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Consider migrating api.wikimedia.org to mediawiki.org
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Sorry to rock the boat. I'm sure whichever WMF teams made these websites (https://api.wikimedia.org, https://developer.wikimedia.org) likes them and has their reasons for having made them.

But does it make sense to have a bunch of technical stuff (api.wikimedia.org, developer.wikimedia.org) that isn't on mediawiki.org?

The downsides in my view are...

  • duplication
  • de-centralization (less viewers, less editors, more pages getting out of date)
  • barriers to editing (developer.wikimedia.org in particular because it isn't a wiki)
  • technical debt
  • inability to translate

Areas where I see duplication...

Event Timeline

stjn subscribed.

The fact that there is also doc.wikimedia.org (justified in its existence btw) kind of points to there being too many weird duplicating websites for this. mw.org and doc.wm.org can definitely fulfill the need for these two.

Please see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Portal and subpages for information about why we felt that a narrow, non-wiki site would be a better initial entry point for discovering information about the how to get involved in Wikimedia technical spaces.

Please see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Portal and subpages for information about why we felt that a narrow, non-wiki site would be a better initial entry point for discovering information about the how to get involved in Wikimedia technical spaces.

Then close api.wikimedia.org? api.wikimedia.org is the 4th result in Google by "wikipedia api", under mediawiki.org and Wikipedia "API" article, and the 2nd result by "wikimedia api". developer.wikimedia.org is nowhere to be seen. This not exactly serves the discoverability mission that is outlined on the page you linked:

Some documentation should be more discoverable, some documentation is dispersed or duplicated across several websites, some of our documentation is outdated, some of our technology areas could be more discoverable.

"Upon arriving on the MediaWiki and Wikitech home pages, I was instantly lost." -- Ashwin Bhumbla
"MediaWiki documentation is not only infamously incomplete, but also terribly scattered." -- Waldyrious

> xkcd comic about 10 standards (OK, I'm kidding)

Another point to consider is that outsiders don't know the word "Wikimedia". They are often even puzzled if Wikimedia is a legit site and not a scam where they slipped in "m" instead of "p".

image.png (515×673 px, 48 KB)

So, I would assume (you should have better metrics for that) that people will usually search for "wikipedia api", not "wikimedia api" or "wikimedia developer". And if the goal is to provide an "entry point", then it makes sense to target paths by which people actually enter.

Then close api.wikimedia.org? api.wikimedia.org is the 4th result in Google by "wikipedia api", under mediawiki.org and Wikipedia "API" article, and the 2nd result by "wikimedia api". developer.wikimedia.org is nowhere to be seen. This not exactly serves the discoverability mission that is outlined on the page you linked:

api.wikimedia.org is a different initiative by a different team started at a different time. I actually personally agree that it serves an unclear audience and purpose, but I do not have any idea who currently has the institutional authority within the Foundation to make a decision to sunset that never fully completed project.

We won't merge developer.wikimedia.org into mediawiki.org. There is documentation on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Portal for past decisions.

Aklapper renamed this task from Consider migrating api.wikimedia.org and developer.wikimedia.org to mediawiki.org to Consider migrating api.wikimedia.org to mediawiki.org.Mar 23 2024, 5:55 PM

Hi all, Thanks for this feedback. The API Portal is waiting on decisions from product management to determine next steps, but I'll provide an update here once I know more.