is the preferred name, and redirect everything there. The
main page would have mediawiki docs, labs, server info and stats,
hackathons, apis, RFCs, and everything else related. Any non-wiki
information like server health could be sub-domain of this site, possibly
with extra permissions. Lets create and share a knowledge platform, not
just software.

 :)

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:24 AM, Quim Gil  wrote:

> Thank you for the vivid discussion about the potential future roles of
> http://mediawiki.org and http://wikitech.wikimedia.org
>
> I have updated http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/**
> Technical_communications/Dev_**wiki_consolidation#Proposed_**solutionaccordingly.
>
>
> On 04/03/2013 03:51 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
>
>> who's going to do the work of
>> migrating all our project documentation over?
>>
>
> guillom, myself and whoever else wants to help.
>
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/**Technical_communications/Dev_**
> wiki_consolidation#Steps
>
>
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> Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/**User:Qgil
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

Thank you for the vivid discussion about the potential future roles of 
http://mediawiki.org and http://wikitech.wikimedia.org


I have updated 
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_communications/Dev_wiki_consolidation#Proposed_solution 
accordingly.


On 04/03/2013 03:51 PM, Steven Walling wrote:

who's going to do the work of
migrating all our project documentation over?


guillom, myself and whoever else wants to help.

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_communications/Dev_wiki_consolidation#Steps

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-04 Thread Jeroen De Dauw

Hey,

I'd say it's well informed paranoia. SMW is used on some largish wikis at
> Wikia and it apparently causes issues very often. The largest wiki with SMW
> at Wikia is very small in comparison to a lot of WMF wikis.
>

SMW has historically had a touch of the featuritis. Most of its features
> would need to be disabled on WMF wikis due to performance reasons, and then
> what's the point?
>

I fully agree with you when speaking about Wikipedia or whatnot. SMW, like
any software, has it's issues. Knowing these I think it'd be a bad idea to
try to deploy it on Wikipedia or Commons or whatever in its current state.
Wikitech and MediaWiki wikis are a different story though. The ill-informed
paranoia I was referring to consists out of thinking something not far from
"SMW will make any wiki uber-complicated and explode". This certainly does
not include concerns with deployment on the big WMF project wikis, which
should be taken seriously.

Cheers

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Don't panic. Don't be evil.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-04 Thread Erik Moeller

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 3:06 PM, Steven Walling  wrote:

> The best way to approach a
> project like this is not to propose an up-front migration of an entire wiki
> to a new piece of software, just to prototype a few new features.

I think the potential migration of content to wikitech and the
potential use of certain MW extensions to improve the user experience
are legitimately separate issues.

If the migration is merited, it is likely merited irrespective of
whether we use SocialProfile, LQT, SMW, SMF, etc. We could perform a
large migration of content without using any of them, or we could
experiment with these extensions without/before migrating any content.

I'm ambivalent about the migration of content. I'm not very fond of
the current division between dev-ops contributors (wikitech) and
everything else (mediawiki.org), which reinforces barriers between the
two worlds. Those are the barriers that Labs was designed to tear
down, empowering technical contributors to prototype their changes
easily, and to get them ready for large-scale usage on Wikimedia or
other production sites.

Having all technical contributors directed to wikitech.wikimedia.org
would address that - it would introduce them to a magical world of
dev-ops unicorns and PHP rainbows at the same time. And having
mediawiki.org more clearly dedicated to the product would allow it to
shine more brightly in its own sunflower-y colors.

At the same time, the amount of wiki-ping-pong we're playing with
technically interested users could very well increase significantly as
a result. Right now, wikitech.wikimedia.org is relatively quiet, with
changes typically either being made by the Wikimedia ops team or by
Labs users.

It simply stands to reason that if we distribute a lot of content from
a large wiki to a much smaller one, the number of times that you'll
have to go back and forth between the two to find what you're looking
for will increase. API docs? Over here. Status update? Over there.
Extension installation docs? Over here. Specs related to the same
extension? Over there. Ping, pong. Ping, pong. The divisions may seem
logical to us, but for the confused technical contributor, things
could easily get a lot worse.

If feasible, I would at the end of the day still argue in favor of a
single consolidated technical wiki. I realize calling that wiki
mediawiki.org is not ideal, but beyond the domain name, a lot can be
done to provide reasonable divisions (namespaces, navigation, etc.),
so that MediaWiki the product and other Wikimedia technical projects
and processes are clearly distinct. Let's also not forget that we'll
have future potential for new MediaWiki-related technical contribution
that actually would fit very nicely under the mediawiki.org umbrella
(e.g. Lua script repository, gadget repository).

If we do go forward with the migration to wikitech.wikimedia.org, I
would argue in favor of largely depleting mediawiki.org of content
except for clearly necessary end user documentation and support pages,
to minimize ping pong effects.

Erik
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 2:15 AM, Jeroen De Dauw wrote:

> Hey,
>
> > Out of curiosity, what's the largest wiki to use Semantic MediaWiki?
>
> That depends on how you defined "largest". If you want a list of public
> wikis (which of course is not complete) by property value count, then here
> you go: http://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Semantic_statistics
>
> SMW is used on many hundreds of wikis, including those of governments and
> large corporations. It has been out there for years. People seem to be
> using it very successfully. It also has by far the largest third party
> community next to core itself. From my perspective a lot of the concerns
> typically coming from people whenever WMF usage of SMW is in question are
> uninformed paranoia. And there seems to be a good deal of populism going on
> as well, since apparently in some WMF related circles it is cool to hate
> SMW.
>
>
I'd say it's well informed paranoia. SMW is used on some largish wikis at
Wikia and it apparently causes issues very often. The largest wiki with SMW
at Wikia is very small in comparison to a lot of WMF wikis.

SMW has historically had a touch of the featuritis. Most of its features
would need to be disabled on WMF wikis due to performance reasons, and then
what's the point?

