Report: The State of the Wikimedia Foundation

[HRIP7]

A major report has just been released. Announcement email:

Hi all,

Today the Wikimedia Foundation published a report on its activities in
calendar year 2014.

This State of the Wikimedia Foundation
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... dation.pdf>
report
provides a snapshot view of the Foundation’s major initiatives and
considerations during that period. It also offers a baseline assessment of
key efforts made by internal Foundation departments, with an emphasis on
data-based results, project impact, challenges, and how our work supports
our mission.

Last December, the Wikimedia Foundation entered into the beginning of a
strategy planning exercise. As we progressed, we found people had differing
familiarities with the work, needs, and concerns of other departments --
the proverbial Blind Men and an Elephant.[1] In response, we began pulling
together information as a baseline reference so we would better understand
each others’ work. This report is the outcome of that research.[2]

Although the information in the report was originally gathered in response
to an internal Foundation need, we planned to make it public as a report
from the very beginning. It is intended to be relatively candid, sharing
insight into where teams feel they have strengths and where they feel there
are development areas.

The report also offers the first look at the Foundation’s internal Call to
Action for 2015
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communi ... _to_Action>.
The Call to Action is a set of actions for the 2015 calendar year to focus
the staff of the Foundation on our core functions. These include improving
the processes by which we do our work, building stronger community
relationships, and exploring new ways to expand free knowledge. Terry, our
new COO <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/20/wmf-welcomes-coo/>, will
manage its implementation over the coming year.

Finally, a note: the report is a standalone product designed to aide the
strategy development process, and does not substitute for the Quarterly
Reports, Annual Report, or Annual Plan process. It is scoped only against
the Foundation’s existing workflows in 2014, and not against the work of
the Wikimedia movement overall. We have not committed to making it an
annual exercise.

The full State of the Wikimedia Foundation report is available as a wiki
here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communi ... Foundation>
and as a PDF on Wikimedia Commons here
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... dation.pdf>
. You can also find more information in our blog post:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/04/02/n ... on-report/.


We hope you find it interesting, and welcome your feedback.

Thanks,

Katherine

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
[2] Thanks to everyone at the Foundation who contributed so much great
information to their various teams sections. And a special thanks to Juliet
Barbara and Heather Walls who wrote and produced the whole thing!


--
Katherine Maher
Chief Communications Officer
Wikimedia Foundation

The report indeed makes interesting reading. For example:

Fundraising

In the previous fiscal year 2013-2014, the Fundraising team raised $52.6 million, exceeding
the annual plan goal by 5%. So far in the 2014-2015 fiscal year, (from July 1, 2014 - January
7, 2015), the team has raised $58.5 million from 4.2 million total donations. By reaching
this number, we met our goal for the fiscal year six months ahead of our revenue plan.

[...]

Due to changing readership [see Considerations section, below] Fundraising intentionally
exceeded our goal in the 2014-2015 fiscal year in order to prepare for future challenges.
We have also explored new banner formats and messaging to increase the effectiveness
of our appeals and will continue to do so in the months and years ahead.

[...]

• According to our projections, our revenue from our year-end English fundraiser would
have decreased by 43% had we run the same campaign as last year.
• 90% of funds come from North America and Europe.
• Traffic is in decline in Europe and North America
• In the U.S.: Between 2013 and 2014, total desktop and mobile pageviews in the U.S. dropped 8.6% 2
• Traffic is also in decline in many key European countries, for example:
Belgium: 30% decline in total pageviews 9
Netherlands: 31% decline in pageviews
Traffic is up in many other countries,10 however these are not
countries where we raise significant funds – and in some cases
we are unable to fundraise due to local or national laws.
• India: 13% increase in total pageviews
• Iran: 168% increase in total pageviews

Wikipedia Zero

Considerations
2014 saw continued growth of the Wikipedia Zero program in terms of visibility
and partner launches. This continued growth and maturation has allowed the Zero
team to begin to assess its efficacy and impact across a broader data set.

