Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Comprehensive link checking tool (ID: 22451570)

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Applicant Details

Main Wikimedia username. (required)

Plantaest

Organization

N/A

If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)

N/A

Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)

Main Proposal

1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.

Comprehensive link checking tool

2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.

2024-04-01 - 2024-06-30

4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)

Vietnam

5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)

Not applicable

6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)

Link errors in Wikipedia articles are a serious issue as they impact the verification of the accuracy of references and content. These errors can range from simple issues like links redirecting to others, links transitioning to a paid mode, or being dead and inaccessible. Manually checking a few links in an article may not be too labor-intensive, but inspecting all the links in an article, especially lengthy ones, is a laborious and time-consuming task.

In the past, Wikipedia users have developed some tools to address this issue, the most notable being the Checklinks tool by user Dispenser (see en:User:Dispenser/Checklinks). However, this tool has been inactive for a long time, as the author has been unreachable since 2020. Some software errors have remained unresolved due to the author's absence. Furthermore, Dispenser's Checklinks is closed-source software, making it impossible for anyone to redevelop the tool to address link error issues. Currently, I believe the community needs a link checking tool similar to Checklinks (see en:User talk:Dispenser/Checklinks).

With this grant, I aspire to develop an application to comprehensively assist in checking links for Wikipedia articles, ensuring the articles' content remains accurate. This tool will be user-friendly, with a modern interface and convenience in correcting erroneous links to functional ones. This is a commitment I made to the Vietnamese Wikipedia community three years ago (see vi:Thảo luận Thành viên:Plantaest/Lưu 4#Công cụ check link mới). It is an application that other language Wikipedia communities can also use to help maintain the long-term quality and stability of their article content. As open-source software, anyone can inherit and maintain it if I am unable to do so in the future.

I have qualifications and experience in the IT field, as well as experience managing the content quality of Wikipedia articles in roles such as administrator and interface administrator on Vietnamese Wikipedia for many years. I believe I have the capability to develop an application to address the issue of broken links on Wikipedia. I previously created a tool that won the Coolest Tool Award 2022 from the Meta-Wiki community (see en:User:Plantaest/TwinkleMobile).

7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.

I plan to develop and complete this project within 3 months.

In the first month, I will undertake the following tasks:

Survey cases of broken links.
Analyze the application's requirements.
Develop the back-end of the application, including exploring the mechanism for analyzing the source code of articles to extract a list of proper links, researching the use of machine learning classification algorithms to categorize links, implementing link-editing functionality, and creating RESTful APIs for client use.
Deploy the back-end to Toolforge.

In the second month, I will continue developing the back-end and perform additional tasks:

Design the application's interface; it will be a web application.
Develop the front-end based on the completed design.
Gradually integrate the two parts of the front-end and back-end.
Deploy the front-end to Toolforge.
Introduce the application to communities to gather feedback.

In the third month, while continuing to refine the application, I will undertake additional tasks to ensure the software reaches its highest level of completion:

Write unit tests.
Learn about Translatewiki.net to apply internationalization (i18n) to the application.
Write user documentation.
Receive feedback from communities to adjust functionalities and fix errors.

8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc. Team members involved in the grant application need to be aware of their involvement in the project.

I am the sole person working on this project: Plantaest (Vietnamese Wikipedia administrator and interface administrator).

9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)

This application will be solely developed by me, but during the implementation process, I may seek advice from the communities, primarily from English Wikipedia and Vietnamese Wikipedia, as English and Vietnamese are the two languages I am familiar with. They will assist in tailoring the software to meet the practical needs that the community desires. To attract attention, I will post this proposal in the areas that I will list below. If community members have opinions, I will review, note, discuss, and potentially implement them into the software I am developing.

The places where I will promote this project:

10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)

No

10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.

N/A

11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.

I have previously proposed to undertake this project with some Vietnamese Wikipedia users at this link: vi:Thảo luận Thành viên:Plantaest/Lưu 4#Công cụ check link mới.

I will continue further discussions about the project with everyone in the following places:

12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)

Not applicable

13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)

Open Technology

14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)

Not applicable

15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)

Improve User Experience

Learning and metrics

17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)

Through this project, I hope to learn the following:

Understand the process of creating a complete open-source application to address issues for the Wikipedia community.
Learn how to deploy applications on Toolforge.
Deepen my programming knowledge.
Learn how to receive feedback from users and make adjustments to ensure the product achieves the highest quality.

18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)

Number of participants, editors, and organizers
Other Metrics	Target	Optional description
Number of participants	10	These are voluntary participants, providing support in terms of advice, feedback, and trying out the application.
Number of editors	1	In this context, I think that 'editor' refers to a software developer, meaning only myself.
Number of organizers	1	I am the sole organizer of this project.

Number of content contributions to Wikimedia projects
Wikimedia project	Number of content created or improved
Wikipedia	1000
Wikimedia Commons
Wikidata
Wiktionary
Wikisource
Wikimedia Incubator
Translatewiki
MediaWiki
Wikiquote
Wikivoyage
Wikibooks
Wikiversity
Wikinews
Wikispecies
Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia

Optional description for content contributions.

I believe that with this tool, thousands of articles will be improved in terms of addressing link errors. I have chosen the symbolic number of 1000.

19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)

Yes

Main Open Metrics Data
Main Open Metrics	Description	Target
Working hours	The number of working hours on this grant, including surveying, requirements analysis, development, debugging, deployment, community discussions, writing documents, testing, etc. In total, it is 90 days multiplied by 5 hours per day.	450
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A

20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)

Working hours: WakaTime.

Financial proposal

21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)

Budget.xlsx

22. and 22.1. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in your local currency. (required)

103500000 VND

22.2. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done only to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD.

4241.45 USD

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

Endorsements and Feedback

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Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:

Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).

Endorse