New subject: Community Wishlist Survey 2022 is coming. Help us and prepare

5 Jan 2022

Hey all, 
	Nice to meet many of you for the first time! Thanks for your feedback and for raising
larger concerns around resource allocation at the Foundation. These concerns are extremely
valid-- especially the ones around allocating resources for less supported platforms such
as Commons and broken infrastructure. The wishlist process will begin next week with the
proposal phase starting Jan 10.

In the email thread, I identified some open questions about the Wishlist process so I am
answering them here. 

Can we vote/focus on the maintenance of tools rather than new tools?
Yes. The wishes that we work on do not have to be associated with a new tool. In the past
we’ve taken on projects that were maintenance related. For example, in the last year, we
took on improvement projects for Wikisource Export and Wikisource OCR tools, among other
initiatives. We also maintain and fix all the tools we’ve built in the past. Check out the
fresh documentation about what qualifies as a proposal here.
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey/FAQ#How_to_create_a_good_proposal?>
Gnangarra, your points about the issues with bulk uploads in Commons would make a sound
proposal-- a proposal does not have to be a new tool in the least. The part about
uploading large files is out of scope for our team though (see link above about our areas
of focus, the issue is infrastructural <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T86436>
and too large for what we can take on). I still believe there is value in suggesting it,
though.
We have Talk to Us
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey/Updates/Talk_to_Us> hours
on January 19-- where the entire team will be available for a video call to help folks who
want to write proposals and polish them so that they may get selected. 

What if what we want fixed is larger than what the Community Tech team can accomplish?
This year, we will be talking directly with leadership about larger wishes that we
can't fulfill ourselves. To make this possible, we will no longer be formally
'Archiving' ideas. One improvement we are implementing from conversations with all
of you at past Talk to Us Hours and other places, is that we will place projects that are
too large for us into a new category called “Larger Suggestions'' because we still
want people to be able to voice those needs. We plan to share this with the
Foundation's leadership during the WMF's annual planning, which takes place in the
spring.
This being said, if you have an idea that may be too large for us to take on, I would also
encourage you to come to Talk to Us Hours (link above) and see if we can help you workshop
the proposal into something we can help with. If we can’t then I would still highly
encourage you to propose, by all means! Chances are if you think it’s an important
problem, many other members do as well. 
Finally, the wishlist isn't just for Community Tech. Volunteer developers and other
Wikimedia Foundation teams have taken on wishes from the wishlist. For this reason, there
is a chance that a wish may not be appropriate for our team, but it can be addressed by
someone else.

Why isn’t the WMF fixing what we feel are  be the most urgently needed fixes in
functionality?
This is a larger question that gets answered at the board and C-leadership levels. There
are also some relatively new teams at the Foundation, such as Architecture and Platform
Engineering, that aim to improve the technical infrastructure overall in the years to
come. However, every team can help with the answer and Community Tech can help with
communication of technical needs. This “Larger Suggestions” collection of wishes I
mentioned in the previous answer will not be a silver bullet that fixes all of the
problems, but I believe in the power of incremental steps to steer us in that direction.

How can we communicate the urgency of the fixes that we need?
I don’t believe there is any lack of documentation of concerns about functionality that is
broken. Folks are right to point out that it’s about synthesizing what is most urgently
broken, the maintenance that is really necessary, and surfacing it to leadership. We, the
Community Tech team, had a lot of hard conversations about how to handle this because we
never want to mislead anyone into thinking we are going to work on ideas that are too
large for our team. However, we all collectively came to the conclusion that we should
still be the team that gives people the space to voice what they need from a technical
perspective. 
The wishlist itself can communicate urgency. If you submit a detailed wish (the more
details, the better!), and if the wish receives a high number of votes, we definitively
know as a team that it's urgent and high-priority. From there, we have the information
we need to take next steps. This may involve taking on the wish ourselves or communicating
the wish to leadership.
Does the Community Tech team work in isolation?
No, we constantly collaborate with other teams at the Foundation and most importantly,
with all of you. This year our goal is to share the top wishes with other product managers
who are responsible for products related to the categories in the wishlist. This way, they
may incorporate relevant wishes into their team's roadmap, or they will at least
consider community requests as they plan upcoming work. We always check to see if other
teams are already working on solutions related to what is asked inside of the Wishlist. We
plan to do more and are energized that the conversation is already beginning to happen in
this thread.
Why is the Community Tech team so small? Why can't more people be hired, or why
can't a second Community Tech team be formed?
As a team, we deeply believe in our work, and we hope to keep growing. We know how
important it is to work directly with community members and fulfill community requests. If
you want our team to grow, one of the best ways you can champion us is to participate in
the wishlist. As participation rates grow (and they have!), the more effectively we can
advocate for our team and its resources.

P.S. We are still welcoming help to promote the survey and to translate the updated
documentation. Thanks for reading.

Best,
Natalia Rodriguez
Senior Product Manager, Community Tech 

Re: Community Wishlist Survey 2022 is coming. Help us and prepare