Grants:IEG/Rethinking Meta-Wiki

status: withdrawn

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eligibility and selection criteria

project:

Rethinking Meta-Wiki

project contact:

jamesmharegmail.com

participants:

James Hare

summary:

With an evaluation of its content and workflows, Meta can evolve from a dumping ground to a movement-wide collaboration tool.

2013 round 2

Project idea

What do we use Meta-Wiki for?

Meta-Wiki was created in November of 2001 as "Meta-Wikipedia," to store the community documentation and discussions that were unsuitable for the Wikipedia proper. Twelve years later, so much has changed: several new sister projects have been established, including Wiktionary and Wikidata; the Wikimedia community has grown significantly to include volunteers throughout the world, collaborating in more than 200 languages; and the Wikimedia Foundation, founded in 2003, uses Meta-Wiki extensively for administering its grant programs (the Individual Engagement Grant program being an example).

Meta is fundamentally defined as a collaborative wiki-space for the benefit of the entire Wikimedia community. However, as the community has grown and the role of Meta has diversified, its structure has not kept pace. A discussion on Meta's usability and purposes, as well as an exhaustive analysis of Meta's current contents, are the requisite tasks that must be completed before we can consider redesigning Meta's home and navigational pages. This redesign will focus on improving Meta's workflow, such that anyone can land on the front page and figure out where they need to go. An overhauled Meta would thus be usable not only by the inner core of Wikimedians, but by third-party stakeholders such as GLAMs and educational institutions.

Project goals

Access to the resources of the Wikimedia movement

The short-term goal of this project is to make Meta easier to navigate for everyone. This serves the broader goal of enabling increased participation in the Wikimedia movement by making information and discussions hosted on Meta accessible to more people, including both current Wikimedians who have not been able to figure out Meta's current layout, as well as third-party institutions interested in developing a closer relationship with the Wikimedia community.

Project plan

Scope:

Scope and activities

The focus of this project is the navigational structure of Meta-Wiki, including the main page and related navigational pages. This project has four main components:

Content analysis—Meta has over 30,000 content pages, according to Special:Statistics. This does not include pages sorted into specialized namespaces, such as the Grants, Research, or Participation namespaces, which encompass entire sub-projects within Meta. Different pages on Meta serve different functions; some pages are proposals, while others are essays, project reports, or descriptions of Wikimedia affiliate organizations. Yet there is currently no clear organizational scheme to these pages; it is very difficult to discover these pages unless you know exactly what page titles or categories to look for. The current main page does not help matters either, since different page elements are given arbitrary weight, with navigational links scattered throughout the page. Since the goal of this project is to make Meta easier to navigate for everyone, it is necessary to first understand what is on Meta (as well as what isn't on Meta, such as outreach-related content that visitors may be looking for). The main deliverables of this component include a prepared analysis of the contents of Meta, detailing the different types of pages, the category structure, and the navigational systems that cause users of Meta to end up on different pages. This component will take 1-3 months to complete.

Stakeholder discussion—Concurrent with the content analysis, a request for comment regarding Meta's function and organization will be held. This discussion will be guided by specific questions, including "what do you use Meta for?", "how satisfied are you by how Meta is organized?", and "how would you change Meta?" Prospective participants in this request for comment include both current active users on Meta, who have the most insight on how Meta currently works, as well as other movement actors who do not use Meta on a regular basis but do potentially have a use for it. To ensure maximum participation, this RFC will be promoted through mailing list posts, posts to relevant Wikimedia wikis (such as the outreach wiki), and a Wikimedia Blog post (which I volunteer to write), in addition to the usual promotional channels available on Meta. In addition to the RFC, I would be reaching out to the various groups that use Meta, including the Wikimedia Foundation Grants Program and the Wikimedia chapters, to gain insight on how their particular corners of Meta operate. The main goal of this component is to achieve a consensus on the organizational needs of Meta, as well as to increase awareness of the need to improve Meta's organization. The main deliverable of this component include a summary of the findings of the RFC, as well as a description of what consensus there is, if any. This component will take 1-2 months to complete.

