Community Tech

Community Tech manages the Community Wishlist, a forum for contributors from all Wikimedia projects to suggest and comment on product and technology changes and improvements.

We leverage the Wishlist to collaborate with editors, volunteer developers, and other Wikimedia teams to turn community-identified needs into real solutions, and work on priority wishes.

✨ Make a Wish or support Wishlist ideas

The team

Jack Wheeler

Lead Community Tech Manager

Karolin Siebert

Engineering Manager

Cormac Parle

Principal Software Engineer

Dayllan Maza

Staff Software Engineer, Tech Lead

Tim Starling

Principal Software Architect

Joydeep Sengupta

Principal User Experience Designer

Harumi Monroy

Senior Software Engineer

MusikAnimal

Staff Software Engineer

Sam Wilson

Staff Software Engineer

TheresNoTime

Software Engineer

Sandister Tei

Movement Communications Specialist

Dom Walden

Test Engineer

George Mikesell

Test Engineer

🛠️ How We Work

We are a small team with limited resources, and balance our efforts across three categories:

Building tooling to advance the Community Wishlist
Maintenance of existing tools and features supported by the Community Tech team
Delivering on wishes, primarily by adopting Focus Areas supported by volunteers.

When we say "no" to a given request, we are merely stating it goes against our current priorities.

When working and communicating with us:

Please be calm, civil, and assume we’re working in good faith.
We aim to respond promptly but can't guarantee immediate replies.
Sometimes, we may need to close a conversation if it takes too much of our time or attention.
We can not handle projects on another team's roadmap or ones that conflict with their work, but we will direct you to the right person when possible.
We can not discuss staffing or confidential issues.

Current selected projects

Community Tech is currently wrapping up carry-over work from the 2023 Wishlist. Beginning in 2024-25, the team will adopt community-supported Focus Areas via the new Community Wishlist.

Projects	Project status
Multiblocks	In development
Sharing QR codes	Done
Edit-Recovery Feature	In development
Template recall and discovery	In preparation

📢 Latest Updates

March 12, 2025: Multiblocks pilot

Multiblocks, the #14 wish in the Community Wishlist Survey 2023 will be released to the Polish-language Wikipedia by 20th March 2025 for piloting. We are also seeking additional wikis to pilot with.

With Multiblocks, admins get more block options: a sitewide and a partial block can run at the same time with different expiry dates. This eliminates the need to wait for the expiration of one block to apply the other. An admin may want to initially impose a temporary sitewide block on a disruptive user, and later keep their access to specific pages or namespaces restricted. This may be useful in cases of blocking Wikipedians heavily involved in editing specific namespaces or pages.

Currently, admins must wait for the first block to expire before applying a second one. They need to find other solutions like setting reminders to return and update the restrictions manually. With Multiblocks, this extra step is no longer necessary. As part of preparations for building Multiblocks, Community Tech has redesigned the Special:Block page using Codex. The block log has been repositioned towards the top of the page so the admins can easily access this information to decide the nature of subsequent blocks.

Blocks can now be applied using precise date selections, providing clearer and more consistent expiration settings compared to written time intervals such as “fortnights.” These design changes serve as foundational steps for the Multiblocks implementation.

The refreshed Special:Block page is accessible via applying a url parameter ?usecodex=1 to the end of the link to an admin's block page. You can try it out. Give feedback about the refreshed Special:Block page on the project talk page.

Some communities may need to update their policies or guidelines for using Multiblocks. We encourage you to start considering these needs if they apply to you. Community Tech is here to support your discussions and will also be listening to how communities wish to approach this.

Thank you for your patience as we work towards delivering this helpful new feature.

February 20, 2025: Codex Special:Block Design Testers Needed

As CommTech prepares to fulfil the Multiblocks wish, we are redesigning the Special:Block page using Codex. Admins are invited to test a prototype of the refreshed block page in a moderated user test conducted by CommTech's Principal User Experience Designer Joydeep Sengupta. To sign up, please visit the Multiblocks talk page where we have some slots open for booking.

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Further information