Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/Wikimedia Foundation Quarterly Report, October-December 2014

This was a draft for a blog post that has since been published at https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/02/23/wikimedia-foundation-quarterly-report-october-december-2014/ .

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Wikimedia Foundation Quarterly Report, October-December 2014
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A brief, one-paragraph summary of the post's content, about 20-80 words. On the blog, this will be shown in the chronological list of posts or in the featured post carousel on top, next to a "Read more" link.

The Wikimedia Foundation's quarterly report for October-December 2014, the first in this new format, gives an overview of what we said we would do, what we actually did, what we learned in the process, and what's next.

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A few days ago, we published the Wikimedia Foundation's report for the timespan from October to December 2014 (the second quarter of our fiscal year), which you can find in PDF form below. As of today, it is also available as a wiki page and (for easy online presentation) on Google Slides.

This is the first report in a new format. Since 2008, we have been publishing updates about the Foundation's work on a monthly basis, also on this blog. As announced in November, we are now changing this to a quarterly rhythm; a main reason being to better align it with the quarterly planning and goalsetting process that has been extended to the entire organization since Lila Tretikov became Executive Director in 2014.

The main objectives and design principles for this report were:

Accountability: Help our movement and our supporters understand how we spend our effort, and what we accomplish.
Learning together: Highlight important internal & external data, trends and lessons.
Presentable: Anyone, from volunteer to the executive director, should be able to present the work of the WMF using this report.
Reasonable effort: Pull as much as possible from existing sources, e.g., quarterly review slide decks & minutes.

The new format reflects this in various ways. For each of the highlighted key priorities, colors (red/yellow/green) indicate clearly whether the quarterly goal was met or not. Besides a slide with overall "Key insights and trends" (see below), there are also "what we learned" sections throughout the document which summarize what the corresponding team considers the most important takeaways informing future work in that area. The report has the form of a slide deck suitable for a 90 minute presentation, keeping the amount of detail limited and linking to corresponding quarterly review meeting documentation for further detail. The Foundation began holding these quarterly team meetings in December 2012 to ensure accountability and create opportunities for course corrections and resourcing adjustments. By now, this process involves almost every WMF team or department.

Please refer to the links above for the full report. But to offer an excerpt from the “Key insights and trends” section (slide 5):

Readership: Globally, pageviews are flat. Mobile is growing, desktop is shrinking. Given a growing global potential audience, this means we need to invest in the readership experience, with focus on mobile.
We have learned that we can move at highest velocity on mobile apps due to their self-contained nature.
Beyond editing: Inviting readers to perform classification tasks on their smartphone is showing promise; response quality is exceeding expectations.
Performance: The implementation of HHVM across Wikimedia sites is an engineering success story and demonstrates that dedicated focus in the area of site performance can pay off relatively quickly.
Fundraising: Mobile matters -- thanks to focused effort, we were able to increase the mobile revenue share from 1.7% to 16.1% (2013 vs. 2014 year-end campaign).

This being the first report in this new format, we will surely tweak format, content (including the choice of key metrics) and process for the subsequent issues. Comments continue to be welcome here or on Meta-wiki.

Tilman Bayer, Senior Analyst

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What we said, what we did, what we learned and what's next: Read the Wikimedia Foundation's quarterly report for Q2 2014-15.