User talk:Siko (WMF)

IEG idea
Hi Siko, I'm Dan. Maggie/Moonriddengirl gives you glowing praise, and she always knows what she's talking about, so I'll just jump right in. I understand you're running the WP:IEG project, and that we've got a deadline of February 15 coming up. My next big project (whether IEG plays a role or not) is software (scripts or external) to help people who use the various reviewing processes (WP:PR, WP:DYK, WP:GAN, FAC). Much of the advice people get is routine, and could be automated. But there are two hitches: I don't have access yet to suitably customizable software, and just jumping in and giving advice to new nominators is the wrong first step, we'll have to proceed carefully to get consensus on what people want. (For instance, if a relatively new editor puts an article up at DYK, and they're confronted with a page of advice telling them that the hyphens should be dashes and they need to fix 20 things to format their references consistently, that's going to have a net negative impact.) So ... we need community discussion followed by a couple of requests for comments, and it may be when you guys see the outcome of the discussion, you're not that excited about the goals the community has selected ... or maybe the community will deadlock. So I don't think this is the right time to be asking for money ... OTOH, I could really use some help, and I'd like to get an IEG going for the October funding cycle if possible ... and perhaps the best way to get ready for October is to start now. I'm open to suggestions. - Dank (push to talk) 12:16, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Dan! This seems super interesting - I'd love to see you start to flesh out the idea more :-)  Why not create a new idea in the Grants:IdeaLab with what you've said above, so you've got a proposal page to keep putting info into as things move forward, and can start to collect some help?  That way, whenever the right time for funding is, you'll be off to a good start.  Offhand, I wonder if you're considering taking an experimental approach to deciding what advice to send - setting up a few short tests in one or more processes based on discussions, see what works and what doesn't, refine, and based on what's been learned then taking it to the community for further RfCs on expanding to other processes or kinds of advice?  This seems like something where being data-driven might help you get to the most useful consensus, and maybe also get started more quickly than you would expect.  At any rate, I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next, hope you decide to start writing up the idea! Siko (WMF) (talk) 07:33, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the enthusiasm, and I'm spending most of my time on this project now. We've got some work to do before putting this under a spotlight, I think, so I'm not going to make the deadline on the 15th, but I just wanted to say thanks and I'll get back with you soon. - Dank (push to talk) 14:24, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Sounds good, Dan - thanks for the update and looking forward to hearing more whenever you're ready :-) Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Congrats... You have joined a team of awesome helpers!
Hey, check out this new badge why don't you Ocaasit &#124; c 17:15, 7 February 2013 (UTC) 

The Tea Leaf - Issue Seven
Hello again! We have some neat updates about the Teahouse:
 * We’ve added badges! Teahouse awards is a pilot project to learn how acknowledgement impacts engagement and retention in Teahouse and Wikipedia.


 * We’ve got a new WikiLove Badge script that makes giving badges quick and easy. Add it here.  You can give out badges to thank helpful hosts, welcome guests, acknowledge great questions and more.


 * Come join the experiment and let us know what you think!


 * And...for all of your great work and all of the progress that you've helped the Teahouse make, we hereby award you the Host Badge:


 * You are receiving The Tea Leaf after expressing interest or participating in the Teahouse! To remove yourself from receiving future newsletters, please remove your username here

Thanks again! Ocaasi 01:58, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

If we got something wrong, could you comment?
At WP:WMFN, thanks! Biosthmors (talk) 16:52, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

The Tea Leaf - Issue Seven (special Birthday recap)


It's been a full year since the Teahouse opened, and as we're reflecting on what's been accomplished, we wanted to celebrate with you.

Teahouse guests and hosts are sharing their stories in a new blog post about the project.

1 year statistics for Teahouse visitors compared to invited non-visitors from the pilot:

Over the past year almost 2000 questions have been asked and answered, 669 editors have introduced themselves, 1670 guests have been served, 867 experienced Wikipedians have participated in the project, and 137 have served as hosts. Read more project analysis in our CSCW 2013 paper

Last month January was our most active month so far! 78 profiles were created, 46 active hosts answered 263 questions, and 11 new hosts joined the project.

Come by the Teahouse to share a cup of tea and enjoy a Birthday Cupcake! Happy Birthday to the Teahouse and thank you for a year's worth of interest and support :-)
 * -- Ocaasi and the rest of the Teahouse Team 20:44, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

You are receiving The Tea Leaf after expressing interest or participating in the Teahouse! To add or remove yourself for receiving future newsletters, please update the list here

The Teahouse Turns One!
It's been an exciting year for the Teahouse and you were a part of it. Thanks so much for visiting, asking questions, sharing answers, being friendly and helpful, and just keeping Teahouse an awesome place. You can read more about the impact we're having and the reflections of other guests and hosts like you. Please come by the Teahouse to celebrate with us, and enjoy this sparkly cupcake badge as our way of saying thank you. And, Happy Birthday!


