Grants:Project/DannyS712/Create a global watchlist extension/Final

This project is funded by a Project Grant

proposal

people

timeline & progress

finances

midpoint report

final report

Report under review

This Project Grant report has been submitted by the grantee, and is currently being reviewed by WMF staff. If you would like to add comments, responses, or questions about this grant report, you can create a discussion page at this redlink.

• To read the approved grant submission for this project, please visit Grants:Project/DannyS712/Create a global watchlist extension.

• Review the reporting requirements to better understand the reporting process.
• Review all Project Grant reports under review.
• Please Email projectgrantswikimedia.org if you have additional questions.

Welcome to this project's final report! This report shares the outcomes, impact and learnings from the grantee's project.

Part 1: The Project

Summary

I successfully created an extension, mw:Extension:GlobalWatchlist, to replace my global watchlist user script, and got that extension deployed to meta. It can now be used by visiting Special:GlobalWatchlist.

Project Goals

Create a functional, integrated global watchlist

This was the only goal of the grant, and was accomplished. The "global watchlist" allows users to view changes to watched pages for multiple sites at once, and is integrated into MediaWiki via the extension system. Since the extension is deployed on Meta, it can be used by users of WMF wikis.

Project Impact

Important: The Wikimedia Foundation is no longer collecting Global Metrics for Project Grants. We are currently updating our pages to remove legacy references, but please ignore any that you encounter until we finish.

Targets

1. In the first column of the table below, please copy and paste the measures you selected to help you evaluate your project's success (see the Project Impact section of your proposal). Please use one row for each measure. If you set a numeric target for the measure, please include the number.
2. In the second column, describe your project's actual results. If you set a numeric target for the measure, please report numerically in this column. Otherwise, write a brief sentence summarizing your output or outcome for this measure.
3. In the third column, you have the option to provide further explanation as needed. You may also add additional explanation below this table.

Planned measure of success (include numeric target, if applicable)	Actual result	Explanation
During the project, I will write the code needed for the extension, test it, and continue to develop it	Done	The code was written and tested, and is available at git:mediawiki/extensions/GlobalWatchlist
Once the project is over, the software will remain available for use	Done	The software is still there

Story

Looking back over your whole project, what did you achieve? Tell us the story of your achievements, your results, your outcomes. Focus on inspiring moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes or anything that highlights the outcomes of your project. Imagine that you are sharing with a friend about the achievements that matter most to you in your project.

• This should not be a list of what you did. You will be asked to provide that later in the Methods and Activities section.
• Consider your original goals as you write your project's story, but don't let them limit you. Your project may have important outcomes you weren't expecting. Please focus on the impact that you believe matters most.

I successfully created an extension, mw:Extension:GlobalWatchlist, to replace my global watchlist user script, and got that extension deployed to meta. It can now be used by visiting Special:GlobalWatchlist.

Survey(s)

If you used surveys to evaluate the success of your project, please provide a link(s) in this section, then briefly summarize your survey results in your own words. Include three interesting outputs or outcomes that the survey revealed.

No surveys were used.

Other

Is there another way you would prefer to communicate the actual results of your project, as you understand them? You can do that here!

Methods and activities

Please provide a list of the main methods and activities through which you completed your project.

• I wrote the code for the extension and submitted it on gerrit
• I have set up a local installation of MediaWiki using MediaWiki Vagrant for local testing (see mw:MediaWiki-Vagrant)
• I added the GlobalWatchlist extension to the patchdemo tool to simplify testing new patches by both myself and others

Project resources

Please provide links to all public, online documents and other artifacts that you created during the course of this project. Even if you have linked to them elsewhere in this report, this section serves as a centralized archive for everything you created during your project. Examples include: meeting notes, participant lists, photos or graphics uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, template messages sent to participants, wiki pages, social media (Facebook groups, Twitter accounts), datasets, surveys, questionnaires, code repositories... If possible, include a brief summary with each link.

• mw:Extension:GlobalWatchlist (documentation page for the extension)
• git:mediawiki/extensions/GlobalWatchlist (code for the extension)
• phab:project/profile/4828/ (phabricator board of the extension, documenting both past work and potential future work)

Learning

The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you took enough risks in your project to have learned something really interesting! Think about what recommendations you have for others who may follow in your footsteps, and use the below sections to describe what worked and what didn’t.

What worked well

What did you try that was successful and you'd recommend others do? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.

• Learning patterns/Writing a new MediaWiki extension for deployment on a Wikimedia project
• Learning patterns/Git repository for software

What didn’t work

What did you try that you learned didn't work? What would you think about doing differently in the future? Please list these as short bullet points.

• I didn't have a cohesive roadmap for the eventual extension, so I spent some time on things that were eventually not needed, like the transitional support for the extension to save settings to the user's javascript subpage, or the settings api
• I filed tasks for the security and performance review fairly late in the process - I should have filed them at the start to get them on the radar of the relevant teams, with an explanation that the actual code wasn't ready to review yet

Other recommendations

If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please list them here.

Next steps and opportunities

Are there opportunities for future growth of this project, or new areas you have uncovered in the course of this grant that could be fruitful for more exploration (either by yourself, or others)? What ideas or suggestions do you have for future projects based on the work you’ve completed? Please list these as short bullet points.

• As phab:project/profile/4828/ shows there are a number of tasks for future addition of features
• I have requested another grant to continue development - Grants:Project/DannyS712/Continued work on GlobalWatchlist extension

Part 2: The Grant

Finances

Actual spending

Please copy and paste the completed table from your project finances page. Check that you’ve listed the actual expenditures compared with what was originally planned. If there are differences between the planned and actual use of funds, please use the column provided to explain them.

Expense	Approved amount	Actual funds spent	Difference
Work time (250 hours)	$10,000	$10,000	$0
Computer equipment	$1,000	$1,000	$0
Total	$11,000	$11,000	$0

Remaining funds

Do you have any unspent funds from the grant?

Please answer yes or no. If yes, list the amount you did not use and explain why.

• No

If you have unspent funds, they must be returned to WMF. Please see the instructions for returning unspent funds and indicate here if this is still in progress, or if this is already completed:

• (Not applicable, no funds to return)

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grantsadminwikimedia.org, according to the guidelines here?

Please answer yes or no. If no, include an explanation.

• Emailed with questions and an explanation of circumstances for missing documentation

Confirmation of project status

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?

Please answer yes or no.

• yes, to the best of my understanding

Is your project completed?

Please answer yes or no.

• yes

Grantee reflection

We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on what this project has meant to you, or how the experience of being a grantee has gone overall. Is there something that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed, or that you’ll do differently going forward as a result of the Project Grant experience? Please share it here!

This was a great experience. I was able to set my own schedule for writing the code, with the focus being on results, not hours. I hope to repeat the experience (I've requested more funding to continue development).