- Ryan
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-03 Thread Jeroen De Dauw

Hey,

> Out of curiosity, what's the largest wiki to use Semantic MediaWiki?

That depends on how you defined "largest". If you want a list of public
wikis (which of course is not complete) by property value count, then here
you go: http://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Semantic_statistics

SMW is used on many hundreds of wikis, including those of governments and
large corporations. It has been out there for years. People seem to be
using it very successfully. It also has by far the largest third party
community next to core itself. From my perspective a lot of the concerns
typically coming from people whenever WMF usage of SMW is in question are
uninformed paranoia. And there seems to be a good deal of populism going on
as well, since apparently in some WMF related circles it is cool to hate
SMW.

See also: some testimonials:
https://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Testimonials

Cheers

--
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http://www.bn2vs.com
Don't panic. Don't be evil.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
>I haven't understood the resistance of the WMF to use SMW in more
>places, but putting it on MW.o would really make MW.o's non-WMF focus
>clear.

If the Wikimedia Foundation put Semantic MediaWiki on MediaWiki.org, that
would mean that the Wikimedia Foundation would be committing itself to
supporting it indefinitely. While there is an active Semantic MediaWiki
community, this likely isn't an issue. But if, in a year or two, there's
nobody else willing to help out and Semantic MediaWiki breaks, it'll be
the Wikimedia Foundation's responsibility to fix MediaWiki.org. Plus
there's Wikidata to consider. I can understand the hesitation here.

>Of course, if the WMF had some objective reason to avoid SMW, now would
>be a good time to clarify what those objections are.

According to , the
Wikimedia Foundation is now using Semantic MediaWiki (at least on a
limited basis). Most of the XSS/CSRF-type security issues have been
resolved at this point, I think. I think the general concern has been
scalability and perhaps relatedly the ability of users to execute poorly
optimized queries (maliciously or otherwise). But take this with a grain
of salt as I don't follow Semantic MediaWiki very closely. Out of
curiosity, what's the largest wiki to use Semantic MediaWiki?

MZMcBride

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-03 Thread Ori Livneh

On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 at 3:40 PM, Quim Gil wrote:

> As I see it, the current proposal is already taking shortcuts in order 
> to have fast iterations. 3 months doesn't mean you don't relese new 
> features in between.
> 
> Anything related with enabling Semantic Forms in specific types of pages 
> can be done pretty fast at Wikitech, where those extensions are already 
> installed. We could prototype that by analyzing a bit further 
> notifications and nodes.

I'm not at all concerned about the rate at which you iterate -- it isn't about 
how fast you put out the shiny and new, but whether the assumptions that 
motivate this big undertaking are testable and falsifiable. Before we can say 
anything with confidence about what newcomers truly need, we need to do some 
usability testing and research. Because newcomers are generally voiceless, 
there is an unconscious tendency to project onto them a set of subjective 
preferences and intuitions, and the only way around that is data.

--
Ori Livneh

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 3:48 PM, Jeroen De Dauw wrote:

> That is incorrect. SMW does not force users to learn new things. I imagine
> that the setup Quim has in mind does not involve workflows for basic
> documentation tasks that require users going though them to have knowdlge
> of SMW. In fact, I suspect the workflow will be made easier for users by
> making use of forms and whatnot, rather then forcing them to mess with
> templates and updating some list on some other page. If you don’t like the
> software - fine, but please do not try to scare people away with
> disinformation.
>

Okay let's assume nothing changes in the workflow for creating
documentation. Which I don't. Even then, who's going to do the work of
migrating all our project documentation over? Is it going to be Quim
personally? Some unnamed contractor? Or are we just going to implement the
new system but not migrate any existing project documentation?

Steven
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-03 Thread Jeroen De Dauw

Hey,

I don't support moving to Semantic MediaWiki,
> ... will require me and lots of people to relearn how we write
> documentation and project tracking, unless you can show why the changes you
> want to make are A) necessary B) require SMW to accomplish them.
>

That is incorrect. SMW does not force users to learn new things. I imagine
that the setup Quim has in mind does not involve workflows for basic
documentation tasks that require users going though them to have knowdlge
of SMW. In fact, I suspect the workflow will be made easier for users by
making use of forms and whatnot, rather then forcing them to mess with
templates and updating some list on some other page. If you don’t like the
software - fine, but please do not try to scare people away with
disinformation.

Cheers

--
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Don't panic. Don't be evil.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

It is not surprising that long term contributors with advanced wiki 
editing skills and familiar with the key people and corners of our 
community don't see a big need for change. Well, this is part of the 
problem.


Yes, Gerrit and Bugzilla have issues. This proposal focuses on the 
potential contributors that are not even getting there.



On 04/03/2013 02:01 PM, Steven Walling wrote: > I'd like to add a +1 to 
Ori's request to trial the project in a much more

minimal way, show some results, and then expand from there.


What first iteration would you propose, then?

As I see it, the current proposal is already taking shortcuts in order 
to have fast iterations. 3 months doesn't mean you don't relese new 
features in between.


Anything related with enabling Semantic Forms in specific types of pages 
can be done pretty fast at Wikitech, where those extensions are already 
installed. We could prototype that by analyzing a bit further 
notifications and nodes.


If you have a proposal for simpler steps I'm all ears.


rearchitect our entire system from the ground up


This proposal actually doesn't touch our current workflows. You can 
continue doing what you are doing. All the new features are optional. 
The worst that can happen is that you find in certain pages a 
soft-redirect, or a form instead of a {{template}}.


This is *not* about enabling SMW forms in all pages. Main namespace 
could be as MediaWiki pure as it is now.


--
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Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 3:12 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:

> The proposal is to move non-MediaWiki documentation our of
> mediawiki.orginto a more generically named wiki. The proposal isn't
> for migrating all of
> mediawiki.org.
>

Thanks for the clarification. Sorry to confuse the discussion on that
point.

