English subtitles for clip: File:Product Department Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation 2021-2022 Annual Plan.webm

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2021-2022 Annual Plan
Toby Negrin
Chief Product Officer

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Hi

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I'm Toby Negrin. I'm the Chief Product

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Officer here at the Wikimedia Foundation

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What's your favorite Wikipedia article?

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My favorite Wikipedia article is the

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List of sports idioms

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and I'm a particular fan of "Let's put

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some points on the board!"

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We tend to think of our work as divided

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into several areas. The first area is

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tools for existing editors

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and so that would be things like

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Community Tech

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Our work on talk pages, or work on

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Visual editor

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work on content translation. These are

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the tools that existing editors use to

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create the content that makes Wikipedia.

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We also have some people working on

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tools for

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new editors. I think the

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best example of this is the Growth team.

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That's actually figuring out new ways

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for new people to start getting involved

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in projects with new forms of editing.

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Not every edit

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has to be in a long form article.

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And the last general area is tools for

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readers

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Wikipedia is a site that's used

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by

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billions of people all over the planet

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so it's really important to make sure

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that the great content that the editors

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create

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is displayed in a way that's both

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aligned with our values

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but also gives people the information

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that they need.

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What's one thing you're proud of from last year?

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I'm really excited by the Growth work.

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I think figuring out ways to make the

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editing experience

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more comprehensible to newcomers is

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really exciting.

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We're starting to see –  I think that's

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deployed on 30 wikis now we've just

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deployed it on some of the larger wikis

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we're really excited about the feedback

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and we think that this can be a real

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gateway into bringing new people into

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the projects.

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Of course we also have to make sure that

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the existing editors and moderators

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are – have the support they need and I

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think here our work

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on IP masking is something that has

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has really just started and I know it's

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been a bit controversial

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but if we can make these moderation

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tools better for everybody then we can

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really reduce the amount of time

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that our editors speak on moderating

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content

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and they can focus on creating it

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What's new this year for Product?

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So probably the biggest new thing this

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year

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is we're calling the pilots.

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We've already talked about how equitable

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growth is a

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goal of the Foundation, but we also know

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that that particularly for newer

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communities

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we don't really have the recipe. We know

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that we need to do it

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with our communities but what we've done

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is we've set up

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three different small projects.

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One is around new users, one is around

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movement organizers, one is around new

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form factors

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that we're going

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to work on

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and we're going to see actually what

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works and take blends of them and

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incorporate them in our strategy moving

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forward.

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One of the things that's new is is a

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focus on movement organizers in a new

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team called the Campaigns team.

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We've known for a long time that the

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unsung heroes

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of the movement are people who work

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in helping people edit, working with

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organizations who want their content to

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be in Wikipedia

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things of that nature. And it must be

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said that we probably haven't

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supported these people

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as well as we might. So we started out

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with a lot of research

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last year and this year we hoped we were

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putting that research into play by

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improving the tools that we're creating

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for movement organizers.

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I think another change in the Product

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department

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is really um focusing in on

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on our technical platform and

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acknowledging that if we're going to

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bring in new developers

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in the movement we actually have to

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update our technical infrastructure

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and it's starting out with a change

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in our presentation

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technology from a homegrown

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system that's five or six years old

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to a new open source platform called

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vue.js

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and this is going to make it much more

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inviting for developers all over the

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world to start participating in

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building out the encyclopedia as well as

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writing content for it.

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So one of the things that we haven't

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done such a great job

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of talking about is our support

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for the existing site and the existing

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platform.

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Wikipedia and Wikimedia are sites used

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by more than 250,000

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editors every month. More than a billion

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people

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and these folks require a lot of support.

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The internet is not a static place and

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so we're continuing having to

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update our experiences to match the

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expectation

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just general internet users. So a

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few examples.

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We're continuing with our work on

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desktop refresh.

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Our content is amazing beloved

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throughout the world. We're now

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updating the default reading experience

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to make things a little bit cleaner

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a little bit more in line with current

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standards and a little bit more readable.

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We're continuing to work on talk pages

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to make them

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easier to use both for newcomers and for

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existing editors.

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The work on community tech is continuing

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where we have users propose projects and

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then on vote on them

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and we take the top 10 and we build

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those. And finally we're continuing to

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work on some of our translation

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some of our translation

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experiences like content translation

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we're making it work better on mobile

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we've already seen great uptake in

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some of our indic language communities

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and we're going to continue in that as well

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Learn more about the
Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan
w.wiki/3XUT