Talk:Web APIs hub/Archive 1

General comments
There's an Engineering Community Team responsible for this, is this their proposal?

mediawiki.org is the hub of which you speak, and already has a Developer hub page and even a How to contribute for "developers beyond just coding MediaWiki", so it's unclear how this proposal differs from "do a better job on mw.org." Creating a new  seems like a non-starter, the way to improve a web site is rarely to start another one. Any proposal for a new site must comprehensively enumerate how it relates to existing wikis and what will become of their overlapping pages, and the bar is set high, appropriately.

It should be easier to present resources on mediawiki.org. In particular I think the external auto-generated documentation should be static read-only pages on mw.org; I'm sure there have been bugs and proposals for this. Especially the (new and cool) CSS "living style guide" for the desktop site needs to appear on this wiki in the developer's current choice of skin and Beta features.

The proposal mentions "be a friendly and inviting sandbox environment" but doesn't propose anything concrete. Again thinking about CSS, we could do more to let people make UX experiments; or is hacking around in a browser's developer console and then with s and s in a test wiki page enough of a sandbox?

-- S Page (WMF) (talk) 04:14, 7 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I just learned about this page thanks to a link from [BarebonesMediaWiki. I need some time to digest all this. I really appreciate getting help to improve our developer documentation, but I agree with S that we should discuss the plan before concluding that we need a microsite from developers. Even the concept of "Wikimedia Developer Hub" deserves some though. Do you think this is different from a "MediaWiki Developer Hub"? Let's talk, and let's push this good energy in the right direction!--Qgil (talk) 23:35, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * S Page (WMF),Qgil from Developer hub… "It is written for skilled LAMP developers who have experience using MediaWiki." I think there is overlap in the target audience but it is not necessarily the same. Perhaps the name is misleading, but the target for this is users of all types (not just skilled LAMP developers) who want to use wikimedia foundation data set or APIs to do interesting things.
 * Jaredzimmerman (WMF) (talk) 02:39, 23 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Jaredzimmerman (WMF): I agree. I've been finding it difficult to figure out the MediaWiki API (as a beginner with some programming experience). Even en:API:Sandbox is very complex and it's been hard for me to figure out where documentation is. I think that lowering the bar to entry is a very good idea. Fhocutt (talk) 20:54, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Fhocutt, great to hear (that you're interested, not that its hard now) Will you be at Zurich Hackathon or Wikimania? we'll be working on it at both places. Jaredzimmerman (WMF) (talk) 04:40, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Jaredzimmerman (WMF): Unfortunately no, but I am hoping to be at WikiConference USA, and I'll be contributing as part of my upcoming internship (if I am chosen!).
 * I agree with S Page (WMF) and I don't feel his concerns have been adequately addressed here. How to contribute was specifically designed with the "re-use our content via XML dumps and our robust API" in mind; in fact, this use-case is directly addressed in the first section of how to contribute, which links to data dumps and m:research:data. What's the virtue of this proposed "Data & Developer Hub"? --MZMcBride (talk) 02:33, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
 * True, let's address the concerns in order to have a better plan. The starting point is that Wikimedia has interesting data and an interesting MediaWiki API that most application developers out there don't know about. Even professional developers joining the Wikimedia Foundation have a hard time finding the information they need to find, learning what they need to learn. There is room for improvement, and this project wants to solve this problem. It is not going to be a short ride, although we can expect some short term results.
 * The URL of the project hasn't been decided, and neither the role of MediaWiki in the infrastructure of the Developer Hub, nor the future of the Developer Hub that already exists here in mediawiki.org. What the Engineering Community Team has agreed is to drive this project with the help of other contributors and to release a prototype during this quarter.--Qgil (talk) 14:22, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Qgil: thanks for the links.
 * As you've stated in your reply here and at , the goal here seems to be to focus exclusively on the MediaWiki API. We already have: (a) an entire "API" namespace here on mediawiki.org (API:Main page is the landing page); (b) the auto-generated documentation at ; (c) the source code itself in Gerrit, on GitHub, and at git.wikimedia.org; and (d) tools such as Special:ApiSandbox.
 * My cursory impression regarding this "Data & Developer Hub" is that this is an attempt to solve a lack of documentation problem with yet another forum to build and maintain.
 * Before there's a discussion about which cute and memorable URL to use (which is mostly a detached question, we already have redirects such as ), I'd personally like to see a clear demonstration why the current four tools (enumerated above) are insufficient. I'd like to see a clear problem statement prior to discussing potential solutions. One possible solution might be creating a micro-site (in a Git repository, I guess?), but this option is almost certainly not the best option given that you'd be slowly and painfully re-creating the giant content management system that is MediaWiki. And we already have a robust content management system installed on mediawiki.org, wikitech.wikimedia.org, and meta.wikimedia.org, among other places. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:40, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * , I agree, MediaWiki and mediawiki.org should provide the foundation of this project, unless there is a better short & long term plan in place. But I also believe that we can do better than sending third party developers to the current api.php, Gerrit, and even API:Main page. Compared to the Developers/API portals of other World-class web services, our offer is hard to find and navigate, and generally uninspiring. We can improve this. At http://fab.wmflabs.org/T491#11 I have tried to identify what are we missing to put MediaWiki at the center of this project.--Qgil (talk) 15:30, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

terms
Unlike most of the linked reference sites, we don't enforce developer behaviors through a Terms of Use. To replace that, it probably will help to have a terms page somewhere mentioning licensing, rate-limiting, etc. Doesn't have to be terribly high profile or anything, but something to think about including in the design.

Currently all we really have is a single legal page on dumps.wikimedia.org, which I'm surprisingly OK with content-wise, but is pretty hard to find. LuisV (WMF) (talk) 18:20, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Rate-limiting seems fairly distinct from licensing. There are some guidelines at API:Etiquette and I think dumps.wikimedia.org is throttled (not sure where that's documented, exactly).
 * I agree with making the licensing information clear and easy to access. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:36, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Good point. Task created.--Qgil (talk) 14:28, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Duplication
First requirement: don't duplicate. If this is meant to replace m:Research:Data, m:Research:Resources and similar on-wiki pages, then it needs to be able to actually do so. One possibility is to load the HTML from Meta as done for Project portals. --Nemo 07:55, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I'd like to better understand why the current set of pages (including how to contribute, which is linked from the footer of every Wikimedia wiki) are failing to address users' needs before creating additional landing pages and portals. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:37, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed, either we link or absorb, but we cannot duplicate resources. "How to contribute" is not a question that a third party developer has. Their questions sound more like "how can I use Wikimedia's API for my own benefit?". The possible answers are useful for Wikimedia contributors, but the former don't need to bother about Gerrit, hgow to get your extension deployed. etc. Again, we can find ways to present the common information to both audiences with clarity and without duplication.--Qgil (talk) 14:37, 23 July 2014 (UTC)