User:Deepanshu/GSoC Application

Identity
Name: Deepanshu Mehndiratta Email: deepanshumehndiratta [AT] gmail.com Project title: Organizing watchlists, adding articles/edits to favourites, rating edits. Inclusion of sidebar to display recent activity and integration with social gadget on mediawiki websites and external wikis.

Contact/working info
Timezone: GMT + 5.5 (Mumbai) Typical working hours: 4pm - 4am (flexible work time) IRC or IM networks/handle(s): deepanshum

Project summary
This project aims at integration of a very minimal social component into the MediaWiki websites and other personal as well as external wikis connected to MediaWiki. The basic idea is to have a collection of all their favourites at one place linked to their mediawiki account without relying on external networks and also to facilitate the implementation of 'Who's been awesome' functionality. The 'add to favourites' thing could alongside also facilitate "Who's been awesome?" which has been suggested on the Idea's page. The basic way is to order the edits in the order of favourites by users. Also the current 'Post a message' system could be extended to Edits and Revisions to message users regarding their contributions. Also, the best revision could be shown on the page alongside the article(this would help the users, who wish to know more about that particular subject contact the person who has been rated as the best contributor of the said article.) Further scope may include publishing of users who have contributed maximum to a field (useful edits and articles on inter related subjects) to be contacted in case if the user wishes to acquire a deeper insight into the subject. Inclusion of a 'Add to favourites' button(Much like the 'Add to watchlist' button) which would be available both for complete Posts as well as Edits. Which would be along with the 'Add to watchlist' button be integrated with a sidebar(available to logged in users). The buttons panel could also be (with the help of API integration) be made as a separate gadget which could then be placed on external wikis too.

Here is a small preview of the intended gadgets.

Deliverables
It should be possible to break down your project into some bullet points describing particular features or milestones which can be reached individually. Consider that we may wish to roll out the system for testing while at an intermediate stage of completion, and that time estimates might vary, leaving you with more time than you expected or (more likely) a lot less -- some features can be pushed back if you end up short.

Project schedule
Try to break your deliverables into "milestones" which can be reached in sequence. Show us your estimated schedule of when you'll reach each functional milestone. Don't forget that real time may change -- leave enough buffer for your required features to be completed!

We suggest that you budget one-half to one-third of your time for merging with trunk, pre-deploy review, testing, bugfixing, documentation of course, and other integration work.

About you
I have a great interest in opensource technologies and have a good knowledge of PHP and Java. Also, I have working(sufficient) knowledge of C/C++. I have been working as a developer of various web based applications for the past 2 years and have acquired skills on frontend web development too(Javascript/jQuery Libraries along with CSS/HTML) The project idea that I have suggested here first came to my mind last october when I developed Wikilive. (Which again was a project based on personal curiosity to fetch Wikipedia pages faster). I think that integration of a minimal social component along with the ones currently in place('Add to watchlist') will improve the experience of a MediaWiki user and also will help them in organizing and bookmarking all the articles/edits they feel are good.

Participation
We don't just want to know what you plan to accomplish; we want to know how. Briefly describe your work style: how you plan to communicate progress, where you plan to publish your source code while you're working, how and where you plan to ask for help. (We will tend to favor applicants that demonstrate a clear vision for what it means to be an active participant in our development community.)

Past open source experience
Last October I had developed Wikilive a live search for Wikipedia for realtime searching. While developing it, I acquired a basic insight into the Wikipedia API's.

Any other info
Please add any other relevant information -- UI mockups, references to related projects, a link to your proof of concept code, whatever. There are no specific requirements, but we love to see people who love what they're doing. Show us you're excited about this project and have an interest in the background and are considering how best to make your idea work.