Steven
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 6:06 PM, Steven Walling wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:59 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:
>
> > If you are a content organizer that modifies templates and likes
> > to make structures easier for for readers and editors, SMW actually makes
> > it much easier to do things that are otherwise impossible in MediaWiki
> > without inflexible bots.
> >
>
> Yes, and that sounds like an advantage for people like Quim, whose job is
> to create structures for other people to use. What I'm saying, as someone
> who is living with our current totally imperfect system of documenting
> software and projects on a day-to-day basis, is that I don't see what the
> advantages are, and that a redesign and a migration needs to take in to
> account everyone's needs more, not just roles like Quim's and the new
> contributors he is admirably working to attract. The best way to approach a
> project like this is not to propose an up-front migration of an entire wiki
> to a new piece of software, just to prototype a few new features.
>
>
The proposal is to move non-MediaWiki documentation our of
mediawiki.orginto a more generically named wiki. The proposal isn't
for migrating all of
mediawiki.org.

- Ryan
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:59 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:

> If you are a content organizer that modifies templates and likes
> to make structures easier for for readers and editors, SMW actually makes
> it much easier to do things that are otherwise impossible in MediaWiki
> without inflexible bots.
>

Yes, and that sounds like an advantage for people like Quim, whose job is
to create structures for other people to use. What I'm saying, as someone
who is living with our current totally imperfect system of documenting
software and projects on a day-to-day basis, is that I don't see what the
advantages are, and that a redesign and a migration needs to take in to
account everyone's needs more, not just roles like Quim's and the new
contributors he is admirably working to attract. The best way to approach a
project like this is not to propose an up-front migration of an entire wiki
to a new piece of software, just to prototype a few new features.

Steven
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:31 PM, Steven Walling wrote:

> Let me put it a simpler way: I don't support moving to Semantic MediaWiki,
> which to me as user seems like a somewhat arcane and bloated piece of
> software that will require me and lots of people to relearn how we write
> documentation and project tracking, unless you can show why the changes you
> want to make are A) necessary B) require SMW to accomplish them.
> Demonstrating that the high level structure proposed will work before
> making the more drastic change seems like a good way to convince everyone
> that what's being proposed is the right path toward a better wiki for all.
>
>
Have you tried SMW? Unless you are heavily editing templates you won't need
to relearn anything and neither will anyone else. The system is hidden from
you behind normal MediaWiki templates. In many cases the templates are also
editable via forms, which actually makes it far easier to edit than regular
MediaWiki. If you are a content organizer that modifies templates and likes
to make structures easier for for readers and editors, SMW actually makes
it much easier to do things that are otherwise impossible in MediaWiki
without inflexible bots. Writing bots is a lot harder than learning SMW.

Are you also opposed to wikidata? The vast majority of what's being
proposed for wikitech is functionality that will also be available at some
point in wikidata. When that's available we can switch to that system,
rather than SMW.

- Ryan
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors


On 03/04/13 22:26, Ryan Lane wrote:

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:19 PM, Isarra Yos  wrote:


On 03/04/13 20:48, Matthew Flaschen wrote:


On 04/03/2013 03:30 AM, Ori Livneh wrote:


That seems wrong. Of the two, MediaWiki.org is clearly the more
successful wiki. It is larger by all measures, and draws a wide pool
of active contributors.


I don't know that it's appropriate to put WMF-only stuff on the
MediaWiki site.  Of course, I'm not totally convinced merging the other
way is a good idea other.  Although there's overlap between MW proper
and the WMF tech, we have to remember they're distinct.


I know some of WMF-specific stuff would still be useful to others trying
to do similar - things like server setup, installation issues,
configuration and good practices and whatnot comes to mind. Having examples
of what others have done - mostly Wikimedia and ShoutWiki in my case -
proved invaluable when I was setting up my own wikifamily-like thing, at
least, but they weren't exactly easy to find.



Wikimedia's configuration isn't specified on MediaWiki.org. It's on
wikitech already. The docs you are referring to are non-wikimedia
configuration examples provided by MediaWiki users, and that stuff will
stay there.

- Ryan
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That was my point, actually - I had to go out and find it elsewhere as 
none of what I used was on mw.org, but it would have been nice if it were.


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:01 PM, Steven Walling  >wrote:
>
> > Quim, I think even this first iteration is problematic on a bunch of
> > fronts. 3 months as a first iteration to build several major features as
> > the basic proof of concept should be a sign that you're biting off too
> much
> > in terms of scope.
> >
> >
> I think this is somewhat exaggerated. Almost all of the things proposed can
> likely be done by defining a set of semantic properties, modifying existing
> templates, then adding queries into templates that can be added back into
> the same templates we're already using on other pages. Defining forms is
> also relatively simple for all of this. I doubt much or any of this will
> requirement any development work.
>
> If we hire someone that already has a lot of SMW experience, this is likely
> a pretty easy target.
>
>
> > I also think it's deeply problematic that you don't seem to have shaped
> the
> > proposal based on the expressed needs of people who have tried to use the
> > current system and failed, and that you're seemingly ignoring the use
> case
> > of all the many different kinds of contributors by focusing a
> comprehensive
> > restructure solely for new contributors. When we make something like
> Echo,
> > we're doing it first and foremost to attract new people, but we can't get
> > away with ignoring the needs of existing users.
> >
> >
> We have a current system?
>
>
> > In general, I don't think you've fully considered how the current set up
> > might serve our needs with less heavy-handed changes than migrating to
> > Semantic MediaWiki, and I'm wary of supporting a restructuring of
> > documentation systems I depend of every day based on a grand plan of any
> > kind.
> >
> >
> Almost all of the changes Quim is suggesting will likely be completely
> transparent to you and your normal processes. Semantic annotations are
> almost always added to templates and users have no clue that magic is
> happening behind them.
>
> - Ryan
>
>
Let me put it a simpler way: I don't support moving to Semantic MediaWiki,
which to me as user seems like a somewhat arcane and bloated piece of
software that will require me and lots of people to relearn how we write
documentation and project tracking, unless you can show why the changes you
want to make are A) necessary B) require SMW to accomplish them.
Demonstrating that the high level structure proposed will work before
making the more drastic change seems like a good way to convince everyone
that what's being proposed is the right path toward a better wiki for all.

