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Future of the Community Wishlist Survey

Help us rename the Wishlist.

May 2024 Update

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Why a rename?

We realized that we’ve outgrown the name “Community Wishlist Survey” in our redesign efforts. With a new approach, we think it’s the right time to think about a new name.

In this new approach, we’ll be looking at three areas to define success:

  • Impact. Number of Focus Areas adopted or addressed by the Foundation, Affiliates, and Volunteer developers in a given fiscal year.
  • Participation. Number of people proposing new ideas and reporting issues, number of different languages and projects represented in the new process.
  • Collaboration. Number of conversations around people’s ideas, number of votes or supports we can generate.

What’s in a name?

A new name should ideally reflect a space where Wikimedians work together to identify the most pressing needs in Community Tech brainstorm solutions, and build them into reality.  It should signal a space that is neither a solutions desk (too prescriptive for the submission stage) nor an idea aggregator (we want accountability for outcomes):

After brainstorming a few names, a few front-runners have emerged, and we want your input:

  • Wikimedia Opportunities registry
  • Wikimedia Collaboration hub
  • ImagineWiki

Please propose a name on the talk page if the names above don’t resonate with you.

We’d love for you to review these potential names and propose alternatives by May 31. From there, we will identify the top two or 3 naming options and solicit your vote for our new name.

June 2024 Update

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Thanks to everyone who’s provided feedback on renaming the Community Wishlist Survey. After reviewing your comments, it’s clear we need “Community” in the name. We want to encourage community participation, foster collaboration, and build up each other’s ideas.

Still, the terms “Wishlist” and “Wish” have unintended baggage that’s led to misaligned expectations. Moving forward, we want to ensure that our name reflects the collaborative and idea-driven nature of this initiative, and to be more transparent about solving community-identified problem areas than building to single proposals.

We have three alternative names that better capture the spirit and purpose of this project. These names focus on the exchange of ideas and community involvement to build better and more inclusive products:

1. Community Ideas Exchange.

Idea. Community Ideas Exchange emphasizes our aspirations for community collaboration and being an ideas exchange.

2. Community Feature Requests.

Request. Community Feature Requests is straightforward, aligned to common product development practices. Though the name is not inclusive of bug reports, we would consider bug reports in our work.

3. Community Suggestions Portal.

Suggestion. Community Suggestions Portal highlights the platform as a central place for community suggestions, covering both new ideas and improvements.

We value your input greatly and want to ensure this platform continues to serve the community effectively. Please cast your vote for the new name and help us shape the future of our collaborative efforts.

Voting will close on June 20, 2024, and we can’t wait to re-open this process on July 15!


Voting guidelines

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  • Please use the {{Support}} template to vote for the name you prefer. By typing the template under that name.
  • Please make sure you are logged in
  • Please sign your vote (see the sample vote by User: STei (WMF))
  • Please vote for one name


–– Jack Wheeler, Lead Community Tech Manager, Wikimedia Foundation

Voting

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Community Ideas Exchange

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Community Feature Requests

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Community Suggestions Portal

