Outreachy Internship Wrap-up

The past 13 weeks have been amazing, from the euphoria of being chosen as an Outreachy intern, to settling in, and working on the Quickstatements3.0 tool, and now, as the curtain closes on this chapter, I look back on this period with pride. I have thoroughly enjoyed the past 13 weeks and would do it all over again if given the chance.

Choosing the Quickstatements3.0 Documentation project was an easy decision I understood what wikidata editing was all about and the vital role the Quickstatements tool plays wikidata editors. I really really really wanted to help the developers and contribute to their mission by creating documentation that will be very easy for everyone to understand, onboard new users easily and ease their learning curve.

Although the Quickstatements2.0 Documentation was good, I felt like it could be made better and easier for newbies to understand. As a DevOps engineer, I have interacted with various DevOps tools documentation throughout my career, so I really appreciated the importance of good documentation in onboarding newbies to a tool. Going into this project my goal was capture users' learning curves, anticipate potential points of confusion, and address them before they arise.

This doesn’t mean I didn’t have fears though. For starters, I have never really undertaken the documentation for a project of this significance and magnitude. Writing to help others’ understanding is a skill I’ve always tried to nurture, but I have never really fully explored this aspect of my skillset. Although I have a blog on medium where I post DevOps related articles from time to time, this project was much more significant. The mission was to create a documentation that would serve as a guide for both complete beginners who in most cases have non-technical backgrounds and those already familiar with the tool.

I have also never contributed to open source before, wasn't sure what to expect from the documentation process, how well I'd perform, or whether I'd impress my mentors. I was apprehensive of how things could turn out.

I spent the first week of my internship deploying the tool on my local server, and spent the remainder of the first month learning the tool, understanding its functionality, and mastering the command syntaxes. My mentors were of tremendous help during this first month, their patience and guidance made all the difference and was really helped me make progress.

By the start of the second month, I had become knowledgeable and confident, and I set about extensively testing the tool. The second month was hectic to be honest, I was creating simple and complex datasets to test the tool, exchanging datasets with my mentor, communicating constantly with my mentor to identify errors, report bugs, report weird behaviours, and test new features. Looking back, even though it was hectic, I enjoyed every minute of it.

In the first week of the third month, armed with a thorough understanding of the tool and its command syntaxes, I drafted most of the documentation and submitted it to my mentors for review. The Quickstatements3.0 tool was scheduled to launch on the 24th of February, 2025. Before the launch, I implemented the feedback and corrections from my mentors, and on the launch day, my documentation went live. It was a proud moment for me.

The Outreachy internship has successfully introduced me to the world of open source, helped me explore a new dimension of my skillset, improved my communication skills, and connected me with amazing individuals. As this chapter of my life closes, I am certain it will have a significant and positive impact on my future endeavors.

I am grateful to the organizers, my mentors and everyone I met on this journey, you are all genuinely Stars.