Wikimedia Resource Center/Walkthrough

Welcome to the Wikimedia Resource Center! We're glad you're here.

The goal of the Wikimedia Resource Center is to make it easier for Wikimedians to discover the resources that help them in their work.

• How the Wikimedia Resource Center works
• "Is this the right page?"

Is this the right page?

The Wikimedia Resource Center might not have what you're looking for.

• I have no idea what Wikimedia even is
  • You can read more about the Wikimedia movement here.
• I am a journalist writing about Wikimedia
  • Please see the Wikimedia Foundation Press Room.
• I represent an organization that is interested in partnering with Wikimedia
  • Visit our Outreach Wiki for more information.
• I am brand new to Wikimedia and would like to learn more about contributing
  • Welcome! The Wikimedia Resource Center should have plenty of resources that will help, but if you're looking for an initial introduction, these pages might be useful:
    • The Introduction page on the English-language Wikipedia
    • The Welcome page on Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
    • The Introduction page on Wikidata, the free knowledge base
    • New Developers page on mediawiki.org
    • More Wikimedia projects...
• I contribute content to Wikimedia projects
  • You can continue reading this page to learn more about how the Wikimedia Resource Center works, or you can jump right to: For Contributors.
• I am involved in MediaWiki software development and/or write technical tools, scripts, bots, etc. for Wikimedia projects
  • You can continue reading this page to learn more about how the Wikimedia Resource Center works, or you can jump right to: For Developers.
• I run outreach programs that help improve the Wikimedia projects and build community
  • You can continue reading this page to learn more about how the Wikimedia Resource Center works, or you can jump right to: For Program Coordinators.
• I serve in a governance role in a Wikimedia affiliate organization (chapters, user groups, etc.)
  • You can continue reading this page to learn more about how the Wikimedia Resource Center works, or you can jump right to: For Affiliate Organizers.
• I am not sure if I fit in any of these particular categories, but am still interested in seeing what the Wikimedia Resource Center has to offer
  • Keep reading this page and you can learn more about how the Wikimedia Resource Center works, or you can browse the complete list of resources.

How the Wikimedia Resource Center works

The Wikimedia Resource Center, or WRC, refers to the page Wikimedia Resource Center and its subpages. You could think of the WRC as a directory or index, collecting annotated links.

Resources

Each entry in the WRC lists a resource. Broadly speaking, a resource is something that helps Wikimedians do work that fulfills our mission. Resources include documentation, connections to other individuals, financial resources, templates, toolkits, etc. Resources can be on Meta-Wiki or elsewhere. Resources pages in the hub are designed to help you with volunteer and organizational projects and programs in the Wikimedia movement. You might want to create a new photo contest, but you are not sure where to find bots and templates to do this, or how to keep your community engaged throughout the competition, or learn what metrics to expect by looking at historic program data. The WRC points you to guides for each of these tasks.

Categories

Resources are organized into functional categories, corresponding to section headers on the WRC pages. These groups are not based on Wikimedia Foundation teams but general topic areas describing different types of resources. The current categories are:

• Contact and Questions – Maybe you have a question about the Foundation, or want to ask a question to the Foundation. Contact and Questions is a good place to start. It has a list of common questions, a page to ask new questions, a portal for emergency contacts, and ways to reach other volunteers.
• Skills Development – The Foundation supports programs and emergent communities across the movement. You can learn about evaluating the impact of your own program, read through the lessons we have collected across the movement in “Learning Patterns”, and find program tools. You can also learn about the Community Capacity Development, and Inspire campaigns to crowdsource ideas.
• Grants Support – Volunteers and affiliates are eligible for funding through grants. The grants page on the Hub will walk you through the different types of grants at the Foundation and what we’ve learned from years of supporting the community with grants.
• Programs Support – Three Wikimedia Programs have dedicated staff support at the Wikimedia Foundation. In this tab, you will find who to connect to, and resources for Wikipedia Education Program, The Wikipedia Library and GLAM initiatives.
• Software Basics – Introductory resources for software development in the Wikimedia community. Here, you can learn how to report a bug, translate interface documentation, follow projects on Phabricator, and learn about events for developers.
• Software Development – The Foundation designs and builds tools and features in collaboration with the broader MediaWiki community.
• Technical Infrastructure – The technical foundation for the Wikimedia community.
• Global Reach Partnerships – Great change doesn’t happen alone, so the Foundation seeks and develops partnerships with a variety of institutions, like governments, nonprofits, universities, and mobile providers, among others. Here you can find out more about each region where the Global Reach team has started partnerships, as well as what kind of research is available on these regions.
• Legal – Free culture and open knowledge are protected by laws. Learn about who you can contact in the legal team at the Wikimedia Foundation for specific issues surrounding digital, privacy, and copyrights. You can also learn about the Wikimedia Foundation’s Board governance and the status of non-free content on the Wikimedia projects.
• Communications – We need to talk about our mission to help advance it. The Communications pages cover everything from storytelling and messaging to social media. These are resources created in collaboration with the Communications Committee and the Foundation.

Audiences

Additionally, you can view resources by audience, filtering out resources based on which groups of people they were intended for. Resources can only be in one category, but they can be relevant to multiple audiences. The current audience views are:

• For Program Coordinators – Resources for people organizing initiatives, including training and outreach programs.
• For Contributors – Resources for those who contribute content to our projects.
• For Developers – Resources for those writing bots, Lua modules, and contributions to MediaWiki itself.
• For Affiliate Organizers – Resources for those with governance roles in their affiliates, including chapter board members.
• All – Every entry in the Wikimedia Resource Center.

We recognize the categories and audiences are not perfect. Your feedback on the talk page is welcome.

What to expect

The Wikimedia Resource Center should not be considered as a hub for permanent online support, nor should immediate response be expected by posting questions or comments in the talk page. It is also not a directory of Wikimedia Foundation teams.

Yes, you can update this!

We want the Wikimedia Resource Center to include resources from within the Wikimedia Foundation and outside the Wikimedia Foundation as well. We invite you to add links to resources that you believe will be helpful to your peers in the Wikimedia community.

Some technical details: each entry in the Wikimedia Resource Center is stored in a Lua table, with each audience view being automatically generated based on this table. This is somewhat unconventional for a wiki but in the long run it should make it easier to maintain the resource center by removing the need to manually synchronize different pages. To make editing more convenient, we have created a gadget to edit individual entries and add new ones through a form.

Gadgets

The Wikimedia Resource Center uses two JavaScript gadgets to add functionality that would not otherwise be available. This includes a "specialized editing interface" gadget and a "make sections collapsible" gadget. These gadgets are turned on by default. You can adjust your gadget settings in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets to enable or disable one or both of these gadgets.