User:Dilshak/Welcoming new contributors to Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs

Welcoming new contributors to Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs

 * Public URL: Proposal : Welcoming new contributors to Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs
 * Bugzilla report: Bug 62837
 * Announcement: OPW proposal : Welcoming new contributors to Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs

Name and contact information

 * Name: Bhagya Kandage
 * Email: dilshak@gmail.com
 * IRC : Dilshak
 * Web Page / Blog / Microblog / Portfolio: https://twitter.com/BhagyaKandage
 * Resume (optional):Bhagya Kandage
 * Location: Colombo, Sri Lanka
 * Typical working hours: 0330h -1230h UTC [Available on Request as well]

Synopsis
Proposal wishes to provide solutions and improvements for the difficulties addressed in Welcoming new contributors to Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs mainly under following the sections :
 * 1) Difficulty in matching new contributors with existing projects
 * 2) Need for improvement of documentation for newcomers
 * 3) Inability to distinguish / track active and abandoned projects distinctly.

In order to overcome the addressed problems, solution outline of the project proposal mainly consists of following improvements and solutions focused on two main user groups : Solution outline can be sub-categorized as follows : in order to provide better search functionality for users with particular project interests.
 * 1) Random helpful volunteer
 * 2) Specific user with a particular project idea
 *  Improvement of current documentation to provide ease of use for new users 
 * 1) Update documentation to provide gist and introductions where needed, so that a new comer is aware about the relevant page's purpose
 * 2) Adding of document maps, in order to facilitate the user with back and forth navigation, will also build the user's awareness on Wikimedia Labs documentation base.
 * 3) Provide graphically enhanced solutions where necessary to facilitate a better user experience. Highlight important links where necessary.
 * 4) Improvements on current images added to documentation, included with concise descriptions for better explanation.
 * 5) Use of infographics and illustrations to depict Important information where required. Rather than a wordy description, new users can grasp information easily and effectively.
 * 6) Addition of FAQ and help information, so that user has access to them where required.
 *  Maintenance of available project list and improvements to project tracking 
 * 1) Refactoring of the semantic search page where all available projects are listed. Involvement of existing project volunteers to finalize project documentation and status of projects.
 * 2) Grouping of projects into abstract categories and sub categories accordingly. Addition of tags for each project to enhance search.
 * 3) Implementation of proposed process to add flags to keep track of project status (such as new, In progress, Completed, On-hold etc.) Allowing project list to be sorted according to project status flag as well.
 * 4) Implementation of a separate search tool for project search including advanced search features such as search by
 * 5) project criteria
 * 6) tags/key words
 * 7) project status
 * 8) contributors etc.

5. Use of infographic solutions (such as pie charts) to illustrate details on current projects With depiction of information in a such manner, solution can be further enhanced to allow the user to click on a particular portion and navigate to projects in a particular status / category. In other words, it will serve as a refined search giving the user the opportunity to directly jump into their area of interest.
 * 1) abstract categories and percentage or number of active projects under each category
 * 2) Percentage of projects in each status (new, on-hold, completed etc.)

Further information related to the above suggestions is discussed in detail here : Feedback review on existing issues and required improvements.

Aforementioned outline of tasks is subject to change according to discussions conducted with mentor and feedback from community.
 * Possible mentors: Andrew Bogott

Deliverables
Deliverables as follows : Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs pages Projects List pages
 * 1) Familiarize and investigate current documentation structure in
 * 1) Update documentation to provide gist and introductions where needed, so that a new comer is aware about the relevant page's purpose.
 * 2) Use of infographics and illustrations to depict important information where required. Highlight important links where necessary.
 * 3) Addition of FAQ and help info links, so that a user has access to them when required.
 * 4) Refactoring of semantic search page where all available projects are listed. Involvement of existing project volunteers to finalize project documentation and status of projects.
 * 5) Grouping of projects into abstract categories and sub categories accordingly. Addition of tags for each project to enhance search.
 * 6) Implementation of proposed process of adding flags to keep track of project status (such as new, In progress, Completed, On-hold etc.)
 * 7) Use of infographic solutions (such as pie charts) to illustrate details on current projects
 * 8) Improvements on current images added to documentation, include with concise descriptions for better explanation.

