Evolving WEP
Everything in the world requires evolution. Whether it's human being, technology, medicine, education etc. In my previous blog series on Wikipedia Education Program, I wrote on how Wikipedia can help in school education. I hope the readers liked it. If you remember the series, I wrote about creating articles, editing articles and probably everything that involved articles. On 14/02/2017, when most people were celebrating Valentine's Day (which involved me as well), I was brainstorming on WEP. I thought of me, my Google Code-In moments with Wikimedia Foundation, my first contribution, my first reverted edit, those endless hours to solve bugs on Phabricator etc. Yes, these moments were my Valentine. However, the word 'Phabricator' gave me intuition. To all who don't know about Phabricator, it is a bug tracker developed by Facebook. Wikimedia Foundation uses Phabricator to track the bugs found on all the Wikipedias powered by MediaWiki. (To read more about Phabricator, click here.)
Most of you might be wondering, what the heck I am talking about. This guy said he was brainstorming on WEP, but he is talking about bug tracker, phabricator, MediaWiki and these terms do not relate to WEP at all. Yes, this is the motto of today's article, "To include these words in WEP". With the increase in trend of contests like Google Code-In, Google Summer of Code, the students in open-source organisations are increasing. So, this is what came into my mind. What if we include MediaWiki in WEP? So, I brainstormed on this idea and came up with the few pointers which I would like to share with you:
- The course will be primarily focused for college students.
- It will be an optional course and students who wish to learn more about open-source and MediaWiki can take the course and gain themselves some extra credits.
- There will be some tasks in Phabricator specifically reserved for those students.
- This course will not only help students to gain credits but also improve their GitHub profile. Their knowledge in open-source development will increase which will be beneficial in future for their career.
- Their chances to win Google Summer of Code internship will be relatively high.
- The community will get new talented contributors.
- They will learn practical skills. Their practical approach to coding will be enhanced.
Why this needs to be done?
Most of the coders that become coders by theoretical approach realise the need of practical aspect of coding when they start to code for an organisation or when they code for a big project. I agree theoretical aspect is must in coding. You should have in-depth knowledge of language you code in. But with the theoretical aspect, practical approach is must. The best way to start practical aspect of coding is to start contributing to open-source. When you code for open-source, you get to
- code for an organisation,
- code for a big project,
- most importantly, become a real coder.
With MediaWiki in the course, the students will gain so much experience in open-source development and coding in a collaborative environment.
Why I chose to integrate MediaWiki in WEP instead of a hackathon?
Hackathons are a great way to introduce coders to open-source world. But very few of them stay associated with the community after the completion of hackathon. The main reason behind this is their course syllabus which is too large and therefore the time management becomes a major obstacle to their development. That is why I chose to integrate it as a part of Wikipedia Education Program.
So many queries can arise on this issue. Even I have a couple of them. Let us discuss on this issue. Do leave your queries below. I would love to answer them. Thanks a lot for reading this article. See you again!
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