Wikispore/August 2020

2020-08-02

Attendees

1. koavf (Justin Anthony Knapp)
2. Pharos (Richard)
3. Alan: Worked on MIT Student Guide and is interested in porting it over to Wikispore
4. Peter: Works on external wikis and wants to colloborate on the WMF wikis
5. Houcemeddine: Worked on COVID-19-related issues
6. Ziko: Working on deployment and theory related to wikis, interested in new wiki launches
7. Edward: Develops extensions
8. Yaron Koren: Developer who maintains Cargo
9. AllyD: Interested in the Art Spore.
10. Ilana: attended Wikispore Day, has worked on her own wiki
11. Gergő: Developer

Agenda:

• Description:This call, we will review how the first annual Wikispore Day went (pretty well!), and see how to pursue next steps for the sister project planning process:
• Full Wikispore Day video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q75Fv7Snc_w
• https://wikispore.wmflabs.org/wiki/Wikispore_Day

Re: new skin: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements

• Yaron and Gergő (sp?) working on back end installation instructionally and that includes Cargo with a database.
• https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T259431 -- file system issue affected wikispore
• VisualEditor can now be installed (also Parsoid, etc.)

Wikispore Day: 200 visitors on Twitter, 200 on YouTube, others on Facebook

AllyD: working on Art Spore. Intersted in making things look different from Wikipedia. Houcemeddine: Making two wikis that overlap is not good. Interactive data would differentiate Wikispore.

• Especially for Geo Spore
• Richard: Maybe a turnkey-based system
• Yaron: Cargo can integrate with this
• Richard: It would be best for specialized information and specialized interface.
• We may be able to integrate with OSM data

• Responding to questions, Pharos says that Wikispore editors have to have a Wikimedia account already some other way. Obsolete content may be moved away but there is no plan for that now.
• Wikidata connections: One can refer to a wikidata item with d:Q456 now. The project may be able to join a Wikidata Federation so as to be able to import values and fill infoboxes for example with values from Wikidata.

What is the process to become a new project?

• There isn't a very explicit process.
• There are some concerns raised on Meta but no actual oppose votes.

Alan: It's important to have a maximum amount of flexibility for editing (e.g. anonymously). Flexibility along the spectrum of openness vs closedness of editing community is useful to allow experimentation in social and collaborative work.

Actions:

• This should lead to a formal proposal: shooting for a letter by September 1.
• Possible grant submission?
• Outstanding need to revamp main page to be more friendly and intelligible. Help explain the plant-based metaphors and what Wikispore *is*. Also include multimedia.