Community Wishlist Survey/FAQ/Archive

Q: Who's going to work on all these wishes?

The Community Tech team is responsible for investigating and addressing as many top wishes as we can in the calendar year. If we can't work on one of the wishes, because it's unfeasible or because another group is working on it, then we'll explain what's happened.

If time allows, Community Tech will also work on lower-ranking wishes that will support smaller user groups who are doing important work, but don't have the numbers to vote a proposal very high in the rankings. This will apply to some combination of: campaign and program organizers, GLAM participants, stewards and CheckUsers, and people working on smaller projects or smaller languages. We haven't determined which wishes we'll pick up yet; we'll be talking about these as we get into the next year.

Also, some of these wishes are or will be on the roadmap for our colleagues on the WMDE Technical Wishes team, or other Wikimedia Foundation product teams.

Q: How can I get updates on progress?

There are several ways!

• You can subscribe to the Community Tech Newsletter to get periodic notifications on the progress of these wishes.
• There will be project pages for each of the top wishes, which you can put on your watchlist. We'll update them as the project progresses. Feel free to post questions and suggestions on the project talk pages.
• If you're familiar with the Phabricator ticketing system, the main Phab task for each wish is noted on the Results page. You can subscribe to those tickets for updates.
• Lastly, you can also watch the main Community Tech page for updates.

Q: Can I resubmit wishes from previous years?

Yes, you can resubmit wishes from previous years if they were not worked on. If a wish was declined by the Community Tech team, it is not eligible for another submission unless it has been changed significantly.

Q: What if my proposal is more important than some of the top wishes?

It could be. The Community Wishlist Survey isn't an exact science; it's a measure of enthusiasm. But this isn't the end of the story for your proposal — as we said above, there will be many different people working on projects this year. If your proposal scored pretty high, but not quite high enough, then that's an opportunity for you to advocate for your idea in other settings.

Community Tech can't work on all of the great proposals in this year's survey, but we're rooting for them! Keep talking about your ideas, and keep advocating for the tools your projects need. The Wikimedia world is full of smart and passionate problem solvers, and you now have a list of people who believe in your idea.

Q: Why do some top proposals only affect some languages?

The Wikimedia movement is global, and it's important to our team that we think internationally. We try to make the projects that we work on apply to as many languages and projects as we can. People who speak English have a very loud voice in our movement, and the English-language projects get a lot of attention. We're happy that the Wishlist Survey is a way for people from other projects to get some attention as well.

Q: Isn't it better to make decisions in conversation with other editors, rather than voting?

Decisions on our wikis are often made by reaching consensus through conversation. This is often very effective, and it's an important part of who we are. But sometimes loud and persistent voices can drown out other people's ideas, and it's nice to have some spaces where a different mix of voices can be heard.

Q: How can I change things for next year?

If you've got suggestions to improve the process, feel free to write on the survey talk page. We'd be happy to talk about any ideas that you have!

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