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[Hackathon doc sprint] Beginner documentation about Wikidata
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Description

This is one of the main topics of the Wikidata documentation Sprint during the Wikimedia Hackathon 2017.

Feel free to add in subtasks your ideas of tasks to improve the documentation for beginners who want to start editing/using Wikidata.

The tasks should be:

  • Simple (you can split complex tasks in several tasks)
  • Clear (please add details, links, explain what's wrong or missing in the existing doc)
  • Ideally, feasible by a team in maximum 1 day

Links to Wikidata doc (feel free to add more):

Inspirations (nice doc from other projects):

  • ...

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Event Timeline

Multichill subscribed.

I consider this important, but not in scope for a hackathon.

I consider this important, but not in scope for a hackathon.

I think I understand why you write this (i.e. that developers should spend their valuable time together, working on the really hard problems, and not on writing beginner documentation), but if I may offer a few counterpoint thoughts:

  • These (3 documentation tasks) are all-day sessions, and are suitable for drop-in; so if an experienced dev wants to take a break from more complex code-oriented thinking, they can optionally do so here.
  • There are usually a small number of newcomer developers in attendance, plus a few experienced-editor non-developers. - These people will (a) be able to provide beginner-perspective insights (to the experienced developers) for why a documentation-change, or a feature-request, or an interface-design-change is desired, and (b) will be able to talk directly to experienced-developers in order to get technically precise summaries, that they as newcomers/non-developers can then help to document, from a beginner's perspective.
  • Documentation problems are so common (throughout the world, not just software!) that they rarely even get discussed in detail. These sessions will give a space for spitballing (sharing/brainstorming/etc) our collective gripes and suggestions. Some of the people who are there, might be inspired to finally fix those longstanding problems! At the very least, a detailed to-do list or options-list can be written down, and then the gritty detailed work can be done at a slower pace when everyone is back home.

Here are notes from a group of people who did not know Wikidata and tried to find their
way into it on their own:
https://github.com/sparcopen/open-research-doathon/blob/master/wikidata_for_newbies.md .

I have experience creating short demo videos about Wikidata. Will bring my recording equipment to the hackathon (= my laptop and headphones with integrated microphone).

What demonstration videos would be useful?

Hello! Just letting you know that you can schedule this session now for the hackathon. Instructions and scheduling can be done here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2017/Program#How_to_schedule_breakout_sessions

How about this for a start, replacing the text in the 'Getting Involved' block on the Wikidata homepage?

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Spinster/New_getting_started_block_thing_for_the_Wikidata_homepage

Lots of these tasks about the hackathon doc sprint for 2017 still seem to be hanging around. Can some of them be cleaned up? Perhaps we just need to remove the link to the hackathon if we still need to do these? Or are they done?

Lots of these tasks about the hackathon doc sprint for 2017 still seem to be hanging around. Can some of them be cleaned up? Perhaps we just need to remove the link to the hackathon if we still need to do these? Or are they done?

@johl: Could you please answer this? ^^ Thanks!

Aklapper added a subscriber: johl.

This task has been assigned to the same task owner for more than two years. Resetting task assignee due to inactivity, to decrease task cookie-licking and to get a slightly more realistic overview of plans. Please feel free to assign this task to yourself again if you still realistically work or plan to work on this task - it would be welcome!

For tips how to manage individual work in Phabricator (noisy notifications, lists of task, etc.), see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T228575#6237124 for available options.
(For the records, two emails were sent to assignee addresses before resetting assignees. See T228575 for more info and for potential feedback. Thanks!)