User:AutumnFeather/Wikinside
Wikinside
Wikinside is a tool for tracking the impact of events on Wikimedia projects.
Components
Events
Events represent various kinds of activities, from single-day editathons to long-term photo competitions. They are the lifeblood of Wikinside and are what you will interact with most often while using the system.
There are multiple types of events specified below, each requiring different information, though all need a name, a start date and an end date, and most require specifying the projects Wikinside will track (eg. the English or French Wikipedia).
With manual user selection
This type of event is meant mainly for single-day or short-term events with a predefined list of participants. Participating users are entered manually, and Wikinside then tracks their contributions over the specified time period in the specified projects.
With a hashtag
This type of event is meant for longer-term challenges that take place over the course of weeks or months. Participating users do not need to be specified in advance. They instead label their contributions with a specified hashtag, and Wikinside then tracks those via the Hashtags tool.
Photo category
This type of event is meant for events that involve uploading photos. Wikinside tracks photos uploaded to a particular Commons category in the specfied time period. Unlike other events, the project is not required (as it is always Wikimedia Commons).
Different types of events track slightly different things, though you may expect most to track the number of participants, edited and newly created pages, and individual edits, as well as the total size of those edits in bytes. Photo category events track the number of uploaded photos and the number of pages using these photos.
Event categories
Each event can belong to one or more event categories. These are meant to organize small individual events into larger wholes. These can then be used to track the impact of a whole set of events at a time. As an example, seeing the impact of a larger event that includes multiple editathons as well as a larger hashtag-based challenge is easy if they all belong to the same category.
Categories are hierarchical, and each category can have any number of subcategories and at most one parent category. Events belonging to a category are also considered to belong to its parent category, its parent's parent category, and so on.
Categories can be color-coded to help distinguish them more quickly!
Users
Users are users of Wikimedia projects (such as Wikipedia) that have participated in any of the tracked events. They may also be called participants when talking about a specific event.
Wikinside tracks the impact of each user across all the events they have participated in.
User categories
Similarly to events, users can belong to one or more user categories, which have the same kind of hierarchy as event categories. Unlike those, however, they can be assigned in two different ways. Alongside the manually assigned categories, events can specify one or more user categories to assign to each participant. They behave in the same way for the prurpose of calculating the impact of a category, however they are only assigned to a user for as long as they are a participant of the event. To see whether a given category is assigned manually or through participating in an event, check the category list and note if it is only present in the "From events:" section at the top of the list.
Projects
Projects represent each of the Wikimedia projects Wikinside tracks. This is the component you will likely interact with the least, as it is rarely needed after the inital setup.
Each project requires its name and path.
How-tos
Creating an event
- Click the "Add" button below the bottom of the list in the Events tab.
- Fill in the name and choose the type of the event.
- Fill out the rest of the form accoding to the instructions.
- If creating an event with a hashtag, including the # is unnecessary. Furthermore, hashtags are case-insensitive. To track multiple hashtags at once, separate them with a comma (though you may want to use separate events for each hashtag).
- If creating a photo category event, including the 'Category:' prefix is also optional. The category name is case-sensitive!
- For single-day events, click on the same date twice when selecting from the calendar.
- Click "Submit".
If everything goes well, a clickable tab of the event should appear below the button. You can create additional events using the already-filled form at this point, but the name must be unique!
Do not worry about making mistakes too much, as any of the fields can be edited at any time after creation.
FAQ
How do I combine two events into one?
Use categories! Both events should belong to a single category, which will track the same things as the individual events, but add them together.
What if edits of two events in a single category overlap? Will they be counted twice?
No, only unique entries are considered.
As an example, let's say we have 30 edits total. 10 are tagged with hashtag A, 10 with hashtag B, 10 with both hashtag A and hashtag B. Event A tracking hashtag A will have 20 edits. Event B tracking hashtag B will also have 20 edits. Category AB containing both events will have 30 edits.
How does calculating impact work with the category hierarchy?
When calculating impact, Wikinside considers all events or users belonging to a subcategory to also belong to its parent category, no matter how many layers deep.
What does "bytes added" actually mean?
It's the sum total of all the edits' diffs! Except, what if an edit actually removes portions of the article? Well, Wikinside considers that to be a positive change, too (like, say, removing spam from a page, or making a paragraph more concise), so it adds it to the total as if it was a positive number, too.