Annoying little bugs

From MediaWiki.org
Jump to: navigation, search
Translate this page
Other languages:
български • ‎Deutsch • ‎English • ‎español • ‎français • ‎日本語 • ‎polski • ‎русский • ‎ไทย • ‎中文
ColeopteraSmith.jpg

This page provides a list of little bugs and tiny missing features which annoy users and which are relatively easy for a new MediaWiki coder to fix. These are a good way to start getting familiar with the MediaWiki code base. You must have read the "Get started" section of How to become a MediaWiki hacker already to understand the infrastructure, workflows and communication expectations.

Potential bugs to work on

The following sections describe a few example areas in which you can contribute, but you are not limited to these areas!

In the upper right corner of a task (bug report) in Phabricator you can see the product and component that the problem is located in. This provides you a hint about the Git repository that the code is located in, and about the development team which you could contact if you want to discuss it in a "broader" way (as comments in bug reports should preferably refer to the specific problem described in the report only).

Documentation

Pywikibot

PyWikibot is a Python-based framework to write bots for MediaWiki. Ask your general development questions on the Pywikibot mailing list and the #pywikibot IRC channel.

Multimedia

Ask your general Multimedia development questions on the multimedia mailing list and the #wikimedia-multimedia IRC channel.

Mobile Apps

There are numerous applications for mobile devices (Android, iOS, Windows Phone, …) to access Wikimedia wikis. Read the general development information and ask your questions on the Mobile mailing list and the #wikimedia-mobile IRC channel.

Reading

The reading team builds the software that serves our readers. We also manage the mobile web experience. Read the general development information and ask your questions on the Mobile mailing list and the #wikimedia-mobile IRC channel.

Wikidata

Wikidata is a centralized knowledge base for structured data, such as interwiki references and statistical information. Ask your general development questions on the Wikidata mailing list, the #wikidata IRC channel and on the wiki.

Huggle

Huggle is a desktop application for dealing with vandalism on Wikimedia projects, written in C++.

Browser Tests & Quality Assurance

Automated browser tests help Wikimedia engineers produce quality user facing software faster. See the page on Browser testing for more on what technologies we use and how to get involved. For more general information, see Quality Assurance.

Language Engineering (Localization/Translation/Internationalization)

Ask your general Language Engineering development questions on the mediawiki-i18n mailing list and the #mediawiki-i18n IRC channel.

VisualEditor and Parsoid

VisualEditor is MediaWiki's WYSIWYG editor. Ask your general VisualEditor development questions on the wikitech mailing list and the #mediawiki-visualeditor IRC channel.

VisualEditor is powered by Parsoid, a wikitext parser and runtime. Ask your general Parsoid development questions on the wikitext mailing list and the #mediawiki-parsoid IRC channel.

Discovery / Search

The Discovery team builds the path of anonymous discovery to a trusted and relevant source of knowledge. Ask your general development questions on the Discovery mailing list and on the #wikimedia-discovery IRC channel.

Analytics

The Analytics team empowers and supports data-informed decision making in Wikimedia. Ask your general development questions on the Analytics mailing list.

Design

Fixing design bugs or requests requires existing graphics skills working with a Vector graphics application (e.g. Inkscape). Basic knowledge of CSS can also be helpful for integration. Ask your general development questions on the Design mailing list and the #wikimedia-design IRC channel.

Skins

Skins allow users to customize the look and feel of MediaWiki. Basic knowledge of CSS and PHP is helpful. Check the project page in Phabricator for more information on each skin and contact information.

System messages and localization/translation problems

System messages in MediaWiki or its extensions often need small corrections to the English text, but the source text can only be changed in the code by developers, contrary to translations. This has grown into a large backlog of usually very easy fixes (which might be as easy as fixing a typo).

Also, many messages are unclear and require better documentation (see Localisation#Message documentation). Missing documentation can also be added by just editing the /qqq subpage of the message on translatewiki.net, like all translations, but may require some study of the code to understand what a message is for: it's therefore optimal to start understanding the code, and very useful for the translators (who do not have such skills).

Collaboration

The Collaboration team mainly works on Echo and Flow.

Ask questions regarding Collaboration team projects on the #wikimedia-collaboration IRC channel.

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is the core software which provides basic wiki functionality. It is complex, written in PHP, and some areas might not have clear maintainership. Ask your general development questions on the wikitech mailing list and the #wikimedia-dev and #mediawiki IRC channels.

Phlogiston

Phabricator is used by Wikimedia for project management, software bug reporting and feature requests. Phlogiston is a set of SQL, Python, and R scripts to report on Phabricator data, particularly burnup reports and forecasting.

And many more…

Still not enough ideas? There are more fields you can explore - MediaWiki has hundreds of extensions and tools! Check out the complete list of bugs recommended for new contributors:

If you have any trouble or questions, please ask for help via IRC or feel free to contact Andre Klapper or Quim Gil.


See also

Retrieved from "https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Annoying_little_bugs&oldid=2245952"