[Campus-announce] Help Wikipedia test some software, and get involved in their community (no programming required) -- June 9, 1 PM Eastern / 10 AM Pacific

[Asheesh Laroia]

Hey all,

Wikipedia software developers are working on a new "Article Feedback Tool" 
which sits at the bottom of every article in Wikipedia. On June 9, you can 
help test the latest version (before it gets rolled out to all of 
Wikipedia!) just by showing up for chat and following instructions. It's 
free, requires no programming, and will let you make a difference in the 
software that runs Wikipedia.

Sign up here: http://smarturl.it/afd-qa

Details:

The Wikimedia Foundation wants people to test that the newest version of 
the Article Feedback Tool works properly. It is hosting a chat session 
where anyone, with any degree of programming experience, is invited to 
chat about the tool, follow a detailed test plan to see if the tool works 
as designed, and report issues (e.g. by filing bugs) where it doesn't 
work.

The Article Feedback tool is a box at the bottom of every Wikipedia 
article, designed 'as an "on-ramp" to engage readers to contribute to 
Wikipedia -- and become editors over time'. You can read more here: 
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Version_5

In this event, you spend an hour or two chatting online, you get a lot of 
insight into how a part of Wikipedia works, and you get to see how bugs in 
Bugzilla drive activity in the open source MediaWiki software that powers 
the encyclopedia.

The event will be led by veteran quality assurance engineer Chris McMahon, 
and has a clear test plan to keep the event focused.

WHO: Anyone who can read/write English

WHERE: The main MediaWiki chat room, #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net (we 
will send instructions once you sign up)

WHEN: June 9, 10 AM US/Eastern; 1 PM US/Pacific (Convert to your time zone 
here: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20120609T17 
)

MORE INFO: 
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Testing_June_2012

SIGN UP: http://smarturl.it/afd-qa

Once you sign up, we'll email you essential information on setting up your 
computer for IRC chat and with important dates to maximize your impact.

The event is co-sponsored by OpenHatch.