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
- RPG Group
- 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
