Interactive Team Disbanding[edit]

In January 2017, it was decided that the Interactive team would be disbanded at the earliest reasonable date. Engineering work on the Interactive team immediately shifted from being focused on the development of new features, to a focus on the stabilization of production code. An evaluation of the general state of the maps project took place, with the aim to define the Minimum Viable Product (or MVP) for long-term, low-maintenance stability. At the time of this writing (February 21, 2017) the MVP has been identified, and the team is working toward the must-have items. A date for the actual disbanding will not be finalized until the outstanding issues identified in the project evaluation, have been addressed.

Why is the team being disbanded?[edit]

Initially, the team was resourced to be completely optimized for rapid experimentation. While this approach was highly successful in the early stages of the project, it led to many sustainability issues as the project reached a more mature state. After several unsuccessful attempts to address these sustainability issues at the team level, a decision was made to disband the team.

Why is work being 'winded down'?[edit]

Once the decision was made to disband the team, it became a priority to preserve the excellent work that they had already accomplished. This required the team to shift focus away from the rapid development of new features, to stabilizing the existing product.

What will happen to the tools?[edit]

The features and tools that were developed and deployed by the Interactive team, will be stabilized and maintained in production.

Going forward how will Discovery communicate changes like this?[edit]

We communicate about changes like this on our mailing lists. Please note: There will sometimes be an unavoidable delay between the unfolding of events, and any announcements regarding outcomes. In the future, we will be more sensitive to that delay, and work on shortening it whenever possible.

Future plans for Interactive work[edit]

The Interactive team had an impressive vision for the future of on-wiki content. The disbanding of the team does not mean that we have abandoned that vision.

How will the development of Interactive content be supported by the WMF in the future?[edit]

We don't know! Happily, this is Annual Planning season, so this is a great time to be asking this question. As part of the ongoing annual planning process, we are preparing to make recommendations to create a team that is appropriately resourced to continue work on maps features. However, as it always goes with annual planning, our proposal will have to compete for resourcing against a lot of other really great ideas. In the event that our recommendations are not funded in the next fiscal year, we are currently working on strengthening and stabilizing the maps project so it can easily survive a longer pause in full-time maintainership.