Design and implementation—Following community debate and content analysis, the process of designing a new main page for Meta and auxiliary navigational pages and templates (as needed) will begin. I will be proposing different design layouts; however, others will be welcome to submit their own proposals. Proposals should be grounded in modern web design principles and an interest in promoting ease of access to Meta's contents, ensuring that Meta's contents are discoverable by experienced Wikimedians and interested third-parties alike. Proposals should also be modular, such that they can be readily adapted to the changing needs of Meta without requiring frequent revisions. Auxiliary navigational templates and pages should be proposed as needed to ensure smooth navigation on Meta beyond the main page. All pages and templates should be designed in a similar fashion to promote a consistent visual identity on Meta. A design, or set of design principles, will be implemented only with the consensus of the community. This component will take 1-2 months to complete. Preliminary ideas for this redesign include:

• Large, button-style links directing users to different sub-projects and documentation pages within Meta
• A fundamental organization scheme based on different audiences that use Meta, including chapter volunteers and third-party organizations
• A clearer designation of discussion spaces, using a system comparable to that of English Wikipedia's article request for comment system, tailored to Meta's specific needs
• A redesigned workflow for translation of Meta pages, to more easily facilitate translation of Meta pages into different languages

Documentation and internationalization—Presumably the Wikimedia movement will find new uses for Meta. So that the efforts of this project survive in the long term, the resulting pages and processes should be documented so that the navigations of Meta should be updated accordingly. Documentation should contain guidance on how to adapt the system for changes to Meta's scope. This would not require pre-clearance for new Meta use cases; rather, the operating assumption is that they will happen and they should be duly accommodated. Documentation should also include instructions on internationalization and localization, to help promote uniform navigation across Meta. The main deliverable of this component will be documentation within the project namespace. This component will take one month to complete, not including page localization undertaken by volunteers.

Tools, technologies, and techniques

Discussions and reports will be facilitated through a project-space page on Meta with a title such as Meta:Rethinking Meta-Wiki, which will include subpages for requests for comment and draft page designs.

Content analysis—Three methods of analysis will be employed, each focusing on different aspects of Meta-Wiki: a mapping of the category tree, a site map based on the number of clicks to get from the main page or side bar to different pages on Meta, and a manual coding of each page on Meta. The category tree analysis indicates what different types of pages there are on Meta, while the site map analyzes how discoverable these different types of pages are. The coding of each page on Meta completes the picture: what pages are there on Meta that are accessible from neither the category tree, the main page, nor the side bar? How do the main page and the side bar differ in how they direct visitors, and do either tools do an adequate job at aiding with navigation? MediaWiki API tools will aid in this analysis.

Stakeholder discussion—At the beginning of the project, a request for comment will be prepared and posted to Meta. This RFC will designed with the intent to begin a conversation on Meta's utility within the movement. To that end, participants from throughout the Wikimedia movement will be invited to participate, including those who regularly use Meta as well as those who do not. The RFC will be promoted through external channels such as mailing lists and IRC, as well as a Wikimedia Blog post; however, discussions should take place on Meta itself. As the state of Meta is fully considered the RFC will transition to a discussion of an action plan to improve Meta, to ensure that the project stays focused and on schedule.

Design and implementation—Based on reports of the above components, I will work on a design for a new main page. The process will begin with the establishment of fundamental principles, based on the outcome of the RFC and the issues revealed by the content analysis. Having these principles determined in advance helps to ensure that the proposals—different they may be—gradually converge toward a consensus. A consensus will be established once one proposal has far more support than others. Since I will be participating as a designer, an uninvolved person should determine the consensus. Once such a consensus is established, the prevailing proposal will be implemented across Meta, first in English and then in other languages.

Documentation and internationalization—Documentation will be prepared on a Meta project space page with a title such as Meta:Maintaining Meta. If a similar page already exists, efforts should focus on improving that page. Translations will be facilitated through TranslateWiki. If a translation management workflow develops on Meta as an outcome of this project, that will also be used to facilitate the TranslateWiki translations (and for future translations of Meta pages).

Budget:

Total amount requested

US $ 10,000

Budget breakdown

I request this funding so that I may manage this project on a full-time basis for the six-month grant period. This would allow me to carry out the requisite analysis, design, documentation, and discussion facilitation tasks, and ensure that the project stays on task and is completed within a reasonable amount of time.

Intended impact:

Target audience

This project is intended to make information and processes available to the Wikimedia community as a whole, as well as interested third parties. Those interested in participating as Wikimedia-wide organizers (chapter heads, outreach event planners, etc.) stand to benefit the most from this project.

Fit with strategy

The primary goal of this project is to improve access to the resources (human, intellectual, and financial) of the Wikimedia movement. One of the stipulated strategic goals of the Wikimedia Foundation is to increase participation, including to "encourage the health and growth of Wikimedia communities and the projects they sustain." The Wikimedia Foundation has, to date, made an extraordinary effort in improving the usability of its software to promote contributions. In time, these software improvements will grow the community of Wikimedia volunteers.

