User:Sandaru/Project Eclipse: Wikidata Outreach Project

Project Eclipse

 * Public URL: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vkj8d9q8WiVe2GZ2wkcIwVOLdDr3KaGjxa0V3mIo484
 * Bugzilla report: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61991
 * Announcement: wikitech-l mailing list announcementwikitech-l mailing list..

Name and contact information

 * Name : Dinu Kumarasiri :
 * Email : sandarumk@gmail.com :
 * IRC or IM networks/handle(s) : sandaru :
 * Location : Colombo, Sri lanka :
 * Typical working hours : whenever I can ;) :

Synopsis
The main idea of this project is to make people more aware of Wikidata and increase the number of contributors. This can be done using an social media campaign. But when the new comers join we should have a proper set of documentation with guided tours ( using guided tours extension is discussed in the project chat of wikidata already). Project Eclipse will give priority to developing a set of getting started guides and completing existing documentation in a structured way. After the documentation is ready at a certain state we can start our social media campaign to spread the word about Wikidata.
 * Possible mentors : Lydia Pintscher :

Deliverables
21st April- 19th May : Get a full understanding on Wikidata and its help pages including existing getting started pages. Consider all possible use cases and figure out the difficulties they faced.

19th May- 25th May : Overall Structure and Design for the "Getting Started" documentation

26th May-29th June : Implementing the getting started guide for new comers

30th June - 06th July : Finish up the initial phase of documentation finishing all the getting started guides along with the guided tour extension.

07th July - 13th July : Start to design and initial photos/memes series to focusing on the current fans to be more interested in the page. Make a introductory video/ presentation to share from other pages like Wikipedia.

14th July- 20th July : Finish and Share the video and photos via other pages and get more attention to Wikidata page

21st July - 27th July : Finish the initial series of photos / memes.

28th July-3rd August : Maintaining the social media sites with more and more interesting posts to keep the fan base interested

4th August-10th August : Start implementing a way to reward contributors

11th August-18 August : Sttart implementing a feedback system to get user’s feedback on documentation

Participation
I hope to carry out this project from two main perspectives ; Improving documentation and Social Media Campaign. For the documentation I hope to have a structured getting started guides with step by step instructions on contributing the society. As discussed in the project chat the guided tour extension can be used in this purpose. But I think having a set of fully structured and complete documentation would be an extra help for the new comers.

Social media campaign should be consistent. I hope to regularly spend two to three hours to deal with Facebook page, Google plus page and Twitter. As I am an online person I will be able to handle any queries coming from new comers to those pages very quickly and help them start contributing directing to our mailing list and getting started pages. I'll try to always be live on IRC so I can have my questions about wikidata answered and more importantly I can help new comers by directing them in to right direction if they ask questions in IRC.

For the last two enhancements of my project I need to have a thorough discussion with the community. I hope to do this via project chat and mailing lists so I can get ideas from the community and implement the two systems. More importantly I would be willing to contribute to Wikidata or Wikimedia foundation in future and continue these projects which need continuous contributions or any other projects which I could help.

About you
I am an third year undergraduate studying Computer Science and Engineering, University o Moratuwa. I hear about this program in the last year when from OpenMRS wiki as they participated in the previous year in this program. From there on I was waiting until the next round starts. The most important thing I see about this program is that this is not only for coders. This helps other people who has even no background in coding to show a way of contributing to open source community. In the duration o the program I have no any other time commitments than academic work. So I have enough time to be active in social media, mailing lists and IRC most of the time when I am not having lectures. Although I am eligible for Google Summer of Code I found this project in OPW more interesting than any other projects in GSoC and OPW. As it is introduced I think WikiData is the game changer of Wikipedia. As a student and as a curious youth Wikipedia has helped me with countless times giving answers to my various questions about everything without disappointing me. Every time I want to know something I Google it and Voila! the Wikipedia article will always be at the top giving you what you need. I think it a great thing that German Chapter of Wikimedia initiated this project. In my words "Wikidata is really a ccol idea". OI haven't been heard about wikidata before and only come to know the existence of it when I found it as an OPW project. Wikidata should be also as popular as Wikipedia. But currently it isn't and I'm here to make it happen :).;

Past experience

 * I have contributed to Wikimedia foundation on MediaWiki, Wikitech and Wikidata. Links To my contributors profiles is given below

Wikidata Contributor profile: : Sandaru

I have done contributions to wikidata by editing pages fixing links and improving items. Specially I have done translations to my native language Sinhala in large number of items.

Mediawiki Contributor profile: : Sandaru

I have done some minor edits to some of the pages in MediaWiki like Wikimedia Labs page apart from my project proposal to wikidata outreach

Wikitech Contributor profile: : Sandaru

Here I have done some editing in the pages improving the existing documentation.