User:Biosthmors/WMF noticeboard

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Software development priorities in January?
About how many developer hours were devoted per week to which software iniatives at WMF for Wikipedia? I would like to get a sense of where resources are currently being invested. Maybe a top 5 or 8 or 10 list would be great. Maybe someting like this: "1. VisualEditor: ~1000 hrs/wk, 2. Echo,: ~800 hrs/wk, etc." Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 05:07, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * You're looking for Wikimedia Engineering. Legoktm (talk) 05:51, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Are you suggesting I ask that question at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Engineering ? Because there are only two comments there total. I think this would be a better place to discuss it. Biosthmors (talk) 21:10, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Winning programmer time
It would be great if editors had a chance to "win" some programmer time from the WMF to help with small projects. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:24, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * One way I've heard one can "win" time is to apply for an IEG. I've heard that getting approval this way gives WMF developers some sort of clearance to work on a Wikipedian's idea. Biosthmors (talk) 05:38, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Doc James and Biosthmors. It's true that some Individual Engagement Grants that need to track log data (edits & pageviews) may get some 'programmer time'. However, two things*:
 * As IEGs are currently scoped, any dev time would be devoted to help with data logging or analysis, not, say, work on bots or gadgets/userscripts.
 * Currently, the only programmer you'd get access to would be me. And I'm a part time contractor, so programmer time would be a pretty scarce resource. It would also be, frankly, a resource of dubious value: I'm not a software developer by training, and while I can hack together bots and such, I'm not a great programmer... as any real dev who takes one look at my code will tell you :)


 * * This is all to the best of my knowledge, but don't quote me on it. You'll have to ask User:Sbouterse_(WMF), who runs IEG, to get true facts.


 * Frankly, there are hundreds of Wikipedians who can program. And Gawd-knows-how-many volunteer devs who work with the Foundation on the MediaWiki core. And you can do a lot with bots and userscripts, toolserver and wmflabs. So if you go the IEG route (and I think you should, it's a very cool program), my suggestion would be to find a collaborator with some coding skills and include them on your grant proposal. Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 02:16, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Is there a list of people who know how to program one can go to when they have projects they need help with? Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:21, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I know specific tech questions can be answered at WP:VPT, so they should be aware of a list if one exists. I think it would be great if such a list did exist. Biosthmors (talk) 05:40, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
 * You might peruse the category "Wikipedia bot owners" for people you recognize. Bots use different programming languages, but many of them are written in Python, which is a pretty flexible language and useful for a lot of different kinds of tasks. You might also look for folks who write or maintain tools, gadgets and extensions like Huggle, Twinkle, WikiLove, HotArticles, etc. Also, the category "Wikipedians with Toolserver accounts". Overall, I think that Bios' suggestion of list of Wikipedians who have particular skillsets and are willing to be contacted about technical collaborations would be useful, provided it's opt-in :) Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 22:54, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Popular page statistics pages should exist for all WikiProjects
As one can see from this old post (and I also posted again here), there is a desire to have these sorts of popular page statistics to help WikiProject prioritize their focus (WP:MED500 is one example of a popular page report). Because effective WikiProjects help the productivity of Wikipedia, could anyone from the WMF try to help this along? I don't know why this has stalled, but this website says "new requests for the popular page systems are not currently being accepted. This will be fixed with updates to the program that should be completed by November." Is this, or could this, be a priority for anyone at the WMF? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 21:07, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I totally agree, even in other languages sister sites. It 'd be of a great help figuring out the popular topics. -- ɑηsuмaη   « ৳ᶏ ɭϞ »   05:56, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Tracking vandalism
Does anyone from the WMF have an interest (or duty) in quantifying vandalism? Discussion thread here. I'm wondering how we as Wikipedians would know whether or not the vandalism problem was getting better, getting worse, or staying about the same. Biosthmors (talk) 05:16, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
 * This is a question you should be asking at User talk:Mdennis (WMF) or emailing to liaison@wikimedia.org (unless of course you're just coming up with random questions to try and make it look like this board is being used).  S ven M anguard   Wha?  00:08, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll email and ask that the reply be placed here for all to see. The interest is genuine. Biosthmors (talk) 01:38, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Real-time collaborative editing?
Is anyone at WMF are currently working on the software challenges behind shifting Wikipedia to a real-time collaborative editing structure? The last I've seen on this possibility was here. I'd like for edit conflicts to be gone away with, of course. Biosthmors (talk) 00:25, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
 * This is a question you should be asking at User talk:Mdennis (WMF) or emailing to liaison@wikimedia.org (unless of course you're just coming up with random questions to try and make it look like this board is being used).  S ven M anguard   Wha?  00:08, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll email and ask that the reply be placed here for all to see. The interest is genuine. Biosthmors (talk) 01:38, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Are you subscribed to any of our Mailing lists? There are usually updates about these sort of things on some of the mailing lists, and there is a monthly Metrics and activities meetings that you can watch live-streamed on YouTube or catchup with afterwards that gives an update on what the WMF has been doing for the past month. I believe that the long term plan is that VisualEditor will have some of these features that you're hoping for, but it's not likely to be implemented soon, as the team is working on building out core features first. Please see their latest presentation on Commons. The latest YouTube recording isn't available yet as it's being processed, but when it is, please be sure to check it out for a presentation by Roan at about the 15 minute mark if I remember correctly (see the Agenda for the meeting).


 * The engineering team also publishes a detailed monthly report, the latest of which is at Wikimedia engineering report/2013/January about their activities and even Roadmap of things they're presently working on, and planning to work on in the future. All this information is freely available and distributed (through mailing lists, a dedicated Tech blog etc.) if you look for it, and people that are interested in it should be able to find it easily without another noticeboard requiring tech staff's time to answer questions.  The  helpful  one  10:34, 11 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the links. I think the idea of signing up for a mailing list will be made partially redundant by this noticeboard, because I think it's a good plan for me to sign up for every one and post anything that relates here. This place is meant as a centralizing place for discussion, and I will include some of those links in the header so that they appear above, thanks. I don't want tech staff to have to answer any more questions they already do. I just want the answers (that relate to English Wikipedia) to be easily accessible here. Biosthmors (talk) 21:37, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Proposal on meta about Webcite
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WebCite and some discussion at WP:VPM. Biosthmors (talk) 16:56, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * This is a question you should be asking at User talk:Mdennis (WMF) or emailing to liaison@wikimedia.org (unless of course you're just coming up with random questions to try and make it look like this board is being used).  S ven M anguard   Wha?  00:08, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think so, because that wasn't a question, but more of a notification for those who wish to discuss it, though those most important to the issue are hopefully discussing via email. Biosthmors (talk) 01:38, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Substantive comment there, FYI. Biosthmors (talk) 02:40, 13 February 2013 (UTC)