Grants:Project/Rapid/-jem-/Table import/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2019-20 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

• To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/-jem-/Table import.
• You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
• You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Yes, the goals were achieved and I'm happy with the project. The tool is already available and in use, automatic updates of the articles/tables are done at least daily, and there is a full help text in Spanish and in English with more concrete and technical details. Several users were involved in the creation and maintenance of articles in which to incorporate tables imported by this new tool, which made me prioritize the work of table configuration and control for the progressive activation of the tables. You can also check the source code linked from the main page, with variable names and comments in English, to make it easier for the project to be Wikimedia-wide in the future, in its use and its contributors.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
20 improved articles	45 improved articles to date (2019-11-19) (44 active and 1 temporarily disabled, later explained) 75 total tables in them (74 active)	The work with the interested users in the setup of tables, mostly in new articles, was enough to accomplish the target several weeks ago. The number of articles and tables will grow over time, so please check the current updated data here.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

• What worked well?
  • The collaboration with several very involved users through Spanish Wikipedia and Telegram has been very intensive and fruitful, and is expected to continue in the use and promotion of the tool.
  • The possibilities offered by the user interface of the tool are beyond the initial expectations, and cover practical aspects, such as the charts, as a result of the day by day in that collaboration.
  • I was able to use my previous experience with my first granted tool in order to solve some technical and practical details or problems, and in particular the previews-parsing code has been very useful again.

• What did not work so well?
  • The configuration work for the requested tables, as the number of tables grew thanks to the interest of the users, took longer than expected, so there was less time left for some other improvements in the tool, which nevertheless can be done during the next months in my volunteer time.
  • Some web sites ofuscate the code of their tables and also the URLs needed to get access to the tables. While this was up to a certain point planned and the tool is ready for all the cases managed so far, my impression after this initial phase is that stranger cases may occur and some adjustments may still be needed (hopefully not too many).
  • The general design had to be rethought after the initial analysis, as in my previous granted tool: the web interface is based on a single php file which includes all the necessary code, and the remote Jembot general functions are called just for the actual edits. This makes the code flow simpler and the tool itself more independent and accesible for collaborations.
  • In one of the articles/tables initially setup and updated, one user made it clear that some format details were not similar enough to the previous format used in manual updating, so he'd rather stick to his work for the moment, which me and other users respected (the article/table was disabled, as stated above). While this hasn't been a problem in other cases, specially new created articles, it's true that the format details remain as a point to work on, which require a more open debate and community consensus and so will take a time not available in the past weeks, but I hope so in the next ones.

• What would you do differently next time?
  • The planning of this project was focused in programming, but a different approach which considered practical implementation details for the projects, including how to deal with the preparation work for the tables and the consensus about formats, could have been useful. Anyway, this would mean integrating in the same proposal the granted work and the volunteering/community aspects to be taken into account, which would also require some talks and study by the WMF in the future.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

As stated in the request, the full amount of 950 euros paid the programming time; this was a bit longer than estimated, but not a problem.

Here is a summary of the breakdown of the time distribution, after adjusting the initial plan to the real work needed, and including programming language details:

• Development of menus and general interface, HTML/CSS and PHP: 3 hours
• Development of chart module and notes system, PHP and Javascript: 5 hours
• Development of configuration edit modules (general and projects), PHP and Javascript: 5 hours
• Development of other web modules (search, table preview and publishing, duplication, table list...), HTML and PHP: 6 hours
• Development of automatic item detection system, PHP: 2 hours
• Adaptation of previous test code and pages/tables to the web interface and configuration files: 3 hours
• Configuration and testing of new pages/tables proposed by users: 10 hours
• Documentation (help text, source code organization and publishing, logging options in PHP): 4 hours

Total: 38 hours - Rate: 25 euros/hour - Total amount: 950 euros

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

No, there are no remaining funds.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

As stated in the proposal and in my previous granted tool, the tool will remain open to improvements based on user feedback and adaptations to other projects, within my volunteer time. Thanks to the involvement of other users, more work is “guaranteed” for the next months, as more sport leagues or competition phases, which are now tracked in the web tool, begin. At the same time and depending on the available time, I hope to begin work with other Wikipedias and Wikimedia projects, and with other thematic areas. As this has been my second experience with WMF support, some things have been easier than in the first time, and learning never stops, so I'm sure than the third will be easier than this second one. Thanks to anyone involved in the WMF and in the Wikimedia projects.