User:Sandaru/Welcome to labs/Project Proposal

Introduction

Problem

Wikimedia Labs is a platform to volunteer and experimental development. It is a two part project Dev Labs and Tool Labs. The problem is Wikimedia labs currently face some difficulties in matching new contributors with existing projects. Also their documentation for newcomers needs improvement as well.

Purpose

Purpose of this project is to have a complete set of newcomer getting started documentation set with complete project landing pages for a each project. Therefore when a new comer comes he/she has a directed guidance to find what are the existing projects and how to contribute to them or how to start a project from scratch.

Scope

The scope of this project is improving all the documentation in Wikimedia Labs. This includes Getting started documentation and all the project pages.

Methodology

As an initial contribution for this project I have made an document on Reviewing main page and getting started page which can be found here. Reviewing Main Page and Getting Started Page

I hope to divide this project in two sections which needs to be executed in parallel.

1. Improving Getting Started Documentation

2. Completing project documentation in each project

1. Improving getting started documentation

Getting started documentation plays a major role in the open source community. Having a complete set of getting started documents will help newcomers to find a direction to contribute to the community. In Wikimedia labs there are two main type of newcomer use cases:

1. Random helpful volunteer who just shows up out of nowhere wondering 'what is this and what is this good for'?.

2. Specific user on a mission who shows up with a particular project in mind.

We should consider these two use cases and come up with a getting started page which supports each of the use cases.

One specific drawback I see in the Wikimedia Labs documentation is It doesn't have an FAQ page. Along with the getting started documentation we should have a FAQ page with set of common questions for newcomers or wikimedia labs users.

For newcomers to start volunteering he/she should find a project which suits his/her ability. In the other case when someone comes with an idea he/she should be able to find whether that idea is already implemented in a project. In order to achieve this we should have a complete project pages with descriptions.

2. Completing project documentation in each project

Currently the labs documentation contents comes from various sources. Some of it is automatically generated and some of it is written by staff and volunteers. If we have a clear template for every project then it would be easy for volunteers or staff to organize the contents and complete the documentation.

For that porpose first I would come up a template discussing with the mentor and then we have a community discussion on that template. After getting the ideas for the community we can the revised template can be sent to the projects to change their documentation. As the internship period is 13 weeks we should start this in the community bonding period. Then I hope to go through the project documentation of each projects preferably 14 projects a week and communicate with the project members and help them complete their documentation. This would result in completing the documentation of all the projects hosted in the labs hopefully at the end of the internship period.

Timeline

Week Number	Week	Task
Community bonding period	21st April - 19th May	Discuss with the mentor and community and come up with a template for project documentation.
1	19th May - 25th May	Coming up with a overall structure and design  for the Getting Started documentation for Labs newcomers. Start completing project documentation on existing documentation according to the template.
2	26th May - 1st June	Start implementing the Getting Started guides with step by step instructions and link thema to main page.
3	2nd June- 8th June	Implementing the getting started guides and make an FAQ page for Wikimedia Labs
4	9th June - 15th June	Implementing the Getting Started Guides and revise FAQ page with ideas coming from the community
5	16th June - 22nd June	Finishing up the getting started guides
6	23rd June- 29th June	Mid term Evaluation : Deliverable - Complete set of getting started guides and links at proper places to be directed to them. FAQ page.
7	30th June - 06th July	Improving the Getting started guides and complete documentation on existing projects
8	07th July - 13th July	Categorize all the projects into active and abandoned categories
9	14th July- 20th July	Make links to active and abandoned categories and make the left submenu include list of projects along with these categories
10	21st July - 27th July	Complete documentation on existing projects.
11	28th July-3rd August	Complete documentation on existing projects
12	4th August-10th August	Plan and design a way to get Labs project members and newcomers  feedback and address the problems on the feedback.
13	11th August-18 August	Pencil Down State: Finishing up the project documentation of the all projects.

Time span of tasks

Tasks	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13
1. Coming up with a overall structure and design  for the Getting Started documentation	x
2. Completing project documentation of each and every project	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
3. Implementing the Getting Started guides with step by step instructions for the newcomers		x	x	x	x
4. Making an FAQ page and revise it from the ideas of the community			x	x	x
5. Finish up the initial phase of documentation finishing all the getting started guides along with the FAQ						x
6. Categorize all projects into active and abandoned states								x
7. Make links to active and abandoned categories and make the left submenu include list of projects along with these categories									x
8. Plan and design a way to get Labs project members and newcomers  feedback and address the problems on the feedback												x
9. Finishing up the project documentation of the all projects.													x