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Op-ed

You are invited to participate in the Community Wishlist Survey

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By Danny Horn


Starting on November 9th, the Community Tech team is inviting all Wikimedia contributors to submit proposals in our Community Wishlist Survey.

Community Tech is a new Wikimedia Foundation product team that’s dedicated to supporting core Wikimedia contributors with features and fixes that make curation and moderation more efficient. We want to work on projects that will help as many contributors as possible – and to reach that goal, we need a process that helps the most important needs rise to the top, in a way that’s inclusive, open, and fair.

The Community Wishlist Survey gives everybody the opportunity to propose fixes and solutions and determine which ideas have the most support. It’s an exciting (and slightly terrifying) prospect.

Here’s how it works: For two weeks, starting November 9th, contributors can come to the Community Wishlist Survey on Meta-Wiki, and post their ideas for projects that will directly benefit the core community.

We’re encouraging people to participate from any project and any language. Volunteer translators have been helping us translate the survey announcement into as many languages as we can get. Once people start submitting proposals, we’ll be canvassing for people to help translate proposals into English.

The proposals are posted on a wiki page, and everyone is invited to discuss the proposals as they come in – to ask questions, add ideas, and help to make the good proposals better.

The proposal phase ends after two weeks, and then the Community Tech team will sort the ideas into broad categories, merge duplicate proposals, and post the ideas for community vote.

The voting phase will also run for two weeks, from November 30th to December 14th. During this time, Wikimedia contributors can add votes of support on any of the proposals that they find worthwhile. We’re encouraging people to continue discussing the ideas during the voting phase, but we’re only going to count support votes.

At the end of this process, we’ll have a prioritized list of projects to work on. The proposals with the highest votes will become the Community Tech team’s top priority backlog to investigate and address. We’re also working with Community Engagement’s Developer Relations team, who will use this backlog when volunteer developers want to find new projects to work on.

The inspiration for this survey comes from Wikimedia Germany’s Community Tech team – “Technischer Communitybedarf”, or TCB – who have run successful Community Wishlist Surveys in 2013 and 2015. We’ll be the first team to encourage cross-project and multi-language participation in a survey like this, which should present some brand-new challenges that I’m sure we’ll discover along the way.

I hope you’ll join us over the next several weeks on the Community Wishlist Survey page and contribute your ideas and your opinions. See you there!


Danny Horn is a Product Manager on the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team.
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Hurrah! Another survey! I wonder how it's going to differ from the Product Survey done last December ([1]) and the Project Ideas survey done last May. Seems to me we need less surveying and more developing. --NeilN talk to me 18:42, 7 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@NeilN: The results of the All Our Ideas Survey from December were converted into a workboard for community tech. We've already fixed and improved many of the tools identified from that survey and are continuing to work on others. The Project Ideas page was just a page to brainstorm ideas. Hopefully many of the ideas from that page will be turned into formal proposals for the current Wishlist survey. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the article. IMO the WMF engineering and development teams should consider using 3rd party software like in features.cpanel.net to quickly and easily let anyone suggest features at any time. We don't need one-time feature surveys because an editor might think of the greatest idea precisely one day after the survey ends, plus ideas proposed in a one-time survey aren't trackable. —Ynhockey (Talk) 20:53, 7 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Ynhockey: Commenting in my volunteer role, isn't that what Phabricator is for? (I'm genuinely not sure) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:51, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@The ed17: Not really, and if that's what the WMF is using it for them we're in trouble (although I'm pretty sure they aren't). Phabricator is a bug tracker, and while like other bug trackers it allows feature requests, it's really not built for that kind of stuff. It actually has nothing in common with a request system like in cPanel, except a smiliar GUI. For one, it's mostly for technical users, while the other system is built to be easily navigable by anyone. Secondly, it's mostly for bugs while the other system is exclusively for feature requests. Thirdly, it lists thousands of tiny issues, while the other system is built for bigger requests. Finally and perhaps most importantly, it's missing the whole voting system (by the general public).
In general, Phabricator is built from the ground up for internal project management, with an optional ability to expose the information to the public. What's needed (in addition to, not instead of Phabricator) is a system built from the ground up to let the public request features, and if it has the side effect of having internal management tools then that's fine too. —Ynhockey (Talk) 21:50, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, gotcha—thank you for the clarification! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:44, 12 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Many companies use UserVoice or any other alternative to get feedback with very good results. A combination of surveys and UserVoice (or any other 3rd party feedback system) is ideal. --207.235.126.210 (talk) 21:10, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is it just me, or does the pic on the right look horribly like one of those diagrams of the human intestinal system? Hope that's not indicative of the fate of our lovely suggestions.... :-) Jheald (talk) 21:34, 7 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't this redundant to Wikipedia:Feature request? Are there developers assigned to every item on phabricator, and is that list so trimmed down that you have some developers sitting on their hands waiting for new assignments? Sorry, but my general impression is that most of the recent significant enhancements that are relevant to my Wikipedia work are still being developed by volunteers, not the WMF engineering staff, so pardon me for not putting any more time into this. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:41, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This survey is for surfacing and prioritizing technical needs from the community. We certainly don't have a shortage of existing bugs and tasks, but historically the WMF has given few opportunities to the community to help prioritize the work of development teams. That's what we're trying to accomplish with this survey. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 19:57, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Signpost is written by editors like you – join in!
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