Raimond Spekking
| Tags | Lua, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata |
|---|---|
| Primary Session | Growing the MediaWiki Technical Community |
| Secondary Sessions | Knowledge as a Service |
tl;dr: Empower more Wikipedians [1] in using Lua, incl. invoking data from Wikidata, and data from the Data namespace on Commons.
In the past 15 years it was relatively easy for every Wikipedian to create templates, and with the ParserFunctions to write some kind of simple program code.
In 2013 we got Lua as real and powerful programming language. Since a short time it is possible to invoke data from Wikidata and a very short time to store/read data in/from the Data namespace on Wikimedia Commons.
These are all good improvements and increases the possibilities in adding valuable data/information to the (often) high quality content of the German Wikipedia. But these techniques increases the requirements in technical knowledge to the Wikipedians. In other words: Substantial less Wikipedians are able to write Lua module than creating templates.
As an active community member of the German Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons (and Wikidata) I see a real bottleneck in the situation, that we do not have enough Wikipedians with skills in Lua and the possibitiy how to invoke data from Wikidata & Co.
Checking the Module namespace via RecentChanges for September 2017 on the German Wikipedia: Only 13 Wikipedians contributed to Lua code. Often I read on the Village Pump and related pages: "Sorry, but my to-do-list as volunteer is full until end of the year, I do not have the capacity to solve your problem." and so on. This is very frustrating for all sides.
Other cool [3] projects, like integration of Maps via Kartographer, stucks because the German Wikipedia has not enough man power for these works
As a result of this notice we have to create some help to empower more Wikipedians in using Lua, incl. invoking data from Wikidata, and data from the Data namespace on Commons.
In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland it probably easier than in other countries because we can offer real-live workshops. In 2018 the team of the "Wikipedia:Lokal K" [2], a real-live supporting base for Wikipedia & Co, is planning, with the support of WMDE, some workshops for Wikidata. Same could be done for supporting Lua & Co.
As originator of the "Technical Wishlist" [4] I am thinking about adding support for Lua modules & Co to the wishlist.
On the summit I would like to discuss these and other solutions for this bottleneck.
[1] to be read as users of all sister projects
[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lokal_K
[3] My POV as active OpenStreetMap community member
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Tech/Community_Wishlist_Survey_description
Originated by me in September 2013: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Technische_W%C3%BCnsche/%C3%9Cber_das_Projekt
