User:Md gilbert/vte
The Virtual Team Explorer (VTE) is a User Script intended to facilitate WikiProject exploration and coordination. It is currently still a work in progress, but it is under active development.
Collaboration would be gladly accepted - if you're interested in helping out, leave me a note and we'll see what type of work can be contributed.
Installation
Installation is pretty straightforward and follows the normal steps for users script. If you install as follows, you'll get the current version of the tool as well as all future updates.
- Copy the line below and place it in your common.js file:
importScript( 'User:Md_gilbert/vte.js' );
- Save the common.js page
- Completely refresh your browser by bypassing your cache.
And that's it! Once you refresh your browser you should be able to get started right away!
Getting Started
The following sections will walk through the basic functionality of the VTE. This is still a work in progress, however, so if you find any bugs or have any functionality requests, please leave a message on the Talk page.
The Project Browser
The entry point to the VTE is the Project Browser, pictured below.
The goal for the project browser is to allow users an easy way to find active projects along a number of metrics. Want to find a project that has the most edits in the last 30 days to the project-related pages? Boom, click the "Sort by project edits" button and the list updates to show you exactly that. If you're looking for a project with the most edits to pages under the scope of the project, just click the "Sort by edits" button and you're there.
Additionally, if you already know the name of the project you want to explore, you can type it in the search bar above the project browser. The thumbnail list will be reduced to only those matching the text you typed, as well as a dropdown from the search bar that will be populated with just those matching your search.
Once you find the project you're curious about, just click it and you'll be taken to the project summary.
Project summary
The project summary is intended to give you a high level overview of activity within that project over time, pictured below.
The top graph shows edits to the WikiProject Biography page (in blue) and the corresponding Talk page (in grey). This high level view gives you a chance to easily see the level of project activity over the life of the project. If you're looking for an up-and-comer, this will show you which projects seem to be experiencing a recent spike in activity. If you're looking for a long-standing steady project, this would be where you'd go.
Underneath the project graph are a number of graphs showing
The Task Browser
The Task browser in the VTE is an attempt to provide a more structured means of both creating and tracking tasks relevant to a WikiProject's goals. An example of the task list is included below:
The Member Browser
About the data
Data to populate the VTE currently comes from two locations:
- The MediaWiki API - This allows grabbing the actual text of WikiProject and WikiProject Talk pages live.
- The Re:Flex API - This is a custom interface we created to provide higher-level aggregate data about all users, pages, and revisions in Wikipedia. Additionally, this interface provides a hook into many other WikiProject related data that would be tedious or time consuming to get through other channels. More detailed documentation on how to access this API, as well as the relevant code to replicate it, can be found at its Github page.
We have attempted to design the VTE in a way where data can be easily integrated from multiple sources. If there are additional APIs that could provide meaningful user experiences, or that may allow us to expand the utility or impact of this application, please leave a comment on the Talk page and let us know.
What remains
There are many different ideas for this tool that have yet to be implemented. I'd like to get to them all, but if you have any ideas or requests, please let me know on the Talk page and we can try to work on the things that have the most value.