WMF releases quarterly reports, annual plans

The quarterly report Foundation "scorecard", an integral new part of new self-assessment efforts.

Annual plan expenditure comparisons for 2015–16, set against the 2014–15 figures; figures are in millions of USD. The largest change in relative terms is in the communications department, which doubled its stake from 2% to 4% of the overall budget, following through with prevailing themes at the Foundation regarding the need for closer community integration and making sure "the story" is told correctly.

The Wikimedia Foundation recently switched to a quarterly report structure to better align reporting with the generally quarterly planning and goal-setting processes. This week's publication of a January–March 2015 quarterly report marks the second such report to be released since a switch was made earlier this year from an older monthly to a new quarterly internal reporting structure. The change was made to better align the contents of these reports with the Foundation's generally quarterly goal-setting processes, and in March the Signpost covered the contents of the first such report, as well as some of the reasoning behind the reformatting. These reports are still reasonably new in structure and remain a work in progress; in an email to the foundation-l mailing list, senior operations analyst Tilman Bayer and chief operating officer Terence Gilbey spoke of some of the changes and new features introduced into this second report.

The principal change has been the creation and organization of a new departmental "scorecard"; this is a new organizational assessment system spearheaded by recently hired chief operating officer Terence Gilbey as a part of an effort to increase the rigor of the metrics the Foundation uses to keep track of its progress—a major theme in last month's publication of the mammoth State of the WMF report. The scorecard is typified by a system of goals drafted at the beginning of a reporting period that are either met (successes) or "missed" (failures) over the course of quarter. The first quarter saw 130 objectives split across 32 teams, with a roughly even distribution of successes (52%; 67) and misses (48%; 63). At this month's metrics and activities meeting, Gilbey, new leader of the meetings in the stead of now-departed vice president of engineering Erik Möller, somewhat clarified the vision behind the scorecard: the hope is for about 75% of goals to result in successes, while a 100% success means that the team is probably not setting goals aggressively enough. He attempted to mollify concerns from a member of the audience about what use a binary pass/fail departmental assessment system could serve in the organization, stating that many of the teams which missed their objectives "came very close" and that further refinements in the system remain under consideration.

In related news, the Wikimedia Foundation this week also published a draft version of its 2015–2016 annual plan. The first Foundation annual plan appeared in 2008, and the Foundation has been openly publishing its annual plans, with various changes in format, ever since then. Last year's annual plan drew criticism for indigestibility: as the Signpost reported at the time, the plan was published and reviewed via the annual plan grants process, an awkward arrangement given that the process's stated mission is reviewing grant proposals to the Wikimedia Foundation by far smaller affiliated national chapters, not those of the organization itself.

In contrast to last year's 22,000-word proposal, this year's plan—now again released independently of the FDC—clocks in at just 3,600 words. Thus, although the plan does provide current data on WMF projections about its activities and budgets for the coming year, in contrast with last year's report it provides little in the way of explanation of its intent. Indeed, in the "background and context" section, the report outlines its new format. A SWOT-style "Risks" section will be prepared as a separate document, one that, alarmingly, only "may be released" in a public version (our italics). The plan says nothing more about the Foundation's progress against its current year's plan: instead it is meant to serve as "a 12 month high-level overview of organizational priorities as guided by the 2015 Call to Action and a forward-looking spend forecast ... it re-aligns organizational focus around communities and technical deliverables."

What to make of the new format? The WMF is currently in the process of overhauling the way it measures itself (hence the report's secondary focus on "key performance indicators", to be defined), and as part of that it has been attempting to re-align its reporting periods against its assessment periods and to cut procedural waste and duplication. This year's annual plan, then, is a plan only in the fiscal sense: it provides board-approved numbers on how the Foundation plans to spend its money, but little else besides. Organizational intent is to be read elsewhere: in the Foundation's quarterly reports, and in particular, in this year's publication of the enormous State of the Wiki report. Though the plan is up for community review, there is little (though not nothing) for the community to review here, as much of the action takes place elsewhere.