Steven
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors


On 03/04/13 14:48, Yury Katkov wrote:

Hi everyone!

I think that there are two categories of developers now:
1) Wikimedia developers deal with Wikimedia tasks of running Wikipedia and
all other projects
2) Independent developers which use MediaWiki for their needs. I think that
not much of us even know that wikitech website exist. :)

IMO stuff related to inner projects of Wikimedia foundation should be
located on wikitech. Manuals that are related to MediaWiki as a software
and its extensions should live on MediaWiki.org. No Wikimedia-specific
materials here.

-
Yury Katkov, WikiVote


I disagree - many of the same resources are useful to either group, and 
there is also overlap even between the groups - developers focussing on 
Wikimedia stuff are more likely to create their own wikis due to their 
familiarity with the stuff, for instance, and they shouldn't need to go 
outside their comfort zone to get the relevant info on that 
specifically, and we should if anything be encouraging independent 
developers to get involved in the movement as well, since if they're 
using the software chances are they have at least some shared goals with 
Wikimedia, so we really should not be pushing them away.


And since a lot of the stuff is applicable to either group, if the 
groups were separated, what then? What would determine which wiki 
something would go on, or would it just be duplicated across both? And 
if the latter, who is going to update the other when information is 
updated on one? In such cases one usually seems to just wind up 
stagnating, and it's not a good model.


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:19 PM, Isarra Yos  wrote:

> On 03/04/13 20:48, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
>
>> On 04/03/2013 03:30 AM, Ori Livneh wrote:
>>
>>> That seems wrong. Of the two, MediaWiki.org is clearly the more
>>> successful wiki. It is larger by all measures, and draws a wide pool
>>> of active contributors.
>>>
>> I don't know that it's appropriate to put WMF-only stuff on the
>> MediaWiki site.  Of course, I'm not totally convinced merging the other
>> way is a good idea other.  Although there's overlap between MW proper
>> and the WMF tech, we have to remember they're distinct.
>>
>
> I know some of WMF-specific stuff would still be useful to others trying
> to do similar - things like server setup, installation issues,
> configuration and good practices and whatnot comes to mind. Having examples
> of what others have done - mostly Wikimedia and ShoutWiki in my case -
> proved invaluable when I was setting up my own wikifamily-like thing, at
> least, but they weren't exactly easy to find.
>
>
Wikimedia's configuration isn't specified on MediaWiki.org. It's on
wikitech already. The docs you are referring to are non-wikimedia
configuration examples provided by MediaWiki users, and that stuff will
stay there.

- Ryan
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:01 PM, Steven Walling wrote:

> Quim, I think even this first iteration is problematic on a bunch of
> fronts. 3 months as a first iteration to build several major features as
> the basic proof of concept should be a sign that you're biting off too much
> in terms of scope.
>
>
I think this is somewhat exaggerated. Almost all of the things proposed can
likely be done by defining a set of semantic properties, modifying existing
templates, then adding queries into templates that can be added back into
the same templates we're already using on other pages. Defining forms is
also relatively simple for all of this. I doubt much or any of this will
requirement any development work.

If we hire someone that already has a lot of SMW experience, this is likely
a pretty easy target.


> I also think it's deeply problematic that you don't seem to have shaped the
> proposal based on the expressed needs of people who have tried to use the
> current system and failed, and that you're seemingly ignoring the use case
> of all the many different kinds of contributors by focusing a comprehensive
> restructure solely for new contributors. When we make something like Echo,
> we're doing it first and foremost to attract new people, but we can't get
> away with ignoring the needs of existing users.
>
>
We have a current system?


> In general, I don't think you've fully considered how the current set up
> might serve our needs with less heavy-handed changes than migrating to
> Semantic MediaWiki, and I'm wary of supporting a restructuring of
> documentation systems I depend of every day based on a grand plan of any
> kind.
>
>
Almost all of the changes Quim is suggesting will likely be completely
transparent to you and your normal processes. Semantic annotations are
almost always added to templates and users have no clue that magic is
happening behind them.

- Ryan
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors


On 03/04/13 20:48, Matthew Flaschen wrote:

On 04/03/2013 03:30 AM, Ori Livneh wrote:

That seems wrong. Of the two, MediaWiki.org is clearly the more
successful wiki. It is larger by all measures, and draws a wide pool
of active contributors.

I don't know that it's appropriate to put WMF-only stuff on the
MediaWiki site.  Of course, I'm not totally convinced merging the other
way is a good idea other.  Although there's overlap between MW proper
and the WMF tech, we have to remember they're distinct.


I know some of WMF-specific stuff would still be useful to others trying 
to do similar - things like server setup, installation issues, 
configuration and good practices and whatnot comes to mind. Having 
examples of what others have done - mostly Wikimedia and ShoutWiki in my 
case - proved invaluable when I was setting up my own wikifamily-like 
thing, at least, but they weren't exactly easy to find.


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 11:37 AM, Quim Gil  wrote:

> Agreed.
>
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/**Requests_for_comment/Wikitech_**
> contributors#First_iterationis
>  supposed to be completed in 3 months, and even there you have some
> easier tasks that could be implemented pretty fast, namely forms &
> templates for
>
> * User profiles.
> * Projects.
> * Tasks.
> * Events.
>
> Notifications still require more definition and expertise to decide what
> should be done now. Is Echo ripe for this? Is it worth to use this
> experiment to prototype Flow there? Or should we fallback to a system like
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/**Extension:**TranslationNotifications...?
>
> And then we have Nodes, which is a novel concept and probably requires
> more complex implementation work in therms of software development and
> design.
>
> About design and usability... Yes, doing something amazing takes a long
> time (look at ourselves). Then again, this is parallel work. This project
> is not contesting Vector, neither the current look & feel. This proposal is
> first and foremost about the plumbing behind.
>
> If you feel that more design resources / budget should be allocated on a
> nicer UI then I can also ask for it, but in a context of limited resources
> the priorities would be clear.
>

Quim, I think even this first iteration is problematic on a bunch of
fronts. 3 months as a first iteration to build several major features as
the basic proof of concept should be a sign that you're biting off too much
in terms of scope.

