Submissions/Developing community norms for critical bots and tools

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

Submission no. 3003 Subject - T2

Title of the submission: Developing community norms for critical bots and tools; (Don't let your brother-in-law's niece be the only person who keeps your community running)

Type of submission: Lecture

Author of the submission: Bryan Davis

Language of presentation: English

E-mail address: bd808wikimedia.org

Username: BDavis (WMF)

Country of origin: United States

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.): Wikimedia Foundation

Personal homepage or blog: bd808.com

Abstract: Present real life bot and tool failures with on-wiki impact that might have been avoided by following a few relatively simple guidelines for healthy FLOSS projects.; Bots and tools are a vital resource for many on-wiki content creation and curation activities. A typical bot/tool project begins life as a way for a motivated Wikimedia community member to make some on-wiki task easier (or possible). These individuals are "scratching their own itch" in the best tradition of open source development. Many of these projects have a short lifecycle due to factors such as loss of interest by the maintainer, insurmountable technical hurdles, or discovery of a better means to manage the original problem. Others however become popular and tightly integrated in the workflows of one or more on-wiki communities.; Popular tools and bots become de facto production software needed to keep the wikis healthy and happy. Their roots as weekend projects from motivated volunteers brought them their success, but ultimately pose a risk to their end users. Life happens and a single developer project is in perpetual danger of abandonment. Adopting basic FLOSS project practices and following some general rules of professional software and systems management can help protect the software and the wikis.

What will attendees take away from this session?: Information about practices that on-wiki communities can look for and promote in tools that they use to solve technical problems.

Theme of presentation: Technology, Interface & Infrastructure

For workshops and discussions, what level is the intended audience?: Beginning to advanced

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

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

Slides or further information (optional): I have previously presented on this topic at WikiConference North America 2016 and Wikimedia Developer Summit 2017. To meet the 25 minute session length, the presentation will focus less on stories and more on best practices that developers should consider and communities should prefer.

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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.

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