CampaignEvents/Collaboration list

Overview

The Collaboration List (formerly known as Event List) is a global, automated list of events on the wikis. It can be accessed by going to SpecialːAllEvents. This feature, which is part of the CampaignEvents extension, centralizes events across wikis onto one calendar. Organizers don’t need to do any extra work for their event to appear on the Collaboration List. As long as they use Event Registration, their event will be visible to users around the world. The Collaboration List also includes filters, so users can easily search for specific types of events.

This feature was created by the Campaigns team. With this project, we want to make it easier for people to find events that interest them. This way, more people can join events, contribute to the wikis in collaborative group efforts, and connect with other contributors. We also want to make it easier for organizers to promote their events, so they can reach new audiences who may be interested in their events. Finally, we want to create more visibility for everyone regarding event organizing in the movement.

Background

This work is rooted in the longstanding request to to have a global, on-wiki event calendar. We have heard related requests in the Community Wishlist Survey (see Global events calendar), in Phabricator (see T303863 and T1035), and in our own office hours and communication with organizers. More broadly, this work is related to our team's work to improve event discovery on the wikis. Through our research, we have learned that it is difficult for many organizers to promote their events on the wikis, and many contributors do not know how to find events that may interest them. The Collaboration List aims to help address this problem.

While there are many calendars in the movement, there has been no calendar like the Collaboration List: global, automated, with search filters, and on the wikis. With this calendar, we hope to offer discoverability and ease of use in a way that has not yet been available. However, we also understand that the Collaboration List is a new feature, and there many improvements that we can make. We plan to expand and refine the Event List over time, taking inspiration from past requests and use cases that have been shared over the years.

Our Approach

First, we want to improve the Collaboration List by making it more user-friendly and intuitive. We have documented many of the potential improvements in T362881. Our first priority is to allow users to hide/display ongoing events (T365859), and we would like to hear from you all about what we should work on next.

Second, we want to add more search filters, so users can more easily find events that interest them. To do this, we will need to collect more data from organizers when they enable event registration, such as: the wiki(s) of the event (T366765), the event type (T355253), and the event topic (T362259). For in person and hybrid events, we also want to collect more precise data on the location of the event, so we are interested in geocoding support (see T316126).

Third, we want to make the Collaboration List more discoverable in the future. Right now, the Event List is not something that someone can naturally stumble upon in the wikis, but we want to change this. We are interested in identifying potential pathways of discovery for users that can feel useful and non-intrusive.

Finally, we are planning to expand the Collaboration List to include WikiProjects. This way, we can make it easier for people to find not only events, but also groups and communities on the wikis that may interest them. Through this work, we can also begin collaborating with the people behind WikiProjects, so we can learn about how we can better support them and their workflows.

Open Questions

Note: The old term of "Event List" is kept in this section for continuity, since we used this old term in the talk page discussion.

Below, we have some questions for everyone, and we look forward to reading your feedback on the project talk page.

1. What are your overall thoughts on the Event List?
2. How can we improve the Event List?
3. How can we make the Event List more discoverable?
4. We want to expand the Event List to include WikiProjects. What do you think of this idea, and do you have any suggestions for how we can do this?

Please share your feedback on the project talk page!

Status updates

November 22, 2024: Wikidata item links now in the Collaboration List

You can now find links to a given Wikidata item for a WikiProject in the Collaboration list, which can be found by clicking on the pencil icon next to each WikiProject listing. The purpose of this link is to encourage all contributors to edit and improve the Wikidata items, so that we can all benefit from more comprehensive and detailed information about WikiProjects.

October 29, 2024: Collaboration List launched

The Event List has now been expanded to include a new tab, which is called "Communities." When you click on the tab, you can find all the WikiProjects on the local wiki that you are on, as defined by Wikidata. Now that we have expanded the Event List to include WikiProjects, we have decided to rename it the "Collaboration list", since it is a place to find many different forms of collaboration on the wikis.

As next steps, we are now working on making the Collaboration List more discoverable, which can be followed in T377861.

August 30, 2024: Expanding the Event List to include WikiProjects

We have begun early development work to expand the Event List to include WikiProjects. We will do by this by creating a new tab ("Communities"), which will display WikiProjects. Meanwhile, events will continue to be displayed, but they will now be under the "Events" tab. For this first version, we will only be displaying WikiProjects on the local wiki that the user is on. So, for example, if a user is on Swahili Wikipedia, they will see the WikiProjects of Swahili Wikipedia. However, we may consider further improvements in the future so that users can search for and discover WikiProjects across wikis.

Overall, we decided to pursue this expansion because we believe that the Event list can be a place of discovery for not only events, but also communities and groups. We want to start with a simple first version of this expansion, so we can learn from community feedback, but we may issue further improvements after the initial release. We may also want to rename the Event List, since it will no longer focus on events only. We are thinking of calling it the "Community List," but we want to know what ideas other people may have.

To learn more, you can see design examples of this expansion in T368115 and you can follow to work to build the simple first version in T372691. You can follow the list of ideas for potential improvements after our initial first version in T371623.