I also think it's deeply problematic that you don't seem to have shaped the
proposal based on the expressed needs of people who have tried to use the
current system and failed, and that you're seemingly ignoring the use case
of all the many different kinds of contributors by focusing a comprehensive
restructure solely for new contributors. When we make something like Echo,
we're doing it first and foremost to attract new people, but we can't get
away with ignoring the needs of existing users.

In general, I don't think you've fully considered how the current set up
might serve our needs with less heavy-handed changes than migrating to
Semantic MediaWiki, and I'm wary of supporting a restructuring of
documentation systems I depend of every day based on a grand plan of any
kind.

I'd like to add a +1 to Ori's request to trial the project in a much more
minimal way, show some results, and then expand from there. If you can show
what you're doing is working to bring in new contributors without requiring
we rearchitect our entire system from the ground up on top of Semantic
MediaWiki, then any change is a much easier pill to swallow.

Steven
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors


On 03/04/13 19:37, Quim Gil wrote:


http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Wikitech_contributors#First_iteration 
is supposed to be completed in 3 months, and even there you have some 
easier tasks that could be implemented pretty fast, namely forms & 
templates for


* User profiles.


User profiles are not that helpful. They may serve to bring some folks 
together and it'd probably be nice for those folks to have them, but 
adding forms and templates and further complexity for that is not 
something most of us need or want. Using something like SocialProfile 
might be a good way to get it set up quickly if you really want it, but 
anything more would entail resources better spent elsewhere.



* Projects
* Tasks.


Specified projects and tasks add bureaucracy and make it harder for 
folks to jump in and just fiddle with things. You see the same ideas 
rejected time and again on wikipedia and other projects for precisely 
that reason. We do not need more confusing barriers, we need less - we 
need to be able to jump in and do stuff, or people will be less inclined 
to bother.




If you feel that more design resources / budget should be allocated on 
a nicer UI then I can also ask for it, but in a context of limited 
resources the priorities would be clear.




There are plenty of things that definitely do need a nicer UI. Gerrit 
comes to mind, but UI is only part of it - and it is indeed probably the 
biggest barrier we have that new contributors and old alike face.  I 
would seriously suggest addressing that /before/ getting into the 
details of what brings folks into the fold in general.


And yes, I know what you said about gerrit being upstream and having its 
own community and issues and all that, but when the entire platform is 
flawed from the ground up, perhaps there are other things to consider. 
If the only way to resolve the problems it places on our community is to 
replace it, then we should seriously consider replacing it. And if there 
is nothing with which to replace it, then perhaps we should be using 
resources otherwise spent puttering around initial details to do so, 
because those initial details don't mean a whole lot even if they do 
help bring in more contributors... if said contributors still wind up 
crashing into the sludgy brick wall that is gerrit.


Obviously I'm not terribly fond of gerrit, but it's not for lack of 
reason. Another active thread on this list demonstrates a piece of it.


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-03 Thread Krenair

I'm not sure I understand your point. If it's better for mediawiki.org 
to have a non-WMF extension doing this, and neither SMW nor Wikidata are 
developed by WMF, how is SMW a better choice than Wikidata?



Alex Monk

On 03/04/13 21:23, Yury Katkov wrote:

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 11:55 PM, Matthew Flaschen
wrote:


On 04/03/2013 11:58 AM, Yury Katkov wrote:

Why? SMW is already here, it's documented beautifully, it has good
performance, active community and it is NOT developing by Wikimedia
Foundation, which is good political decision for the MediaWiki.org portal
which aimed to be closer to 3rd party developers.

Software development of Wikidata is actually primarily by Wikimedia
Deutschland.

Matt Flaschen

that's right, and software development of SMW is not by WMF, that's my

point!


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 11:55 PM, Matthew Flaschen
wrote:

> On 04/03/2013 11:58 AM, Yury Katkov wrote:
> > Why? SMW is already here, it's documented beautifully, it has good
> > performance, active community and it is NOT developing by Wikimedia
> > Foundation, which is good political decision for the MediaWiki.org portal
> > which aimed to be closer to 3rd party developers.
>
> Software development of Wikidata is actually primarily by Wikimedia
> Deutschland.
>
> Matt Flaschen
>
> that's right, and software development of SMW is not by WMF, that's my
point!

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On 04/03/2013 11:26 AM, Antoine Musso wrote:
> Le 03/04/13 15:48, Yury Katkov a écrit :
>> IMO stuff related to inner projects of Wikimedia foundation should be
>> located on wikitech. Manuals that are related to MediaWiki as a software
>> and its extensions should live on MediaWiki.org. No Wikimedia-specific
>> materials here.
> 
> I fully support that separation, and I guess we can start moving the
> Wikimedia projects pages to wikitech. Example candidates:
>  https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:WMF_Projects

Do we have templates yet for marking stuff to be moved MW => Wikitech
and vice versa?

Matt Flaschen

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On 04/03/2013 11:58 AM, Yury Katkov wrote:
> Why? SMW is already here, it's documented beautifully, it has good
> performance, active community and it is NOT developing by Wikimedia
> Foundation, which is good political decision for the MediaWiki.org portal
> which aimed to be closer to 3rd party developers.

Software development of Wikidata is actually primarily by Wikimedia
Deutschland.