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None of the above

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  • Support Support I object to and boycott this voting because giving each voter only one ballot to cast with no runoff means the most favored candidate can end up in second place and the result will not be reflective of the participants' opinion. Nardog (talk) 20:53, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Good point. Additionally, as I allueded to in my unanswered question below, change should be on consensus and not on numerical voting counts. RudolfRed (talk) 16:04, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment Comment Hello @Nardog regarding the rules around this election, we intended for this to be a majority carries the vote poll, since it is the simplest system to run. Certainly if there is a tie, there should be a runoff. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 10:21, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Simple or not, first-past-the-post is a terribly unfair voting system when there are more than two candidates. All the people who voted in this section below may prefer one name to another, a second preference to a third one, and so on. But alas you can't know them because you gave them only one vote to cast instead of making them rank the options (like they did for c:Commons:Sound Logo Vote).
    To act on the result of this voting alone would be to ignore the voice of its participants (unless one option outnumbers all the others combined)—which would be ironic given the whole point of the very thing you're trying to rename is gathering community input. Nardog (talk) 10:59, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Nardog how terrible the first-past-post-system is, as opposed to other systems, will always be an opinion depending on the context. However, your opinion matters, thank you for sharing it. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 11:39, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    One would not say that if one were actually interested in objectively gauging what the community thinks is best overall. Which... I had a hunch, but thanks for the confirmation I guess. Nardog (talk) 13:32, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @STei (WMF) FPP is substantially more complex and difficult to administer, because it requires you to verify that every voter only supported one option. This is contrary to Wikipedia’s standard method of voting, combined approval voting, which involves asking everyone to give a “support”, “oppose”, or “neither” to every option, then tallying support minus opposition. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 21:51, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I change my vote to "keep the current name", which by my count currently has a simple majority, which is what they're going by (as established above). I want the wishlist to succeed, and antagonizing and not listening to the very community whose input you sought is a great way to make sure it won't. Nardog (talk) 12:13, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support The three options are all bad (the Feature/Suggestions ones a little less but those aren't only features or mere suggestions) and the problem is not the name of the things but the long grave neglect of technical development / implementation of these wishes by the WMF as pointed out here, here and elsewhere. Technical needs survey is the term used on Commons and "Technical requests" may also be good. Instead of thinking long about which name may or may not be better just implement or facilitate implementation of the supported wishes. --Prototyperspective (talk) 16:12, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for sharing this, @Prototyperspective. We're working hard to put a better system in place for WMF to respond to and address needs addressed by the communities. This new system should better align technical needs to our annual planning process and thus implement more wishes. Ultimately, CommTech and the Foundation will be measured by the impact of our work. As we began implementing this new system, we believed it was (and is) time for a new name. Once we launch the new system, I hope you'll start seeing the impact you've longed for. JWheeler-WMF (talk) 16:56, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Sounds great. (Nevertheless, I don't think the three suggested names are fitting and would suggest "Technical requests" (features, bugfixes, tools, meta, config-/code-changes).) Prototyperspective (talk) 17:36, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Missed to clarify: I prefer to just keep the current name rather than renaming even if a fitting term like "Technical proposals/requests" is chosen. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:21, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't understand how we are going to build a better system if it should be aligned with the Annual Plan, a plan which is closed to innovation and improvement. Theklan (talk) 06:25, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support Please keep the existing name because it is accurately descriptive and well known. Certes (talk) 17:52, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support e/c. Glrx (talk) 17:56, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support It better to keep "wishlist survey" because it belong the wish of the user. WikiFer msg 19:30, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I prefer something along the lines of Community Feature Priorities. As an aside, it's hard to look at this and wonder if we could've gotten one more wishlist item instead of a rebranding initiative... — Rhododendrites talk \\ 21:23, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the input @Rhododendrites. The process to rebrand the Wishlist has no impact on WMF's ability to address Wishlist items, as stakeholders in Movement Comms, Product, and Brand have engaged here, and not engineers.
    As far as progress on Wishlist items, CommTech is building out a new form to accept wishes. This is a tradeoff against progress on individual wishes. We made this tradeoff because the previous process was built on a series of patches, and with the Foundation's focus on making the Wishlist even more successful (ie, achieve more), we need a more resilient and inclusive wish intake process. JWheeler-WMF (talk) 21:45, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment Comment @Rhododendrites and anyone concerned about the cost of spending time on the rebrand of Wishlist as opposed to wish fulfilment.
    Community Tech over the past few months as the Wishlist is being rebranded has also been working on some wishes.
    We have completed work on the 2023 #8 wish Edit Recovery (formerly Auto Save). We spent time inviting and testing on wikis which are accessible by regions that report power and internet outages and have a need for a way to recover edits so their work is not disrupted by data loss. For regions that don't have these issues, editors who accidentally close their browsers or crash their computers can still recover edits. The feature is now deployed to all wikis.
    We also worked on QR Code wish. Now you can make QR codes for any Wikimedia project and we have added some nice functionalities too.
    We also have been consulting with some admins over the design of Multiblocks (formerly Layering/timing of blocks), the #14 wish. We chose this to be able to balance our support and include users who have advanced flags.
    We have also conducted investigations on 4 wishes related to how we use templates which we recently announced. Those 4 wishes will be handled as one project known as Template Picker Improvements. We are happy to say, our approach to grouping related wishes aligns with the future of the Wishlist, where we create what we call Focus Areas.
    We have also been working on an upgrade for CodeMirror, we are bringing needed updates to the extension for better syntax highlighting.
    There is also work on Autosuggest linking Wikidata item after creating an article.
    Within this period, we also piloted Wishathon for the first time ever as a community event, where our engineers looked to address wishes alongside community, in a hackathon session.