 * --Ocaasi and the rest of the Teahouse Team 22:22, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Congrats... You fixed the Teahouse just where it needed to be fixed!


Wiknic 2013
"Wiknic 2013 Sunday, June 23rd · 12:34pm · Lake Merritt, Oakland Theme: Hyperlocal list-making" This year's 2013 SF Wiknik will be held at Lake Merritt, next to Children's Fairyland in Oakland. This event will be co-attended by people from the hyperlocal Oakland Wiki. May crosspollination of ideas and merriment abound!

Location and Directions

 * Location: The grassy area due south of Children's Fairyland (here) (Oakland Wiki)
 * Nearest BART: 19th Street
 * Nearest bus lines: NL/12/72
 * Street parking abounds

EdwardsBot (talk) 04:44, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

You're invited...
to two upcoming Bay Area events:
 * Maker Faire 2013, Sat/Sun May 18-19, San Mateo -- there will have a booth about Wikimedia, and we need volunteers to talk to the public and ideas for the booth -- see the wiki page to sign up!
 * Edit-a-Thon 5, Sat May 25, 10-2pm, WMF offices in San Francisco -- this will be a casual edit-a-thon open to both experienced and new editors alike! Please sign up if on the wiki page if you can make it so we know how much food to get.

I hope you can join us at one or both! -- phoebe / (talk to me) 17:34, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

 * Hi! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission.  I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Start Page
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Lounge
 * The Teahouse new editor help space
 * Wikipedia Help pages
 * If you have any questions, you can ask me personally. I'm Ocaasi.  I'm glad you're with us :) -- Ocaasileave me a message

Help Project newsletter : Issue 7
The Help Project Newsletter Issue VII - August 2013

Hello from Hong Kong, and the Wikimania DevCamp! Just a quick bulletin to update everyone on recent goings-on:


 * There was a Wikimedia blog post about our experience at the Open Help Conference.
 * Based on discussions at the Open Help Conference, Seeeko, Ocaasi and the wub have drafted a series of guidelines for writing and improving help pages.
 * There is now also a system in place for assessing help pages by quality and importance. See Help Project/Assessment for more details and the two scales we are using.
 * A project collaboration has been started, the first one is focusing on the above mentioned Assessment. Discussions about this are welcome at Wikipedia talk:Help Project.
 * New contributors' help page/questions was merged into Teahouse/Questions
 * A couple of other mergers have been proposed:
 * Questions and Requests
 * How to help and New contributors' help page
 * Help:Introduction to talk pages and Help:Introduction to policies and guidelines have both been overhauled and updated to use the new tutorial design.

Suggestions for future issues are welcome at Help Project/Newsletter.

If you don't wish to receive this newsletter on your talk page in future then just edit the participants page and add "no newsletter" next to your name.

-- EdwardsBot (talk) 06:16, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

 * Hi! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission.  I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Start Page
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Lounge
 * The Teahouse new editor help space
 * Wikipedia Help pages
 * -- 19:54, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

 * Hi !  We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission.  I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Start Page
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Lounge
 * The Teahouse new editor help space
 * Wikipedia Help pages

--

Yo Ho Ho


 Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  is wishing you Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding to your friends' talk pages.

Thanks, WereSpielChequers! Wishing you very happy holidays as well :) Siko (WMF) (talk) 18:36, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Individual Grants for the Arabic Wikipedia
Hi Siko, it's a wonderful idea to create a page in the Arabic Wikipedia for individual grants. For example, Many of the Arab contributors have ideas for biographical articles but they lack the resources. Buying biography dictionaries or Who's Who will be the solution.--Salah Almhamdi (talk) 20:46, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Salah! Thanks for the feedback, and your example is really helpful to hear :)  A follow-up question for you:  In terms of biographical resources, the trick is what's the easiest way to get these into the hands of Wikipedians. I can think of a few ways we could get these resources to editors: 1) getting subscriptions to resources that are available online for a fee, and giving out free accounts to these (I'm not sure there are any good online biographical dictionaries in Arabic, though, are there?), 2) having an account for an online bookseller where we pay but editors can order their own approved books directly (this requires knowing what online stores most Arab contributors have access to...in the US Amazon is the natural choice, but there may be a better option for other countries?), or 3) just giving people money to buy the book locally.  The third option may be the slowest option for everyone, so if you had any suggestions for considering options 1 or 2, I'd love to hear them! Looking forward to seeing this discussion move forward, and thanks again for the suggestions! Siko (WMF) (talk) 21:04, 13 February 2014 (UTC)


