Talk:Hackathons/Hackathon tips for organizers

Reedy mentioned this in a chat. It seems to be missing from the handbook?

Thanks! Added to m:Wikimania_Handbook#Freenode (as linked from Hackathons/Hackathon tips for organizers#Wifi). @Reedy (WMF) please clarify that sentence with details on who to contact etc.

I've further tweaked based on the phab comment, and added a section for "IP Throttle exception", but we still need clarification on where to contact Freenode and Wikimedia.

Hi @Cherishsantosh, I really enjoyed reading w:en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-08-18/News_and_notes.

I'm wondering if you'd have anything to add to this documentation page? (or, if you have your own documentation pages elsewhere already, maybe those could be linked from here to start with, and perhaps slowly merged over time, so that everyone can eventually find the best-practices in a single place). Thanks!

Hello @Quiddity (WMF) ,

Thank you for reaching me out. I posted source code's link and little bit description here. (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2016/Chandigarh_Hackathon).

In coming day's I am going to write a blog regarding chandigarh hack-a-thon and WCI2016 (https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/08/24/digest-tulu-wikipedia/).

Thank you

I removed the reference to Whatsapp: Telegram seems more used in open communities (client is GPL), and it's already been used in the Movement for event's coordination (WMDE created a group for WmCon attendees in 2016, which is still featuring almost 90 members).

Good point about volunteers' t-shirt not being a good option. May I suggest vests instead?

If particular food options are to be requested to waiters due to their limited availability (kosher, vegan), say so on table signs, in participants' guides and whenever meal time is announced on mic.

"Don't print schedule of sessions in advance" contradicts indications at the beginning that the badge may include a schedule.

The nap room is in a certain sense a tested idea. WMDE provides bean bags at WmCon and every year has its share of aficionados, especially jet-lagged people, who don't even mind if the room is not a quiet one.

Coffee, water, tea, snacks must be available in the room which is open 24hs a day or in a very close place freely accessible by the hackers, the way I see it.

@Rfarrand (WMF), thank you for working on Hackathons/Pre-hackathon Checklist for Organizers. Wouldn't it be better to bring that table to this page, in order to have everything in a single page? I fear we have too many similar hackathon pages, and if anything we should aim to reduce the number of pages (@Quiddity (WMF) has been working on this and he might have an opinion as well).

Yes and no. I considered that, but the reason that I did not end up going that route is because I find that the hackathon tips for organizers page is so full of information that in the past organizers have had a hard time reading through it and distinguishing important details from fun ideas and tips. Then they important thinks get mixed in with the optional things and the important things get missed. It is probably partly a formatting issues, but also there IS a lot of information there and more will be added over time.

My ideal is that there is a (more or less) simple pre-hackathon checklist. That checklist only has the important things that the event needs (or else it might fail). Those important things link to sections within the tips for organizers page. Then if we have a really serious organizer they can also read through all the written up tips.

I am certainly not completely set on doing it this way, so would be happy to hear what kind of organization might be more helpful to organizers.

Pages growing organically to a point where they are not useful anymore is my main concern too. This is more likely to happen when such pages don't have many watchers, and it is difficult to have more watchers in pages when we have so many pages spread without clear structure and overlaps.

So what about having just one page for organizers stating with the table of requirements and then leaving the rest of tips underneath? Then every time we get questions from organizers, we come to this single page and we fix the part of the documentation that is missing or confusing. Of course, organizers can fix things themselves as they use this page and solve problems.

OK, this works for me. I will copy the table over to this page and delete the other page.

+1 to merging. Improving an existing documentation page is generally better than just starting a new one. (cf. m:Grants:Learning patterns/Every new page starts off unwatched)

There were 3 oddly formatted links in the table's wikitext that were not displaying, going to these locations. I couldn't see obvious places to re-insert them.

• phab:T128722
• wmf:Friendly space policy
• en:Given_name

Could we also try to merge Volunteer coordination and outreach/Event planning please? Thanks in advance. :)

Will you ask Wikimania organizers to review this resource at some point? It seems to me that there should be a sort of checklist of things they should really do and communicate about in advance; https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T124809 for example looks important but is diluted among other stuff.

@Elitre, thanks, I've changed the link to m:Wikimania_Handbook#Hackathon_requirements and merged the list from phabricator into that.

Thanks!