Hi Pine! - It is not - the difference is that the Media platform team is a platform team, meaning it takes care of the underlying multimedia infrastructure, while the former multimedia team primarily focused on specific user-facing features (like the MediaViewer). Still, platform work does directly benefit users, but is commonly a little less visible.
One example: The first major project is to redesign our thumbnail infrastructure: We’re doing this work to ensure that the infrastructure can scale for a continued growth of images. The changes we're making won't be super-obvious, except that you'll notice fewer problems. Essentially, platform teams’ job is to think holistically about the platform, what it should enable and can reasonably support, while ensuring sustainability and scalability – which in return also makes it easier to build better features (faster). Hope that helps clarify the scope! Birgit On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 5:01 PM Pine W via Wikitech-l < [email protected]> wrote: > Hi Birgit, thanks for the news. is the Media Platform Team effectively a > reconstitution of the former Multimedia Team? See > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia. > > Pine🌲 > > On Wed, Jul 8, 2026 at 12:30 AM Birgit Müller via Wikitech-l < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi All, >> >> Some of you might have seen this >> <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/8845/> already on >> Phabricator :-) - I'm happy to share that we’ve created a Media Platform >> team under the umbrella of the MediaWiki Engineering group >> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Engineering_Group>. This >> enhances the MediaWiki Engineering group from formerly 3 to now 4 teams – >> Core Platform, API Platform (also known as: MW Interfaces), Content >> Platform (also known as: the content transformers :), and Media Platform. >> [1] >> >> With this change, we’re addressing the need to invest in the >> sustainability of our media platform, with an initial focus on de-risking >> key parts of the media infrastructure, ensuring the platform remains >> resilient when scaled scraping occurs and can scale for continued growth. >> >> The Media Platform team will work on how we store, manipulate, stream, >> and display media and is responsible for the media related work under the >> Responsible >> Reuse objective >> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2026-2027/Product_%26_Technology_OKRs#Protect> >> in the Foundation’s annual plan (July 2026 - June 2027). The first major >> project is to come up with a new architecture for the thumbnail >> infrastructure (see ticket <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T431141>). >> >> We’ve created a Phabricator project for the team >> <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/8845/> and updated >> the developers and maintainers list >> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developers/Maintainers> to reflect the >> changes. >> >> Feel free to come say Hi >> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Media_Platform_Team> when you get the >> chance :-) >> >> Birgit >> >> [1] - We're adjusting the names of the other MediaWiki Engineering teams >> to maintain consistency across platform teams & are working on updating the >> corresponding tags and team pages. >> >> -- >> Birgit Müller (she/her) >> Director of Product, MediaWiki and Developer Experiences >> >> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] >> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] >> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/ > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/ -- Birgit Müller (she/her) Director of Product, MediaWiki and Developer Experiences Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
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