Below mentioned additional deliverables will be attended to as and when time permits
 * 1) Implementation of a separate search tool for project search [Optional]
 * 2) Linking project pie charts via refined search to provide user with project details on specific search criteria [Optional]

Participation
Since this project requires constant feedback from users on their perspective, continual involvement of community is highly beneficial. I intend to take in user feed back constantly via resources such as wikidata-l mailing list and also by communicating with current project members and volunteers via chat and hangouts.

I also intend to publish weekly progress reports for review. I will stay in contact with my mentor via mail and chat mostly as constant feedback is required from both community and mentor in order to instigate proposed improvements.

I welcome continual feedback on changes done via any mean of communication.

About you
University of Colombo - Sri Lanka Staffordshire University - United Kingdom Via a friend of mine who encouraged me to apply to OPW.
 * Education completed or in progress:
 * Master of Computer Science (2013 - present)
 * Bsc (Hons). in Computing - 2nd Class First Division (2007 - 2010)
 * How did you hear about this program?

As I am currently reading for my Masters, I will be unavailable during weekends due to lectures.
 * Will you have any other time commitments, such as school work, another job, planned vacation, etc., during the duration of the program?

No, will be only applying for FOSS Outreach Program for Women.
 * We advise all candidates eligible to Google Summer of Code and FOSS Outreach Program for Women to apply for both programs. Are you planning to apply to both programs and, if so, with what organization(s)?

Next to Biology, Computing has always been one of my favorite areas of exploration. The reason being for both passions, is my curiosity to solve problems and investigate unknown scenarios. Being in the field of computing allowed me to solve problems through a different perspective as it is often required to investigate the same problem via numerous points of views.
 * What makes me tick!

I believe I can use my knowledge on catering to different perspectives with regard to this project as it allows me to visualize the problem for different perspectives of users that access Wikimedia Labs and Tools Labs sections. It will also give me an opportunity to provide simple yet out of the box solutions that are user friendly and at the same time helpful for users of different contexts.

I am also certain that this is a great opportunity for me to get to know the wiki-community and contribute to it with the best of my knowledge level. In addition undoubtedly this will serve as great new educative experience for me.

Past experience
As a user, I am a strong promoter of FOSS. I’m an ardent user of Ubuntu OS and a collection of FOS software ranging from development tools and IDE’s such as MySQL, Netbeans, Eclipse to media player software such as VLC.
 * Please describe your experience with any other FOSS projects as a user and as a contributor

Being in the software industry has provided me a window of opportunity to use and experience a variety of open source software with support of community as and when needed.

As a contributor I have contributed on many forums as much as I have benefited from them. My contributions include but not limited to forums in Jboss, Log4j, Apache Software Foundation, MySQL, Netbeans etc.

Also have provided feedback on Jboss nightly-builds.


 * Please describe any relevant projects that you have worked on previously and what knowledge you gained from working on them (include links)
 * As per requirement for my Bsc. qualification, a data mining tool was developed in order to predict customer churn. I consider that my knowledge and experience on pattern analysis has been of benefit in instigating solutions to the current problem of identifying active and inactive projects in current problem context.
 * My prior work experience related to content management offered me insight on context and structure of a good documentation. [Project : Mobitel]
 * My work experience as a software engineer has exposed me to maintenance of documentation for code in multiple projects under different business domains. [Projects : Rikslunchen, Avianca ]
 * Also prior experience in developing Help pages and FAQs in many projects will be of advantage in this particular project context. [Project : Rikslunchen ]
 * As a postgraduate, research modules I've been following facilitate abundant opportunity in polishing my skills in concise report writing.

Mostly interested in Welcoming new contributors to Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs project in WikiMedia Foundation.
 * What project(s) are you interested in (these can be in the same or different organizations)?