Introduction to hacking #MediaWiki

One of the innovations at #Wikimania was a session during the hackathon where MediaWiki was explained to programmers new to the code. The origin of this session was because people with no experience asked if they were welcome.

As we like to welcome everybody, it was felt a good idea to reach out to these people and spend some time explaining the magic behind our software.

As MediaWiki is getting older, it also becomes increasingly difficult to understand. Yes there is documentation and, yes a lot of effort goes into the documentation. It is however quite different if you have to find your way on your own or if you are taken gently by the had and introduced into all the vagaries of our software.

This session was a success. In the end two thirds of the participants had actually done some work. If anything, this is the kind of session that is worth repeating.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Preparing for the #MediaWiki #Hackathon|Berlin 2011

The expectations for the Berlin hackathon are high. The program is filled to the brim and, everyone wants to get the most out of this meeting.

Running parallel to the meeting of developers there is a meeting of the language committee. It is no less technical and filled with issues that impact the development and reach of the Wikimedia projects.

Nothing has a bigger impact then the ability to be able to read in and write for a particular language. When you cannot see the text, you cannot read it. When you do not know where to find the characters on a keyboard, you cannot enter search for an article or write an article.

At the hackathon, Trevor and Alolita will be there and Santhosh is eager to show the integrated user interface of the Narayam and the WebFonts extension. For many languages the availability of the functionality these two extensions represent is essential. The availability of these extensions facilitated the gift by  Mr Prabu M Rengachari of his Pagul font for the Sourashtra language.

We hope and expect that these developments will meet with approval so that we can bring improved language support to all MediaWiki installations.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The #MediaWiki #Hackathon|Berlin 2011

When people meet in real life, when they come together for something like the Berlin hackathon, the results can be magic. This coming hackathon will be magic because the ground is being well prepared.

• Brion did set up an environment with the Wikia WYSIWYG software
• Krinkle will be there and can help Toolserver people with the internationalisation of their tools
• Alolita will talk with the language committee about language support including WebFonts and Narayam
• Santhosh has shown how quickly a language can be supported with a font, a web font and support in Linux
• Michael is the undisputed king of bringing characters into Unicode, into fonts and ensuring the required quality
• ...

The talent that will be around has the potential to move things forward. The trick will be to be happy with any and all things that get achieved. It will be different from what can be expected any way.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Hackaton for ten years of #GLAM and #Wikipedia cooperation

On the eve of celebrating 10 years of Wikipedia, we prepare for the next decenium hacking on the technology that will make the cooperation with GLAMs that much easier and sophisticated.

The group of people we have brought together consists of some of the MediaWiki greats but there are also people from cultural heritage organisations. Face time is gold.

We flew RobertHL in from Great Britain to work on one project; enabling support for Europeana. Europeana is the European portal to what is already digitally available of what European museums, archives and libraries. What is truly awesome is that by translating at translatewiki.net you enable other parts of the world to access what is a world class project.

This is only one of the things that are going on..
Thanks,
     GerardM