Essay:ProleWiki news logs/Future ideas

From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia

Future ideas for ProleWiki, in no particular order. Often the result of a brainstorm session.

Last update: 2023-10-06

Maintenance

  • Eventually clean up all unused categories and merge similar categories into one. (Crit)
  • Move everything that is reused on the website into templates for easier maintenance in the future. Unsure if there is anything left to move though. (Crit)
  • Change references in our wiki pages to use library works instead of external sources where applicable. Fix with Mass Edit Regex? (Crit)
  • Communication happens mostly on the Discord, but some editors use the Matrix space, others are on neither. Works for now as most everyone is on discord, but can become problematic if the ratio equalizes. (Crit)
  • Keep everything on MediaWiki as much as possible to make it easier to manage (that way editors don't need extra accounts elsewhere). (Crit)

Essays

  • Make the sidebar items collapsible. This is technically feasible (see Template:Sidebar with collapsible lists) but will need some study. (Crit)
  • Fix picture display if possible. The aspect ratio is different on the feed vs. the essay itself. (Crit)

Library

  • Resize all card items to save disk space (makes the library homepage load faster as well). (Crit)

Tech stack

  • Find a cloud storage provider (bucket) to host images and send backups to. Wasabi seems cheap, have to see their availability rating. Not needed yet, but will be as we approach the limits of our disk space. (Crit)
  • Host our own Lemmy instance for editors or a Focalboard server (or similar, e.g. Appflowy) for tech project management. Just thrown around as something to write down somewhere for now. (Crit)

Branching out

Stuff other than the Wiki (there's already the library and essays for example)

  • News articles (Crit)
  • Podcast (Crit)
  • More youtube videos, perhaps even longer form than what we've done so far. Even putting someone as the face of the videos? (Crit)

Funding

  • Find some grants we could apply for? (Crit)
  • Savings are otherwise secure. We keep 2 years worth of essential expenses saved up. We also have patreons which creates savings over time and reduces the need to do fundraisers like we did for the new hosting plan early 2023. At our current monthly revenue rate, we can pay our yearly essential expenses every 6 months, so this is more than sustainable. (Crit)

Uses

  • Improve tech stack. Better VPS = more services we can host on it, generally faster loading times, etc. (Crit)
  • Advertise? (Crit)
  • Get tools we could need to do better agitprop work or wiki work. (Crit)
  • Possibly hire professionals on a contractual basis (e.g. translators, video editors, graphic designers etc) but problematic because otherwise everyone is a volunteer, it doesn't make sense to pay some people but not others. On the other hand if the only way we can get someone with very particular skills to help is by hiring them for a job, that could also be discussed. (Crit)