User:Grv99

Hi! My name is Gaurav Chawla. I am an undergraduate student at IIT Roorkee, India. I am a social, eager kind of student, who loves to keep things as simple as possible. I code in my free time. That was a short intro for myself.

Now coming to the point... I want to be a contributor of Wikimedia this summer under Google Summer of Code 2013. And this is my proposal for the same:

A request: Please read it full.

Introduction:

Reading articles is good. But, sometimes (actually, manytimes) we just need to know a small description or introduction ar an exact definition about something (or sb), just to know, like, who he/she is, or what is this famous for, or what is it commonly called? For these kind of questions, full descriptive long articles on the subject are not as essential, hence loading a full page will be a burden for both users and Wikimedia. I am not saying that these long articles are bad or inapropriate, I am saying that sometimes even after reading the whole pages, we are unable to get an exact one-line definition of the subject.

Keeping this in mind, I would like to propose a new project WikIcards (pronounced as wikicards not wik-i-cards, though they are Icards).

Description:

What are wikIcards?

These are small, information cards (containing that exact definition) about everything that comes under the category of proper nouns. Ex : personality, landmarks, places, company, crop, body part, celestial body, likewise...

An example of the structure of wikIcards is parts of which are explained in this image... and here:

1. Title and subtitles:

The first three lines will contain basic info,

-For places, it can be	First line: Name Second line: State Country

-For personalities, it can be	First line: Name, Second line: Nationality Profession Third line: Birth - Death dates (or Birth date - )

-For Chemicals, First line: Name Second line: Also known as / scientific name

and likewise...

2. The photo :

- A clearly visible relevant photo. - Fixed size - Can't be left blank! Every wikIcard must contain a photo.

3. Description (definition) :

- Fixed maximum length (200 suggested). - Community editable - If a change is to be suggested first it will be put up on the card's page, where the changes can be voted by the public and/or community members(do we need a seperate page for each card? Please Suggest something for this). The most voted one will be the part of the Icard. This will increase the quality as the most voted one ie. the one which is widely accepted by public will be used.

Q: Is voting viable? A: Yes, because the text is so small that it can be reviewed easily and it will increase the participation of wiki users. It will make the description better and better over time as more and more users vote for it.

4. Links :

- The links at the bottom will be directly exposed (ie. more visible, because the ratio of the area that links use to the area of card, is higher) - These will be displayed and arranged according to the topic of Icard. (surely we don't want the Icards to display links that lead to a search returning "nothing found!") - If these will be static like always the same sequence...Wikipedia then, Wikibooks then, Wikiquotes, Wikisources, it will make it look as non-living (like some template), and the user will likely not consider these as part of information. Hence, the sequence must be according to the no. of matched documents. Leftmost will have highest no. of related documents/pages. - In my opinion, these links will definitely increase the user involvement in other wikimedia projects too.(by other, I mean other than wikipedia).

Why wikIcards?

- Small summerised data cards. - Will contain a standardardised and widely accepted and precise definition of the subject(ie. topic). - The space is limited, so the quality (as relevence) of the information/definition (small description) will be at its best. - Will increase user involvement on other Wikimedia projects as well (via links on footer). - Less bandwidth used and fast to load and access. - Will help Wikidata in building and refining its database (since these are editable and anyone can make one). - The existing Wikimedia content can be reused, wherever possible, to make wikIcards.

Utility:

1. They can be read via their dedicated page. Each WikIcard has its own page where discussion, suggestion and voting takes place.

2. For desktop browsers

WikIcards can be used as popups through browser extension, as shown in this image... (same as the above image). The user can double click (or ctrl+shift+select or any other event can be binded) the name and WikIcards will be displayed as popup.

3. As flip cards

This is specifically for Wikimedia Mobile.

- The users can access this using an app. - Initially, the user can search for something and its card will be displayed. - The user can flip the card and a new card will be displayed related to the previous one. And now the page will contain the card and some description of the relation between this card and the previous (fliped) card and again this can be fliped to get a new related card. - The user can select whether to stay in the same category (maybe like politics) or can go across the different categories. - This way it will be story telling kind of experience where everything unfolds one after other. Though this is not necessary! - It can be an exploration drive too (when going across categories).

4. APIs will be provided for any other use.

My part:

What will I do? - Create the server side scripts for WikIcards. Using: PHP, mysql, HTML, CSS the Card, the suggestions + voting section
 * Page for wikIcard, that wil contain:
 * The suggestion + voting backend (handling the inputs)
 * Will be using the existing search module to search through the database.

- Create browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer Using: javascript, jQuery, AJAX, XML
 * A small script that uses the APIs to request the search.
 * The request will be made using AJAX.
 * Data will be recieved as XML.

PS: I have excluded the mobile part to make it an approachable target for the GSOC and also to give myself ample time to check, test, and debug the application. But, I will surely do it once I complete these targets.

- Create documentation for the whole code involved.

Timeline: (These are the days I will need)
 * Investigation for 10 days.
 * Server-side code and APIs in 30 days.
 * Browser extensions in 15 days.
 * Documentation in 7 days.

PS: I have a good experience in making extensions for Chrome and Firefox. Internet Explorer will be new to me. So, these 15 days will be divided as : Chrome - 2 days, Firefox - 2 days, IE - 10 days, Watching TV - 1 day :P

Note: My holidays are beginning from 15th May, so I will start the work that time itself. So that, for the midterm evaluation (on 28th July), I can give full server-side codes and APIs. And rest all (browser ext. and documentation) will be for the second phase.

Why this project be considered?

-Increase participation -Increase reach -Encourage innovation
 * It fulfills three of the "strategic priorities over next five years" listed on Wikimedia movement page, viz.


 * It will give a database of community edited-and-selected definitions (we have nice and awesome articles on each topic, but sometimes, they lack a proper and exact definition).

That's it. That was my proposal to enhance (even more), the information we have. Thankyou for your time. :) I am too excited to make it and make my contribution to Wikimedia. Please suggest any amendments required in the proposal.