Grants:IdeaLab/Newsletter extension for MediaWiki

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Newsletter extension for MediaWiki
Creation and management of newsletters on top of MediaWiki, allowing users to subscribe and receive notifications when new issues are published.
idea creator
Qgil-WMF
designer
Simmimourya3107
developer
Vivek Rai
volunteer
01tonythomas
this project needs...
volunteer
join
endorse
created on11:42, 26 February 2015 (UTC)


Project idea[edit]

What is the problem you're trying to solve?[edit]

Wikimedia projects have a hard time communicating their activity across the movement and out there.We are relying on watching pages, subscribing to mailing lists, follow blogs and social media... For most users, managing all these channels is hard, and every option includes exposure to plenty of noise (information not related to the project or topic of interest).

What is your solution?[edit]

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T76199

We are missing precisely the simplest model, specifically designed to solve this problem: publish a newsletter and let users subscribe to it, sending them a notification when a new article or issue is published. In a MediaWiki context, "a newsletter" can just be a main page with subpages for every issue or article. This part of the problem is well solved. The missing piece is the possibility to discover newsletters and subscribe to them in order to receive notifications.

Goals[edit]

Get Involved[edit]

Participants[edit]

  • I have a clear idea of what we need and I can help sketching the UI, writing strings, testing, discussing improvements, promoting the features, perhaps even recruiting more people.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:47, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Developer I can help with the development of extension (having previous experience in programming and open-source development, reported few Wikipedia bugs as well, helped few GSoC students) Vivek Rai (talk) 07:14, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
    • Vivek Rai, thank you for your support! Please head up to phab:T76199, where there is some action happening. An apparently strong GSoC candidate is interested in the task, and we have one mentor now. I'm volunteering as co-mentor, but if you want to co-mentor instead, please be my guest. I will continue to be involved no matter what.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:56, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Volunteer Working on getting https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T76199 done :) 01tonythomas (talk) 13:42, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Designer I can hekp with the UX part of the plugin. (I have worked on many web apps, on both backend and frontend)

How user interacts with plugin's functionality, how she/he is going to navigate throughout. I can definitely add up a good "ease of use" factor to the processes. Simmimourya3107 (talk) 08:49, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Endorsements[edit]

  • I have always wondered why each newsletter we put out, is a hacked together thing. This might also be a big boon for the WikiProjectX project as well (easier newsletter composition and distribution via notifications) would allow for more efficient group involvement :) Sadads (talk) 14:56, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
  • A much needed feature indeed. Relevant both for wikipedia-family and the plethora of wikis built on mediawiki software. 82.180.24.6 17:48, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
  • I agree this is a helpful idea worth pursuing. In particular, I think this will be helpful to WikiProjects and Affiliates. Varnent (talk)(COI) 01:17, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Sounds really useful. Non-WMF use should be kept in mind though (c.f. the excellent UploadWizard extension, which is almost perfect for use on other wikis, but for the multiple ways it assumes it's only built for Commons). — Sam Wilson ( TalkContribs ) … 02:01, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Great idea because everyone is already tired of watching pages in every Wiki-projects. Zygimantus (talk) 16:39, 31 March 2016 (UTC)