[Wikia-l] Volunteer Programmer Interaction & Community Grouping

[Dan The Man]

What does everyone think of a bit more solid definition of the programmers mixed in with the Wikia community who could even help with the construction of some of the various things being setup. Basically I'm thinking of more definition that a few various people in the Wikia community are programmers, some even avid MediaWiki extension and hack programmers who think to themselves (If I had done this, I would have tweaked this, or done this) when they look at new features being rolled out across Wikia. More solid definition would consider 2 things. Identification and interaction. Identification would mean various ways of identifying that such a group of people who can do these things exists: We have a Wikians page, a list of Staffers, lists of Techs, and a few other groups or lists users put themselves up on in some of the inner communities. Perhaps a page for the programmers who like working with the software Wikia is working on could be made. Userboxes are always interesting and even one to identify the coders would be interesting. The staff are getting a tag for their signatures to signify that they are staff. I know it's for identification for them, and care should be taken to keep any other group identification solidly different than that. But perhaps identification of groups in a signature would be interesting. (I think I'll expand on this later in this message) Interaction would both mean interaction between the programmers in the community, and even possibly some of the techs: Interaction by some method (Forum, IRC, special Mailing list, etc...) between the programmers in the community could let them co-ordinate on some ideas. If one had an idea to build something, others could give suggestions on methods, or what it might lack that would make it be rejected if anyone decided that it would be useful for a Wikia wiki. There is some small communication between a few people, and one or two techs. But if there was some method of communication programmers could help give feedback on ways they've found that could help improve the code being worked on Wikia. I myself, and a few programmers have short lists of ideas that the techs have suggested that Volunteers can help out with coding. What if we put lists like these up in a public location for various programmers to see. Perhaps it would attract people who like doing those things, but have never considered that they might be allowed to help out build it for Wikia. Perhaps some more focus on the Open Source aspect: Like WikiMedia and the MediaWiki groups, Wikia aims at the open source area. Anyone can contribute to a wiki, anyone can use those contributions elsewhere, anyone can become an admin to help out, and anyone can found a new wiki. But what if we did the same thing with coding new tools for use on Wikia? Community involvement in making wiki, making templates for wiki, and even coding the software to work on those wiki. Code could be put in SVN so even the programmers could suggest patches to fix glitches, clean up the code, tweak functionality, or add new features. Unofficially, one of the reasons I started Wiki-Tools was actually to demo new tools and extensions that could possibly be used on Wikia. Something a bit different to consider is actually community grouping: One of the things I found a problem with was how Wikia is only simply divided into the large community, and the individual communities. One of the problems I see is that only the wiki as a whole, and the wiki as individuals are emphasized. So when a wiki needs to go up a level to get help, the only group they are a part of they can ask for help, is the entire community as a whole. But for a small wiki, even that is pretty intimidating. It also doesn't work out for moving from one wiki to another. Thankfully we are getting the hub pages to help group similar wiki together, but that isn't much different than the categories. To find a new wiki, you still move out to the entire community, and then in to another. It may be more comfortable for someone to move out into a group of wiki similar to each other, then in to another one of those. Unfortunately I can't draw a graph to demonstrate, but I'll attempt to show the difference with a table and lists. (Using Gaming, Animanga, and Programming groups as examples (not all wiki exist, it's just a example)) Grouped Hierarchy Wikia Community Gaming Wikia Halopedia FPS Wiki RPG Wiki Runescape Wiki Animepedia Narutopedia InuYasha Wiki Bleach Wiki PHP Wiki _javascript_ Wiki C/C++ Wiki Wikia Community Gaming Group Gaming Wikia FPS Group FPS Wiki Halopedia RPG Group RPG Wiki Runescape Wiki Animanga Group Animepedia Narutopedia InuYasha Wiki Bleach Wiki Programming Group PHP Wiki _javascript_ Wiki C/C++ Wiki My thoughts are, instead of emphasizing the Wikia Community, and the Individual wiki. Emphasize the Wikia Community, the Individual Wiki, and Group those wiki together in ways where all the similar wiki can collaborate together on making things that they can all use, or letting members move from one wiki to another, without having to jump out into the wide area. That's actually something I'm trying to experiment with. Wikia has default Templates, but they don't work for all groups in the same way. Different groups may need a different set than another group. So I'm attempting in the Animanga area making these kind of things in the Animanga Group area in that list, so that indivdual wiki in the group don't need to struggle with creating their own when other wiki in the group have already struggled through that and created reliable templates that are targeted at what that group is doing. And it doesn't half to be just grouping of wiki groups. Like the idea of grouping the programmers together so they can collaborate on ideas, you could also group together the artists who like drawing things, and even let users in different groups have some sort of identification they can put in their sig to signify what they do. It's not a grouping of "People like communicating with their own kind" but the fact that it can help identify what someone may do. Someone goes and sees that a signature tag says that someone is in the CSS/JS group, then they ask "Can you help me fix this". Someone sees a tag that someone is in the Pywikipediabot Users Group, they ask that person to help setup the framework on their own computer. And someone sees someone in the MediaWiki Programmers group, and they ask "Is there any reason that Wikia might reject this Extension being added to this Wiki?". -- ~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of The Gaiapedia, Wikia Graphical Entertainment Project, and Wiki-Tools.com

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