 * 1) I will look if there is any good online biographical dictionaries in Arabic. 2) In the Arab world we have Neelwafurat.com --Salah Almhamdi (talk) 22:07, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Salah Almhamdi, there's a few publications using the "Who's Who" name. The Marquis Who's Who product does have an online database. I've used their paper versions before, they're quite good for basic biographical details.  English only though, and I don't know how good their coverage is for international figures.  The Interior  (Talk) 03:40, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Siko, I want to thank you for the great Idea for thee Library of Arabic Wikipedia , I created Page now for the Library and I am ready to organize the library --Mohamed Ouda (talk) 09:29, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Mohamed! Thank you so much for creating the page and volunteering to organize, I'm so glad you like the idea :) We need to get a few things (like the accounts needed to place book orders) setup on this end so that we can be ready to begin, but I can start working on those next week, and then I will send you more information by the end of the week. Hope that sounds good to you - I'm really looking forward to the مكتبة ويكيبيديا .  I'm also paging Ocaasi, who started the English Library, because I think he will be very happy to see the beginning of this new Arabic page.  More soon! Best wishes, Siko (WMF) (talk) 03:14, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
 * , that is one of the neatest things I've ever seen on Wikipedia. I'm so excited for TWL to have a presence in another language and community.  Thank you for taking such a great first step to get it going.  This will be awesome.  Phew, Sbouterse, that was fast.  Nice. work.  Cheers, Jake Ocaasit &#124; c 03:25, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Thank you so much and , and I am willing to start the Arabic Library soon--Mohamed Ouda (talk) 16:48, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 1
Hi! Thank you for subscribing to the WikiProject X Newsletter. For our first issue...

'''Has WikiProject X changed the world yet? No.'''

We opened up shop last month and announced our existence to the world. Our first phase is the "research" phase, consisting mostly of reading and listening. We set up our landing page and started collecting stories. So far, 28 stories have been shared about WikiProjects, describing a variety of experiences across numerous WikiProjects. A recurring story involves a WikiProject that starts off strong but has trouble continuing to stay active. Most people describe using WikiProjects as a way to get feedback from other editors. Some quotes:
 * "Working on requested articles, utilising the reliable sources section, and having an active WikiProject to ask questions in really helped me learn how to edit Wikipedia and looking back I don't know how long I would have stayed editing without that project." – Sam Walton on WikiProject Video Games
 * "I believe that the main problem of the Wikiprojects is that they are complicated to use. There should be a a much simpler way to check what do do, what needs to be improved etc." – Tetra quark
 * "In the late 2000s, WikiProject Film tried to emulate WP:MILHIST in having coordinators and elections. Unfortunately, this was not sustainable and ultimately fell apart." – Erik

Of course, these are just anecdotes. While they demonstrate what is possible, they do not necessarily explain what is typical. We will be using this information in conjunction with a quantitative analysis of WikiProjects, as documented on Meta. Particularly, we are interested in the measurement of WikiProject activity as it relates to overall editing in that WikiProject's subject area.

We also have 50 people and projects signed up for pilot testing, which is an excellent start! (An important caveat: one person volunteering a WikiProject does not mean the WikiProject as a whole is interested; just that there is at least one person, which is a start.)

While carrying out our research, we are documenting the problems with WikiProjects and our ideas for making WikiProjects better. Some ideas include better integration of existing tools into WikiProjects, recommendations of WikiProjects for people to join, and improved coordination with Articles for Creation. These are just ideas that may or may not make it to the design phase; we will see. We are also working with WikiProject Council to improve the directory of WikiProjects, with the goal of a reliable, self-updating WikiProject directory. Stay tuned! If you have any ideas, you are welcome to leave a note on our talk page.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing!

– Harej 17:21, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 2
For this month's issue...

Making sense of a lot of data.

Work on our prototype will begin imminently. In the meantime, we have to understand what exactly we're working with. To this end, we generated a list of 71 WikiProjects, based on those brought up on our Stories page and those who had signed up for pilot testing. For those projects where people told stories, we coded statements within those stories to figure out what trends there were in these stories. This approach allowed us to figure out what Wikipedians thought of WikiProjects in a very organic way, with very little by way of a structure. (Compare this to a structured interview, where specific questions are asked and answered.) This analysis was done on 29 stories. Codes were generally classified as "benefits" (positive contributions made by a WikiProject to the editing experience) and "obstacles" (issues posed by WikiProjects, broadly speaking). Codes were generated as I went along, ensuring that codes were as close to the original data as possible. Duplicate appearances of a code for a given WikiProject were removed.

