2015 MediaWiki User Survey

In an effort to answer the question, “Who is using MediaWiki?” the MediaWiki Stakeholders’ Group has organized a survey.

We wanted to hear from existing MediaWiki users and ask that you complete this short survey about your use of MediaWiki. The results of the survey will help by providing input that should influence the future development of MediaWiki. We also hope to grow the community of MediaWiki Users and improve involvement.

The preliminary results of this survey were anonymized and shared with the public at the MediaWiki Stakeholders' session at Wikimania 2015 and will be posted to MediaWiki.org at a later date. An anonymized data set will be available for download as well. This survey is separated into two parts and should take about 10 minutes to complete.

The survey closed on Friday, July 31st.

Discussion
If you have feedback or suggestions regarding the survey itself, please leave a comment on the talk page.

Distribution
Methods of distribution used and contacts can be found on 2015 MediaWiki User Survey/Distribution

Presentation
We presented a preliminary analysis of the survey and related projects at Wikimania 2015.



Here are the presentation slides on Google Docs.

A video of the presentation from Archive.org

MediaWiki Software
The general consensus of respondents is positive. MediaWiki is a prefect fit for many individuals and organizations. The software is robust for most needs and the many extensions make customization approachable. Many remarked that MediaWiki is easy to install and that the development is active. The free nature of open-source software was also mentioned as a positive.

Praise was given to the community as being a useful and viable option for support.

Another note is that the mission of sharing knowledge is alive within the community - even if a wiki is 'behind closed doors'. Many responses commented on the collaborative authoring and ease to edit being a plus. Many use it as a 'knowledge management' solution within a larger organization.

While the language of the survey spoke to MediaWiki 'users' the audience appears to skew towards administrators and 'owners' - those individuals who are responsible for the technical side of MediaWiki for others to use.

As for improvements, many commented on better access controls. Per page rights as an example. Others remarked on an improved WYSIWYG editor would be welcome. Many asked for improved upgrade paths for extensions - automatic 'one-click' updates ala mobile OSes or other CMSes. Some commented that an Improved installation process would also be welcome. Better multiple language support and media management were also common responses. An update to the user experience and user interface to be more 'modern' was also requested.

MediaWiki Community
to come...

Results
After letting the survey run for two weeks (July 15th to July 31st) we closed the survey to new responses. Below are some visualizations of the quantifiable data.

Wishlist
Another outcome of the survey was fortifying our prioritized list of most requested MediaWiki features for third-party users. This list was put together after feedback from MediaWiki users was combined with the most requested improvements from the survey. It is a work-in-progress, but does a sizable job in summarizing the improvements that would most benefit MediaWiki users - as described by active, current users.

Raw Data
A comma-separated list (csv) of the raw data can be found at Survey Results Anonymized.csv