Tools for smaller wikis, your favorite cup of tea, and the weather!
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	Aklapper
	May 5 2020, 11:55 AM

Description

This is a group to support small wiki communities: Learn and share technical skills to support, maintain, and grow your community.

Let's get together, discuss, brainstorm, ask, have a tea. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_wiki_toolkits

small introduction round (~30 seconds, keep it short!): Potential ideas: who's here, your main wiki/community, interest in the topic, your favourite tea, your favorite weather? (either talk, or write in the chat, or just wave :)
- show how to raise a hand in the Google sidebar chat
- watch in parallel Google sidebar chat IRC/Telegram chat (#wmhack)
- Andre/BIrgit will take notes in this Etherpad, everyone is welcome to help :-)
short summary/overview (The idea behind; the areas and status)
- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_wiki_toolkits
- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_wiki_toolkits/Starter_kit
- ...and please feel very welcome to add yourself in https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_wiki_toolkits#Members
Open discussion about technical difficulties you face in your community, etc? (max 50% of discussion time)
More input and ideas what we should do? Any tips you could share about documentation, workshops, ...? (max 50 % of discussion time)

13 people
People from different wikis
Interested in good tools for smaller wikis; learning how to grow a wiki; tools for wikitech?; better/easier docs to set up things on new wikis; interested in what this session is about;
Favourite teas: green tea, black tea, cinnamon apple flavored black tea ... :-)
Favourite weathers: Rain! (multiple mentions); hot cold ...

Idea behind the project: Support smaller wikis in growing technical capacity; Share knowledge better, create a network for helping each other, recommendations what to use (because so many templates and gadgets). We have overview pages, but they do not tell you "This is easy to install" or "This is maintained". Also coming up with trainings, tutorials, workshop, ...
- Current project: "starter kit" -> covers areas like abuse filter, improve the frontpage of a wiki to make it look good on smaller screens etc, templates/modules, gadgets, tools
Question: Why do we recommend stuff instead of importing it for them?
- Good question. Maybe many different specialisations. Not sure if we really have things that each and every wiki needs.
- Created T252369: Create starter packs for small wikis with basic templates & gadgets
- Import works only when you have import sources defined - perhaps it should be set up automatically for all wikis when they get created?
- With gadgets, we can always have a master wiki (like Hot Cat/Commons)
  - Amire80 created https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_templates but I don't think it's ever gone far
  - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T251895 was recently created by the Wikimedia Core Platform Team but Andre thinks that is a long-term idea, and not something they have capacity for soon (but that is only Andre guessing!).

Forms to use QuickStatements for Wikidata; improve workflows (check documentation for that, potentially link? - covid-obit.toolforge.org )
- presentation on the tool will happen at 10 PM CEST: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2020/Remote_Hackathon#Saturday,_May_9
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Adventure
- We can create step by step adventures for small wiki toolkits, like installation of userscripts?
- In WP adventure, all the things are automated. like pre filled text in the text area.
- Many people might not be comfortable using Phabricator. Maybe good to have a proxy, like people who collect issues onwiki, and then go to Phabricator as representatives of the community the issue came up with.
- Re: Some communities have this, more likely more a problem in smaller wikis.
- Hope is that the video might help with this
Maybe in the long-term future, members of this network could also help a bit to proxy and report things to Phab?
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Help#Using_email
- Anonymous task creation is not possible; anonymous posting would create a problem with getting answers to follow-up questions
  - Previous discussion: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T972#16750
- Maybe there is a way to connect email-phab-email

Notes by RhinosF1 (will be on IRC)

How can we reduce complexity of templates on enwiki or make easier versions for small wikis to use (reduce dependenices on too many other templates/modules) ?
Can we make the toolkit easily adaptable and usable for non-wikimedia wikis?
Could we create a startup pack of templates etc that users can import to new wikis ?
- rhinosf1 - open a task about ^ and will work on one for infoboxes and maybe some of the gadgets like hotcat: T252369
Regarding, better / easier docs for setting things up- maybe we could have a starter pack that someone could import into the wiki that could get things like infoboxes working with minimal setup then a customisation guide.
- rhinosf1 will look into ^