Grants:IEG/WikiProject X/Renewal/Timeline
This project is funded by an Individual Engagement Grant
This Individual Engagement Grant is renewed
| renewal scope | timeline & progress | finances | midpoint report | final report |
Timeline for WikiProject X edit
| Timeline | Date |
| First version of CollaborationKit ready for demonstration | 31 October 2016 |
| CollaborationKit deployed to English Wikipedia and used on WikiProject X pilot projects | 30 November 2016 |
Monthly updates edit
Please prepare a brief project update each month, in a format of your choice, to share progress and learnings with the community along the way. Submit the link below as you complete each update.
January (pre-renewal period) edit
Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:
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.)
- 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.)
February edit
This month:
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) 01:43, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
March and April edit
This month:
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 article=, category=, or wikiproject=, and the list will be transcluded. For example, for requests having to do with all living people, just do {{Wikipedia Requests|category=Living people}}. 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!
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:Wikipedia Requests#Transition project and help out. Doing this will help put your list in front of more eyes—more than just your own WikiProject.
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 s52475__wpx_p. The table that associates WikiProjects with articles and drafts is called projectindex. Pages are stored by talk page title but in the future this should change. Have fun!
- 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)
May edit
June edit
July edit
Is your final report due but you need more time?
Extension request edit
New end date edit
30 November 2016
Rationale edit
We have run into numerous challenges developing the CollaborationKit extension, which was not originally envisioned for the grant renewal. This resulted in months of delays, especially as we needed to make adjustments to our team to accommodate the new technical requirements. However, we are now making good progress and are expecting to launch CollaborationKit by the end of November. Once we have done so, we will file a report detailing our progress to date, with a follow-up report after three months describing further CollaborationKit adoption. harej (talk) 01:34, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
Extension approved edit
I'm approving a new project end date of 30 November 2016 for WikiProject X, with the report due 30 days later. Marti (WMF) (talk) 21:06, 20 October 2016 (UTC)