Wikimedia Meta-Wiki

WikiFundi/2018

< WikiFundi

Context

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How it was built in 2016-2017 : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiFundi/en

Was built in Fall 2016 by Anthere and Kelson42.

There were two versions prepared. One specifically for Orange Foundation (september 2016) and one for the general public (january 2017). Here below is the description of the general set up.

Step 1 :
Anthere prepared the pages to be included in the wiki.
The pages in French : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Wikipack_Africa
All pages to include in WikiFundi were tagged with the following category : <wiki>Catégorie:Projet Wikipack Africa Contenu</nowiki>
The pages in English : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikipack_Africa
All pages to include in WikiFundi were taggued with the following category : [[Category:WikiProject Wikipack Africa Content]]

Those pages were threesome

  • some were generic pages to introduce WikiFundi and navigate on it.
  • some pages were Wikipedia articles used as ‘’examples’’ (such as FA articles or articles on schools or villages)
  • some pages were purposefully chosen as they included specific templates that we wanted to see used on WikiFundi (such as an infobox related to villages for example)

Step 2 :
Kelson set up two intermediary wikis (one to receive the French version, the other the English version).
The French was hosted there : http://fr.africapack.kiwix.org
The English was hosted there : http://en.africapack.kiwix.org
Those wikis being temporary, they have been closed and are no longer available at this point.

Step 3 : Content pages were retrieved by Kelson (thanks to the category) then imported in the intermediary wikis. To the best of my knowledge, this has been automated so that could be done as painfully and quickly as possible.

Step 4 : Kelson ran a bot over the English and French Wikipedias and collected all templates used “a significant number of times” in the encyclopedia. This was meant to gather most templates often used, but let aside all those of minor use. To the best of my knowledge, this has been automated so that could be done as painfully and quickly as possible.

Step 5 : All those selected templates were imported on the intermediary wikis.

Step 6 : each of the imported pages on the wiki was checked as well as general functionning. Some templates were missing and were added to the general “select then import” bot. Some extensions had to be added as well. We did several reimport, recheck, reimport, recheck till all necessarily templates were there and the system basically working.

Step 7 : Anthere selected a whole bunch of additional ressources : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipack_Africa_Resources (those are images, or pdf, or videos). Those are made available within the WikiFundi as a WikiPage, as well as regular documents in a specific folder on the SD card from the home.

Step 8 : A list of all elements to add on the SD card was prepared for a unique image.
Those elements include

  • WikiFund in English
  • WkiFundi in French
  • the package of ressources above mentionned (images, videos, pdf)
  • some Kiwix resources (offline Wikipedia etc.)

Step 9 : Kelson exported the whole intermediary wikis and set up an image to download the entire package : http://download.kiwix.org/plug/ The full package is nearly 200 GB

Step 10 : Kelson set up a github entry to report bugs : https://github.com/kelson42/wikifundi/issues

What is envisionned in 2018

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In general :

  • Fixing of bugs reported by users
  • Improvements as suggested by users and project leaders (some “content related”, some “software related”, some “package related”)
  • Addition of tutorials to facilitate the adoption of the tool, inspired from tutorials made in French as part of the WikiMooc

Provisionnal lists of “tech tasks”

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1= top 2=medium 3=bottom priority

Open a project on phabricator (A)

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https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Creating_and_renaming_projects

request rejected

Testing on all plateforms (F)

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Or at least many. Windows, Mac etc. Tablet. Phone.

The captive window on macintosh (E)

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So here is the problem I meet with what I call "the captive window issue".

The issue happens with when using WikiFundi on the Raspberry. When I switch on the Raspberry, a network becomes available (named WikiFundi). I can connect to it.

The display differs depending on which OS I am using.

When using a computer operating under Windows (or Android for that matter), the WikiFundi plateform can be opened in launching a browser such as Firefox or Chrome. In this case, the software opens in a completely regular browser window. As every browser window, there are all functionalities, such as "redimension the window", "going backward", "going forward" or "several tabs").

