Hello Sam, thank you for the kind words.
And also thank you to Chris and Martin for yours.
With regards to the “optimizations” mentioned in the product update: usage change over the course of 2022 wasn’t really the motivating factor here (given it’s only been one year so we’re fully expecting fluctuations), It’s more about trying to increase the system’s efficiency and limit areas where things could break at scale - in preparation for future demand. There has been some increase in costs over the 2022 calendar year, as shown in the finance report’s bar-graph and associated paragraph, but that was primarily due to staffing changes, not hosting costs.
Our initial system architecture focused heavily on Wikipedia database dumps and now we’re focusing on expanding the “realtime” data feeds. We decided to rebuild the architecture to look more like an event-based system, to work alongside exported-data products, instead of adding on more services on top of the dump generation.
As mentioned in the product update, for those interested in this topic there are quarterly summaries of the technical work on the project’s MediaWiki page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise#Updates But, if you’d like to talk through the implementation details and the thinking behind it, then the best format is a real-time conversation. I encourage you to come to the “office hours” public meeting this Friday - etails at the top of the project page on Meta. Even if you can’t make it to that, we’ll make sure to discuss the product update and I’ll be uploading the recording afterwards to Commons, with a timecoded summary of the conversation.
Sincerely,
Liam
On Tue, 7 Feb 2023 at 23:29, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Chris - My thoughts exactly. A satisfying report: useful, informative, densely linked.
TLDR: revenue at 2% of the WMF total; projected to be cashflow positive this year. 9 FTEs, up-to-date landing page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise, even headshot photos for a majority of the team. (And a subtle reminder that we should consider doing something awesome with a community-led merch store!)
Liam - for the product update, I'm curious how hosting costs + usage have changed over the year (and implications for what we learn to optimize)
SJ
On Tue, Feb 7, 2023 at 10:16 AM Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks Liam! That looks admirably clear and very thorough - would be great to see this level of detail and transparency in other aspects of the WMF's work
Chris/ The Land
On Tue, 7 Feb 2023, 14:35 Liam Wyatt, lwyatt@wikimedia.org wrote:
Dear all,
Following the initial announcement and project launch in 2021, and press release about first customers in 2022, the Wikimedia Enterprise team has today published the *first financial report* and a summary of a forthcoming *product update*.
This has been published today on the Diff blog, here:
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/02/07/wikimedia-enterprise-financial-report-... [also available in German https://diff.wikimedia.org/de/2023/02/07/wikimedia-enterprise-finanzbericht-und-produktupdates/ ]
One of the principles https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Principles of the Wikimedia Enterprise project has been “the publication of overall revenue and expenses, differentiated from those of the Wikimedia Foundation in general, at least annually”. We are therefore proud to present the inaugural edition of the Wikimedia Enterprise financial report – covering the calendar-year 2022, its first year of operations.
The update also includes a description of some of the API features that have been under development. While the primary use-case is companies which consistently require very high-speed updates of very large amounts of Wikimedia content, it is important to note that there are several free-access methods.
If you have written questions or comments about the update, please share them on the project’s talkpage https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Enterprise on Meta. As described in the blogpost, we consider this report covering the 2022 calendar year to be a “beta” version. We are actively seeking feedback about how its structure, content, and explanations can be improved for the next edition in late 2023, which will cover the 2022-23 fiscal year.
If you prefer real-time conversation: A public meeting will be hosted by the Enterprise team this Friday, February 10 @1900 UTC to discuss this announcement - details on the project homepage https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise.
If you have any other questions please consult the FAQ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/FAQ.
Sincerely,
- Liam Wyatt [Wittylama]*
Senior Program Manager for *Enterprise,* *Campaigns, & WikiCite* Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org