The biggest concern for Wikipedia Zero is that we do not yet see evidence that it is
reaching the target audience – the world’s poorest people who cannot afford mobile data
charges – at scale. We still do not see organic growth in usage. And our own data on
pageviews by language version show roughly 90% usage in English throughout South
Asia, indicating the program is actually reaching more privileged segments of society.
The Wikipedia Zero team has identified a number of possible explanations for this:
The target audience is not yet actively using the Internet.
• Carriers care about growth markets. They are actively trying to engage new users
in the mobile internet, leading with discounted bundles of well-known services like
Facebook and whatsapp. Our mission is relevant, but our main tactic is less so.
• This raises the question of whether Wikipedia Zero is premature, and if
there are other ways we could help bring people online.

Our product was not designed to serve Global South users.
• In some Wikipedia Zero countries, locally-relevant language content is not well-developed.
• The Foundation has not dedicated resources to optimizing the product for Global South users.
• In countries where knowing two or more languages is the norm, the
product does not support easy toggling between languages.
• Not all cultures are familiar with or accustomed to using “encyclopedic” knowledge –
this requires investigation of product-market fit. For example, target users may prefer
shorter, more accessible bits of information rather than long-form articles.

Potential users have a lack of awareness about the product, and we are not marketing to them.
• Many potential users may not know about the availability of Wikipedia Zero – and
many are not familiar with Wikipedia or encyclopedias in general.
• Because of constraints in our trademark policy and historical resistance to
marketing, all awareness efforts are borne by partner operators.
• Operators tend to be unwilling to heavily market a service that doesn’t contribute to their ARPU goals.
• Our experience indicates pageviews do not grow except when the operator advertises.
Making Wikipedia free of data charges is not driving usage in underserved segments.
• Scaling pageviews is not the most critical metric.
• The Wikipedia Zero team needs to understanding potential alternative metrics, and how to
achieve them, with attention to awareness-building initiatives and Global South user needs.
Zero-rating is controversial among some policy and advocacy audiences.
• Zero-rating and Wikipedia Zero have received negative attention by
some critics who believe it is at odds with net neutrality.
• Critics argue that this is because zero-rating favors incumbents with
the ability to pay for preferential access to users.
• We believe that since our program involves no exchange of money and is in support of our
mission to make free knowledge available with the world, it is not at odds with net neutrality.
Zero-rating is falling out of favor with carriers.
• Zero-rating is also becoming a bit passe among carriers, and it is typically used as a 90-day
promos or first month trial, not a persistent program. Wikipedia and Internet.org are exceptions.

Engineering & Product

Lessons Learned from Media Viewer:
The Media Viewer project ran from July 2013 to November 2014 and was more
challenging than expected. While the product received positive or neutral feedback
on most projects, it was met with negative reactions from many contributors on the
English and German Wikipedias, as well as on Wikimedia Commons. This required
the team to work longer than planned, to improve features based on user feedback.

[...]

Mobile use is increasing, but without a commensurate increase in mobile editing.
Our data indicates that fewer than 10% of edits started on mobile apps are finished, the size of mobile edits is smaller, and long-term retention of mobile editors is very low.
We need to create new ways for growing mobile community to participate in our projects that recognize the opportunities and constraints of mobile devices.

[HRIP7]

Note that the report is also available as a wiki page on Meta. Some people may prefer to read it there.

[Anthonyhcole]

Thanks for pointing it out. This is fascinating.

[Randy from Boise]

Hey, there's a link to the mysterious "Call to Action" document, too.

linkhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communi ... _to_Action[/link]


Thanks.

RfB

Addendum: It's just a bunch of internal rah-rah. Not surprising at that.

[Randy from Boise]

By Jove, I think they are starting to "get it"....

* We need additional research with and into our current and future communities in order to formulate good hypotheses and make good decisions about engagement strategies.

* We need more focused pilots (rather than to try and work at scale from the start) in order to increase awareness of our projects to readers and potential contributors, and support to existing contributors.

RfB

[Vigilant]

By Jove, I think they are starting to "get it"....

* We need additional research with and into our current and future communities in order to formulate good hypotheses and make good decisions about engagement strategies.

