Move material/guidelines for general "Introduction to Wikimedia Tech" talk on a wikipage
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At Wikimania 2015 I ran an T102238: "Introduction to Wikimedia Tech" session (on first Hackathon day) (that task includes a list of web pages to show).
And @AndyRussG gave an (improved) version in Spanish, with slides and pretty nice graphics of the "stack": T105602: Spanish track: Introducción a las tecnologías del movimiento Wikimedia. Un espacio para los novatos y sus compañeros de hackeo. / Introduction to Wikimedia Tech for newcomers and their buddies.

Turn that into a (translatable) wikipage (we basically have en and es already) with bullet points. Add more specific examples to present to talk attendees, so the talk becomes less abstract and more hands-on (e.g. Template use etc).

Dumping a draft here:

An Introduction to and an Overview of Wikimedia Tech: Technical areas, Infrastructure, and Communication.

This talk only provides pointers and ideas. It's up to you to explore and create.
Wikimedia is big - many projects/sites, many languages, many areas to contribute to.
Content and code is free - it can also be used outside of the Wikimedia movement. Your technical contributions may benefit this wide community of communites, not just Wikimedia.
Overview graphic of areas: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wm_technical_areas.svg
MediaWiki Core (mostly PHP; also JavaScript, CSS, LESS and other languages; more than 0.5 million lines of code)
MediaWiki extensions: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Extensions (Extending MediaWiki Core functionality. PHP and JS. More than 2000 extensions available; nearly 100 used on Wikimedia sites)
MediaWiki Skins: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Skins (CSS/LESS/HTML; changes the appearance of a wiki)
Templates: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Templates (Lua; logic to process some content, controlled from within the same wiki)
User scripts and Gadgets (=popular user scripts): https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gadget_kitchen (JavaScript etc. on wiki pages which allows personalizing the individual experience of each user)
WebAPI: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page (Reuse and remix for your own needs.)
Related: XML and SQL dumps: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dumps
Bots: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Bots (e.g. based on the Pywikibot framework) (many programming languages; more than 1000 bots. External programs which use the API to automatically process/change and analyze content. Example areas: Importing, typos, vandalism.)
Labs and Tool Labs: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Tool_Labs (Virtual machine hosting environment for community developers working on tools and bots that help users maintain and use wikis. Examples for projects running on Tool Labs: https://tools.wmflabs.org/ )
- (Simplified: Compared to Bots, Tools always run, also when you're not around)
Testing: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Quality_Assurance (e.g. Ruby and Cucumber; QA and Browser test automation)
Native Mobile applications: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps (Objective-C, Java)
External desktop applications: Huggle (C++), AutoWikiBrowser (C#), ...
Wikimedia Site operations and technical infrastructure: https://github.com/wikimedia/operations-puppet , https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Puppet_coding (e.g. Puppet; design, configuration and maintenance of the Wikimedia cluster of services)
Variety of Programming languages: PHP, JavaScript, Lua, HTML, CSS/LESS, Objective-C, Java, C++, C#, ...

Infrastructure and tools for development collaboration
- Communication: on-wiki, IRC chat (pretty common among developers), mailing lists: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Communication
- Tracking and discussing tasks, bugs, enhancement requests in Phabricator: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator
- Source code repositories in Git and Code review in Gerrit: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gerrit

High-level overview of MediaWiki development: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hub
Introduction to developing MediaWiki: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker
Find something to get started! Easy tasks: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Annoying_little_bugs
Get inspired by what's going on by subscribing to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News (A weekly summary of highlights happening in technical areas)
Apart from code: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_contribute
Explore, create, share, collaborate, have fun!
What do you plan to work on? And how can we help you?

Related Objects

Mentioned In: T130829: Introduction to Wikimedia Tech (code areas, infrastructure tools, communication venues)
T125082: Prepare "Introduction to Wikimedia Tech" & "Intro to Phabricator" sessions for European Hackathon and WikiArabia
Mentioned Here: T102238: "Introduction to Wikimedia Tech" session (on first Hackathon day)
T105602: Spanish track: Introducción a las tecnologías del movimiento Wikimedia. Un espacio para los novatos y sus compañeros de hackeo. / Introduction to Wikimedia Tech for newcomers and their buddies

Event Timeline

Aklapper created this task.Jul 23 2015, 10:23 PM

Aklapper raised the priority of this task from to Low.

Aklapper updated the task description. (Show Details)

Aklapper added a project: Developer-Advocacy.

Aklapper added subscribers: Aklapper, AndyRussG.

Hi! Here are the slides and the graphic mentioned above. Hope they're useful!

Aklapper claimed this task.Jul 26 2015, 1:59 PM

Aklapper updated the task description. (Show Details)

Aklapper set Security to None.

Aklapper added a project: ECT-August-2015.

I've dumped an improved/updated list of topics above and adapted most of your pretty great descriptions of areas. Wasn't sure where to add Analytics and documentation but please feel free to add them.

Aklapper moved this task from Backlog to Ready to Go on the ECT-August-2015 board.Aug 3 2015, 7:51 PM

Qgil moved this task from To triage to July-September 2015 on the Developer-Advocacy board.Aug 8 2015, 9:08 AM

IMHO this is "ready to go" (copy above desc over to a wikipage) I'm just entirely clueless how to name that page on mediawiki.org or which pages should link to it (e.g. does "Presentation Material" or such exist?) so people could actually find it.

What about improving https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Starter_kit ? Then we could link the kit from the main sentence at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_contribute (afted discussing etc). From here it should get the popularity it deserves.

In T106753#1566501, @Qgil wrote:

What about improving https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Starter_kit ?

I assume you mean merging the content into of "Introduction to Wikimedia Tech" into that page? Sounds pretty good to me, thanks.

Then we could link the kit from the main sentence at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_contribute (after discussing etc).

"Main sentence" being "Learn how you can contribute to MediaWiki and the free culture community."?

About the link to Starter kit from How to contribute, I have created https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Sns0zolnaz95xioy. Let's continue this specific discussion there.

Aklapper added a project: DevRel-September-2015.Aug 31 2015, 7:21 PM

Aklapper moved this task from Backlog to Ready to Go on the DevRel-September-2015 board.Aug 31 2015, 7:22 PM

Added to
https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Starter_kit&type=revision&diff=1881825&oldid=1878952 and https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=How_to_contribute&type=revision&diff=1881818&oldid=1878947 plus added AWight's diagram.

Still not fully happy with redundancy (e.g. Translation and API are mentioned on both pages), but "good enough" I'd say. Resolving.

Qgil awarded a token.Sep 15 2015, 7:12 AM

Aklapper mentioned this in T125082: Prepare "Introduction to Wikimedia Tech" & "Intro to Phabricator" sessions for European Hackathon and WikiArabia.Jan 28 2016, 2:22 PM

Aklapper mentioned this in T130829: Introduction to Wikimedia Tech (code areas, infrastructure tools, communication venues).Apr 1 2016, 10:11 AM