Hey all,
Nice to meet many of you for the first time! Thanks for your feedback
and for raising larger concerns around resource allocation at the Foundation.
These concerns are extremely valid-- especially the ones around allocating
resources for less supported platforms such as Commons and broken
infrastructure. The wishlist process will begin next week with the proposal
phase starting Jan 10.
In the email thread, I identified some open questions about the Wishlist
process so I am answering them here.
Can we vote/focus on the maintenance of tools rather than new tools?
Yes. The wishes that we work on do not have to be associated with a new tool.
In the past we’ve taken on projects that were maintenance related. For example,
in the last year, we took on improvement projects for Wikisource Export and
Wikisource OCR tools, among other initiatives. We also maintain and fix all the
tools we’ve built in the past. Check out the fresh documentation about what
qualifies as a proposal here.
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey/FAQ#How_to_create_a_good_proposal?>
Gnangarra, your points about the issues with bulk uploads in Commons would make
a sound proposal-- a proposal does not have to be a new tool in the least. The
part about uploading large files is out of scope for our team though (see link
above about our areas of focus, the issue is infrastructural
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T86436> and too large for what we can take
on). I still believe there is value in suggesting it, though.
We have Talk to Us
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey/Updates/Talk_to_Us>
hours on January 19-- where the entire team will be available for a video call
to help folks who want to write proposals and polish them so that they may get
selected.
What if what we want fixed is larger than what the Community Tech team can
accomplish?
This year, we will be talking directly with leadership about larger wishes that
we can't fulfill ourselves. To make this possible, we will no longer be
formally 'Archiving' ideas. One improvement we are implementing from
conversations with all of you at past Talk to Us Hours and other places, is
that we will place projects that are too large for us into a new category
called “Larger Suggestions'' because we still want people to be able to voice
those needs. We plan to share this with the Foundation's leadership during the
WMF's annual planning, which takes place in the spring.
This being said, if you have an idea that may be too large for us to take on, I
would also encourage you to come to Talk to Us Hours (link above) and see if we
can help you workshop the proposal into something we can help with. If we can’t
then I would still highly encourage you to propose, by all means! Chances are
if you think it’s an important problem, many other members do as well.
Finally, the wishlist isn't just for Community Tech. Volunteer developers and
other Wikimedia Foundation teams have taken on wishes from the wishlist. For
this reason, there is a chance that a wish may not be appropriate for our team,
but it can be addressed by someone else.
Why isn’t the WMF fixing what we feel are be the most urgently needed fixes in
functionality?
This is a larger question that gets answered at the board and C-leadership
levels. There are also some relatively new teams at the Foundation, such as
Architecture and Platform Engineering, that aim to improve the technical
infrastructure overall in the years to come. However, every team can help with
the answer and Community Tech can help with communication of technical needs.
This “Larger Suggestions” collection of wishes I mentioned in the previous
answer will not be a silver bullet that fixes all of the problems, but I
believe in the power of incremental steps to steer us in that direction.
How can we communicate the urgency of the fixes that we need?
I don’t believe there is any lack of documentation of concerns about
functionality that is broken. Folks are right to point out that it’s about
synthesizing what is most urgently broken, the maintenance that is really
necessary, and surfacing it to leadership. We, the Community Tech team, had a
lot of hard conversations about how to handle this because we never want to
mislead anyone into thinking we are going to work on ideas that are too large
for our team. However, we all collectively came to the conclusion that we
should still be the team that gives people the space to voice what they need
from a technical perspective.
The wishlist itself can communicate urgency. If you submit a detailed wish (the
more details, the better!), and if the wish receives a high number of votes, we
definitively know as a team that it's urgent and high-priority. From there, we
have the information we need to take next steps. This may involve taking on the
wish ourselves or communicating the wish to leadership.
Does the Community Tech team work in isolation?
No, we constantly collaborate with other teams at the Foundation and most
importantly, with all of you. This year our goal is to share the top wishes
with other product managers who are responsible for products related to the
categories in the wishlist. This way, they may incorporate relevant wishes into
their team's roadmap, or they will at least consider community requests as they
plan upcoming work. We always check to see if other teams are already working
on solutions related to what is asked inside of the Wishlist. We plan to do
more and are energized that the conversation is already beginning to happen in
this thread.
Why is the Community Tech team so small? Why can't more people be hired, or why
can't a second Community Tech team be formed?
As a team, we deeply believe in our work, and we hope to keep growing. We know
how important it is to work directly with community members and fulfill
community requests. If you want our team to grow, one of the best ways you can
champion us is to participate in the wishlist. As participation rates grow (and
they have!), the more effectively we can advocate for our team and its
resources.
P.S. We are still welcoming help to promote the survey and to translate the
updated documentation. Thanks for reading.
Best,
Natalia Rodriguez
Senior Product Manager, Community Tech
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