We found 52 "benefit" statements encoded and 34 "obstacle" statements. The most common benefit statement referring to the project's active discussion and participation, followed by statements referring to a project's capacity to guide editor activity, while the most common obstacles made reference to low participation and significant burdens on the part of the project maintainers and leaders. This gives us a sense of WikiProjects' big strength: they bring people together, and can be frustrating to editors when they fail to do so. Meanwhile, it is indeed very difficult to bring editors together on a common interest; in the absence of a highly motivated core of organizers, the technical infrastructure simply isn't there.

We wanted to pair this qualitative study with quantitative analysis of a WikiProject and its "universe" of pages, discussions, templates, and categories. To this end I wrote a script called ProjAnalysis which will, for a given WikiProject page (e.g. WikiProject Star Trek) and WikiProject talk-page tag (e.g. Template:WikiProject Star Trek), will give you a list of usernames of people who edited within the WikiProject's space (the project page itself, its talk page, and subpages), and within the WikiProject's scope (the pages tagged by that WikiProject, excluding the WikiProject space pages). The output is an exhaustive list of usernames. We ran the script to analyze our test batch of WikiProjects for edits between March 1, 2014 and February 28, 2015, and we subjected them to further analysis to only include those who made 10+ edits to pages in the projects' scope, those who made 4+ edits to the projects' space, and those who made 10+ edits to pages in scope but not 4+ edits to pages in the projects' space. This latter metric gives us an idea of who is active in a certain subject area of Wikipedia, yet who isn't actively engaging on the WikiProject's pages. This information will help us prioritize WikiProjects for pilot testing, and the ProjAnalysis script in general may have future life as an application that can be used by Wikipedians to learn about who is in their community.

Complementing the above two studies are a design analysis, which summarizes the structure of the different WikiProject spaces in our test batch, and the comprehensive census of bots and tools used to maintain WikiProjects, which will be finished soon. With all of this information, we will have a game plan in place! We hope to begin working with specific WikiProjects soon.

As a couple of asides...


 * Database Reports has existed for several years on Wikipedia to the satisfaction of many, but many of the reports stopped running when the Toolserver was shut off in 2014. However, there is good news: the weekly New WikiProjects and WikiProjects by Changes reports are back, with potential future reports in the future.
 * WikiProject X has an outpost on Wikidata! Check it out. It's not widely publicized, but we are interested in using Wikidata as a potential repository for metadata about WikiProjects, especially for WikiProjects that exist on multiple Wikimedia projects and language editions.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing! If you have any questions or comments, please share them with us.

Harej (talk) 01:44, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 3
Greetings! For this month's issue...

We have demos!

After a lengthy research and design process, we decided for WikiProject X to focus on two things:
 * A WikiProject workflow that focuses on action items: discussions you can participate in and tasks you can perform to improve the encyclopedia; and
 * An automatically updating WikiProject directory that gives you lists of users participating in the WikiProject and editing in that subject area.

We have a live demonstration of the new WikiProject workflow at WikiProject Women in Technology, a brand new WikiProject that was set up as an adjunct to a related edit-a-thon in Washington, DC. The goal is to surface action items for editors, and we intend on doing that through automatically updated working lists. We are looking into using SuggestBot to generate lists of outstanding tasks, and we are looking into additional options for automatic worklist generation. This takes the burden off of WikiProject editors to generate these worklists, though there is also a "requests" section for Wikipedians to make individual requests. (As of writing, these automated lists are not yet live, so you will see a blank space under "edit articles" on the demo WikiProject. Sorry about that!) I invite you to check out the WikiProject and leave feedback on WikiProject X's talk page.

Once the demo is sufficiently developed, we will be working on a limited deployment on our pilot WikiProjects. We have selected five for the first round of testing based on the highest potential for impact and will scale up from there.

While a re-designed WikiProject experience is much needed, that alone isn't enough. A WikiProject isn't any good if people have no way of discovering it. This is why we are also developing an automatically updated WikiProject directory. This directory will surface project-related metrics, including a count of active WikiProject participants and of active editors in that project's subject area. The purpose of these metrics is to highlight how active the WikiProject is at the given point of time, but also to highlight that project's potential for success. The directory is not yet live but there is a demonstration featuring a sampling of WikiProjects.

Each directory entry will link to a WikiProject description page which automatically list the active WikiProject participants and subject-area article editors. This allows Wikipedians to find each other based on the areas they are interested in, and this information can be used to revive a WikiProject, start a new one, or even for some other purpose. These description pages are not online yet, but they will use this template, if you want to get a feel of what they will look like.

We need volunteers!

WikiProject X is a huge undertaking, and we need volunteers to support our efforts, including testers and coders. Check out our volunteer portal and see what you can do to help us!

As an aside...