Worthy of particular attention is the last section of the report: an appendix on the Foundation's newly restructured engineering department. Engineering—or things that are to be construed as engineering under the aegis of the "product" department—makes up the bulk of the WMF's expenditure; there is good reason for this, since surveys again and again show that stakeholders believe this should be at the core of the Foundation's purpose. Vice-president of product and strategy and extremely long-time Wikipedian Erik Möller, retired from the Foundation last month—a move that was soon followed by a public email to the mailing lists by executive director Lila Tretikov regarding high-level reorganizations in the WMF, principally a restructuring of the engineering team (and the re-merging of product into the engineering department). R

• Bad news from China: At 14:19 UTC on 20 May it was announced in Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, that "the Chinese Wikipedia is temporarily unable to be accessed by mainland China; the reason is unclear; other Wikimedia projects (such as the English Wikipedia) are currently not affected." (Translated; top cell, right side.) Two days later the story was picked up by Forbes, among other mainstream news outlets. The action comes as part of a history of blocking WMF sites by Beijing for various periods; it is still unclear when the current blocking will end. The Signpost notes private speculation that it may be related to the 4 June anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. T
• Good news from China: NetEase, a major Chinese internet content provider, has announced that as of Wednesday 20 May it is hosting content on its popular 163.com portal from both the English Wikipedia and Baidu Baike, the Chinese-language collaborative online encyclopedia, with the claim that there will be a combined "20 million encyclopedia entries" (Google translation of announcement). The new service has come about largely through the efforts of the Wikimedia user group China, in particular one of its coordinators, Addis Wang. He told the Signpost: "for Youdao Dictionary App, they simply mirror ... articles from en.WP in their local server and people have full access to the content. Youdao only [supports] iOS at this time, but is working on [also supporting] Android. I've heard no plans for a desktop version, though I'm going to push for that." T
• Sue Gardner on life after Wikimedia: Former long-time Foundation executive director Sue Gardner this week posted on her personal blog about her post-WMF career trajectory. Gardner was hired on as executive director in December 2007, overseeing the organization the WMF's formative years as it expanded from fewer than 10 to more than 160 employees (and millions of dollars of revenue) at the time she announced her retirement from the organization in 2013 (current executive director Lila Tretikov has been serving since mid-2014). In the post, titled "Why I'm working with Tor and First Look", Gardner explains the reasoning behind the two projects on which that she is currently embarking: R

• "We" in the Wikipedia Movement: A discussion of interest occurred on the wikimedia-l mailing list this week after Wikimedian Micru authored a post titled "Building a 'we' in the wikimedia movement". The post is a retrospective on Wikimedia Conference 2015 and on the Wikimedian community process overall. He stated, in part, that: R

• Das Referenz: Wikipedia for iPad: In a detailed blog post, UI design consultancy Raureif unveiled a new iOS application meant to make Wikipedia more readable on-the-go. It reads, in part:

Wikipedia's struggle for relevancy in the increasingly media-saturated market (and the difficulty which the roll-out of Foundation-developed technical initiatives like Media Viewer and VisualEditor, meant to address these shortfalls, have had in the past) are a (even the) principal focus behind the Foundation's currently ongoing efforts to re-invent itself (for more information see last month's letter to the mailing list by Lila Tretikov and the publication of the State of the Wiki report). This is likewise not the first effort to bemoan Wikipedia's visual interface in the hopes of offering a better alternative: as the Signpost reported at the time, another similar effort, called Wikiwand, received strong press late last year. R

• New user-groups: Wikimedians of the Levant and North Carolina Triangle Wikipedians are this week's newly affiliated user groups. R
• NIOSH's Wikipedian-in-residence: The blog of the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, part of the Centers for Disease Control, carried a post from Emily Temple-Wood (Keilana), their Wikipedian-in-residence. It is only the US government's second such position, being surpassed only by Dominic Byrd-McDevitt (Dominic) and the National Archives and Records Administration. NIOSH director Dr John Howard is quoted in the piece as being "pleased to partner with Wikipedia ... Wikipedia provides a trusted, popular resource to do so in today’s national, indeed global, virtual community." E
• Wiki-Edu Report: The Wiki Education Foundation published their monthly report covering April 2015. R
• Social media survey: The WMF is conducting a brief online survey about their social media presence. G
• Inspire campaign results: The Wikimedia Foundation published a post to the WM Blog summarizing the Foundation's findings in its assessment of last month's "Inspire" grant-making campaign. For more information on the initiative see also previous Signpost coverage from the campaign's announcement and from the campaign's closure. R

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