Tools

Tools, broadly speaking, are software applications that interact with the Wikimedia projects but are not fully integrated with them.

Definition

Tools can be thought of as "external" to the wikis, meaning officially deployed MediaWiki extensions would not usually be considered tools.

However, on-wiki JavaScript gadgets can be thought of as tools, since they consist of user-written code not subject to the usual controls.

Tools also include web applications and bots.

Uses

Tools can be used for many purposes, including use-cases such as: Identifying quick editing tasks, semi-automatically performing a large number of very similar edits, visualizing data, extracting metadata, and editing and using wiki content in general.

Listings

There are many listings of tools. The Toolhub project is creating a comprehensive directory of community-developed tools. (ongoing, 2020–)

Other listings include (or are linked from):

• Toolforge hosted tools, all ~3,000 tools hosted on Toolforge
• Hay's Tool Directory, a curated list of ~1,000 entries, plus some external tools
• Gadgets
• Bots
  • IRC/Bots
• Local wiki pages for:
  • Project:Tools (Q6584911)
  • Project:Gadget (Q10824034)
  • Project:User scripts (Q13501220)
  • Project:Bots (Q4048867)
• Topical and other:
  • Statistics
  • Research:Data
  • commons:Commons:Structured data/Get involved/Tools
  • outreachwiki:GLAM/Resources/Tools
  • w:de:Benutzer:Atlasowa/edit history visualization
  • See, Also: Featured visualizations of Wikimedia data
  • wikitech:Event Platform/EventStreams/Powered By
  • wikitech:Portal:Data Services
  • wikitech:SRE/SRE tooling
  • Cloud VPS projects
  • Coolest Tool Award

History

Different services have made computing resources and web hosting available free of charge to tool developers, starting with Wikimedia Deutschland's Toolserver from 2005 to 2014 and the Wikimedia Foundation's Toolforge (formerly Tool Labs) since 2013.