Grants talk:IdeaLab/Build/April-July 2014 sprint plan

Roles & skills

I don't like this idea: everyone can do everything. Badges should be, in my view, optional, if at all needed. —Gryllida 02:43, 19 February 2014 (UTC))

Hi Gryllida, everyone can do everything, and these will be optional! These features are about offering up talents and offering up needs as proactive invitation for engagement, when people feel like specifying a role or skill would be useful for their projects. They're intended as an experimental answer to a need that some project creators have identified, but don't worry, you won't need to use these features if you don't like them, though, and there is no formal vetting involved per-se :) Siko (WMF) (talk) 22:11, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't think badges are needed at all, granted the editing interface is friendly enough. Gryllida 10:53, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

There could be a good place to get started with activities though — lists with recently drafted proposals (copy editing), with finished drafts (looking for programmers). Gryllida 10:53, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

User infoboxes with programming things can be easily created, like language infoboxes for user pages. Gryllida 10:53, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Stress no need to do calls for feedback or mentors; all proposals need feedback at all times. Instead, categorize by topics and make the list compact and easy to browse for people to pick up interesting ideas to get involved with. Gryllida 10:53, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Forms “gadget” is an overkill

I keep thinking that developing individual gadgets is hard. Reuse VE work maybe?

I think we may want to enable visualeditor for the idea:* namespace, granted we actually decide to create it, and do close to *absolutely nothing* as it already solves the problem of making submitting a new idea easier; you just fill in a template using visualeditor's friendly template editor, and start typing the content body of the proposal page. (It may need some one-week-max developer thinking on how to preload some stuff when creating a Idea:* page, and how to open the template dialog when the user enters editing mode —Gryllida 10:55, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida, last I heard, there were no immediate plans to roll out VE on meta, because it doesn't play nice with the translate extension. Do you have updated info? Cheers, Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately I don't. Gryllida 09:23, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm. I'll follow up with someone in Language Engineering on this. Thanks, Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 19:51, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Just to make sure... Is the translate extension used at the IdeaLab? Do the ideas get translated? (I imagine they could, but knowledge of actual use-case could be relevant). Gryllida 23:17, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Navigation and coding suggestions

• Shorten and simplify the Grants:IEG page.
• I like Gryllida's idea of using VE in a way to simplify workflow.
• If we're going to have a badges system let's keep it simple unless we have some evidence that a more elaborate set will be used to improve ease of use of IdeaLab or IEG. We've seen with previous development work what happens if we take a "build it and they will come" approach.
• Prioritize addressing problems based on evidence of grantees or committee members asking for change, such as in the Committee's scoring system and with the need to find devs to match with IEGs.

Thanks, --Pine^✉ 06:13, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the notes, Pine. Just a quick reply to clarify that this sprint is specific to IdeaLab, not IEG, but that doesn't mean we're not also doing IEG-related build projects elsewhere :) We're working on a plan with the platform team to get a better scoring tool in place by next fall, for example, by recruiting in OPW to schedule someone to work on that project this summer (I've been drafting the scope with tech folks today, actually...will keep the committee in the loop as that piece moves forward down the road). Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 00:09, 1 March 2014 (UTC)