Matt Flaschen

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On 04/03/2013 09:15 AM, MZMcBride wrote:
> Ryan Lane wrote:
>> mediawiki.org will still exist to document MediaWiki. The domain name
>> itself makes it fairly ill-fit to document our non-MediaWiki software
>> documentation.
> 
> I follow Wikimedia pretty closely and I have no idea what the distinction
> between the two wikis (wikitech.wikimedia.org and mediawiki.org) is
> nowadays. I used to know as it used to be much clearer. Now I have no idea.

As far as I know:

mediawiki.org - MediaWiki software and extensions
wikitech.org - system administration stuff for WMF production and labs

Yes, there are a few things on the wrong side of the line (which should
be fixed), but for the most part it seems pretty accurate.

Matt Flaschen

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On 04/03/2013 03:30 AM, Ori Livneh wrote:
> That seems wrong. Of the two, MediaWiki.org is clearly the more
> successful wiki. It is larger by all measures, and draws a wide pool
> of active contributors.

I don't know that it's appropriate to put WMF-only stuff on the
MediaWiki site.  Of course, I'm not totally convinced merging the other
way is a good idea other.  Although there's overlap between MW proper
and the WMF tech, we have to remember they're distinct.

Based on Ryan's email, a merge may not in fact be intended, though I
agree that's what "wikitech.wikimedia.org would become the one and only
site for our open source software contributors" sounded like.

> Semantic this-and-that and ontologies of categories entails putting
> up rails everywhere and signs with arrows on them indicating which
> way you should go. That approach will inevitably end up reflecting a
> narrow, inflexible view of what a wiki is and what you do with it.

There is a role for the semantic web (e.g. Wikidata seems to be quickly
heading in the right direction).  At the same time, I agree that the
wiki must not get in the way of simple writing.

Matt Flaschen

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors


On 04/03/2013 11:11 AM, Ori Livneh wrote:

required. What you are proposing is considerably more ambitious in
scope (Web Platform doesn't integrate with bug management and SCM),
but some napkin cost analysis could be very useful.


Yes, but I didn't want to go too far with implementation details and 
budgeting before having some community feedback first (which we are 
getting now).


Then again, the proposal has enough level of detail to get a rough budget.


Before committing to the full scope of the project, it would be good
to comb through this and identify one or two things that could be
implemented easily and that would be expected to demonstrate a
measurable impact on the number of new contributors. We should not
wait for a project like this to be finished in toto before examining
the correctness of the initial hypotheses.


Agreed.

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Wikitech_contributors#First_iteration 
is supposed to be completed in 3 months, and even there you have some 
easier tasks that could be implemented pretty fast, namely forms & 
templates for


* User profiles.
* Projects.
* Tasks.
* Events.

Notifications still require more definition and expertise to decide what 
should be done now. Is Echo ripe for this? Is it worth to use this 
experiment to prototype Flow there? Or should we fallback to a system 
like http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:TranslationNotifications ...?


And then we have Nodes, which is a novel concept and probably requires 
more complex implementation work in therms of software development and 
design.


About design and usability... Yes, doing something amazing takes a long 
time (look at ourselves). Then again, this is parallel work. This 
project is not contesting Vector, neither the current look & feel. This 
proposal is first and foremost about the plumbing behind.


If you feel that more design resources / budget should be allocated on a 
nicer UI then I can also ask for it, but in a context of limited 
resources the priorities would be clear.


--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:11 PM, Ori Livneh  wrote:

>
>
> On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 at 2:18 AM, Ryan Lane wrote:
>
> > Spend some time editing a well designed Semantically enabled wiki. Web
> > Platform is a good example:  >.
> > There's a high degree of structure there. That wiki is way above average
> > quality from the point of view of a reader specifically because it
> enables
> > the editor to easily make the content consistent.
>
> OK, given your experience with Web Platform, I'd like to get your
> assessment of what sort of engineering and design effort was required. What
> you are proposing is considerably more ambitious in scope (Web Platform
> doesn't integrate with bug management and SCM), but some napkin cost
> analysis could be very useful. Web Platform has very good usability and
> design. Even if the basic blocks for a semantically-enabled wikitech are
> there, there is still a large additional investment of designer time and
> effort that would be needed to make it usable and well-integrated. But how
> much? (Input from designers would be useful, too.)
>
>
This isn't technically my proposal. It's Quim's, so he can likely better
answer this.

For webplatform the semantic design was implemented by a couple engineers
in about 3-6 months.

- Ryan
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-03 Thread Ori Livneh

On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 at 2:18 AM, Ryan Lane wrote:

> Spend some time editing a well designed Semantically enabled wiki. Web
> Platform is a good example: .
> There's a high degree of structure there. That wiki is way above average
> quality from the point of view of a reader specifically because it enables
> the editor to easily make the content consistent.

OK, given your experience with Web Platform, I'd like to get your assessment of 
what sort of engineering and design effort was required. What you are proposing 
is considerably more ambitious in scope (Web Platform doesn't integrate with 
bug management and SCM), but some napkin cost analysis could be very useful. 
Web Platform has very good usability and design. Even if the basic blocks for a 
semantically-enabled wikitech are there, there is still a large additional 
investment of designer time and effort that would be needed to make it usable 
and well-integrated. But how much? (Input from designers would be useful, too.)

The goal stated by this proposal is engagement of new contributors. Before 
committing to the full scope of the project, it would be good to comb through 
this and identify one or two things that could be implemented easily and that 
would be expected to demonstrate a measurable impact on the number of new 
contributors. We should not wait for a project like this to be finished in toto 
before examining the correctness of the initial hypotheses.

Ori

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-03 Thread Faidon Liambotis

On Tue, Apr 02, 2013 at 05:45:58AM -0700, Quim Gil wrote:
> * 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.

This is excellent. We recently had the merger of labsconsole and
wikitech and this is a great (and ambitious!) next step. Kudos.

One thing that I'd like to see though -and which I think is central to
the success of your proposal- would be allocation of more engineering
resources for wikitech. Ryan and Andrew are doing an excellent job by
holding the fort almost by themselves, but if we're to do this, I'd like
to see more of an effort and commitment by other people/teams.

