S Page wrote: >http://devhub.wmflabs.org is a prototype of the "Data and developer hub", >a portal and set of articles and links whose goal is to encourage >third-party developers to use Wikimedia data and APIs. Check it out, your >feedback is welcome! You can comment on the talk page of the project page >https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/dev.wikimedia.org , or file Phabricator >tickets in the project dev.wikimedia.org [1]. > >Since December 2013 Moiz Syed and others discussed creating "a thing" to >expose our APIs and data to developers. When S Page moved to WMF tech >writer, he wrote some articles for this on mediawiki.org and with Quim Gil >developed a landing page from the wireframe designs [2]. > >The prototype is using the Blueprint skin and running on a labs instance, >but the articles are all regular wiki pages on mediawiki.org that we >regularly import to http://devhub.wmflabs.org
I'm glad that we're using mediawiki.org as the data source. >Q: Yet another site? Arghh! >A: Agreed, T101441 "Integrate new Developer hub with mediawiki.org" [5]. >It's a separate site for now in order to present a different appearance. > >Q: But why a different appearance? Why a separate skin? >Our competition for developer mindshare is sites like >https://developers.google.com/ . We believe looking like a 2000s wiki page >is a *deterrent* to using Wikimedia APIs and data. We hope that many >third-party developers join our communities and eventually contribute to >MediaWiki, but "How to contribute to MediaWiki" [6] is not the focus, >providing free open knowledge is. I don't think a cutesy FAQ section absolves you of your sins. You've created yet another wiki and increased our collective technical debt. I also find the argument that anyone cares about the appearance of documentation over its content a bit insulting. That said, I appreciate the informative e-mail and the collection of tasks filed for future improvement. The content of this "data and developer hub" is currently pretty... anemic. Where's the information about database dumps (XML and SQL)? Where's the information about the replicated databases available on Tool Labs? Where's information about how I can take my pre-existing skills in Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby, etc. and use a library or framework to easily retrieve content from Wikimedia in my application or script or bot? Where's information about creating a bot? I clicked over to <https://rest.wikimedia.org/> and now I get the strong impression that I need an api_key? Yet I can't find any place where I might generate such a key and I can't find any information about why a key would be necessary. More to the point: why not just make dev.wikimedia.org a round robin that points to either <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Data> or <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_contribute>? I think it would be a lot more valuable like that. I don't see how pointing people to the Wikidata home page or Commons home page or a list of Wikimedia projects is helpful at all and these are the three most prominent links on the page. MZMcBride P.S. If it sounds as though I'm frustrated, it's probably due to the limited design resources we have being allocated pretty much exclusively to dubious microsites like the Transparency Report and this Data and Developer Hub, instead of having design resources devoted to, y'know, improving the real sites that receive billions of views per month. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