    The rebranding seems more visible, but please be rest assured that engineers have been working on your wishes too. Thank you for engaging. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 11:26, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Second choice behind "feature requests": keep the name the same. Levivich (talk) 22:29, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support- I like "Community Wish List." That's my choice. But, of course, that's overly descriptive and not nearly bureaucractic-sounding enough to ever suffice. Carrite (talk) 23:12, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support Retain the existing name. No change is a good change. Pavlor (talk) 05:18, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep the existing name. Ayack (talk) 10:30, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support. I'd like to see the phrase "community priorities", since this is a prioritization process, not just a list of feature requests. "Community Ideas Exchange" and "Community Suggestions Portal" are too vague and don't give a sense of the scope of topics relevant for the wishlist. Recommendations for WMF grants? Proposals for new projects like WikiTravel? Based on the scope evident in the survey's current selected projects, I would suggest something more descriptive like "Community Priorities for Technical Improvements". Daask (talk) 15:26, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support. I like the current name a lot. It's an institution. For me, the first and third suggestions are no-gos, as they are overly vague and don't give a sense of priority. The second one may miss wishes which are not a new feature, such as improving current features and possibly fixing bugs. I like the suggestions above in the direction of "technical community priorities", which captures the process well. Femke (talk) 16:47, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support I support keeping the current name. I have already given my reasons for this in prior discussion. StefenTower (talk) 18:17, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support. Existing name is fine. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 18:30, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support - If you want to rename it, by all means rename it, but I object to using voting as a way to legitimize a rename that didn't really come from the community. More generally I am concerned that the direction this rebrand process is going in effectively strips the community of its voice and power. Bawolff (talk) 18:42, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support The current name seems good. Superzerocool (talk) 19:58, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support a variation of "Community prioritization" or "technical wishlist". We need a consistent year-over-year prioritization process, not a place to exchange ideas or suggestions (we already have many of those!); and many community priorities aren't FRs. To the concern about baggage: we are all familiar with using wishlists as a place to look for topics for community-run hackathons and other dev sprints, so while some may have expectations of a central group building towards a single implementation, the concept is also familiar as a place for all-purpose discussion, refinement, and even clustering of priority issues. –SJ talk  –SJ talk  01:47, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support Making people argue about minor variations of a name we are all used to for almost a decade is nothing but a distraction. The name is not the problem. If you really want to change it then just do it. --TMg 06:54, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Good point. Only after seeing the new system in action can we assess what name best describes it. Nardog (talk) 12:56, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support No change, per TMg. This is a classic BIKESHED situation. Leave the name alone. RudolfRed (talk) 16:03, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • For me as a non-native English speaker, Wishlist is a way understandable (what this initiative did) than any of proposed titles. MBH (talk) 16:11, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support I like the existing name, I think it is easy to understand and I think it's pretty appropriate.--Ethn23 (talk) 17:56, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support – keep the name the same. Am concerned that the new names don't reflect a community-led approach to this, similarly to Bawolff's comments above. --YodinT 03:21, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support No real argument has been made for changing the name of a well-known area and the current name is fitting. And this appears to be a top-down edict rather than something organic. The WMF should spend more time worrying about fulfilling the requests of the community, not finding a preferred name for the area in which the generally ignored requests are made. The usual style-over-substance WMF thing. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 06:52, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    While my first choice is to keep things the same, my second choice would be a name that reflects how the area is treated by the WMF, such as the Futility Folder, the Event Horizon, or the Depository of Ideas Discarded in Favor of the Mid-Tier Silicon Valley Executive Obsession du Jour. OK, the last one may be too wordy. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 06:55, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support Looking at the discussion, I am struggling to see 2 of these 3 voting options having appeared there? I am however seeing various participants expressing preference for the current name. Does "Working with consensus" figure in the WMF staff onboarding process? If not, should it? The present "not-listening" attempt to impose a change expresses a power relationship which would hardly bode well for the future. AllyD (talk) 07:28, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support the current name is fine. Ingenuity (talk) 12:38, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support I prefer "WeSpentOurTimeRenamingThisInsteadOfFixingGraphs". Or, if that's a no-go, "Wishlist McWishlistface". AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:11, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support Gdansk or Danzig? "mcwish mcwish face". you might want to spend the emotional energy making wishes, lest people stop engaging when they perceive their wishes are unrequited. --Slowking4 (talk) 23:26, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support Discussing the name is a distraction, as a WMF employee wrote above: "The process to rebrand the Wishlist has no impact on WMF's ability to address Wishlist items". Also, we are in a multilingual project and the proposal fails to adress how it would affect other langugage communities. Arpyia (talk) 08:26, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support I prefer the status quo. --SHB2000 (t • c) 10:30, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support keep XtexChooser (talk) 10:42, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support I consider retaining the existing name because its firstly popular and also its catchy. Macholi (talk) 20:14, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support No change. Hopeandlink (talk) 03:29, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support: completely useless rename without any consideration for internationalisation. Most of the variants are hard to translate to all languages. stjn[ru] 15:28, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support keeping the current name. I like Community Wishlist Survey. The other names sound rather dry and corporate. Plus changing the name may confuse people. Nosferattus (talk) 16:01, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support Keep the current name is OK for me.--Hehua (talk) 00:24, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support None of the above suggestions are close to being selectable. Respublik (talk) 04:28, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support, keep the current name. It is well known by the community and reflects what the process is (wishes that sometimes come true, but not always). No change needed. Alexcalamaro (talk) 04:48, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support, the expectation is to start working on wishes, to start deliverying and unbreaking our system, not to spend time renaming it. Please, start working on improving our system, and don't expend time in other things. -Theklan (talk) 06:22, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support keeping the name. ~~~~
    User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk)     07:40, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support I'm in favour of not renaming it (except maybe dropping "survey" from the end). Renaming things can be more confusing than helpful, especially when the names are not obviously related, because lots of people/places will still refer to the old name and everyone will end up having to learn two names instead of one. I also think that the WMF deciding that it has to be renamed (without asking whether the community wants it to be renamed) damages the credibility of the wishlist as a whole - if the WMF goes ahead and renames it after so many people have said they don't want it to be renamed, why should we believe the WMF will pay attention to anything we ask for in the wishlist? - Nikki (talk) 10:02, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support aucun des choix proposés ne me convient. --Cbyd (talk) 22:00, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support If I have more than one vote, I will probably also support the second option "Community Feature Requests", as it is the clearest name compared to others. But tbh all the name listed in this poll are not the good option as they are vague. There are other alternatives mentioned in the previous discussion (e.g. "Community Tech Survey"), but I don't understand why they were not listed in this poll. Thanks. --SCP-2000 15:30, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support the current name is fine. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 21:57, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Questions

