Wikimedia Commons App’s Participation in FOSS Internship Programs
The Wikimedia Commons Android app is an open-source app created and maintained by grantees and volunteers of the Wikimedia community.
Wikimedia Commons - Android Apps on Google Play
The Wikimedia Foundation is not involved directly in the creation, development or creation of the app. For an app fully maintained by the non-paid community members, this pulse is an extraordinary feat!
If you dig down to the contributor’s section for January to March period, you would see that most of the contributors are new to the project. This influx of new contributors is as we included our app for the FOSS internship programs for the following projects
We definitely expected a few students to come and show their interest to the app but the response was simply overwhelming. At least 10 new contributors made their first contribution to the app hoping to grab an internship opportunity.
We made our last release ie. v.2.6.7 on 1st Feb and for the next release, we have a number of features lined up, thanks to the students. Some of the notable feature enhancements added by students apart from bug/crash fixes are:
- Changed Web views to Custom Tabs so that the screens open within the app itself
- Show only the email clients on clicking feedback so that irrelevant Share options are not shown
- Rate us feature added to help us gather more reviews
- Skip option for developers in the Welcome screen to make life easier for developers
- Added forgot password option in the login screen
- Revamped Settings page to make it look beautiful
- FAQ section in About Page to answer the most common queries
Here are some screenshots from the app showing what has changed.
We really appreciate the effort all the students have put in to identify issues and fix them. Thanks to them we have managed to fix several bugs and add small yet good to have features which would have otherwise remained in our backlog for a long time.
This is the first mentorship experience for me and I am really excited about interacting with my mentee. I had previously co-mentored Google Code In students for the same project and it really felt good helping school kids get started with their open source journey.
Google Code-in/2017 - MediaWiki
Volunteers are always welcome to the project! Feel free to check out the project and make a contribution[ ;) ] to the Commons Android app.
commons-app/apps-android-commons
If you want to get started with Open source you can read my post on how to choose the right project and submit your first pull request.
How to get started with Open Source?
Written on March 13, 2018 by Vivek Maskara.
Originally published on Medium
