VisualEditor/Stakeholders

This page describes the various stakeholders in the VisualEditor team's work. It aims to describe reality rather than goals.

  • Divide pigs and chickens?

Community and public stakeholders (see Wikimedia Product Development/Personæ)
Group Description Needs Key voice Input channels
Readers Read Wikipedia, sporadically or heavily, but have never clicked the 'edit' button
  • Editing tools do not adversely affect the reading experience
  • Aware of the opportunity to become an editor
Abbey Ripstra, Dan, and (during launch prep) Aaron from the research team. ?
New editors Have made only a handful of edits, or have clicked the 'edit' button but been discouraged VisualEditor is easy to use, and pushes users to behaviors favored by the community (adding useful citations, edit summaries, wikilinks, etc.) Abbey, Dan, and (during launch prep) Aaron from the research team. Dashboard.
Casual editors Edit sporadically (5-99 edits a month), and have a moderate understanding of the project and community VisualEditor works well as a main editor for a content contributor, and does not try to be overly helpful (not like e.g. Clippy) Abbey, Dan, and (during launch prep) Aaron from the research team. Dashboard.
Sherry Snyder and Erica Litrenta from Community Engagement. Phabricator tasks, weekly meetings.
Power editors Edit heavily (99+ edits a month), have a broad understanding of the project, and heavily identify as community members
  • WikiEditor continues to work well
  • VisualEditor is useful for use cases that WikiEditor does not cover well (e.g. table editing, auto citations, etc.)
Sherry and Erica from Community Engagement. Phabricator tasks, weekly meetings.
Self-selected power editors Phabricator tasks, MediaWiki wiki (e.g. VisualEditor/Feedback), public triage meetings (though not in practice)
Donors Mostly individuals giving through the website, which overlaps heavily with editors and readers.
  • Large donors want input into product prioritization.
  • Want consistent public-facing updates
Communications team. Caitlin Virtue on Advancement. Nothing direct. Temporarily, VE launch meetings.
Volunteer developers Non-WMF developers who contribute to VE or related tools, or want to. Input into decision-making process. Visibility into current changes. Quim Gil. Self-selected members (e.g. TheDJ, EranRoz) IRC. Mailing lists. Phabricator. RfCs?
Foundation stakeholders
Group Needs Key voice Input channels
Research team Advance notice of project direction. Involvement in product discussions. Dario, Abbey, Aaron Weekly meeting.
Non-team engineers Notice of breaking changes that might affect them. Jon Robson. IRC. Mailing lists. Scrum of Scrums.
Parsoid team. Subbu Shastry.
Operations Notification (automated?) of any chance that impacts performance. TBD. Scrum of Scrums.
Release engineering. Zeljko.
Analytics Kevin LeDuc. Dan Andreescu.
Community liasons Advance notice of project direction. Immediate notice of breaking/disruptive changes. Input into prioritization of tasks. Sherry, Erica, and Rachel. Standups. Weekly meetings. Monthly product check-in.
Communications Advance notice of any changes likely to make news. Katherine, Juliet. TBD.
Senior management Input in earliest stages of goal-setting. Regular updates on progress. After-action data and analysis. Lila and Damon. Quarterly review meetings.
Team stakeholders
Group Needs Key voice
Designers Early involvement in brainstorming. Clear backlog of tasks. Nirzar. Kaity Standups. Phabricator.
Engineers Clearly spec'ed, prioritized backlog of tasks. Ed. Standups. Phabricator.
Productizers Visibility into all other stakeholders. Final say on roadmap. James.
QAers Unified backlog of testing. Involvement in deploy process. Rummana.