Google Summer of Code/Past projects

Accepted projects
For the official list with links to the proposals, go here.
 * "Turning MediaWiki into an efficient localization platform": Niklas Laxström (Nikerabbit) mentored by Siebrand Mazeland
 * "Semantic Layers Extension": Jeroen de Dauw mentored by Yaron Koren
 * "Doog - The New Cortado Applet": Gerardo Antonio Cabero mentored by Michael Dale (mdale)

Maps

 * Maps and Semantic Maps by Jeroen De Dauw, mentored by Yaron Koren.

Status as of 2010
Jeroen De Dauw is still very active in the community, and the Maps and Semantic Maps extensions are both still under active development.

MwEmbed

 * MwEmbed by Gerardo Cabero, mentored by Michael Dale.

Translation

 * Extension:Translate
 * See Nikerabbit's GSoC 2009 wrapup blog post

Status as of 2010
In active use on http://translatewiki.net

Image rendering daemon
Zhe Wu mentored by Aryeh Gregor (Simetrical). Was written in Python and designed to handle asynchronous image rendering requests. Proposal was very well written, programmer obviously knew what he was doing. Major issues:
 * Was being developed on another repository (need URL for this). Should've been in SVN with everything else.
 * Mentored by an accomplished developer, but someone who had little interest in the subject matter
 * While the proposal was very well written, it wasn't developed with Wikimedia operations in mind. Their wants/needs should've been solicited and probably consulted during the process as well.

Status as of 2010
Since it was developed off-site, it never really received much input. As far as I know, none of this was ever looked at by anyone in operations for eventual (if ever) deployment on WMF.

WebDAV
I am working on an extension which provides a WebDAV / DeltaV / Subversion interface to MediaWiki articles: Extension:WebDAV

The extension enables articles to be browsed and edited with WebDAV or Subversion clients. When complete, it will support editing articles offline, using for example the Subclipse Eclipse IDE plugin or Emacs VC mode.

http://code.google.com/soc/2008/wikimedia/appinfo.html?csaid=E6DAC4A0526C0A41

Visual Diff
Visual_Diff - A system to provide more visually intuitive diffs, rather than lines added/removed. Project by Guy Van den Broeck. Officially mentored by Brion (I think), but he was always busy so Guy asked a lot of questions in #mediawiki.

Status as of 2010

 * Had lots of outstanding issues, i18n, style, etc.
 * Was a part of two releases, 1.14, 1.15. Disabled by default.
 * Removed from trunk in r58267, will not be in 1.16 or future releases.

2007
The proposal: "Audio and video can instruct and inform in ways unattainable by words and still images. Currently, audio and video have only limited support and are often cumbersome to access in MediaWiki and the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. This project seeks to allow Wikimedia's sites to more effectively leverage the power of audio and video resources. To achieve this, a reliable and expandable system is proposed to automatically recode contributions from numerous digital a/v formats to a single, royalty and patent free compression standard. With the ability to generate such a library, Wikimedia would be poised to easily present a vast range of audio and video to their visitors using an in-browser streaming player."

Status blog: http://mikeswikidev.wordpress.com/

Structured discussion
Add support for structured discussion pages. Option for discussion pages to be more like message boards with threads. Current discussion format is less than ideal (can modify other's comments, cluttered editing window, etc). This could also include support for embedding polls in discussion pages, voting on proposals, etc. Basically, create a minimal message board system that is tailored for use in a wiki environment (see LiquidThreads for some ideas in that direction).


 * David's SoC project blog

The Village Pump is a good example of why explicit threading would really help. Just try to find a conversation that you remember happening some time in 2003. Archiving is labor intensive, and currently anybody can modify anybody else's comments.

Status as of 2010
Andrew Garrett, working on contract from the Foundation, has spent the last several months overhauling LiquidThreads entirely; almost none of the code is the same. Consider this a successful project though: it worked, and developed some concrete ideas that have been expanded upon more recently.

Video
No-install in-browser display of video (and audio?) clips for Wikimedia Commons, using reasonably common Java and/or Flash components. Needs to be able to 1) play or transparently pre-convert Ogg Theora videos, 2) avoid use of patent-encumbered formats. Consider integration of Fluendo's Cortado player applet as a starting point.

Brion's talk suggested that this project will also involve creating thumbnails for video clips.