Wouldn't it be cool if lists of requested articles could not only be integrated directly with WikiProjects, but also shared between WikiProjects? Well, we got the crazy idea of having experimental software feature Flow deployed (on a totally experimental basis) on the new Article Request Workshop, which seeks to be a place where editors can "workshop" article ideas before they get created. It uses Flow because Flow allows, essentially, section-level categorization, and in the future will allow "sections" (known as "topics" within Flow) to be included across different pages. What this means is that you have a recommendation for a new article tagged by multiple WikiProjects, allowing for the recommendation to appear on lists for each WikiProject. This will facilitate inter-WikiProject collaboration and will help to reduce duplicated work. The Article Request Workshop is not entirely ready yet due to some bugs with Flow, but we hope to integrate it into our pilot WikiProjects at some point.

Harej (talk) 01:58, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 4
Newsletter • May/June 2015

Hello friends! We have been hard at work these past two months. For this report:

The directory is live!

For the first time, we are happy to bring you an exhaustive, comprehensive WikiProject Directory. This directory endeavors to list every single WikiProject on the English Wikipedia, including those that don't participate in article assessment. In constructing the broadest possible definition, we have come up with a list of approximately 2,600 WikiProjects. The directory tracks activity statistics on the WikiProject's pages, and, for where it's available, statistics on the number of articles tracked by the WikiProject and the number of editors active on those articles. Complementing the directory are description pages for each project, listing usernames of people active on the WikiProject pages and the articles in the WikiProject's scope. This will help Wikipedians interested in a subject find each other, whether to seek feedback on an article or to revive an old project. (There is an opt-out option.) We have also come up with listings of related WikiProjects, listing the ten most relevant WikiProjects based on what articles they have in common. We would like to promote WikiProjects as interconnected systems, rather than isolated silos.

A tremendous amount of work went into preparing this directory. WikiProjects do not consistently categorize their pages, meaning we had to develop our own index to match WikiProjects with the articles in their scope. We also had to make some adjustments to how WikiProjects were categorized; indeed, I personally have racked up a few hundred edits re-categorizing WikiProjects. There remains more work to be done to make the WikiProject directory truly useful. In the meantime, take a look and feel free to leave feedback at the WikiProject X talk page.

Stuff in the works!

What have we been working on?


 * A new design template—This has been in the works for a while, of course. But our goal is to design something that is useful and cleanly presented on all browsers and at all screen resolutions while working within the confines of what MediaWiki has to offer. Additionally, we are working on designs for the sub-components featured on the main project page.
 * A new WikiProject talk page banner in Lua—Work has begun on implementing the WikiProject banner in Lua. The goal is to create a banner template that can be usable by any WikiProject in lieu of having its own template. Work has slowed down for now to focus on higher priority items, but we are interested in your thoughts on how we could go about creating a more useful project banner. We have a draft module on Test Wikipedia, with a demonstration.
 * New discussion reports—We have over 4.8 million articles on the English Wikipedia, and almost as many talk pages as well. But what happens when someone posts on a talk page? What if no one is watching that talk page? We are currently testing out a system for an automatically-updating new discussions list, like RFC for WikiProjects. We currently have five test pages up for the WikiProjects on cannabis, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and Ghana.
 * SuggestBot for WikiProjects—We have asked the maintainer of SuggestBot to make some minor adjustments to SuggestBot that will allow it to post regular reports to those WikiProjects that ask for them. Stay tuned!
 * Semi-automated article assessment—Using the new revision scoring service and another system currently under development, WikiProjects will be getting a new tool to facilitate the article assessment process by providing article quality/importance predictions for articles yet to be assessed. Aside from helping WikiProjects get through their backlogs, the goal is to help WikiProjects with collecting metrics and triaging their work. Semi-automation of this process will help achieve consistent results and keep the process running smoothly, as automation does on other parts of Wikipedia.

Want us to work on any other tools? Interested in volunteering? Leave a note on our talk page.

The WikiProject watchers report is back!

The database report which lists WikiProjects according to the number of watchers (i.e., people that have the project on their watchlist), is back! The report stopped being updated a year ago, following the deactivation of the Toolserver, but a replacement report has been generated.

Until next time, Harej (talk) 22:20, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 5
Newsletter • October 2015

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

We did it!

In July, we launched five pilot WikiProjects: WikiProjects Cannabis, Evolutionary Biology, Ghana, Hampshire, and Women's Health. We also use the new design, named "WPX UI," on WikiProject Women in Technology, Women in Red, WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health. We are currently looking for projects for the next round of testing. If you are interested, please sign up on the Pilots page.

Shortly after our launch we presented at Wikimania 2015. Our slides are on Wikimedia Commons.

