User:Dilshak/Welcoming new contributors to Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs

Welcoming new contributors to Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs

Public URL: Proposal : Welcoming new contributors to Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs
Bugzilla report: Bug 62837
Announcement: OPW proposal : Welcoming new contributors to Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs

Name and contact information

Name: Bhagya Kandage
Email: dilshak@gmail.com
IRC: Dilshak
Web Page / Blog / Microblog / Portfolio: https://twitter.com/BhagyaKandage
Resume (optional): Bhagya Kandage
Location: Colombo, Sri Lanka
Typical working hours: 0330h -1230h UTC [Available on Request as well]

Synopsis

Proposal wishes to provide solutions and improvements for the difficulties addressed in Welcoming new contributors to Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs mainly under following the sections :

Difficulty in matching new contributors with existing projects
Need for improvement of documentation for newcomers
Inability to distinguish / track active and abandoned projects distinctly.

In order to overcome the addressed problems, solution outline of the project proposal mainly consists of following improvements and solutions focused on two main user groups :

Random helpful volunteer
Specific user with a particular project idea

Solution outline can be sub-categorized as follows :

Improvement of current documentation to provide ease of use for new users

Update documentation to provide gist and introductions where needed, so that a new comer is aware about the relevant page's purpose
Adding of document maps, in order to facilitate the user with back and forth navigation, will also build the user's awareness on Wikimedia Labs documentation base.
Provide graphically enhanced solutions where necessary to facilitate a better user experience. Highlight important links where necessary.
Improvements on current images added to documentation, included with concise descriptions for better explanation.
Use of infographics and illustrations to depict Important information where required. Rather than a wordy description, new users can grasp information easily and effectively.
Addition of FAQ and help information, so that user has access to them where required.

Maintenance of available project list and improvements to project tracking

Refactoring of the semantic search page where all available projects are listed. Involvement of existing project volunteers to finalize project documentation and status of projects.
Grouping of projects into abstract categories and sub categories accordingly. Addition of tags for each project to enhance search.
Implementation of proposed process to add flags to keep track of project status (such as new, In progress, Completed, On-hold etc.) Allowing project list to be sorted according to project status flag as well.
Implementation of a separate search tool for project search including advanced search features such as search by
1. project criteria
2. tags/key words
3. project status
4. contributors etc.

in order to provide better search functionality for users with particular project interests.
5. Use of infographic solutions (such as pie charts) to illustrate details on current projects

abstract categories and percentage or number of active projects under each category
Percentage of projects in each status (new, on-hold, completed etc.)

With depiction of information in a such manner, solution can be further enhanced to allow the user to click on a particular portion and navigate to projects in a particular status / category. In other words, it will serve as a refined search giving the user the opportunity to directly jump into their area of interest.

Further information related to the above suggestions is discussed in detail here : Feedback review on existing issues and required improvements.

Aforementioned outline of tasks is subject to change according to discussions conducted with mentor and feedback from community.

Possible mentors: Andrew Bogott

Deliverables

Deliverables as follows :

Familiarize and investigate current documentation structure in
Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs pages
Projects List pages
Update documentation to provide gist and introductions where needed, so that a new comer is aware about the relevant page's purpose.
Use of infographics and illustrations to depict important information where required. Highlight important links where necessary.
Addition of FAQ and help info links, so that a user has access to them when required.
Refactoring of semantic search page where all available projects are listed. Involvement of existing project volunteers to finalize project documentation and status of projects.
Grouping of projects into abstract categories and sub categories accordingly. Addition of tags for each project to enhance search.
Implementation of proposed process of adding flags to keep track of project status (such as new, In progress, Completed, On-hold etc.)
Use of infographic solutions (such as pie charts) to illustrate details on current projects
Improvements on current images added to documentation, include with concise descriptions for better explanation.

Below mentioned additional deliverables will be attended to as and when time permits

Implementation of a separate search tool for project search [Optional]
Linking project pie charts via refined search to provide user with project details on specific search criteria [Optional]

