View source for WikiProject X presentation

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=== WikiProjects ===
*Community spaces dedicated to specific subjects or goals
*Random example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sanitation
*Like talkpages, just made out of the same things as articles and social norms
*We have no sensible social norms

===IEG===
*This was all James Hare's idea. Other people made it work too.
*Project to research and improve wikiproject experience
*Started in january, ran through september (extension)
*If you were at wikimania, you got the midpoint presentation from a more product-oriented persective
*Now you get the final presentation from the design perspective, or at least something very cranky.

===What we did in a nutshell===
*Establish problem in which most wikiprojects aren't very useful
*Try to figure out why, and what more useful ones do
*Try figure out what to maybe do about it
*Maybe do something about it
**try some things
**try some more things
**run into a whole lot of bugs
**come up with really horrible workarounds for bugs
*Run out of grant and ask for more money.

===Actual process===
*It wasn't actually that bad.

===Research and outreach===
*Set up a wikiproject for the wikiproject project on enwp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_X
*Solicited stories and volunteers from existing wikiprojects
*Looked at existing wikiprojects largely at random to get an idea of things

===More research===
*Once we had stories and volunteer projects, ran through the stories and volunteers
**Story analysis (common things, whatever)
**Component analysis [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_X/Workspace#List_of_components_.28found.29_in_pilot_projects]
*WikiProject Directory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Directory
**Because we needed to know what we're dealing with.
**What we're dealing with is terrifying.

===The problem===
*Yay we know what the problems are!
*WikiProjects are terrifying.
**No, really.
**For us, for new users, for people trying to maintain it all.
*No technical support for wikiprojects
**Everything needs to be done by hand
**Hard to maintain, difficult to navigate
**Few automatic updates/notifications
**No way for new users to find them and become engaged
*Unrealized potential

===Mockups and test project===
*I made some mockups. Yeah. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_X/Workspace#Mockups]
*James turned one of them into an initial project. And then ran an editathon using it with some folks.
*So some testing happened.
*Some drinking happened.
*Some other things happened.

===Much, much later===
*More mockups
**I had this brilliant idea to mock up all the design elements in one place so I could template everything and quickly cross-compare the styles so everything remains consistent...
**This fell apart very quickly.
*Prototype: http://wiki.zaori.org/wiki/WikiProject_stuff/WikiProject_mainpage
**templates/formatting became basis for production template modules
*Tool development
**bots, bots, bots
**tasks, related, current discussions
**signup process
**suggestbot guy did suggestbot stuff
*This happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cannabis

===Phabricator===
*We requested a phabricator project.
*We started tracking project tasks and bugs.
*Really! https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/wikiproject-x/

===Pilots===
*Five pilots! Templates changed. Bugs showed up. Bugs got fixed. Hopefully.
*A few others got converted/made as well.
*At some point we established that this really, really isn't sustainable.

===Serious problems===
*Setup
**We have a wizard for signup. We need a wizard for project creation.
**We can't make a wizard for project creation because project creation needs to initialise the wizard for project signup.
**Initialising a wizard requires admin permissions.
**Also some other weird complications.
*Maintainability (now bots, off-project; horrible template soup)
*Cross-project integration (wikidata, commons, etc)
*Echo and Flow
*Simply put, we're not done.

===The future===
*More work on this is needed - more research, more development, more wrap-up
*Also https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T113973