However, building the Wikimedia community requires a community-wide portal and workspace that anyone can use, just as how Wikipedia requires an editing interface usable by anyone. Meta-Wiki's uses are many: it is an archive of accrued wisdom and experiences; the home to several discussion spaces, including proposals for new projects; and the host of certain Wikimedia Foundation projects, including the Wikimedia Foundation grants programs. If these participation mechanisms are not readily accessible to newcomers, it limits their ability to participate in the Wikimedia movement. It is the ambition of this project to parlay casual volunteers into deeply-engaged movement participants to grow our base of organizers and to ameliorate inevitable volunteer attrition.

Sustainability

While the main reorganization work will be complete after six months, the project is designed to have a lasting effect on Meta. One of the required outcomes is a modular page design that can be adapted to future use cases, as well as documentation that describes how the navigation system was created and how to best adapt it to new uses. The community may, in the future, want to redo the main page or the entire system, but there should be enough of a structure in place that it would be doable on a volunteer basis. Very little would have to be done by scratch.

Measures of success

Measures of success include both qualitative measures of community feedback and quantitative measures based on the principle that a Meta that is easier to navigate should further enable the discovery of pages.

Community feedback—Those who participated in the original request for comment on usability will be contacted and asked to participate in a survey regarding their satisfaction with the redesign. Links to the survey will also be featured throughout Meta. This survey will be tailored to those who use Meta very frequently in addition to occasional users. If the project is successful, the majority of survey responses will indicate that the redesign is helpful in letting users find what they are looking for.

Page views—During the project, certain pages will be identified as "key" pages. Such pages serve as primary pages for projects within Meta or otherwise are general landing pages that lead users to other, more specific pages on Meta. As such pages are identified, their monthly page view count will be tracked, with measurement of the rate of page view increase/decrease per month. As the redesign of Meta's main page and navigational pages is implemented, these pages will then have their rates of page view increase/decrease per month compared against Meta pre-redesign. If this redesign is successful in creating a more coherent navigational structure, over time the rate of page view increases should increase over time. In statistical terms, the null hypothesis is that the redesign has no effect on page views and the alternative hypothesis is that the redesign causes an increase in page views. This is more of a long-term metric and would not prove useful for any reports prepared immediately following the completion of the project, but it would be useful data to track over time.

Referer tracking (optional)—I am not sure if this technology is available on Meta, and it is not crucial for this project, but it is worth considering. For each key page, referer data will be tracked to measure how people are accessing a given page. Access through direct URL input will be compared against access through other pages on Meta and through pages outside of Meta. Following the redesign, this referer data will be monitored for changes over a period of time. If the project is successful, the share of page views coming from referer links within Meta will increase as a share of page views.

Participant(s)

I, James Hare, would be the facilitator of this project. I have been a Wikipedia editor since 2004 and I have strong ties to the Wikimedia community through my Wikipedia work and through my role on the Board of Directors of Wikimedia District of Columbia, a regional Wikimedia chapter. (Note that I am applying for this grant in a strictly personal capacity, and this would not conflict with any role I would have with my chapter.)

From 2007 until 2011 I developed and maintained several bots on the English Wikipedia, including RFC bot, RM bot, GA bot, and One bot. In developing these automated processes I worked with groups of Wikipedia maintenance volunteers to develop solutions to inefficient procedural workflows on English Wikipedia. As a result of this effort, the amount of work necessary to list article RFCs or good article nominations has been reduced, making it easier to coordinate discussions across English Wikipedia. New features also came out of this work, including Wikipedia Dashboard, visited 4,980 times from June–August 2013, and Feedback Request Service, used by 394 Wikipedians (as of September 1, 2013) to get notifications about requests for comment and good article nominations. These new features have further facilitated online collaboration.

I stepped aside from bot work to run Wikimania 2012 with a team of dozens of organizers, volunteers, and contractors based in the Washington, D.C. area and around the world. As Coordinator, I managed vendor relationships, secured partnerships with organizations, managed budgets, communicated planning updates, and prepared extensive reports of the conference, including the rewritten Wikimania Handbook. The conference had a total budget of $550,000, with 1,400 attendees participating over the course of six days.

Web and graphic design is a hobby of mine; I am proficient in HTML and CSS. One of my recent personal projects was redesigning the main page of Wikimedia DC's website, as well as a mobile adaptation of the MediaWiki Vector skin for Wikimedia DC's website (view wikimediadc.org on a mobile device!). I also designed the logos for Wikimania 2012 and, more recently, Wikipedia Takes America 2013.

Discussion

Community Notification:

Please paste a link to where the relevant communities have been notified of this proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions, here.

• I have created a thread on Meta:Babel

Endorsements:

Do you think this project should be selected for an Individual Engagement Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project in the list below. Other feedback, questions or concerns from community members are also highly valued, but please post them on the talk page of this proposal.

• Community member: add your name and rationale here.