the right level of detail (mediawiki, apis)
DESCRIPTION
A talk I gave at the first MXUG-style Girl Geek Dinner in Melbourne, 21/7/2009. This version comes with extra explanatory slides for the attendance-deprived. I love web apps. But they generally don't have very good tools to help their own users deal with data overload. Like filters and summaries. Luckily, we have APIs, so they're pretty easy to string together. Examples using MediaWiki.TRANSCRIPT
i ♥ web apps...
(I use a lot of wikis)
...but...
they're so needy!
some web apps help usersmanage data well.
the good:
the bad:
LinkedIn groups
(why can't I get all group news in one email?)
the ugly:
this was fine when Iread my wikis every day,
but no longer.
I need... filters!
and... summaries!
what kind of problem is this?
usability
usercommunication
marketing
marketinguser
communication
usability
luckily, we can buildour own solution...
...because we have APIs!
an example: MediaWiki.
api.phpmediawiki.org/wiki/API
mwclient Python library for accessing
MediaWiki API
(affordable web hosting)
mwfeeds.modernthings.org
Filter feeds for only edits that add a new H2 heading.
So instead of THIS:
I can just have the items thatadd new topics. woot!
(Pipes could probablydo it too. No API needed.)
pipes.yahoo.com
Summary example on one of my favourite
“occasional” wikis:
so I want something like this:
Hi! Here's what happened in geekfeminism.wikia.com this week.
* 243 edits were made in the article space. Wow! That's 34 edits every day.* 22 editors were working this week. The top 5 busiest people have been Thayvian (131 edits), Skud (75 edits), Elky (9 edits), Hypatia (3 edits) and 78.105.109.196 (3 edits). Thanks everyone!* 77 different articles were edited, including 25 completely brand new pages. Woot!
Top 5 articles this week:* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/EMACS_virgins_joke* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Ubuntero_gendered_name* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Trigger_warning* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Richard_Stallman* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_women_in_Open_Source
And all the new articles:http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Troll* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Concern_troll* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Stereotype_threat* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Defcon_comic_strip_incident* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Emasculation* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Dress_a_day_blog* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Concern_trolls* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Richard_Stallman* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Ally* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Hoss_Gifford* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Experiences* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Matt_Aimonetti
30 minutes of hacking later:
todo: generalise,
hook into email/RSS, better faster stronger
but really... how easy is that?!
credits● Title – CC-BY – jared - http://www.flickr.com/photos/generated/2056145757/
● Mouth open – CC-BY-SA – bradleygee - http://www.flickr.com/photos/icanchangethisright/3690065403/
● The good – CC-BY – pinksherbet - http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/2160471914/
● The bad – CC-BY-SA – yogi - http://www.flickr.com/photos/yogi/65938277/
● The ugly – CC-BY – isforinsects - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sethwoodworth/2714717353/
● Filter – CC-BY-SA – daveyll - http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveyll/332723930/
● Summary – CC-BY- Tom T - http://www.flickr.com/photos/scraplab/3195233814/
● Digging – CC-BY – woodleywonderworks - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/3377221745/
● Map mashup – CC-BY – caterina - http://www.flickr.com/photos/caterina/12204207/
● Surprise – CC-BY-SA – bensonkua - http://www.flickr.com/photos/bensonkua/2754312951/
● Web logos and screenshots – most are copyrighted with all rights reserved.
everything else is mine & licensed CC-BY-SA!
