Utilizing Categories on WikiMo

Categories are an underutilized feature on the Mozilla Wiki. Though the User Survey just closed (with well over 700 responses!), a cursory view through the results reveals that users and contributors would like the WikiMo’s search capabilities improved. A first step towards this goal and for the service of better information architecture, one of my task items is to create a guide and screencast about creating and using categories.

My single blocker is typical: you begin to write on a topic that seems simple, but reveals itself to have much complexity. For the guide and screencast, I will focus on SPAM. We have a new SPAM template that flags suspicious pages for bureaucrats and admins. Within the SPAM template, Category:Spam is defined. That way pages that are flagged are automatically logged into the SPAM category listing.

I’ve been considering other wiki-wide projects with which to address and demonstrate the power of Categories. Tracking documentation of projects is one. Though a project may now be documented on the Mozilla Developer Network, outdated or just older pages could be flagged with an MDN category. The MDN category would alert WikiMo users that the most up-to-date information is no longer on the wiki but now at MDN.

I plan to record the screencast this week using the current implementation of the Vector theme.

Mozilla Wiki User Survey 2014

The Mozilla Wiki User Survey has launched! This survey is designed to gain insight at who is using Mozilla Wiki (aka WikiMo) and how. The survey will be up until 21 July 2014 at 12pm PT (17:00 UTC).

Since its formation in March 2014, the Wiki Working Group has been focusing on ways to improve WikiMo, making it more accessible and easier to document and share work. While much progress has been made including the elimination of spam accounts, it is imperative that we capture a snapshot of current wiki users and their usage in order to continue forward.

A survey will benefit us in several ways:

• We will get a glimpse at the types of contributors——paid or volunteer——and users interacting with the wiki.
• WWG will receive feedback from the community on what types of support will improve their wiki experience.
• Reveal patterns of usage that will inform development of best practices and education materials about the wiki.

If you haven’t, please fill out the survey

Questions of Clarity

The Wiki Working Group has launched the Mozilla Wiki User Survey 2014. The survey is designed to get insight into who is using the wiki, how often, and their satifaction with it in its current state.

One of the more difficult parts of designing a survey is narrowing down the questions that will lead to actionable tasks. As I wrote in my proposal, my work at WWG centers around the questions of clarity

Who is using the wiki?
How are they using the wiki?

Are these users active contributors? How is WikiMo positioned in their workflow. I would have liked to have launched or had the survey ready for launch in the beginning of the week, but configuring the survey took me longer than I anticipated. Every time I came back to the survey after a break, I discovered something new about Survey Gizmo, the platform that is powering the survey.

The survey will be up for two weeks or longer depending on the number of responses we receive.

WikiMo Styleguide

One of my objectives during this internship is to assist the Wiki Working Group (WWG) with the styleguide they were developing. It faced a few blockers, the biggest being lack of a standardized styling convention on WikiMo. For example, this early draft reads to not use HTML, but Wikipedia uses HTML on a number of pages and some tags are allowed in Mediawiki software.

Christie suggested that I start a page of Tips and Tricks that could blossom into or aid the development of a longer form styleguide. I am proud that I covered Namespaces, and will moving onto Categories which I am very excited about.

My First Week at Mozilla

To start, I just want to reiterate how excited I am to be working with Mozilla and the GNOME Foundation! Having attended several meetings so far and speaking with my mentor, Christie Koehler, I will learn so much about community building, managing wikis, information architecture and about the Mozilla project.

My first weeks at Mozilla have been a bit bumpy, I must admit. The ITP Spring Show was May 19th and 20th and then I visited family over the Memorial Day weekend. I don’t feel behind perse, but I am grateful to have a ticket to attend Wikiconference. It will be a great kickoff.

My tasks this week have revolved around reviewing my initial proposal for the summer internship. I am using Trello to label identify dependencies and sort tasks into two categories, ones to be completed during the internship and those that cannot be completed within the 12 weeks. Here is the link: Main Trello Board.

This first update is pretty brief. I will be micro-blogging during Wikiconference. A detailed report of the ammended tasks will be the next post.

Cheers to what I know will be a great, busy, and productive summer!