On 06/29/2013 02:31 AM, Faidon Liambotis wrote:
Hi Sumanah,
On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 07:39:19PM -0400, Sumana Harihareswara wrote:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2013-14_Goals#Wikimedia_Technical_Community
Back in April, Quim made a proposal on this list for a plan to attract
new contributors that included a "deeper restructuring of our community
spaces", including a reshuffling/repurposing of wikitech/mediawiki.org.
I think the outcome of that discussion was to run an experiment and
reevaluate, but I might have lost track -- the Wikitech contributors
RFC[1] shows no real updates since April though.
Thank you Faidon for bringing up that discussion. There were several
outcomes out of it:
* Let's improve the main runways for new contributors but let's not
reshuffle wikitech/mediawiki.org right now.
* Let's focus on the onboarding & editor engagement tools to onboard and
engage technical contributors.
* Let's find specific audiences and areas to get new contributors right now.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:New_contributors#The_solution
This is reflected in several points of the plan shared by Sumana:
* Focus on the area of automated browser testing to bring a new breed of
Wikimedia contributors.
* Keeping the focus on mentorship programs like OPW and GSoC.
* Fluent connection with two pools of potential contributors: the
Wikimedia communities we serve (involving Tech Ambassadors) and the
upstream FLOSS communities we depend on.
* Introduction of community metrics to analyze our contribution
workflows, where are the good practices and the bottlenecks.
In addition to this, in my (draft!) personal goals I'm proposing
* To improve web pages and documentation for new contributors.
* To promote DIY tasks for volunteers.
* To promote and streamline the conversion path from Wikimedia user to
tech contributor.
A deeper restructuring sounds like goal material. Is this under
consideration for the coming year?
A lesson (at least for me) from that discussion is that, even when the
community agrees in deep restructuring, this must happen through small
steps.
Absolutely personal opinion:
The release management of MediaWiki is planned to change, while tools
like Echo API and Flow are also in the pipeline. These factors might
lead to pragmatic ad-hoc restructuring steps in a way that no big plan
discussed in advance could.
--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
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