In two May 6 announcements to the community Maryana Iskander announced that in January she is planning to step down as Wikimedia Foundation CEO. Iskander reached out to The Signpost requesting an interview the same day.

See the position announcement here.

The CEO succession planning started more than a year ago and the announcements show a sense of confidence that Iskander is still on the job and will handle the transition in the most effective and professional way.

So we shouldn't expect a usual WMF CEO transition? Iskander just firmly replied that there wouldn't be any surprises.

Iskander officially joined the WMF in January 2022 after a two month long listening tour. She pointed to her 2022 article in diff as the starting point of her priorities as CEO. These included:

• Reimagine the WMF's Planning Processes
• Attract and retain global leaders to the WMF, starting with product and technology, and
• Refresh the organizational values of the WMF.

She listed some of the major accomplishments since then as:

• An improved technical infrastructure
• A larger donor base with increased funding passed on to the community, and
• greater public trust in Wikipedia and other WMF projects.

Have we really gained more public trust? She recognizes that the last six months have been difficult for many Wikimedians in terms of politics, and watching legal and other government actions that target Wikipedia. And there are parts of the media that are very critical in their reporting about us. But she believes that the community and the WMF are strong enough to deal with these challenges.

Iskander tells us that her only immediate plans are to continue contributing to the WMF and the community, and to successfully complete the transition by January.

Her management philosophy is influenced by the book The Starfish and the Spider. The starfish in the title refers to the starfish's ability to regrow a limb if it loses one. She doesn't want to do a "debriefing" or a review of her WMF tenure now because it's still incomplete. We will continue to check in with her over the next eight months and report any major news here. We may even do that "debriefing" around the New Year. (Send in your questions!)

We wish Iskander success in completing the transition and in her future endeavors.

Thanks Maryana! – S

See related coverage in this issue's In the media

The Wikimedia Foundation has published a draft White Paper on the subject of best practices around privacy in Wikimedia-related research. The creation of such a paper was requested by the Arbitration Committee in 2023, to convey "to researchers the principles of our movement and give specific recommendation for researchers on how to study and write about Wikipedians and their personal information in a way that respects our principles." (Phabricator task.)

Volunteers are invited to provide feedback on the current draft by 1 July 2025. See meta:Research:Wikimedia Research Best Practices Around Privacy Whitepaper#How to provide feedback on the latest version of the privacy white paper (until 1 July 2025) and meta:Research talk:Wikimedia Research Best Practices Around Privacy Whitepaper. – AK

The Wikimedia Foundation office action that blanked the article Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation has been reversed, after a decision by the Supreme Court of India to overturn a lower court who had ordered removal of content it deemed "defamatory" from Wikipedia. See prior Signpost coverage and this issue's In the media. – B

The MediaWiki graph extension has been broken and disabled since early 2023 (see prior Signpost coverage at the one year mark), but an announcement on Village pump (technical) states that they will be re-enabled soon. As part of the pilot program the Charts extension has been working on Italian, Swedish, and Hebrew Wikipedias, as well as on MediaWiki.org. It is currently expected that Charts will be enabled on enWiki around 20 May to 22 May.

The WMF's 2025/8 Foundation Bulletin features a draft 2025–26 Annual Plan, as well as Wikimania 2025 location selection, WikiForHumanRights, updates on annual goals in various categories (Knowledge Equity, Safety & Integrity, Effectiveness) and more. There's also a link to the Annual Reports for both the WMF and its Endowment (here and here, respectively).

• Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Pneumatics (beginning 12 May), followed by Headquarters (beginning 19 May). Please be bold in helping improve this article!