Then after all that work, we went through the process of figuring out whether we accomplished our goal. We reached out to participants on the redesigned WikiProjects, and we asked them to complete a survey. (If you filled out your survey—thank you!) While there are still some issues with the WikiProject tools and the new design, there appears to be general satisfaction (at least among those who responded). The results of the survey and more are documented in our grant report filed with the Wikimedia Foundation.

The work continues!

There is more work that needs to be done, so we have applied for a renewal of our grant. Comments on the proposal are welcome. We would like to improve what we have already started on the English Wikipedia and to also expand to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. Why those? Because they are multilingual projects and because there needs to be better coordination across Wikimedia projects. More details are available in the renewal proposal.

How can the Wikimedia Foundation support WikiProjects?

The Wikimedia Developer Summit will be held in San Francisco in January 2016. The recently established Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation is interested in investigating what technical support they can provide for WikiProjects, i.e., support beyond just templates and bots. I have plenty of opinions myself, but I want to hear what you think. The session is being planned on Phabricator, the Wikimedia bug tracker. If you are not familiar with Phabricator, you can log in with your Wikipedia username and password through the "Login or Register: MediaWiki" button on the login page. Your feedback can help make editing Wikipedia a better experience.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 09:03, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 6
Newsletter • January 2016

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

What comes next

Some good news: the Wikimedia Foundation has renewed WikiProject X. This means we can continue focusing on making WikiProjects better.

During our first round of work, we created a prototype WikiProject based on two ideas: (1) WikiProjects should clearly present things for people to do, and (2) The content of WikiProjects should be automated as much as possible. We launched pilots, and for the most part it works. But this approach will not work for the long term. While it makes certain aspects of running a WikiProject easier, it makes the maintenance aspects harder.

We are working on a major overhaul that will address these issues. New features will include:
 * Creating WikiProjects by simply filling out a form, choosing which reports you want to generate for your project. This will work with existing bots in addition to the Reports Bot reports. (Of course, you can also have sections curated by humans.)
 * One-click button to join a WikiProject, with optional notifications.
 * Be able to define your WikiProject's scope within the WikiProject itself by listing relevant pages and categories, eliminating the need to tag every talk page with a banner. (You will still be allowed to do that, of course. It just won't be required.)

The end goal is a collaboration tool that can be used by WikiProjects but also by any edit-a-thon or group of people that want to coordinate on improving articles. Though implemented as an extension, the underlying content will be wikitext, meaning that you can continue to use categories, templates, and other features as you normally would.

This will take a lot of work, and we are just getting started. What would you like to see? I invite you to discuss on our talk page.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 02:53, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 7
Newsletter • February 2016

This month:

One database for Wikipedia requests

Development of the extension for setting up WikiProjects, as described in the last issue of this newsletter, is currently underway. No terribly exciting news on this front.

In the meantime, we are working on a prototype for a new service we hope to announce soon. The problem: there are requests scattered all across Wikipedia, including requests for new articles and requests for improvements to existing articles. We Wikipedians are very good at coming up with lists of things to do. But once we write these lists, where do they end up? How can we make them useful for all editors—even those who do not browse the missing articles lists, or the particular WikiProjects that have lists?

Introducing Wikipedia Requests, a new tool to centralize the various lists of requests around Wikipedia. Requests will be tagged by category and WikiProject, making it easier to find requests based on what your interests are. Accompanying this service will be a bot that will let you generate reports from this database on any wiki page, including WikiProjects. This means that once a request is filed centrally, it can syndicated all throughout Wikipedia, and once it is fulfilled, it will be marked as "complete" throughout Wikipedia. The idea for this service came about when I saw that it was easy to put together to-do lists based on database queries, but it was harder to do this for human-generated requests when those requests are scattered throughout the wiki, siloed throughout several pages. This should especially be useful for WikiProjects that have overlapping interests.

The newsletter this month is fairly brief; not a lot of news, just checking in to say that we are hard at work and hope to have more for you soon.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 01:44, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Bay Area WikiSalon series kickoff, April 27
Please join us in San Francisco!



The last Wednesday evening of every month, wiki enthusiasts in the San Francisco Bay Area will gather to collaborate, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas. We have two brief presentations lined up for our kickoff event in downtown San Francisco:


 * The Nueva Upper School recently hosted the first ever high school Wikipedia edit-a-thon. We will hear what interests them about Wikipedia, what they have learned so far, and what they hope to achieve.
 * Photojournalist Kris Schreier Lyseggen, author of The Women of San Quentin: The Soul Murder of Transgender Women in Male Prisons, will tell us about her work and how she researched the topic.

We allow time for informal conversation and working on articles. Newcomers and experienced wiki users are encouraged to attend. We will have beverages and light snacks.

Please note: You must register here, and bring a photo ID that matches your registration name. The building policy is strict on this point.

