Campaigns/Foundation Product Team

The Campaigns product team of the Wikimedia Foundation aims to improve the experience of Wikimedia campaigns. The team was formed in 2021, as part of the Product department. We focus on the needs of campaign and event organizers and participants. We plan to incrementally build and improve features in the campaigns ecosystem over time.

The team has built various features for the CampaignEvents extension, includingː

• Event registration: We have created an on-wiki tool that lets organizers add a 'Register' button their event page. The event registration solution also includes many other features, such as: the option for participants to register privately, automatic confirmation emails after registration, integration with the Programs & Events Dashboard, and more.
  • Status: Available on all wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled.
• Event Listː The Event List is a global, automated list of events on the wikis. Organizers don’t need to do any extra work for their event to appear on the Event List. As long as they use Event Registration, their event will be visible to users around the world. The Event List also includes filters, so users can easily search for specific types of events.
  • Statusː Available on all wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled.
• Event discovery (invitation lists): The event discovery project aims to create or improve tool(s) that make it easier for editors to learn about campaign events on the wikis. For this project, we are developing an Invitation List tool, which allows organizers to generate a list of contributors who they may want to invite to their events.
  • Status: Available on all wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled.

We plan to start with these projects, and see what we learn from working with Organizers.

If you want to be updated on our roadmap and technical developments please join our update subscription below.

You can join the Event Organizer group on Telegram, which is a multilingual chat group for organizers of events in the Wikimedia movement. We post announcements and updates about our team's work in the Telegram group, and we also take in feedback, such as feature requests and bug reports. Organizers are encouraged to share their updates, tools, and ideas in the group too.

We previously sent regular newsletter updates via MassMessage, however we have more recently been sharing our updates via Telegram (see above). However, we may revive the newsletter in the future, so people should still feel free to still sign upǃ

Previous updates:

• September 2022
• March 2022
• October 2021
• September 2021
• More soon!

If you would like to subscribe for these updates to be sent to your user page, please subscribe here!

• CampaignEvents extension for Indonesian Wikipedias: This event will provide more information and context on the Event Registration tool for the Indonesian Wikipedia community.
• French community office hours: This event provided more information and context on the Event Registration tool for the French Wikipedia community.
• Event registration tool and Arabic Wikipedia (April 2024)ː This event provided more information and context on the Event Registration tool for the Arabic Wikipedia community.
• Event Invitations Consultation Hour 4 (March 11, 2024)ː The session provided additional support to organizers who were sending out invitations to their events, based on their Invitation Lists. Also, feedback was collected from those who had already sent out invitations.
• Event Invitations Consultation Hour 3 (March 5, 2024)ː In this session, we provided a training on how to send out invitations based on the Invitation Lists tool.
• Event Invitations Consultation Hour 2 (February 27, 2024)ː This session works with participants to review their article lists, make changes where necessary and support in capturing the lists on the event page.
• Event Invitations Consultation Hour 1 (February 21, 2024)ː This was the first online consultation on Invitation Lists with Wikimedia affiliates and local organizers running events in February through March 2024. This session shared information about the tool and why it is important for the Wikimedia movement to participate in the design process through tool testing.
• Office Hour 5: Event Registration & Event Discovery (October 2023): We will demo the new features on the event registration tool, and we will collect feedback on our new project (event discovery). We will also discuss the organizer right and how it can be expanded to more users on the wikis in the future.
  • Commons link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Organizer_Tools_Office_Hour_5_Recording_(video-converter.com).webm
  • Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rnes40FbHP4
• Office Hour 4: V1 Event Registration Tool: Demo and Invitation to Test (December 2022): We had enabled the CampaignEvents extension with the event registration feature on Meta-Wiki, so we demoed the tool and some new features that had been added since the V0 release.
  • Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNMNSrMovQI
• Office Hour 3: V0 Event Registration Tool: Demo and Invitation to Test (July 2022): We demoed an early version of the event registration tool (known as VO) that was available for testing by organizers, so that we could collect feedback and improve the tool in preparation for the V1 release.
  • Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xb6-ZElpN4
• Office Hour 2: Event Registration Tool: Namespaces, Wireframes and other Updates (March 2022) We shared our plan to create an extension with an Event namespace, and we shared wireframes to collect feedback.
  • Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYXEduCaKtE
• Office Hour 1: Introducing the Campaigns team (September 2021): We introduced the vision of our team in this office hour.
  • Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jT8fRUWjfI

Starting July 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation has a Campaigns product team focused on the needs of campaign organizers and participants. The Campaign product team will be addressing Organizer needs through software development that will help Wikimedia communities invite new participants to activities and programs that address key knowledge gaps through the Movement Strategy Topics for impact recommendation.

