Talk:MediaWiki Product Insights

Feedback on the August 2023 email

Thoughts and questions welcome! --BMueller (WMF) (talk) 20:21, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Idea for increasing the number of authors to selected MediaWiki repositories

There is the goal to increase the number of authors to selected MediaWiki repositories deployed in Wikimedia production by 20 % until 30 th June 2024. From my point of view one reason why not so many people are able to contribute to the Code Base of MediaWiki is the syntax. I like the goal of increasing the number of authors and I am interested in programming and wrote different programs in the last years. I wrote the programs as demos for Wikifunctions to demonstrate alternative ways of contribution to code repositories and to hopefully enable more people to contribute to Wikifunctions. I used for it Spreadsheetfunctions or the programming languages R and COBOL. Additionally I experimented with the conversion of blocks in the visual programming languages Snap! and Scratch into Source code based on a mapping. I like Natural Language like programming and I think it would be great if it is easier to contribute to the MediaWiki Code Base. A alternative way for contributing to the Wikimedia Code Base I want to propose is the mapping of code snippets to blocks. This makes it possible to write code through combining blocks in visual programming languages. A block is a kind of sentence with gaps for the variables. After exporting the result it can be converted into source code based on a mapping. I experimented with the conversion of source code back into blocks what enables people to read source code in a way that is similar to a text as far the code snippets are mapped to a block. In cases without a mapping a block for only displaying content can be used to display the source code. So this system is a mark up what displays code in another way. I am interested in this way of programming. Please tell me what you think about it. I hope it can help increasing the number of people who are able to contribute to the MediaWiki Code Base. Hogü-456 (talk) 18:43, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

@BMueller (WMF) Can you please tell me what you think about what I wrote. From my point of view it is important to make the contribution to the Wikimedia Code accessible for more people. I am not sure if what I propose can work or is easier for at least some people so they can contribute to. I think I would be able to contribute then. Hogü-456 (talk) 19:24, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Hogü-456, thank you for thinking about this! The approach you’re describing (low code/no code tools) could be interesting to explore for some tools around the wikis, but wouldn’t work for the MediaWiki code base. Sorry that it took me a while to get back to you!

For the goal to grow the number of people who contribute to MediaWiki, the target audience are developers. So this is about helping teams and individuals to feel (more) confident touching MediaWiki, and to increase knowledge around MediaWiki (or specific parts of the software). If you’re interested in learning more about onboarding in MediaWiki, these recordings from sessions for people new to MediaWiki in our team might be interesting to you.

We’re still exploring how to approach this work the best way, are testing a few things, and will share more about this some time in September. What I can say already is that one key question is how to balance initiatives with our capacity to provide code review, consultancy and mentorship. Another question is which areas or type of tasks we should focus on (i.e. an area of the code base where we'd benefit from having more people who know how to work with it; smaller tasks that are good first tasks for newcomers, etc.).

Not sure if you’d be generally interested in getting into programming beyond your current focus, or primarily focus on the no-code ideas right now! If you’re interested in getting more into programming, I can ask around for some good resources to get started. -- BMueller (WMF) (talk) 16:58, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I am interested in getting into programming beyond my current focus. From my point of view it is necessary to look for innovative concepts regarding programming. If it is not possible at the moment this does not mean it is not possible in general. I think it is possible to find solutions to make contributions to the MediaWiki code base easier. I will wait for the proposal and will see what will happen and if the number of people who are contributing to the MediaWiki code base will be greater in the future. Hogü-456 (talk) 19:13, 12 September 2023 (UTC)