* We need more focused pilots (rather than to try and work at scale from the start) in order to increase awareness of our projects to readers and potential contributors, and support to existing contributors.

RfB

Here, let me add one:

* We need to hire people who aren't raging assholes to be our community liaisons.

[EricBarbour]

* We need to hire people who aren't raging assholes to be our community liaisons.

[Jim]

2015: The year ahead
In 2015, the Product and Engineering teams will:
* Deliver reliable, quality software and products that meet the needs of our readers and editors.
* Roll-out improved VisualEditor as the default editing experience for new users to all major projects and platforms.

uh-huh.

Strengthen community input into product priorities and develop standardized update and feedback channels.
Improve process for community input and allocate dedicated technical resources to community requests.

I expect someone will be able to point me to where the widely advertised "[strengthened] community input into product priorities" can be found for this "product priority".
I assume it addresses the mega RFC rejecting this.

[Poetlister]

It might help if they could get someone to write a strategy in coherent English, rather than burying things in a lot of management-consultant speak.

[thekohser]

A quarterly report (for calendar Q1 2015, fiscal Q3) was released on May 20.

My favorite part:

In a mature 90 day goal setting process the “sweet spot” is for about 75% of goals to be a success. Organizations that are meeting 100% of their goals are not typically setting aggressive goals.

{{citation needed}}

[thekohser]

To give an example of what earns the "green dot" of success at the Wikimedia Foundation, here's one:

Goal: Hire a Director of Recruiting

Status: Interviewing for Director

Evaluation? Green dot of success!

[thekohser]

Another example of what earns the "green dot":

Goal: Implement Single User Login (SUL) Project and rename 2.8 million accounts

Status: On track to rename affected accounts beginning 15 April [that's in the following quarter]

Evaluation? Green dot of success!

[Poetlister]

That's the problem with a dichotomous red/green system. You need an amber "substantial progress; likely to be achieved next quarter" button. Of course, that may lead to things being amber for several quarters.

[thekohser]

That's the problem with a dichotomous red/green system. You need an amber "substantial progress; likely to be achieved next quarter" button. Of course, that may lead to things being amber for several quarters.

If the goal stayed amber for more than one quarter, then maybe the WMF could issue an AMBER alert (T-H-L).

[lilburne]

Wikipedia Zero

Considerations
2014 saw continued growth of the Wikipedia Zero program in terms of visibility
and partner launches. This continued growth and maturation has allowed the Zero
team to begin to assess its efficacy and impact across a broader data set.

The biggest concern for Wikipedia Zero is that we do not yet see evidence that it is
reaching the target audience – the world’s poorest people who cannot afford mobile data
charges – at scale. We still do not see organic growth in usage. And our own data on
pageviews by language version show roughly 90% usage in English throughout South
Asia, indicating the program is actually reaching more privileged segments of society.
The Wikipedia Zero team has identified a number of possible explanations for this:
The target audience is not yet actively using the Internet.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron….Is there no other way the world may live?” – Dwight D. Eisenhower –

Back in the 1980s it was reckoned that to give everyone in the world adequate housing, education, food, water and health care would cost about the same as the world spends on armaments every two weeks. Today the cost of giving that little girl in Africa access to the above food,water, housing, etc costs about 75p a day, a cost that is way outside of what her parents can afford. And the WMF thinks the family has spare money for 4G mobile technology? If ever there was an example of headup arsed tech-nerds you have it here. Of course this was going to benefit the already wealthy, of course it was going to make the less well off poorer and less able to compete. One might say that only saving grace is the crapness that is the wikipedia product, but even that would be wrong, because the really wealthy can afford way better resources.

[Notvelty]

That's the problem with a dichotomous red/green system. You need an amber "substantial progress; likely to be achieved next quarter" button. Of course, that may lead to things being amber for several quarters.

Can't see the issue. Goal not achieved by due date is failed.

[Poetlister]

That's the problem with a dichotomous red/green system. You need an amber "substantial progress; likely to be achieved next quarter" button. Of course, that may lead to things being amber for several quarters.

Can't see the issue. Goal not achieved by due date is failed.

It's useful for projects achieved ahead of time.