Our objective is to build software to help campaign and event organizers so that they can effectively engage participants as successful editors and retain them as contributors on Wikimedia projects. Our software will be focused on building tools that help organizers bring participants from discovery and registration of events through event participation to invitation to future activities in the movement.

We know that Movement Organizers need to be able to invite, coordinate and support new and diverse editors who join the Wikimedia Movement and fill knowledge gaps on the platforms (see Movement Organizers Research). For most of Wikimedia’s history, campaigns and editing events on platforms like Wikipedia or Commons have relied on a complex mix of social systems and volunteer or affiliate maintained tools that are not fully integrated into the MediaWiki software. However, these tooling solutions don’t always scale or address needs in new and emerging contexts, creating barriers for new and experienced organizers, especially as the movement focuses on Knowledge Equity.

The product team collaborates with community investments in the Wikimedia Foundation through grant making, capacity development and partnerships. To understand the complex processes involved in organizing campaigns, we recommend the organizer workflow document. To support these other needs we work with the Campaigns program team.

• 
  Antoni Mtavangu
  Product Ambassador for Swahili communities
• 
  Benedict Udeh
  Movement Communications Specialist
• 
  Bonaventura Aditya Perdana
  Product ambassador for Indonesian communities
• 
  Claudio Melo
  Tech Lead/Staff Software Engineer
• 
  Emanuele Leoni
  Software Engineer III
• 
  Euphemia Uwandu
  Program Officer
• 
  Georges Fodouop
  Product Ambassador for French communities
• 
  Gregory Onyeahialam
  Senior UX Designer
• 
  Ilana Fried
  Senior Product Manager
• 
  Irene Florez
  Data Scientist III
• 
  Isabel Zapico
  Product Ambassador for Spanish communities
• 
  M. Bachounda
  Product Ambassador for Arabic communities
• 
  Michelle Maria Horsey
  Senior Software Engineer
• 
  Valérie Puffet-Michel
  Engineering Manager
• 
  Vaughn Walters
  Test Engineer

As a team, our vision is to build robust, long-term support for Wikimedia campaign events. To make this possible, we plan to create a Campaign Events platform, which we call the Event Center. This platform will have an organizer and participant side. The organizer side will provide the tools and resources that organizers need to create and manage impactful campaign events. The participant side will provide the guidance and support that participants need to meaningfully engage with Wikimedia campaigns. Note that the details of this platform are still being determined.

Overall, this platform will be:

• Modular: This means that features can be separated and recombined, based on the special needs of a wiki or community.
• Extensible: This means that features can be added over time by our team, other teams, or volunteer developers.

At first, we’ll be focused on building the organizer side of the platform, which we are currently calling the “Organizer Center” (note: this name may change, along with all feature names we mention at this stage). The first tool in the Organizer Center will be a registration configuration solution. Over time, we plan to address the top campaign event requests (as detailed in the image below). We determined this list of requests by conducting interviews with 50+ organizers across the movement, along with digging into existing research and studies.

Regarding the participant side of the platform, we recognize its tremendous importance. For this reason, we also plan to focus on it later on, after we have built some of the foundational infrastructure for the organizer side.

We believe that registration is a solid first building block for this platform. By working on it first, we’ll be in a strong position to work on subsequent projects. We don’t yet know the order in which we will tackle the other requests, but we have provided this mapping (see below) to demonstrate some potential paths we can take.

We will keep this page updated as our thought process on our team plans and strategy develops. In the meantime, you can follow our project page or subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated.

The movement has long requested better tools for organizers. WMF has worked on fixes for distinct steps in the reporting and implementation process for events and campaigns (such as improving Central Notice for advertising events or Community Tech Wishlist features), or key requirement around reporting and other process steps (i.e. metrics tools). However, WMF has not systematically invested in the the whole experience of organizers and participants at events.

We are using previous research on Organizers and Programs to help our team understand needs. Major research consulted includes:

• Movement Organizers
• New Editors
• The Campaign Organizer framework
• Grants Impact Report
• Quantitative and Evaluation reports for events and grants

Has there been previous investment in a tool or software that supported campaigns? Please connect it here:

• Programs and Events Dashboard
• Upload Wizard Campaigns