For further details, see here: Bay Area WikiSalon, April 2016

We hope to see you -- and until then, happy editing! - Pete, Ben & Wayne

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 8
Newsletter • March / April 2016

This month:

Transclude article requests anywhere on Wikipedia

In the last issue of the WikiProject X Newsletter, I discussed the upcoming Wikipedia Requests system: a central database for outstanding work on Wikipedia. I am pleased to announce Wikipedia Requests is live! Its purpose is to supplement automatically generated lists, such as those from SuggestBot, Reports bot, or Wikidata. It is currently being demonstrated on WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health (which I work on as part of my NIOSH duties) and WikiProject Women scientists.

Adding a request is as simple as filling out a form. Just go to the Add form to add your request. Adding sources will help ensure that your request is fulfilled more quickly. And when a request is fulfilled, simply click "mark as complete" and it will be removed from all the lists it's on. All at the click of a button! (If anyone is concerned, all actions are logged.)

With this new service is a template to transclude these requests: Wikipedia Requests. It's simple to use: add the template to a page, specifying,  , or  , and the list will be transcluded. For example, for requests having to do with all living people, just do. Use these lists on WikiProjects but also for edit-a-thons where you want a convenient list of things to do on hand. Give it a shot!

Help us build our list!

The value of Wikipedia Requests comes from being a centralized database. The long work to migrating individual lists into this combined list is slowly underway. As of writing, we have 883 open tasks logged in Wikipedia Requests. We need your help building this list.

If you know of a list of missing articles, or of outstanding tasks for existing articles, that you would like to migrate to this new system, head on over to Wikipedia Requests and help out. Doing this will help put your list in front of more eyes—more than just your own WikiProject.

An open database means new tools

WikiProject X maintains a database that associates article talk pages (and draft talk pages) with WikiProjects. This database powers many of the reports that Reports bot generates. However, until very recently, this database was not made available to others who might find its data useful. It's only common sense to open up the database and let others build tools with it.

And indeed: Citation Hunt, the game to add citations to Wikipedia, now lets you filter by WikiProject, using the data from our database.

Are you a tool developer interested in using this? Here are some details: the database resides on Tool Labs with the name. The table that associates WikiProjects with articles and drafts is called. Pages are stored by talk page title but in the future this should change. Have fun!

On the horizon


 * The work on the CollaborationKit extension continues. The extension will initially focus on reducing template and Lua bloat on WikiProjects (especially our WPX UI demonstration projects), and will from there create custom interfaces for creating and maintaining WikiProjects.
 * The WikiCite meeting will be in Berlin in May. The goal of the meeting is to figure out how to build a bibliographic database for use on the Wikimedia projects. This fits in quite nicely with WikiProject X's work: we want to make it easier for people to find things to work on, and with a powerful, open bibliographic database, we can build recommendations for sources. This feature was requested by the Wikipedia Library back in September, and this meeting is a major next step. We look forward to seeing what comes out of this meeting.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 01:29, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Invitation to the Bay Area WikiSalon series on May 25
Please join us in downtown San Francisco!



The last Wednesday evening of every month, wiki enthusiasts gather at Bay Area WikiSalon to collaborate, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas.

We allow time for informal conversation and working on articles. Newcomers and experienced wiki users are encouraged to attend. We will have beverages and light snacks.

Please note: You must register here, and bring a photo ID that matches your registration name. The building policy is strict on this point.

For further details, see: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, May 2016

See you soon! ,, and via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:15, 9 May 2016 (UTC) | Subscribe/Unsubscribe to the SF Meetups notice.

Invitation to the Bay Area WikiSalon series, Wednesday, June 29
Please join us in downtown San Francisco!



The last Wednesday evening of every month, wiki enthusiasts gather at Bay Area WikiSalon to collaborate, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas.

We make sure to allow time for informal conversation and working on articles. Newcomers and experienced wiki users are encouraged to attend. Free Wi-Fi is available so bring your editing devices. We will have beverages and light snacks. We will also have:


 * A brief report on Pride edit-a-thon recently held at the San Francisco Publice Library, coordinated by Merrilee:
 * What topics might we cover in a follow up?
 * Find out more about resources your public library provides to help with editing (hint, it's more than just books!)
 * Special announcement (secret for now but come and find out more!)
 * Join in on an in person Wikidojo!
 * Are you curious how your peers approach writing a Wikipedia article? This exercise, pioneered by Wikipedians Nikola Kalchev and Vassia Atanassova in 2015 and conducted in many places around the world, will help us all - from first-time wiki users to veteran Wikipedians - share ideas, while building an article together. If you have ideas (relating to Bay Area history, ideally) about a new article we could build (stubs and short existing articles are fine), please submit them ahead of time to coordinator Pete Forsyth. (User talk page or email is fine.)
 * Announcements and impromptu topics are welcome, too!

