MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group/Fantastic MediaWikis Program/Promoting MediaWiki

Bryan

  • Poor governance
  • Essentially for the Wikimedia projects
  • Example: Kubernetes: The software is not owned by google anymore. Result: Roadmap planning involves a lot of stakeholders

Sabine

  • Use cases are not clear
  • It seems like it is still in the past

Richard

  • MW is losing ground against Confluence in google trends
  • Focus on usage, change it in the direction the users need it
  • Standardisation
  • Even in WM context there are many use cases


  • Different ideas of where we want to google


  • how can we institute a governance model for mw?

Bryan

  • Kubernetes: shift from inside
  • realized there is an opportunity for a wide spread open source software
  • operational contract for the stakeholders


Richard

  • Maybe use MediaWiki Community edition


Sabine

  • A matter of relevance -> to the Foundation
  • WMF is entierly missing the conversation outside
  • Knowledge management is dead: lifelong learning, digitalisation, etc. is the new trends


Brion

  • If we want to spread MW software, we need to have a shift of how WMF looks at MW
  • WMF is struggling to supprt sister projects, how should it provide 3rd parties?
  • Therefore goverance model is the way to google
  • There is a shift in the WMF


Bryan

  • Convince Management that MW is a core part of the mission of WMF


How?

Bryon

  • Make a ROI proposition which makes sense (to convince)

Brion

  • Need a lobby from inside and outside

Ziko

  • There is a change aversion in the community

Brion

  • Take individual projects that will be a sustained effort, e.g. community release,
  • Prove there is an active community around this
  • Keep communication lines open

Richard

  • Community change aversion is not an issue with enterprise users
  • We can offer experience besides documentation and translation
  • Not only an issue only of governance, but 3rd party devs are also reluctant

Sabine

  • Make the point for the encyclopedic use cases

Markus

  • Two things: Show the value of 3rd party contributions to WMF and 2) increase number of users by showing use cases and usage

Richard

  • What we really can do: start promoting that


Bryan

  • Community has more ressources than WMF on MediaWiki (more than 4 devs)
  • A group like MWStake grows membership, get all involved
  • Work on a roadmap for a common subset things
  • As that gains momentung, you will get momentum and by in from the Foundation devs
  • Like paid content cannot completely fulfil Wikipedia, paid development can't cover all the needs of MW users
  • Volunteers come to advance the open knowledge mission
  • Most of the code is probably written by volunteers


Brion

  • Don't be afraid to say we need "something" from the Foundation, as long as "something" is specific and does not require a lot of resources
  • We need to get communication lines open
  • e.g. hook, or use case,
  • Foundation needs to be able to see communitys value proposition


Bryan

  • Community needs to be more visible, e.g. blogging out q


  • Toby negrin in charge