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Community Wishlist Survey is now Community Wishlist

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Thank you everyone who has participated in the restructuring and rebranding conversations of the Wishlist so far.

Regarding the renaming, based on your feedback, we will keep the 'Community Wishlist' and remove 'Survey'.

Please read more about the renaming, check out the vote results and learn more about the re-opening of the Community Wishlist on July 15, 2024, in our latest update.

PS. Thank you to all who helped with housekeeping during the vote. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for listening to the community's feedback on the wishlist name. I appreciate it. Hopefully this puts things off to a great start for the new wishlist format that is about to open :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:26, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Novem Linguae you are welcome and thank you for engaging right from day one, we really appreciate it. And if I may plug this in, we have an update on the reopening, how submissions work and how Wishlisters can prepare their drafts if they want to. I will be happy to hear your feedback if you have any. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 20:42, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Update to renaming the Community Wishlist

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Thanks again for your continued participation and discussion. Based on input and feedback from contributors, we will continue using the name "Community Wishlist" and we will continue to call new submissions "wishes."

Since the new Wishlist will not have a start/stop date, the term “survey” misrepresents our new process, and we are dropping the term "Survey" from the title.

Ultimately, the Community Wishlist’s success is not measured by its name, but rather its ability to improve our products.

We’re betting that the new Community Wishlist will generate the best outcomes via informing and influencing the Foundation’s annual planning process. We’ll achieve this by packaging wishes into compelling opportunities (Focus Areas) that excite and engage the Foundation, its affiliates, and volunteer developers to prioritize wishes.

I’m excited to re-open the Community Wishlist on July 15. Note – it will be an early-stage product, so there will be bugs, roadbumps, etc, and we'd welcome your feedback along the way.

And, as we roll out our changes, I’d love to understand how we can better engage and partner to define Focus Areas as problems in need of prioritization. Please share your thoughts on the discussion page!

Best,

JWheeler-WMF (talk) 20:31, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PS. For visibility, below is the result of our voting process:

  • 6 - Community Ideas Exchange
  • 10 - Community Feature Requests
  • 7 - Community Suggestions Portal
  • 35 - Keep the same name
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