User talk:Ashleythenerd

Feedback on your essay

(Also posted in Google Melange)

Hello Ashley,

Thank you so much for choosing this task and submitting your essay for review so quickly!

I think it can probably be improved a bit, and the fact that you've shared it so early is a good thing; it's in line with the open-source trend to "release early, release often" and improve incrementally.

I have a few questions that might help you improve and expand your report a bit:

When you write "I downloaded it right away without hesitation" and "I figured out how to use this software", are you saying you downloaded the MediaWiki tarball and installed it on your computer? If so, I'd love to learn a bit more about that experience, for example: How savvy were you with LAMP applications prior to installing and using MediaWiki? Would you have a use case for installing a MediaWiki-powered site, for personal use, or at school, or somewhere else?

When you write "I liked how the website gave easy access to figuring stuff out so you don’t have to waste a lot of time trying to open or edit something", are you talking about mediawiki.org, or something else? I'd love to read more details about what kind of information you were looking for.

Similarly, when you write "I barely got frustrated on working things out", I'd like to have an idea of what "things" you were trying to work out :)

In a nutshell, your essay in its current form is doing a good job at telling us how you felt (and I'm glad you had an enjoyable experience), but it would be more valuable if those feelings were given more context to explain what your goals were as you explored. Was it to install MediaWiki on your computer? Or to learn about MediaWiki in general? Or to learn about MediaWiki to contribute as a developer? Or something else?

I hope this feedback will be useful to help you improve your essay. I'm looking forward to reading your next version! guillom 05:38, 21 November 2013 (UTC)