Work towards Developer - Monthly Report

MyM - MediaWiki Release Team
Work towards a Developer Community
Monthly Progress Report
August 15, 2014

Management Summary
In July and early August of 2014, we intensified our energy and effort on the preparation for Wikimania with a focus on relationship building to galvanize the interest of people and stakeholders in a developer community. Presented below is a summary of the activities and links:

Completed

• Markus Glaser’s announcement of the MediaWiki User Group on wikitech-l sparked a discussion about the need for such a group. The ensuing discussion demonstrated great support for the group. The unprompted defenses provided by Brion Vibber and Derric Atzrott were especially encouraging.
  • https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-August/077924.html
• Mark Hershberger initiated a developer discussion during the Wikimania Hackathon. Markus Krötzsch agreed to moderate the discussion. There were roughly 40 people, mostly developers, present. The discussion led to some concrete suggestions in how to improve extension quality such as automated extension certification. We hope to spearhead the implementation of these efforts.
  • https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/wm2014-3rdparty
  • http://hexmode.com/2014/08/wikimania-2014-takeaway-developer-discussion/
• Markus Glaser gave a talk about organising a MediaWiki User Group at Wikimania. There were roughly 30 people with a variety of interests present. The objective was to illustrate what a MediaWiki-focused user group would accomplish. At the end of the presentation, 10 people expressed an interest in founding the group.
  • https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/How_about_a_MediaWiki_Consortium%3F
  • https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/wm2014-mwusergroup
  • https://plus.google.com/events/c2oanp0td876hrnbf87cma2jco8
• At 2:00pm the same day a follow up meeting served to start the organisation, Wiki Co-op. The thirteen (13) people present helped create a rough mission, description, and timeframe. As of August 15, 2014, we have 5 promoters and 7 members. One person who signed up as promoter -- Chris Koerner -- was not present at Wikimania. This shows the need for the group is already recognised in the broader MediaWiki-using community.
  • https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Groups/Proposals/Wiki_Co-op
• We identified the following developers who are willing to contribute volunteer hours in testing, development and operations of third party features: Legoktm, Nikerabbit, Matanya, Chris Koerner.
• Markus Glaser talked to third party users from WikiFur and Semantic MediaWiki. Mark Hershberger also met with the members of Mozilla’s Wiki (wikimo) to discuss their needs and possible future involvement in the Wiki Co-op. Notably, they said they were interested in bootstrapping real time, collaborative wiki editing using TogetherJS and the user script that was demonstrated during one of the talks.
  • https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WyAs41-M1FRnh5nWa8kLV0IWKSg2rDDmM4LopNhq4aE

Ongoing

• We are working towards official recognition of Wiki Co-op.
• We need to start holding regular online meetups for the Wiki Co-op and schedule some in-person meetings
• We reached out to experts for advise and guidance with the environmental scan. As a result, the method and purpose is much clearer and we are headed towards starting the scan.
• We are continuing outreach work through direct contact, following up with inquiries, and networking. Mark is continuing to meet with NASA engineers who set up an internal wiki and wrote some custom extensions.

Not Started

• Work on the 3rd-party focused development roadmap was postponed until after Wikimania.
• Research on potential grants and other forms of income was postponed until after Wikimania.