Having the same person do UI, sole maintainership of OpenStack &
authentication MW extensions and operations/upgrade for the wiki (among
a million other things), just doesn't cut it. Both the labsconsole and
wikitech experiences had smaller or larger several issues and while the
recent efforts as part of the merger alleviated some of them, we still
have a long way to go. For example, I think some of OSM pages' in
particular could use some help from UX experts -- no offence to Ryan,
I'm sure I'd do worse; but UX is in neither of our job descriptions.

Incorporating wikitech to the regular platform processes (deployments &
version updates, configs etc.) would also be needed if we want to do a
reasonable job and provide contributors with a maintained platform. From
lagging MediaWiki versions to IPv6, wikitech is just not on the same
level of support as the rest of the cluster right now.

Regards,
Faidon

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-03 Thread Mark A. Hershberger

On 04/03/2013 11:58 AM, Yury Katkov wrote:
> Why? SMW is already here, it's documented beautifully, it has good
> performance, active community and it is NOT developing by Wikimedia
> Foundation, which is good political decision for the MediaWiki.org portal
> which aimed to be closer to 3rd party developers.

+1

I haven't understood the resistance of the WMF to use SMW in more
places, but putting it on MW.o would really make MW.o's non-WMF focus clear.

Of course, if the WMF had some objective reason to avoid SMW, now would
be a good time to clarify what those objections are.

-- 
http://hexmode.com/

[We are] immortal ... because [we have] a soul, a spirit capable of
   compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
-- William Faulker, Nobel Prize acceptance speech

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 7:41 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:

> On Apr 3, 2013, at 8:29 AM, Antoine Musso  wrote:
>
> > Le 03/04/13 11:18, Ryan Lane a écrit :
> >> One example of how semantics could improve mediawiki.org is the
> extension
> >> matrix .
> >
> > Can't we get Semantic extensions deployed on mediawiki.org ?
> >
>
> I'd rather we wait for wikidata. I'd eventually like to replace the
> SMW use on wikitech with wikidata as well.

Why? SMW is already here, it's documented beautifully, it has good
performance, active community and it is NOT developing by Wikimedia
Foundation, which is good political decision for the MediaWiki.org portal
which aimed to be closer to 3rd party developers.

>

- Ryan
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

It seems that it's what's planning now, isn't it? Turn on SMW, Semantic
Forms and maybe other semantic extensions and modify the existing templates
to use them.

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 7:26 PM, Antoine Musso  wrote:

> Le 03/04/13 11:18, Ryan Lane a écrit :
> > One example of how semantics could improve mediawiki.org is the
> extension
> > matrix .
>
> Can't we get Semantic extensions deployed on mediawiki.org ?
>
> --
> Antoine "hashar" Musso
>
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On Apr 3, 2013, at 8:29 AM, Antoine Musso  wrote:

> Le 03/04/13 11:18, Ryan Lane a écrit :
>> One example of how semantics could improve mediawiki.org is the extension
>> matrix .
>
> Can't we get Semantic extensions deployed on mediawiki.org ?
>

I'd rather we wait for wikidata. I'd eventually like to replace the
SMW use on wikitech with wikidata as well.

- Ryan

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-03 Thread Antoine Musso

Le 03/04/13 11:18, Ryan Lane a écrit :
> One example of how semantics could improve mediawiki.org is the extension
> matrix .

Can't we get Semantic extensions deployed on mediawiki.org ?

-- 
Antoine "hashar" Musso


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-03 Thread Antoine Musso

Le 03/04/13 15:48, Yury Katkov a écrit :
> IMO stuff related to inner projects of Wikimedia foundation should be
> located on wikitech. Manuals that are related to MediaWiki as a software
> and its extensions should live on MediaWiki.org. No Wikimedia-specific
> materials here.

I fully support that separation, and I guess we can start moving the
Wikimedia projects pages to wikitech. Example candidates:
 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:WMF_Projects

-- 
Antoine "hashar" Musso


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

On 04/03/2013 06:48 AM, Yury Katkov wrote:

Hi everyone!

I think that there are two categories of developers now:
1) Wikimedia developers deal with Wikimedia tasks of running Wikipedia and
all other projects
2) Independent developers which use MediaWiki for their needs. I think that
not much of us even know that wikitech website exist. :)

IMO stuff related to inner projects of Wikimedia foundation should be
located on wikitech. Manuals that are related to MediaWiki as a software
and its extensions should live on MediaWiki.org. No Wikimedia-specific
materials here.

If the most problematic point of this proposal is the location of
certain pages then the best is to be conservative moving content from
mediawiki.org to Wikitech. Do as Yuri says and keep the docs interesting
for "independent developers" in mediawiki.org.

There is enough change to do before reaching that point. Once we are
there we can look around and decide whether it is worth moving anything
else or not.

This would hopefully satisfy as well the feedback received at
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Technical_communications/Dev_wiki_consolidation#Where_to_draw_the_line_25778

If there is agreement about this then I can just edit accordingly

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_communications/Dev_wiki_consolidation#What_belongs_where

--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-03 Thread Chad

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 10:33 AM, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:
> On 04/03/2013 09:48 AM, Yury Katkov wrote:
>> IMO stuff related to inner projects of Wikimedia foundation should be
>> located on wikitech. Manuals that are related to MediaWiki as a software
>> and its extensions should live on MediaWiki.org. No Wikimedia-specific
>> materials here.
>
> This seems like a simple, and clearly delineated distinction.  Even I
> was wondering why the Tool Labs (which is clearly Wikimedia-centric, and
> not all that directly Mediawiki-related) had its documentation living on mw.
>

I totally support this.

-Chad

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors


About the virtues of MediaWiki software.

On 04/03/2013 12:30 AM, Ori Livneh wrote:

The core of MediaWiki is in my mind still radical and exciting: you
make or find a page, click edit, and just type into it.


