Submissions/Timeless: building a new interface for Wikimedia

This is a Completed submission for Wikimania 2017 ready to be reviewed by a member of the Programme Committee.

Submission no. 3064 - T3

Title of the submission: Timeless: building a new interface for Wikimedia

Type of submission (lecture, panel, tutorial/workshop, roundtable discussion, lightning talk, poster, birds of a feather discussion): lecture

Author of the submission: Isarra

Language of presentation: English

E-mail address: zhorishnagmail.com

Username: Isarra

Country of origin: USA

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)

Personal homepage or blog: https://wiki.zaori.org/wiki/Main_Page

Abstract (up to 300 words to describe your proposal): Over the past year and a half, as a volunteer MediaWiki developer, I have been working on a new responsive skin, Timeless, based on Brandon Harris' Winter designs. This year, the skin was proposed for deployment to Wikimedia projects and has since been getting needed reviews and undergoing testing. There is a major underlying problem, here, however - that we really don't know what the user needs are. Thus, we have reached out to several of the sister projects, fr.wiktionary, fr.wikinews, fr.wikiversity, commons, and en.wikisource (not specifically excluding wikipedia; it's just that nobody's gotten around to prodding any of them yet), and plan to work with them moving forward. I have also submitted a grant proposal aiming to address the lack of research into this area, and to finish developing Timeless into a product that effectively meets the needs of all the projects.; This talk will go into some of the history behind the skins and features leading up to Timeless (Vector, Winter, mobile development, the skinning system overhauls making this possible now), and will also cover what we have done so far, and how the process is moving forward. How one task submitted on Phabricator was adopted by many volunteers to make happen, how the community outreach began and continues forward as the communities themselves take on the task of actually testing things out. If it's accepted, the nature and plans for the grant that will support continued development, and either way, what people can expect moving forward, and how they can get involved and help out. Timeless, after all, may not exactly be the future of Wikimedia's new front-end itself, but it will be the stepping stone to whatever it turns out to be.

What will attendees take away from this session?

A better understanding of technical community plans and processes
More trust about how changes can be made well moving forward (as opposed to various debacles in the past with new interface rollouts, such as with Vector, fonts, MMV)
General buy-in to this particular potential change

Theme of presentation

Technology, Interface & Infrastructure
Sister Projects

Length of session (if other than 25 minutes, specify how long): 25 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Probably

Slides or further information (optional)

Special requests

Is this Submission a Draft or Final?

This is a Completed submission for Wikimania 2017 ready to be reviewed by a member of the Programme Committee.

Interested attendees

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