When using a computer operating under Mac OS, upon joining the WikiFundi network, a window automatically launch and display the software plateform. It is not possible to use the regular browser (this one simply indicates that I am connected to Internet). This window automatically opened has a fixed size (it can not be increased or decreased or closed, only moved around). There are two buttons to go backward and forward. But that's it. No tabs, nor the regular functionalities available on a internet browser window. At the bottom of this window, we see written "captive.apple.com".

What is VERY annoying with this situation is that the size of the window is fixed... and actually quite small. Making editing the wiki very burdensome as only a small portion of the wiki page is visible. The fact we can not use a tab system to have several windows opened is also making editing difficult. And of course, nothing like "printing", "export" and so on...

Note that the problem is 100% reproducible. It is a permanent issue. It can be simply seen for anyone who has

  • a mac with os and a pc (with windows or android)
  • a raspb, an SD card, and the wikifundi software

Link to visuals : https://drive.google.com/open?id=19aE4NjRwXJH1d9CZL_Ct2gbIKVa7EqZe

See also : https://github.com/kelson42/wikifundi/issues/2

Also mentionned It was smooth only that, the signing page sometimes showed as a pop up on a mac and not in the browser. So if students mistakenly closed the pop up window we had to restart the device or disconnect and connect again to have the login window on their pcs.

Access to videos of the French WikiMooc (E - 3)

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Last year… it worked. I am sure of that. Now… when I try to access those videos (on OS Mac or on iphone), I get an error (see screenshot).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1e7Bs92JIYV7VBaKE2g_yoEOk1R7MJnFr

Access to pdf resources on the WikiPack (E- 2)

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Several resources are made available. They are either images, or videos, or pdf. Those are proposed via links.

The documents in pdf are not displayed on Macintoh OS (they are displayed on iphone though). There is no alert message displayed. Just, when someone click on the link… nothing happens.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ImxUgJqyPac0MOc9EPNSCV-3hjywCc8S

See also : https://github.com/kelson42/wikifundi/issues/3


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The current bundle proposes access to Kiwix offline resources, namely Wikipedia offline, Wiktionary offline, Wikiquote offline. The navigation system within the display is unclear to the user. At the top of the screen, there is a navigation bar that displays

Library -- Home -- Random.

Library actually brings us back to the home page of the entire bundle. Home brings us back to the home of the offline resource (eg, Wikipedia offline). It would be way clearer to rename those buttons, with labels becoming

Home -- Wikipedia -- Random
or
Home -- WIktionary -- Random
or
Home -- Wikiquote -- Random

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The preferred language is not “kept” when navigating in and out of the Kiwix resources. For example, suppose the French language is selected, Then I go to Wikipedia (it is in French) I click on “Library” to go back to the home screen, then I get back to the English version by default.

Welcome page needs serious update for usability (1. Qui ?)

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the visuals (the folders representing the different elements) are too large. It creates visibility issues on small screens, phones or Mac captive windows. each visuals need to be associated to a small explanation of what’s in it (for example, the folder representing WikiSource actually need to explain that this allow access to an offline version of Wikisource, the blablabla At the bottom of this screen, we need to update the “contact and credits”. and last… we plan to provide different bundles, so the welcome page needs to be fully reworked to address that situation

See also : https://github.com/kelson42/wikifundi/issues/8
and https://github.com/kelson42/wikifundi/issues/7

Release bundles (Kelson-1)

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At the moment, we propose only one bundle that contains

  • English WikiFundi
  • French WikiFundi
  • Offline Wikipedia, wikiquote, wikisource and wiktionary in English
  • Offline Wikipedia, wikiquote, wikisource and wiktionary in French
  • Other ressources in English (wikipack)
  • Other ressources in French (wikipack)
  • Videos of the French WikiMooc

All that together makes an image of nearly 200 GB. That’s simply too much to be practical. It is hard and very long to create images on the SD cards And require 200 GB cards, which are hard to find and expensive

Also, we would like to propose Vikidia in French

Solution :
We would like to propose several bundles (of smaller sizes) rather than only one big one with everything. Exact composition of bundles to estimate. Currently thinking of

  • WikiFundi English only
  • WikiFundi French only
  • Full pack English only
  • Full pack French only (with Vikidia)
  • Only WikiFundi, but English and French

For reference : last year : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vdF7XsPGroolzWaHWMF7LsHo7KGuqbnvv1YxUufAd3c/edit?usp=sharing

Time display (2)

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Currently no time tracking in the package. So the Recent Changes timestamps are naturally … incorrect. Need to know what is needed so that timestamps are preserved. How much would that cost.