Please note: You must register here, and bring a photo ID that matches your registration name. The building policy is strict.

For further details, see: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, June 2016

See you soon! ,, and  | (Subscribe or Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:07, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 9
Newsletter • May / June 2016

Check out this month's issue of the WikiProject X newsletter, featuring the first screenshot of our new CollaborationKit software!

Harej (talk) 00:23, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

REMINDER/invitation to the Bay Area WikiSalon series, Wednesday, June 29 at 6 p.m.
Please join us in downtown San Francisco tonight!



If you cannot join in person or want to view portions later:
 * To join via Hangout on Air
 * Via YouTube Stream

We will have:


 * Light snacks, and time to mingle
 * A brief report on the Pride edit-a-thon recently held at the San Francisco Public Library, that was coordinated by Wiki editor Merrilee
 * A special announcement (secret for now but come and find out more!)
 * Join in on a brief in person Wikidojo!
 * Announcements and impromptu topics are welcome, too!

Please register at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cjLRrSTlEkGOPTQ-h6A0WvSFI4ZmIUl6jEHp_RYas-E/viewform and bring a photo ID that matches your registration name. The building policy is strict.

For further details, see: Bay Area WikiSalon, June 2016

See you tonight! ,, and MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:48, 29 June 2016 (UTC) | (Subscribe or Unsubscribe to this talk page notice)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 10
Issue 10 of the WikiProject X newsletter is here!

This month, we discuss the new CollaborationKit extension. Here's an image as a teaser:



23:59, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 11
Newsletter • February 2018

Check out this month's issue of the WikiProject X newsletter, with plans to renew work with a followup grant proposal to support finalising the deployment of CollaborationKit!

-— Isarra ༆ 21:26, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 12
Newsletter • August 2018

This month: WikiProject X: The resumption

Work has resumed on WikiProject X and CollaborationKit, backed by a successfully funded Project Grant. For more information on the current status and planned work, please see this month's issue of the newsletter!

-— Isarra ༆ 22:24, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 13
Newsletter • December 2018

This month: A general update.

The current status of the project is as follows:
 * Progress of the project has been generally delayed since September due to development issues (more bitrot than expected, some of the code just being genuinely confusing, etc) and personal injury (I suffered a concussion in October and was out of commission for almost two months as a result).
 * I currently expect to be putting out a proper call for CollaborationKit pilots in January/February, with estimated deployment in February/March if things don't go horribly wrong (they will, though, don't worry). As a part of that, I will properly update the page and send out announcement and reach out to all projects already signed up as pilots for WikiProject X in general, at which point those (still) interested can volunteer specifically to test the CollaborationKit extension.
 * WikiProject X/Pilots was originally created for the first WikiProject X prototype, and given this is where the project has since gone, it's only logical to continue to use it. While I haven't yet updated the page to properly reflect this:
 * If you want to add your project to this page now, feel free. Just bear in mind that more information what to actually expect will be added later/included in the announcement, because by then I will have a much better idea myself.
 * Until then, you can find me in my corner working on making the CollaborationKit code do what we want and not just what we told it, per the workboard.

Until next time,

-— Isarra ༆ 22:44, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 14
Newsletter • June 2019

Updates: I've been focusing largely on the development side of things, so we are a lot closer now to being ready to actually start discussing deploying it and testing it out here.

There's just a few things left that need to be resolved:
 * A bunch of language support issues in particular, plus some other release blockers, such as the fact that currently there's no good way to find any hubs people do create.
 * We also probably need some proper documentation and examples up to even reference if we want a meaningful discussion. We have the extension documentation and some test projects, but we probably need a bit more. Also I need to be able to even find the test projects! How can I possibly write reports about this stuff if I can't find any of it?!

Some other stuff that's happened in the meantime:
 * Midpoint report is out for this round of the project, if you want to read in too much detail about all the problems I've been running into.
 * WikiProject Molecular Biology have successfully set up using the old module system that CollaborationKit is intended to replace (eventually), and it even seems to work, so go them. Based on the issues they ran into, it looks like the members signup thing on that system has some of the same problems as we've been unable to resolve in CK, though, which is... interesting. (Need to change the content model to the right thing for the formwizard config to take. Ugh, content models.)

Until next time,

-— Isarra ༆ 21:43, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 15
Newsletter • September 2019

A final update, for now:

The third grant-funded round of WikiProject X has been completed. Unfortunately, while this round has not resulted in a deployed product, I am not planning to resume working on the project for the foreseeable future. Please see the final report for more information.

Regards,

-— Isarra ༆ 19:24, 29 September 2019 (UTC)