This session will answer the following questions:
- What essential features/technologies are needed to make a globally/widely usable tool ?
- How do we identify a valuable tool/project that could warrant further support from the platform ?
- What are the major pitfalls for making something 'globally' usable
- What platform technologies need improvement and which need to be build
Session Themes and Topics
- Theme: Defining our products, users and use cases
- Topic: Equitable Access and Global Features
Session Leader
- Derk-Jan Hartman (TheDJ)
Facilitator
Description
A key hurdle to providing an equitable experience to new and emerging communities is unlocking the powerful tools developed on older projects. This session examines the ways we can provide access to these tools “out of the box” for new projects, and remove the gap in toolsets between larger and smaller projects which have fewer users.
Questions to answer during this session
| Question | Significance: Why is this question important? What is blocked by it remaining unanswered? |
| What MediaWiki/Extension/Service/Client features are globally applicable across different projects and languages? | In order to support equity, we need to understand what features seem to be applicable to a wide array of projects. |
| What do we need to do to support global curation and anti-spam tools/bots/gadgets… how do we productionize what is on tool labs? | Most anti-spam tools and bots are hosted in tool labs and are not language agnostic (en only). Many of these tools are needed in other projects. Many of them could also benefit from running in a production environment and/or being first class features of Mediawiki and running in a production environment. This question should reveal hurdles in making this possible. |
| How do we make localizable and consistent templates and gadgets globally available across all projects? | This is a key question blocking use from support projects that are new and have small communities. Finding a way to create templates that are localizable but shared would enable use to better support these small communities. |
| What global features are insufficient or nonexistent? | We have some features which are “global” (like CentralAuth). Are there any problems with such features that we could learn from when making other features global? Some other features may be unimplemented but are most useful in a global context. These are useful when planning equal access to features. |
Keep in mind:
- A tool can be many things, from gadgets to a new watchlist, to something on toolforge or even a completely new wiki project
- Not all tools will need platform support in order to be successful
- Equitable !== Equal (pun intended)
Facilitator and Scribe notes
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uo1Yi9KFNfSGSZ-dmY6v0WrmYTSDRbqB2sPYFhiEhyU
Facilitator instructions
Resources:
Open issues that are/might be related:
- T22153: Implement global gadgets (WMF-wide)
- T171577: Develop a long term vision for community managed scripts and gadgets
- T121470: Central Global Repository for Templates, Lua modules, and Gadgets
- T187749: Make it possible to use code from an external repository for editor-controlled Javascript/CSS
- T66475: Make crosswiki bits and pieces truly global (tracking)
- T15631: Wikimedia should become an OpenID provider
- T61101: Support server-side JavaScript
- Cluebot
- Risker's checklist for content-creation extensions
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Language_goals_and_wishlist
- Growth team
Session Structure
- Define session scope, clarify desired outcomes, present agenda
- Discuss Focus Areas
- Discuss and Adjust. ''Note that we are not trying to come to a final agreement, we are just prioritizing and assigning responsibilities!''
- For each proposition [add etherpad link here]
- Decides whether there is (mostly) agreement or disagreement and the proposition(s).
- Decide whether there is more need for discussion on the topic, and how urgent or important that is.
- Identify any open questions that need answering from others, and from who (product, ops, etc)
- Decides who will drive the further discussion/decision process (ie: a four month deadline)
- Discuss additional strategy questions [add etherpad link here]. For each question:
- Decide whether it is considered important.
- Discuss who should answer it.
- Decide who will follow up on it.
- Wrap up
Success stories:
- Thanks
- Tools database replication
- centralauth / oauth
- query.wikidata.org
Problem stories:
- Lifting maps from tiles.wmflabs to product
- gadgets
- starting a new wiki/sister project
- Flow
Session Leaders please:
- Add more details to this task description.
- Coordinate any pre-event discussions (here on Phab, IRC, email, hangout, etc).
- Outline the plan for discussing this topic at the event.
- Optionally, include what it will not try to solve.
- Update this task with summaries of any pre-event discussions.
- Include ways for people not attending to be involved in discussions before the event and afterwards.
Post-event Summary:
- ...
Action items:
- ...