According to Internet in a box : Time chip (1 dollar according to Internet in a box) so that the Wiki log would be correct


Add Image description templates when uploading pictures (1)

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At the moment, users can upload pictures on the wikifundi. However, there is no default template proposed. So users tend to upload the pictures with no information (description, author, source, licence) whatsoever. This really does not convey the right thing to do it. It does not teach them how important it is. And even knowledgable people will tend not to put anything. Then when pictures are uploaded on Commons… it is a really an issue as the information is not available. We do need to propose a list of licences during the import, even to upload pictures on WikiFundi and we need to propose a default description template.

Export page content (1)

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Context : when people are done with their page on WikiFundi, they may want to import it to Wikipedia or Vikidia. Problem is that, whilst wikipedians know better and copy and paste the wikicode so that everything stays nicely formatted, non-wikipedians are not confortable doing so. In situation of use in disconnected schools, teachers usually did a copy paste of the text, directly on the screen, and provided that for integration. Explaining them to go directly to the wikicode was difficult and scary to many of us.

Also, the copy paste of the screen also lead to the complete loss of information related to the pictures !

The export system should also try to collect the information related to images, included in the image description (not in the article itself). Perhaps putting it somewhere into comments so that it is recorded somewhere ?

I think a HUGE benefit to this new version would be to add a button ”export” to each page. Export would create a regular document with the entire wikicode included in the wiki page, to be directly saved on the computer of the person. The document would include a header in comment displaying an info such as “content exported from the article xxx in WikiFundi on date ddmmyy. Import that text in Wiki on online wikis such as Wikipedia”


Mirror credit files (2)

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The files currently used to illustrate the FA articles have been picked up from Wikimedia Commons. They do not reflect the credit/description. This was noted last year, but we ran out of time to implement. Images description from Commons should be collected and displayed on WikiFundi.

Guide tour extension (Emmanuel - 1)

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Add the guide tour extension to the Media Wiki set up. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GuidedTour


Create, or adapt onwiki tutorial in French and English (Florence and someone with javascript skills) (1)

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References : In French

In English

Stuff to see how the French tutorials work

Main need on this… someone knowledgeable in mediawiki and javascript to help set up the tutorials.

Other tech issues reported to explore and evaluate

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Autodisplay

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Issue described here : https://github.com/kelson42/wikifundi/issues/9 Is there anything that can be done to fix that ? Or is that entirely out of our hands ?


Adding sources issue

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https://github.com/kelson42/wikifundi/issues/6

Loss of password

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In the online MediaWiki sphere… lost password are recovered by email. No such thing can work here. However, the issue was reported by many teachers (whose students lost their password and teachers were unhappy to have no way to either recover it, or force it reset).

I am not sure there is an easy solution to that. Is there ?

Other questions

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Can WikiFundi might consider installations on laptops too (if not being done already) ?

Yes. Plan update of guide though.

Pages content (Florence)

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Archive English and French previous versions

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  Done Anthere (talk) 11:35, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Add WikiChallenge articles to French versions

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With addition of a page regarding to WikiFundi uses in 2017.

todo Florence

Update ressources

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Todo Florence and Isla

Create Tutorials

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English and French.

Todo Florence and Isla

Update all general pages

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English and French.

Notes:

  • must make it clearer on the home page that login is mandatory (at the moment, there are no alerts). This needs to be clarified very visibily in the booklet guide
  • Change homepage to reflect "list of articles available" rather than recent changes.

Communication

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Update UserGuide

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After tech updates

Explainer video

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todo Isla

Upgrade website

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Newsletter

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contact database
newsletter
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