Fabrice Florin (WMF)

Fabrice Florin

Product Manager, Wikimedia Foundation

"Let's be kind to each other."

About me

I worked at the Wikimedia Foundation from October 2011 to June 2015. For the first three years, I served as product manager, coaching our teams to improve the user experience on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites. During that time, I led the development and release of a wide range of new software tools, such as Notifications, Thanks, Beta Features, Media Viewer and other features.

In my last six months, I worked with the foundation's communications team, where I managed and edited the Wikimedia blog, a global hub that connects our diverse communities (see my final report). I believe that better communications are really important to grow our movement -- and I advocate a 'culture of kindness' to help make that happen.

Before joining the Wikimedia movement, I founded and led NewsTrust, a nonprofit social news network, which was acquired by the Poynter Institute in 2012. Our news literacy tools helped people find good journalism online, to make more informed decisions as citizens.

My previous ventures include: Handtap, a multimedia content provider for mobile devices; shockwave.com, a web entertainment site at Macromedia; Apple Computer's Multimedia Lab, a research and development group; and Videowest, a producer of rock journalism. Read more about my career on LinkedIn.

I would like to thank all the community and team members I have had the pleasure to work with over the years. It has been an honor to serve our movement together and to help our contributors share free knowledge with each other and the world.

Going forward, I will be using my personal account on Wikipedia and its sister projects.

My work

Here are some of the projects I managed at the Foundation:

Wikimedia blog - our movement's communications hub
Roundtables - creative workshops with our community
Multimedia - a new set of media tools for Wikipedia
Media Viewer - an immersive multimedia browser
Structured Data - a better way to read and edit file metadata
Upload Wizard - upgrades to our multimedia import tool
Beta Features - test new software before it's released
Notifications - keep up with new activity related to you
Thanks - a quick way to give positive feedback
Page Curation - new page patrol made easy
Article Feedback Tool - a reader engagement tool

Other work
I am the producer of "Hackers", a documentary about the heroes of the computer revolution -- and the 'hacker ethic' which made the Wikimedia movement possible. I was also elected an Ashoka Fellow for my work as social entrepreneur.

My work has been widely covered by publications such as the BBC, Atlantic Monthly, the Guardian, Le Monde, Newsweek, the New York Times, Scientific American, Time, the Washington Post, Wired and many more.

Disclaimer: I work for or provide services to the Wikimedia Foundation, and this is the account I try to use for edits or statements I make in that role. However, the Foundation does not vet all my activity, so edits, statements, or other contributions made by this account may not reflect the views of the Foundation.

Contact me

Photos

How can we make Wikipedia better?

I love to develop new products based on ideas from our community. For the past few years, I have asked Wikimania conference participants for their suggestions on how to improve Wikipedia. Thanks for the inspiration -- and keep them coming!

For more community ideas, check out my full photo set on Flickr. For the best viewing experience, watch them in slideshow mode.

You can also view some of these images as a video montage on YouTube, on Vimeo -- or in Ogg/Theora format on Wikimedia Commons.

Editor Engagement Roundtable

To improve Wikipedia's editor engagement tools with the help of our community, I hosted this roundtable discussion at the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco on June 22, 2013. We brainstormed a variety of new features together, and gained many new insights from these conversations. Learn more about this Roundtable.