Annoying little bugs
This page provides a list of little bugs and tiny missing features which annoy users and which are relatively easy for a new MediaWiki coder to fix. These are a good way to start getting familiar with the MediaWiki code base. It is assumed that you have read the "Get started" section of How to become a MediaWiki hacker already to understand the infrastructure, workflows and communication expectations.
Contents
Potential bugs to work on[edit | edit source]
The following sections describe a few example areas in which you can contribute, but you are not limited to these areas!
In the upper right corner of a bug report you can see the product and component that the problem is located in. This provides you a hint about the Git repository that the code is located in, and about the development team which you could contact if you want to discuss it in a "broader" way (as comments in bug reports should preferably refer to the specific problem described in the report only).
MediaWiki[edit | edit source]
MediaWiki is the core software which provides basic wiki functionality. It is written in PHP. Ask your general development questions on the wikitech mailing list and the #mediawiki-dev and #mediawiki IRC channels.
Pywikibot[edit | edit source]
PyWikibot is a Python-based framework to write bots for MediaWiki. Ask your general development questions on the Pywikibot mailing list and the #pywikibot IRC channel.
Language Engineering (Localization/Translation/Internationalization)[edit | edit source]
Ask your general Language Engineering development questions on the mediawiki-i18n mailing list and the #mediawiki-i18n IRC channel.
Multimedia[edit | edit source]
Ask your general Multimedia development questions on the multimedia mailing list and the #wikimedia-multimedia IRC channel.
VisualEditor and Parsoid[edit | edit source]
VisualEditor is MediaWiki's WYSIWYG editor. Ask your general VisualEditor development questions on the wikitech mailing list and the #mediawiki-visualeditor IRC channel.
VisualEditor is powered by Parsoid, a wikitext parser and runtime. Ask your general Parsoid development questions on the wikitext mailing list and the #mediawiki-parsoid IRC channel.
Mobile Apps[edit | edit source]
There are numerous applications for mobile devices (Android, iOS, Windows Phone, …) to access Wikimedia wikis. Ask your general development questions on the Mobile mailing list and the #wikimedia-mobile IRC channel.
Wikidata[edit | edit source]
Wikidata is a centralized knowledge base for structured data, such as interwiki references and statistical information. Ask your general development questions on the Wikidata mailing list, the #wikidata IRC channel and on the wiki.
Design[edit | edit source]
Fixing design bugs or requests requires existing graphics skills working with a Vector graphics application (e.g. Inkscape). Basic knowledge of CSS can also be helpful for integration. Ask your general development questions on the Design mailing list and the #wikimedia-design IRC channel.
System messages and localization/translation problems[edit | edit source]
System messages in MediaWiki or its extensions often need small corrections to the English text, but the source text can only be changed in the code by developers, contrary to translations. This has grown into a large backlog of usually very easy fixes (which might be as easy as fixing a typo).
Also, many messages are unclear and require better documentation (see Localisation#Message documentation). Missing documentation can also be added by just editing the /qqq subpage of the message on translatewiki.net, like all translations, but may require some study of the code to understand what a message is for: it's therefore optimal to start understanding the code, and very useful for the translators (who do not have such skills).
And many more…[edit | edit source]
Still not enough ideas? There are more fields you can explore - MediaWiki has hundreds of extensions and tools! Check out the complete list of bugs recommended for new contributors:
- open bug reports and enhancement requests with the "easy" keyword
- the same list but without long-commented reports (so you need to read less)
If you have any trouble or questions, please feel free to contact Quim Gil or Andre Klapper or ask for help via IRC.
See also[edit | edit source]
- How to become a MediaWiki hacker
- How to contribute — Learn about more ways how you can contribute to MediaWiki and the free culture community (e.g. translation, documentation, …)
- Possible projects for volunteers willing to dive into more complex challenges
- Triage tasks in Bugzilla — if you want to get an idea of issues in the software and help developers to save some time
- Oldest open changesets in Gerrit — your help reviewing them is welcome
