Wikimedia Product

This page reflects the work done by the Wikimedia Product group. Wikimedia Product staff employed by the Wikimedia Foundation build, improve and maintain the features of Wikimedia sites.

Monthly Product Showcase
Members of Discovery, Editing and Reading teams show off new work and experiments.

Next: January 6, 2015

Recent: December 14, 2015 (Watch the Showcase)

Recent: November 16, 2015 (Watch the showcase)

Recent: October 28, 2015 (Watch the showcase)

Community Wishlist Survey
The Community Tech team invited all Wikimedia contributors to submit proposals in a Community Wishlist Survey. The survey ran from the 9th through the 22nd of November. Voting on proposals occurred from Nov 30–Dec 14. The team is now reviewing the results through the end of December and will present on work in early January.

Product Development
There are a few current efforts underway to help solve some long standing challenges around product.
 * A high level product development process is open in draft for discussion.
 * Team Practices Group is leading a more detailed effort to restructure how the WMF plans and executes software engineering, known as the SPDPP (Software Product Development Process Proposal). Engineering, Product departments and the Team Practices group, will contribute to this draft as it evolves. Team Practices Group also leads ongoing projects to measure what fraction of team effort is dedicated to maintenance and to promote burnup charts for documenting team progress.
 * The Design research team is also working on gathering feedback around product lifecycle and has created a site and will provide feedback to help support this process.
 * Community Engagement is working with the teams to develop a set of Design and Development Principles. First draft is up here.
 * The current roadmaps and development are provided comprehensively with the technology teams.  Individual audiences are also provided below.

Developers Summit
All teams will have their respective leads, product managers and engineers participating at the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2016. Here are the latest tasks in motion. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/wikimedia-developer-summit-2016/. Specific tasks per audience include: Reading (T114542), Discovery (T113526, T113540) and Editing (Series of tasks).

Discovery
We build the anonymous path of discovery to a trusted and relevant source of knowledge.
 * Discovery Page: Discovery
 * Discovery Lead: Tomasz Finc
 * Phabricator task board: #discovery
 * Discovery Projects: Maps, Search, Wikidata Query Service

Updates

 * First portal A/B test is live in production. Second test development is nearing completion.
 * Wikipedia Android app now uses OSM tiles in production
 * Q3 goals are up on Wikimedia Engineering/2015-16 Q3 Goals#Discovery
 * Early exploration of using page view data to affect relevance
 * Completion suggester beta feature live in wmf.9 (hits wikipedias dec 17th)

Goals

 * Q1: July - September 2015, WMF Quarterly Review
 * Q2: October - December 2015
 * Q3: January - March 2016
 * Q4: April - June 2016

Editing
We build collaborative, inclusive tools for creating and editing free knowledge.


 * Editing page: Editing
 * Editing head: Trevor Parscal
 * Phabricator task boards: #Editing; #Collaboration-Team-Current, #ContentTranslation-Release7, Multimedia, #Parsoid, #VisualEditor
 * Editing teams: Collaboration, Multimedia, Languages, Parsing, VisualEditor

Major updates

 * Collaboration
 * [On track] Cross-wiki notification work is nearing completion and is on track for beta testing in the New Year.
 * [Delayed] LiquidThreads → Flow conversion on remaining wikis is mostly complete but stalled; this will complete major work removing LQT from production.
 * Language
 * Nice summary on Content Translation Tool Design by Pau Giner.
 * Multimedia
 * [On track] Experimental improved multimedia editing workflow is being prototyped with non-destructive image editing – see demo.
 * [New] Working on improved in-edit upload workflow testing with users to motivate better behaviour.
 * Parsing
 * [On track] Experimental work to add an extension registration system for Parsoid is underway.
 * VisualEditor
 * [Delayed] Provision of a single edit tab to combine the wikitext and visual editors; gentle deployment will be needed given complexity of change.
 * [Delayed to Q3] Providing the visual editor by default for logged-out users on the English Wikipedia will need the above, A/B testing, and discussion.
 * Q3: January - March 2016 goals are posted on Mediawiki

Goals

 * Q1: July - September 2015, WMF Quarterly Review
 * Q2: October - December 2015
 * Q3: January - March 2016
 * Q4: April - June 2016

Fundraising Tech
Technical work supporting the Wikimedia Foundation's fundraising efforts.
 * Fundraising Tech Page: Fundraising tech
 * Fundraising Tech Lead: Katie Horn
 * Phabricator task board: #wmf-fr

Updates

 * [IN PROGRESS] Support Big English fundraiser (ongoing until January)
 * [COMPLETE] Support Banner History rollout. This new feature in CentralNotice was enabled for the ongoing France campaign. Analytics to work with our team to help digest the data we are getting back now.
 * Q3: January - March 2016 goals posted for review on Mediawiki.

Goals

 * Q1: July - September 2015, Quarterly Review
 * Q2: October - December 2015
 * Q3: January - March 2016
 * Q4: April - June 2016

Reading
We build exceptional learning and reading experiences for the sum of all knowledge.
 * Reading Page: Reading
 * Reading Lead: Toby Negrin
 * Phabricator task board: #reading
 * Reading Projects: Community Tech, Mobile Apps, Desktop & Mobile Web, Reading Infrastructure

Updates

 * New Android production release including improved link preview, nearby with maps and directions to points of interest, and Wikipedia lookup from other apps.
 * The Reading team's first desktop new feature -- Read More has been released into beta
 * Q3: January - March 2016 goals are posted on Mediawiki.

Goals

 * Q1: July - September 2015, WMF Quarterly Review
 * Q2: October - December 2015
 * Q3: January - March 2016
 * Q4: April - June 2016