[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [Wmfall] Editor Engagement Reloaded

[Steven Walling]

Cross-posting Erik's announcement (from the WMF staff list).

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>
Date: Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 9:44 AM
Subject: [Wmfall] Editor Engagement Reloaded
To: Staff All <wmfall at lists.wikimedia.org>


Hi all,

I already gave the headline at all-hands, but wanted to officially
share some news about our two editor engagement teams.

## Staffing changes

Ori Livneh is leaving the E3 team to transition into a role that will
provide him with the structure to better support projects that are
used across teams. As Senior Software Engineer, Ori has led the
development of several such projects already, including EventLogging,
NavigationTiming, and MediaWiki-Vagrant. We’re still finalizing
details of his new role and will announce this change separately.

Another change (already in place) is that S Page will be working
across Features, with a focus on QA, testing, code review, and
documentation. His first task will be working as ScrumMaster with the
Flow team, making sure that group has the support it needs as it
tackles the thorny problem of improving how discussion systems work on
our wikis.

To fill Ori and S's spots on the team, we'll be hiring two full-time
Front-end Engineers -- one immediately and one by January 1. Steven
Walling and Matt Flaschen will remain in their current roles. The team
will also include Aaron Halfaker as data analyst, and Pau Giner is
currently working as primary UX designer.

## The name and mandate of our two Editor Engagement teams

The truth is not many people, internally or externally, find the
distinction between "Editor Engagement" and "Editor Engagement
Experiments" to be clear. The names are too similar, for a start.

To try and address this, we're going to transition to the following:

- Editor Engagement Experiments (E3) is now the Growth team.
- Editor Engagement (E2) is now Core Features.

Core Features reflects a focus on building products that engage new
editors and keep existing editors coming back. We think of these
features as providing an essential framework for positive
communication and collaboration between editors. They include things
like notifications, discussion pages, and structured profiles.

Growth is just what it sounds like. This team's job is to expand the
Wikipedia editor community. The fact that the team’s Annual Plan
target is a number of new editors, rather than particular features,
reflects an abiding commitment to use data to drive change.

What has changed is that the Growth team no longer focuses on small,
disconnected experiments, but instead on lasting improvements to key
areas for new users. That means drawing tons of new people into the
signup process, showing them how to make their first edits or create
an article, and giving them clear next steps that put them on the path
to becoming Wikipedians.

We think that these names are much more aligned with the
responsibilities of each team. Core Features like Flow and
notifications lay the groundwork for a healthy community. The Growth
team gives people a compelling reason to join, and shows them how to
make their first contributions to the encyclopedia. Together, they
work in concert (along with mobile, multimedia, VisualEditor, and
more) to provide a modern, cohesive user experience for Wikipedia.

If you want to learn specifics about what each of these teams want to
do over the year, check out 2013-14 Goals page,[1] and please do
comment. The respective product managers for Growth or Core Features
-- Steven and Maryana -- can answer any questions you might have.

All best,
Erik

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2013-14_Goals
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

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-- 
Steven Walling
https://wikimediafoundation.org/