Blogs from WikiToLearn

Bells and whistles from the WikiToLearn Community

WikiToLearn GSoC goals and expectations

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Hi everyone, I’m Demetrio, a student of University of Milano-Bicocca, who has been contributing to WikiToLearn since 2017. I found this community very helpful and friendly, they have worked immediately to make me feel important by giving me resources and primary tasks to do. They included me in their official meetings so I felt motivated: this has been the main reason I am still happy to contribute to this great project.

I have been chosen as a GSoC student to work full-time on WikiToLearn web app. The main topics of this job experience can be summarized as “making web app production-ready”. To do so, I have written a proposal explaining what I am going to do next. First, I am going to make little changes to the views so we have functional webapp in little time. Then, I can start the migration to WebPack 4, contribute to the docs, write tests and think about offline experience. My main expectations from these great communities (WikiToLearn and KDE) are: friendly helps and useful feedbacks on what I am going to do. I am hopeful that this will be a great job experience for my personal and professional growth.

Wiki, what’s going on? (Part 24-Badges and books)

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Books, badges and new functionalities are coming!

Hey WikiToLearn-ers! It has been a while, but now “What’s going on?” is back.

This last period was really difficult for all of us but we never forgot of WikiToLearn. In spite of personal commitments and exams, the members of our community kept working day after day and now we see the results!

Electromagnetism is now ready!

In the first episode of “Meet the authors” we have come to know Dan, a long term contributor of ours. It is now a pleasure to announce that his book about electromagnetism is ready! Dan is one of the most active editors in our community and on our website he wrote several books on the italian portal: analysis, physics I, mechanics and electromagnetism! Kudos Daniele for your strong dedication to the project and for your contributions!

We have badges!

The tech team never stops, the platform is always at his best and our sysadmins work hard to provide you great services. When we had problems we were able to solve them very quickly and to get back on our feet! In this period

our devs worked on a long-term requested feature for our website: badges! Yeah, now WikiToLearn has badges! Since our project was born we were asked a way to certify an imported or reviewed book and to give its author/reviewer the proper merit. We are very happy to announce that this feature is now ready! When you donate a book to be imported, a proper tag will be associated to it on the website.

Professors always asked us a tag to certify their books authority. To accommodate this request now we have the “Reviewed” tag. Are you the author of a specific book and you would like it to be certified? Now with WikiToLearn you can! One step further to guarantee high-quality content and to monitor revisions on our dynamical textbooks!

Let’s celebrate!

We never forget where we belong: that’s why we remind you that during this week Akademy2017 is taking place in Almeria! Akademy is the annual conference of the KDE community. WikiToLearn was born under the KDE umbrella and still today we fell part of the KDE family. This year WikiToLearn is represented at Akademy by Vasudha, a GSoC student of ours working on Ruqola. Today we remember Akademy with extreme pleasure: two years ago, during Akademy2015 our project was officially born!

Since the first official announcement to the public, so much happened. We can consider ourselves satisfied for the hard work we did and for the initial outreach we had. People feedbacks pushed us to work better and better to improve functionalities and to satisfy users’ needs. In this period we had the occasion to spread the word about WikiToLearn and we could obtain substantial involvement in our projects. We are extremely grateful to all the members of our community for events organized, books donated for importation, reviews and creation of new material on the platform.

For us now it’s time to work even harder. During these two years we came up to realize what we were doing properly and what has to be modified. In the next few months we are working on communication and style improvements to enlarge our community.

Content creation and usability are the two main issues we are facing right now.  Any kind of user should be aware of what the platform offers and should be encouraged to write on it. WikiToLearn collects dynamical textbooks and in the incoming future this innovative feature of our product has to become our strength point!

 

We are working for you, WikiToLearn-ers! Stay tuned, spread the word, join.wikitolearn.org and start sharing your knowledge in a completely innovative way!

 

Thank you for your love <3

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I just received another anonymous happiness package, this time personal:

You have worn many hats in open source over the years, not just as a contributor, but also as a mentor. I put a lot of high value into your thought-out opinions and insights. You have a unique and open-minded way of thinking about things, in open source and personal things alike. I’m thankful that we have people like you in open source communities to build better software and also to build better communities. I am lucky to have someone like you around. Thanks for being there always.

Lots of love.

What can I say? 🙂 I am feeling overwhelmed. Thank you so much to whoever has sent me this bit of love!

 

WikiToLearn Happiness Packet received!

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Dear anonymous happiness sender,

I woke up this morning to your love message for the WikiToLearn community, sent through happinesspackets.io. The e-mail address used to send the packet is only read by a few people, so I am reposting this love for the whole community to enjoy. Here are the contents of the packet:

I feel totally overwhelmed, excited and very, very grateful. Thank you for caring. You people are just unbelievable. You are a bunch of craziest, most awesome and the most positive people I’ve ever met. You inspire me to give back to the community.

I wish I could express properly what I’m feeling right now.

Thanks for everything guys. Sending hugs, you crazy, amazing people!

What can I say, if not sharing the love for the amazing community that got together? Your words are beautiful and inspiring, and I personally feel extremely happy to have contributed, in my little part, to create such great vibes.

Dear anonymous sender, I do not know who you are, but lots of thanks and love to you too. 🙂

Love only grows if shared.

 

Wiki, what’s going on? (Part 22-Throw back time)

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A glorious flash back to one year ago

WikiToLearn is doing great recently, but where were we one year ago?

Exactly one year ago I was about to have my first experience with WikiToLearn. When I left Milan, this day one year ago, I only knew I was going at CERN (Geneve) to start working at this project called WikiToLearn…

I didn’t know what a Sprint was neither what exactly I was going to do at a WikiToLearn-Sprint. I wrote a course on complex analysis (ITA) and I got it imported on the website: the thing I didn’t realize was that I became a WikiToLearn-er in that precise moment.  So, I left Milan having seen the other members of the community only once and I didn’t know what was my role (probably because I didn’t have one) but I was extremely enthusiast for this opportunity.

On this day, one year ago I discovered a beautiful world. I started discovering the open source world without knowing anything about it. Our week at CERN was extremely insane! We woke up at 8:30AM and used to work until midnight. When we were done with our work and we should had gone to bed, we met at CERN’s cafeteria and had glorious moments till late night: what happens at the Sprint, stays at the Sprint.

I could say so many things about the Sprint that a blog post wouldn’t  be enough. I met special people whom I am still in contact with and I am really happy to see when I have the occasion. Back then, my journey in the open source world began and I simply don’t want to stop now.

Since then I worked every day of my life at WikiToLearn. I understood what my role in the project is. Simply, I became part of a new family.

This blog post is somehow different from the others of the “What’s going on?” series, but it is necessary. One year ago, when I wrote the first episode I didn’t expect it to become a series. Actually I didn’t expect WikiToLearn to become so fundamental in my life too. If you have ever read a “Wiki, what’s going on?” episode, be aware that this is where everything started.

There is no better way for you to understand what I felt (and still feeling) than become part of the Wiki-Fam. Come join us at join.wikitolearn.org and change the world with us!