Submissions/Tutoring software development students to streamline Wikimedia Commons flow: from a digiKam export plugin to a Wordpress embedding plugin
|
This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2012. |
- Submission no.
- 685
- Title of the submission
Tutoring software development students to streamline Wikimedia Commons flow: from a digiKam export plugin to a Wordpress embedding plugin.
- Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation)
- presentation
- Author of the submission
- Jean-Frédéric Berthelot
- E-mail address
- jean-frederic.berthelot
wikimedia.fr
- Username
- User:Jean-Frédéric
- Country of origin
- France
- Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)
- Wikimédia France member
- Personal homepage or blog
- None − Guest-blogger on Commonists, French blog about Wikimedia Commons
- Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)
Tutoring software development students to streamline Wikimedia Commons flow: from a digiKam export plugin to a Wordpress embedding plugin.
Wikimedia Commons, the free media repostory of the Wikimedia projects, has a flow which can be broken down in three steps: adding content, curating content, reusing content[1]. All three steps are a struggle in their own ways, and the community is in dire need of software support. Another, non-related problem is the huge disconnection between Wikimedia Commons and the rest of the software world.
Students in software development, as part of their normal curriculum at the university or engineering school, must carry projects anchored in real life needs − whether it may be an industrial or research project.
As part of my day job, I had the opportunity to submit to students two projects[2], to tackle a bit the aforementioned issues. They aim to help with Wikimedia Commons broken flow (both upstream and downstream) by connecting it with third-party software. Both projects were picked up by interested students (the acceptance rate was 56%, with 75 student teams for 132 project propositions).
The first project, upstream, revolved around digiKam. digiKam is a FLOSS, cross-platform “digital asset management” application used to manage a large media library. The project aimed to finalise an export plug-in to upload files to Wikimedia Commons − the current prototype being very deficient, lacking good support in key aspects like licensing and categories.
The second project, downstream, revolved around Content Management Systems such as Wordpress, Joomla! or Drupal. These tools are very popular: as an example, Wordpress claims several millions installations running. The project aimed to build plug-ins to easily search and embed Wikimedia Commons files, while respecting the crucial licensing requirements.
Though the projects are currently in progress, they are running quite smoothly and will be finished by Wikimania. Of course, there will be some demonstrations of students realisations.
In this talk, I will make a case of tutoring computer students students to work on Wikimedia-related projects, which is a win-win operation. Wikimedians gain in tailored software development supporting the community. It is also an outreach operation, a way to explain key values like knowledge dissemination and licensing issues through the prism of software development. As for students, they get to realise a piece of software with a potentially huge audience, and learn the virtues of open collaboration, from shared-code repository to wiki-based coordination and community feedback.
- Track
- Technology and Infrastructure
- Length of presentation/talk
- 25 Minutes
- Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
- Most probably so
- Slides or further information (optional)
- Special request as to time of presentations
- None
Interested attendees
If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with four tildes. (~~~~).
- Add your username here.
- Sumanah (talk) 18:12, 21 March 2012 (UTC)