Work Breakdown Structure

Community Integration Period
	1. Familiarize with Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs pages and current Projects
	2. communicate with mentor and community
	3. Work on Demonstration Project as contribution
	4. Active participation and involvement with community and mentor, to extract opinions on improvements that are to be carried out.
Month 1: May 19 - June 18
May 19	1. Update documentation to provide gist and introductions where needed, so that a new comer is aware about the relevant page's purpose.
	2. Implementation of FAQ page. Addition of FAQ and help info links where necessary in Wikimedia document.
May 30	1. Revision of FAQ page structure based on community feedback.
	2. Restructure of Main Page to highlight important links.
	3. Improvements on current images in documentation, include with concise descriptions for better explanation.
	4. Updating of left side-pane to include helpful links to user.
June 10	1. Involvement of existing project volunteers to finalize project documentation and status of projects.
Month 2: June 19- July 18
June 19	1. Continuation of project documentation for existing projects.
	2. Completion of project documentation for all current projects.
June 24	1. Categorization of projects into abstract categories and sub categories.
	2. Implementation of project tagging with the involvement of respective project members.
	3. Implementation of proposed process to flag project statuses after further refining of feature.
July 04	1. Refactoring of semantic search page where all available projects are listed according to new improvements.
	2. Modify how table data is displayed according to proposed changes. All projects must have descriptions and tags. Data must be sortable from any column including project status.
July 11	1. Finalize all existing projects into relevant categories and status flags. At the end of this phase all projects can be clearly distinguished by their statuses and all relevant documentation must be complete.
Month 3: July 19 - Aug 18
July 21	1. Use of infographic solutions (such as pie charts) to illustrate details on current projects.
July 25	1. Implementation of a separate search tool for project search with advanced search criteria [Optional]
August 1	1. Improvement to facilitate the user to navigate to projects in particular categories / statuses upon clicking on selected areas in pie charts. (facilitating a refined search for user via infographics) [Optional]
August 11	1. Modifications and improvements in Getting Started pages and Help guides according to improvements done in Projects section. (eg: Embedding infographics (pie chart) which depicts the percentage of all active projects under each category)
August 14	1. Finalizing of all project documentation, considering any given feedback from community.

Participation

Since this project requires constant feedback from users on their perspective, continual involvement of community is highly beneficial. I intend to take in user feed back constantly via resources such as wikidata-l mailing list and also by communicating with current project members and volunteers via chat and hangouts.

I also intend to publish weekly progress reports for review. I will stay in contact with my mentor via mail and chat mostly as constant feedback is required from both community and mentor in order to instigate proposed improvements.

I welcome continual feedback on changes done via any mean of communication.

About you

Education completed or in progress

Master of Computer Science (2013 - present)

University of Colombo - Sri Lanka

Bsc (Hons). in Computing - 2nd Class First Division (2007 - 2010)

Staffordshire University - United Kingdom

How did you hear about this program?

Via a friend of mine who encouraged me to apply to OPW.

Will you have any other time commitments, such as school work, another job, planned vacation, etc., during the duration of the program?

As I am currently reading for my Masters, I will be unavailable during weekends due to lectures.

We advise all candidates eligible to Google Summer of Code and FOSS Outreach Program for Women to apply for both programs. Are you planning to apply to both programs and, if so, with what organization(s)?

No, will be only applying for FOSS Outreach Program for Women.

What makes me tick!

Next to Biology, Computing has always been one of my favorite areas of exploration. The reason being for both passions, is my curiosity to solve problems and investigate unknown scenarios. Being in the field of computing allowed me to solve problems through a different perspective as it is often required to investigate the same problem via numerous points of views.

I believe I can use my knowledge on catering to different perspectives with regard to this project as it allows me to visualize the problem for different perspectives of users that access Wikimedia Labs and Tools Labs sections. It will also give me an opportunity to provide simple yet out of the box solutions that are user friendly and at the same time helpful for users of different contexts.

I am also certain that this is a great opportunity for me to get to know the wiki-community and contribute to it with the best of my knowledge level. In addition undoubtedly this will serve as great new educative experience for me.

Past experience

Please describe your experience with any other FOSS projects as a user and as a contributor

As a user, I am a strong promoter of FOSS. I’m an ardent user of Ubuntu OS and a collection of FOS software ranging from development tools and IDE’s such as MySQL, Netbeans, Eclipse to media player software such as VLC.

Being in the software industry has provided me a window of opportunity to use and experience a variety of open source software with support of community as and when needed.

As a contributor I have contributed on many forums as much as I have benefited from them. My contributions include but not limited to forums in Jboss, Log4j, Apache Software Foundation, MySQL, Netbeans etc.

Also have provided feedback on Jboss nightly-builds.

Please describe any relevant projects that you have worked on previously and what knowledge you gained from working on them (include links)

As per requirement for my Bsc. qualification, a data mining tool was developed in order to predict customer churn. I consider that my knowledge and experience on pattern analysis has been of benefit in instigating solutions to the current problem of identifying active and inactive projects in current problem context.
My prior work experience related to content management offered me insight on context and structure of a good documentation. [Project : Mobitel]
My work experience as a software engineer has exposed me to maintenance of documentation for code in multiple projects under different business domains. [Projects : Rikslunchen, Avianca ]
Also prior experience in developing Help pages and FAQs in many projects will be of advantage in this particular project context. [Project : Rikslunchen ]
As a postgraduate, research modules I've been following facilitate abundant opportunity in polishing my skills in concise report writing.

What project(s) are you interested in (these can be in the same or different organizations)?

Mostly interested in Welcoming new contributors to Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs project in WikiMedia Foundation.