I agree, and perhaps this is one of the reasons why we are still here 
and not at [your preferred CMS].


http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Wikitech_contributors 
doesn't remove any MediaWiki feature: all are there. Contributors can 
create and edit regular wiki pages as always.


The use of Semantic Forms is proposed to solve specific cases where a 
form and a predefined page structure is useful: user profiles, projects, 
tasks, events and nodes. And even all these specific types of pages 
include the beloved bug textarea taking the usual functionality.


For an example look 
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Wikitech_node_concept.jpg


The first central block "Node: Lua" is your old free-form wiki page. The 
rest would be aggregated automatically thanks to the structured data 
introduced elsewhere by a bunch of users, collaboratively.


Yes, you could do all that templating and categorization manually... But 
it requires a lot more editor knowledge and discipline in exchange of a 
higher risk of driving people away and breaking things. So yes, I 
believe that using forms for specific types of pages is a good idea.


--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-03 Thread Marc A. Pelletier

On 04/03/2013 09:48 AM, Yury Katkov wrote:
> IMO stuff related to inner projects of Wikimedia foundation should be
> located on wikitech. Manuals that are related to MediaWiki as a software
> and its extensions should live on MediaWiki.org. No Wikimedia-specific
> materials here.

This seems like a simple, and clearly delineated distinction.  Even I
was wondering why the Tool Labs (which is clearly Wikimedia-centric, and
not all that directly Mediawiki-related) had its documentation living on mw.

-- Marc

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors


Hi, about Wikitech / mediawiki.org check

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_communications/Dev_wiki_consolidation

On 04/03/2013 12:30 AM, Ori Livneh wrote:

That seems wrong. Of the two, MediaWiki.org is clearly the more
successful wiki.


Sure, but following this argument we could just have dev.wikipedia.org, 
right?


The point is that we need a good ground to build an infrastructure for 
technical contributors, and Wikitech provides this ground. It is not 
such a radical step, actually. Today we are asking contributors to


* Join wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
* File bugs at bugzilla.wikimedia.org
* Send patches to gerrit.wikimedia.org
* ... after getting developer access at wikitech.wikimedia.org

Moving / building there the resources related to contributors makes sense.

I think the simplest way to draw the line between Wikitech and 
mediawiki.org is to do it between users and contributors. The definition 
of "user" includes


* Editors of a generic MediaWiki.
* Sysadmins installing MediaWiki.
* Developers using the MediaWiki API.

I believe this causes no harm to mediawiki.org, cleaning it from 
Wikimedia centric content and allowing it a lot more freedom and focus 
about using MediaWiki and related technologies available to anybody.


mediawiki.org keeps being the place to download software, learn and get 
support. None of these activities requires to put your feet in any 
Wikitech* or Wikimedia* domain.


--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

Hi everyone!

I think that there are two categories of developers now:
1) Wikimedia developers deal with Wikimedia tasks of running Wikipedia and
all other projects
2) Independent developers which use MediaWiki for their needs. I think that
not much of us even know that wikitech website exist. :)

IMO stuff related to inner projects of Wikimedia foundation should be
located on wikitech. Manuals that are related to MediaWiki as a software
and its extensions should live on MediaWiki.org. No Wikimedia-specific
materials here.

-
Yury Katkov, WikiVote



On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 4:45 PM, Quim Gil  wrote:

> 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
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

Tyler Romeo wrote:
>Maybe I'm missing something, but what about the MediaWiki page creation
>process isn't "find a page, click edit, and just type into it"?

Sure, that's easy enough to explain: page creation suggests that the page
does not yet exist. So you'll never get past the "find a page" step. ;-)

Ori correctly said "make or find a page." The problem is that the page
creation process is completely unintuitive. The general bug is
, if you're
interested.

Tangential to the unintuitive page creation process is the editor itself,
which surely we can all agree is difficult, if not impossible, for many,
many users to use.

Once you know how MediaWiki works, it's pretty easy to create or edit a
page, of course. But getting to that point can be painfully difficult.

MZMcBride

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

Ryan Lane wrote:
>mediawiki.org will still exist to document MediaWiki. The domain name
>itself makes it fairly ill-fit to document our non-MediaWiki software
>documentation.

I follow Wikimedia pretty closely and I have no idea what the distinction
between the two wikis (wikitech.wikimedia.org and mediawiki.org) is
nowadays. I used to know as it used to be much clearer. Now I have no idea.

I think we should establish a bright-line rule for the wikis or merge
them. The current situation seems pretty bad and it seems like it's only
going to get worse with time.

MZMcBride

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

2013-04-03 Thread Tyler Romeo

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 9:06 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> Describe the page creation process in WordPress and then describe the page
> creation process in MediaWiki. The MediaWiki process is three times as
> long and includes three times more caveats.
>

Maybe I'm missing something, but what about the MediaWiki page creation
process isn't "find a page, click edit, and just type into it"?

*-- *
*Tyler Romeo*
Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2015
Major in Computer Science
www.whizkidztech.com | tylerro...@gmail.com
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors

Ori Livneh wrote:
>The core of MediaWiki is in my mind still radical and exciting: you make
>or find a page, click edit, and just type into it.

This feels like a hyper-idealized version of MediaWiki.

Describe the page creation process in WordPress and then describe the page
creation process in MediaWiki. The MediaWiki process is three times as
long and includes three times more caveats.

Now describe the category addition or removal process in WordPress and
then describe the category addition or removal process in MediaWiki.
Again, the MediaWiki process is three times as long and includes three
times more caveats.

I realize your broader point was about the radical nature of the wiki (and
Wikipedia and other sites are a living testament to this idea), but to
look at MediaWiki and consider it good design is pretty insane, in my
opinion. No visual editor, no input validation, almost no user interface
when editing other than a terrifying textarea, no clear paths for how to
add a page or a category or anything else.

MZMcBride

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: Wikitech contributors