Wikimedia Conference 2014/Documentation/24

24 Software development as a new opportunity for chapters

Emmanuel talking
Slides (pdf) by Emmanuel
Handout (pdf) by Emmanuel

tl;dr:

  • Don't be too ambitious. Many things will fail, but that's not a problem. Involve volunteers.
  • WMUK is looking at a project to automatically rate article and media file quality.

Notes

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Emmanuel Engelhart (WMCH) soft dev.

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Introduced his background, here makes the speech as a developer.

  • Why it is important to invest in software? The question of working with free knowledge is how we have to do it.
  • It is not good to let WMF decide what is necessary.
  • Software projects are risky, it is possible to lose much money.
  • There are 2 types of projects: integration or software dev (from scratch). Focus is on the last.
It must be ae an emancipation factor
  • Free software is a good decision because of access to the source code, save privacy
  • It is important to deal with the endusers
  • No solution works out of the box. If you by an external solution, please test it.
Thoughts about Software development projects
  • Chapters want to be big players in software projects but don't have money
  • there are many volunteers with computing background
  • you have to work with them as partners
  • KIWIX is a volunteer project (7 ways to go offline); see http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page/de
  • WMCH is not big enough, but there is much to do in development
  • KIWIX is used in Afripedia and other projects, also with hardware
  • volunteers work for fun - make that happen
  • more people are working for money - that is not the same
  • support people with information and publishing - that costs not much and is important for them
  • connect these volunteers with people in international teams (MediaWiki, Softewaredev come together, ...)
  • many of these vol developers have no project management - support this for them, Chapters and WMF have the possibility
  • you don't need much money
  • important is a project page, takes one hour but is very important
GLAMWikiToolSet
Conclusion
  • not be to ambitious
  • much will fail - that is not a problem
  • give projects a change
  • most important are the people, right people can do enough
  • it works not like Wikipedia does
  • Try to involve volunteers!

Michael Maggs (WMUK) - WikiRate: rating Wikimedia

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Slides (pdf) by Michael

A plan for tech work that is being considered by WMUK. How to rate article and media file quality.

For more details, see https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Technology_Committee/Project_requests/WikiRate_-_rating_Wikimedia

How can you measure your impact? Target must be smart. This is an overview, what can be done.

  • Increasing need for chapters to measure using SMART targets
  • SMART means Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely
  • Measuring article and media file quality (as opposed to quantity) is very difficult and expensive at the moment. Mostly done by hand.
  • We want to provide an easy-to-use set of tools to rate article and media file quality.
Other Work
Who could use?
  • Chapters to measure their impacts
  • Educationalists
  • Individual editors
  • Academic and Wiki researchers
  • Foundations analytics team
How to create the model
  • Score some articles/media files manually
  • List of possible inputs, and desired outputs
  • Adjust (train) the model using standard machine learning techniques
Apply the trained model
  • Use trained model to rate articles and media files automatically by quality.
  • Keeps FDC happy if you can report hard numbers to them!
  • Use the Mailinglist List from the foundation to find projects and other developers
  • How to extimate Softwareprojects?