Proposal Welcoming new contributors to Wikimedia Labs and Wikimedia Tool Labs
Proposal Title: Documenting and managing MediaWiki projects[edit]
There are several interrelated tasks for this project.
- New volunteers receive poor documentation on how to begin with wikimedia technologies, if they have a great project idea.
- Existing projects are not tracked meaning
- No track record of which projects have become obsolete or frozen, which projects are inter-related and can be merged.
- Volunteers do not have a defined process for documenting/tracking their projects.
Time Planning[edit]
Below is my expected time line
| Period | Phase name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 10 - Dec 25 | Exploration & planning | Initial understanding of the processes, checking existing projects, understanding briefly what existing docs are and making initial contacts with existing project volunteers |
| Jan 1 - Jan 20 | Recommendation | Based on existing projects, recommend suggestions volunteers, project documentation, tracking. Perform experiments to check the recommendation (similar to Agile prototyping) |
| Jan 20 - Feb 5 | Execution | Perform concrete execution of operations agreed upon, get volunteer feedback, get wikimedia staff feedback, make necessary changes to initial to plan |
| Feb 5 - Feb 28 | Execution | Perform second phase with improved planning, get contacted with volunteers, update documentation, get feedback from all stake holders. |
| Mar 1 - Mar 10 | Windup | Take processes to end, make new recommendations for future changes. |
Expected Deliverables[edit]
I expect after my internship, the following will be delivered:
- A process defined for people who want to start working with wikimedia projects, how they start working, what steps they need to follow for their project.
- Improved documentation and organization of existing projects.
- A tracking mechanism for projects
Why Me?[edit]
The biggest benefit is that I am a fully technical person but also interested in management and documentation. This is the blend required for the project! Since I am able not only to work/explore/understand wikimedia technologies, but also to define processes, tracking, and documentation for them.