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ogechivivian
ogechivivian

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The journey thus so far in Wikimedia

“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” The saying of Arthur Robert Ashe Jr., a well-known American tennis player, is true and valid for all paths of life because to reach the desired destination, it is important to pay attention and place importance on the journey that takes there.

Its has been over a month plus I started the journey as a Wikimedia intern via the outreachy program initiative and I must say it has been a series of learning and unlearning process with the help of my mentors. In December I started the contribution in improving the Lua documentation on Mediawiki and meta-wiki pages,
the first few weeks were spent on getting familiar with the environment, setting up my workspace(sandbox) with the help of my mentor and the resources provided I became familiar with the environment and fully set up to commence.

Technical writing is not just about understanding technical information and recording it in a document. Technical writing takes high-level information and processes it into digestible content for a specific audience. With the knowledge of what technical documentation entails and its role in the sustainability of a project, I was able to identify the audience and gather a lot of information, this help with coming up with a model and structure which was carefully drafted under the supervision of my mentors.

These few weeks I have worked on improving the Lua tutorial and Lua scripting documentation with the help of my mentors and I must say it has been a learning process, the need to understand what you are writing about can't be over-emphasize as it's of paramount importance and it has been an interesting ride while unlocking new skills you never know you possess.

During the cause of the internship, I have had a couple of meetings with my mentors where ideas have been shared, and most importantly I have learned a lot from the knowledge sharing. I most say there has been tremendous progress on the work so far.

I just wanted to leave a short thank you note to my Mentors, Wikimedia and Outreachy for this great opportunity to contribute in Review and improve Lua documentation on meta and MediaWiki thus the journey so far!

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