Moving out of Home - MediaWiki Governance Revisited
28
Moving out of Home? MediaWiki Governance Revisited Markus Glaser MediaWiki Stakeholders’ Group
-
Upload
hallo-welt-gmbh -
Category
Internet
-
view
217 -
download
0
Transcript of Moving out of Home - MediaWiki Governance Revisited
Moving out of Home?MediaWiki Governance
RevisitedMarkus Glaser
MediaWiki Stakeholders’ Group
Agenda●Usage of MediaWiki
●How it fits into our mission
●MediaWiki is neglected
●Possible solutions
●Key questions
●Concrete steps to move forward
MediaWiki is widely usedBy User:Anthere (flower) and User:Eloquence (combination, concept), reworked by User:Aka, vectorized by User:Chrkl ; brackets fixed by guillom (Own work based on: Tournesol.png) [Public domain],via Wikimedia Commons
Range of organisations●Small local wikis, e.g. aw-wiki
●Knowledge bases, e.g. physiopedia
●Howtos and documentation, e.g. mozilla wiki
●NGOs, e.g. Wikimedia
●Governmental organisations, e.g. Mitre and NASA
● Intelligence and military, e.g. CIA and Navy
●Corporations, e.g. Johnson & Johnson
●Etc, etc...
The impact of MediaWiki№ of wikis Good articles Total pages Edits Images Users Admins
WMF 851 88295601 277319930 3050050642 34707726 128967945 6900
MediaWikis 12437 62354637 366424498 1997653464 26444657 621428717 64443
Wikia 410703 25098732 151267717 463170940 27877618 24302450 160797
Other 4759 1729653 9680521 54803506 2038127 114214943 7272
Non-WMF 427899 89183022 527372736 2515627910 56360402 759946110 232512
Total 428750 177478623 804692666 5565678552 91068128 888914055 239412
Q: WikiStats beta
MediaWiki fits into the movement mission
Wikimedia Foundation [CC BY-SA 3.0],via Wikimedia Commons
MediaWiki is opinionated software●Trains users to share first
●Ends up creating better quality information●Makes clear that another way of sharing information is possible.●Wikis are important for the development of a web-based
society.●Free-sourced extensions greatly enhances the diversity of
formats available for a variety of communities
MediaWiki needs some loveBy inky2010, Varnent and Dan Bolser [CC0],via Wikimedia Commons
MediaWiki is neglectedThere is room for improvement in these areas:
Maintenance, like installation, configuration and maintenancePromotion and public visibilitySupport for extension developers who add a lot of extra
functionalitySupport for an ecosystem
Systematic documentation
Available options
By Polyextremophile [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Option 0: Do nothing●Installation and maintenance will get increasingly hard
●MediaWiki’s reputation will suffer
●People will be driven away from using it do to technological restrictions
●Closed source solutions will become more market share
●There’s a high risk of a software fork
Thoughts on forkingSplit MediaWiki for 3rd parties off the WMF development
Benefits
● MediaWiki could evolve freely according to third party needs
Drawbacks
● Duplication of effort and split of resources
● MediaWiki’s popularity is due to the fact that it is the software that drives Wikipedia. MediaWiki is likely to still be released in the current form.
● Emotional stress
● Bad press / reputation
Option 1: MediaWiki FoundationSpin off MediaWiki core into a separate organisation
Benefits
● Separation of concerns on a product level
● Additional options for fundraising
● Financial support from WMF
Drawbacks
● Coordination of development will become extremely difficult
● Duplication of organisational structures
● External dependency for Wikimedia Foundation
Option 2: Create a focussed organisationAn organisation which is designed to help MediaWiki maintainers
Benefits
● Separation of concerns on the use case level
● More ways to raise money
● Clear scope of development
Drawbacks
● No guarantee that we can freely implement changes
● Dependency on WMF decisions
● Little financial support from WMF
Benefits●Stakeholders can contribute resources and money specifically to
the development of MediaWiki. ●They can raise funds directly for MediaWiki. ●The responsibility gap in MediaWiki development will be
closed.●Stakeholders can influence the features of MediaWiki with their
resources.●There can be a better coordination of efforts.
Solution suggestionBy Stefan Krause, Germany (Own work) [FAL], via Wikimedia Commons
Wait. There’s already something like this!●Mediawiki Stakeholders’ Group, founded in 2014
●~30 members, 10 active
●Work being done:○ Fixing bugs
○ Work on documentation
○ Investigate MediaWiki usage
●This one could serve as an incubator for the new organisation
●Strategy is to ramp up such an organisation through natural growth
Vision
We imagine a world in which people participate to build wiki-based tools to easily create, share, and transform knowledge
collaboratively.
MissionMake MediaWiki the most effective open source collaboration software:Improve MediaWiki experience for users via tools provided to edit, watch,
etc.Make MediaWiki easier to manage for site administrators.Advertise MediaWiki as a collaboration toolMake MediaWiki a reliable partner (for organizations, the WMF)Empower partners to participate in improving the software.Help users and third party developers maintain the software via
contributions to core or the development of extensions without fear of breakage
Maintain a predictable development roadmap
Out of scope!Make another Wikipedia (or other place to share actual knowledge)Compete with Wikimedia Foundation (we mean to complement it)Fork MediaWikiRewrite MediaWiki (at least not yet!)Create redundancy (e.g. separate issue tracker, separate wikitech-l
mailing list)Run wiki farms or set up a wiki for you
ResourcesOrganisations using MediaWiki have indicated potential financial
support.Organisations have indicated they can spare developer resources.Depending on the form of incorporation, a MediaWiki organisation can
raise its own donations.receive grants
Be part of this!
Ralf Roletschek [CC BY-SA 3.0 at], via Wikimedia Commons
Roadmap●🔄Agree on funding model (& organizational model) sources of
funding●✓ Working groups●✓ Present idea to wider audience● 🔄 Discuss at Wikimania● 🔄 Discuss options with Wikimedia Foundation officials (MoU)● 🔄 Identify initial programmes to work on (candidate: extension
management)●Identify working model
Roadmap cont’d●Get seed funding for incorporation●Decide on form and place of incorporation●Work on bylaws●Align bylaws with AffCom●Incorporate MediaWiki Stakeholders●Find freelancers / staff
Get in touchMark A. Hershberger (User:MarkAHershberger): [email protected]
Markus Glaser (User:Mglaser): [email protected] Stakeholders’ Group: mwstake.org
Ralf Roletschek [CC BY-SA 3.0 at], via Wikimedia Commons
