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Maniphest T108926

Criteria to use the "technology" category in the Wikimedia Blog
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There is a proposal to use the "technology" category feed from the Wikimedia Blog in a refreshed mediawiki.org homepage: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki/Homepage_redesign/Preview

Currently posts are being assigned to this category quite liberally, which in itself is not bad. However, if these news are going to be featured in mediawiki.org, we need some criteria to stick on topic. It is fine and good to have posts beyonds strict MediaWiki software, but still they should have some focus in MediaWiki, extensions, technology, developers...

Taking a snapshot of https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/technology/ today,

On topic for mediawiki.org

  • Content Translation, used in over 10,000 articles, now available on Wikipedias in all languages (MediaWiki extension)
  • Developers gather in France for the 2015 Wikimedia Hackathon (tech event)
  • Annual Wikimania conference comes to Mexico City (tech event)
  • Securing access to Wikimedia sites with HTTPS (MediaWiki feature)
  • Over 5,000 new articles created with the Content Translation tool (MediaWiki extension)

Off-topic for mediawiki.org

  • Wikimedia Foundation hosts lively panel on copyright (primary focus is content, not software)
  • My life as an autistic Wikipedian (on-topic if it would relate to a tech community member)
  • Wikidata, coming soon to a menu near you (editathon)
  • Get the latest Wikipedia updates easily with IFTTT (service for readers)
  • Get email updates from the Wikimedia blog (service for readers)

On-topic, not in 'technology'

  • Wikimedia Foundation Quarterly Report, April–June 2015 (includes a ton of info on development progress)
  • It’s all due to hockey: Kunal Mehta’s journey from casual editor to programming mentor (tech community)

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Event Timeline

Qgil created this task.Aug 13 2015, 9:48 AM
Qgil raised the priority of this task from to Needs Triage.
Qgil updated the task description. (Show Details)
Qgil added a project: Diff-blog.
Qgil added subscribers: Qgil, Krenair.
Restricted Application added a subscriber: • Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptAug 13 2015, 9:48 AM
Qgil added a parent task: T653: Refresh the mediawiki.org homepage.Aug 13 2015, 9:48 AM
Paladox set Security to None.Aug 13 2015, 9:53 AM
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Paladox added a comment.Aug 13 2015, 9:55 AM

Or we could create a section called mediawiki for example the url would be https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/technology/mediawiki/

Qgil added a comment.Aug 13 2015, 10:52 AM

We have so many fronts open with this homepage refresh. I'd rather take straight useful routes. The technology category already works quite well, and with a soft agreement on criteria we could solve this problem and move forward. If later on someone wants to try more complex solutions, fine.

Paladox added a comment.Aug 13 2015, 10:55 AM

Ok.

• Tbayer subscribed.Aug 13 2015, 8:08 PM

Just on a procedural note, the Wikimedia-blog Phabricator project currently used for technical issues with the blog's platform and not a good way to discuss content issues such as this with the blog team. I have notified them by email about it. (The proposal per se makes sense to me.)

EdErhart-WMF subscribed.Aug 14 2015, 6:22 AM

Hey Quim, you should send me an email; I'd be happy to discuss this. We've been mulling a reorganization of our WordPress categories anyway, so this dovetails nicely!

Qgil added a comment.Aug 14 2015, 8:35 AM

Thanks @Tbayer and @EdErhart-WMF for the handling. I have sent an email to the recipients of https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Guidelines#Blog_team

I will report here any progress unless someone beats me at it. :)

jrbs subscribed.Aug 14 2015, 11:36 AM
• asherman subscribed.Aug 14 2015, 1:31 PM
Qgil closed this task as Resolved.Aug 18 2015, 9:26 AM
Qgil claimed this task.

@EdErhart-WMF and the rest of the Comms team have agreed on using the "technology" tag only for posts with a focus on MediaWiki, extensions, applications, developers... The benchmark is: would it make sense to feature this post in mediawiki.org?

These criteria are not mathematical, and we can expect hesitation in some posts. This is fine. We will learn as we go. The worst that can have is that we move or remove a tag after the fact. No big deal.

The new criteria is effective now. Old posts will remain untouched. It's not that we are going to have a refreshed mediawiki.org homepage tomorrow...

Thank you for everybody involved. I believe this is a small step for... that will have a bigger impact in the long term.

Qgil added a project: ECT-August-2015.Aug 18 2015, 9:26 AM
Qgil added a parent task: T109419: Whitelist https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/technology/feed/ for Extension:RSS in mediawiki.org.Aug 18 2015, 9:35 AM
Krenair added a comment.Aug 18 2015, 3:54 PM

I found https://twitter.com/mediawiki the other day which has been tweeting all sorts of things it shouldn't be. I hope that's not using the same criteria.

Qgil mentioned this in T63888: Adjust RSS whitelist for mediawiki.org (mediawikiwiki).Aug 19 2015, 9:03 AM
Qgil added a comment.Aug 19 2015, 9:22 AM

Social media accounts should follow the same criteria, yes.

• MZMcBride subscribed.Aug 19 2015, 12:55 PM
jrbs mentioned this in T112419: Create new project for Wikimedia-Blog-Content.Sep 12 2015, 11:26 PM
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