MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group/Annual Report 2017

Focus Areas

In 2017, we focused mainly on these areas:

• Continuation and improvement of MediaWiki user experience. We are striving to keep user experience of MediaWiki as consistent and integrated as possible for self-installed MediaWiki instances (see output).
• Outreach to relevant stakeholders. We haved increased our efforts to reach out to MediaWiki maintainers by co-organizing conferences and conference tracks.
• Exchange of experience among stakeholders, i.e. primarily people running MediaWiki as their platform. This was done in regular online and offline meetings as well as through our online platform at mwstake.org.

Output

• High level information about MediaWiki activity: 8 blog articles
• Migration of WikiApiary to a new infrastructure within Wikimedia Cloud Services.
• Various extensions have been created and improved by MWStake members to make MediaWiki easier for 3rd parties to use:
  • There is an still ongoing effort to standardize LDAP integration: LDAP hub.
  • A system to install and maintain MediaWikis centrally: Meza
• Organisation of conferences and conference tracks:
  • MWStake members were heavily involved in the organisation of the EMWCon Spring 2017, e.g. by chairing several organisation committees.
  • We also organised a conference track "Fantastic MediaWikis and how to Maintain them" at the Vienna Hackathon 2017. For a summary, attendance statistics and media coverage, see our blog post.
  • Currently, we are preparing the upcoming EMWCon Spring 2018, which will be run entirely by MWStake.

Exchange of Experience

Real Life Meetings

These meetings are used to discuss current issues of MediaWiki and of the Stakeholders' group with a wider audience. They are generally open to the public, thus reaching out to potential new members for the group.

• MediaWiki Developer Summit 2017, San Francisco, USA
• Wikimedia Conference 2017, Berlin, Germany
• EMWCon Spring 2017, Washington DC, USA
• Vienna Hackathon 2017, Vienna, Austria
• Wikimania 2017, Montreal, Canada
• SMWCon Fall 2017, Rotteram, Netherlands

Online Meetings

• 11 regular telcos (Hangouts/BlueJeans), all documented. Average attendance: 10 participants

Outreach

Real Life

In 2017, we actively participated in various MediaWiki and Open Source conferences, among others with these topics:

• Wikimedia Conference 2017: Emphasis on the role of MediaWiki in the strategy discussion.
• EMWCon Spring 2017: Authentication, content synchronisation across wikis, ontology design, create camp.
• Vienna Hackathon 2017: MediaWiki and competitors, use cases, best practises, ways of promotion.
• SMWCon Fall 2017: LDAP workshop

Online

Participation in discussions on 3rd party relevant topics

• Office hours
• Discussions in Phabricator

Financials and internals

• In 2017 we raised no money and we spent no money.
• We worked on incorporating, doing legal research and creating an Memorandum of Understanding aligned with the Wikimedia Foundation.