Product and Technology Advisory Council/Meeting notes

Details from the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) monthly meetings are published below, capturing key discussions, outcomes, and actions to take forward.

2024-10

31 October 2024 (Virtual)

PTAC met for the first time as a group on October 31, 2024 in a virtual session. The agenda covered introductions, discussion of goals and expectations, and preparation for onboarding sessions with Foundation Staff to learn from decisions made recently.

2024-11

20 & 22 November 2024 (Virtual)

Two sessions were held in a small "Listening tour" to learn respectively about how the Foundation came to prioritize work on a new Charts service, and formed a new strategy for MediaWiki support.

2024-12

4 December 2024 (Virtual)

Further onboarding/listening tour session covering:

Multi-generational strategy. Learning about the longterm strategic objective to become a multi-generational project.
Movement metrics. Overview of the metrics that drive the movement and discuss how the WMF Product & Technology department's initiatives might influence these metrics.

2025-01

24-26 January 2025 (In-person)

PTAC's first in-person meeting was held over three days in Portland, Oregon, USA. The group looked at data and trends and explored the potential value of different strategic directions as part of putting forward a draft first recommendation, subsequently publishing February 2025 draft PTAC recommendation for feedback.

2025-02

25 Feb 2025 (Virtual)

Agenda covered

Recommendation response from the community: PTAC provided feedback on the community response to the published Recommendation.
Recommendation iteration: discussion on whether there should be iteration on the recommendation.
Annual Planning: how the foundation’s Product and Technology department is incorporating the recommendation in annual planning and the product roadmap.

Key notes

Although we received some great feedback regarding our recommendation, it was from a limited number of people. We acknowledge that if the community had strong objections, they would have communicated their concerns to us. Therefore - we are moving forward with the Recommendation.
We noticed there might be some confusion about who the recommendation is for - is it for WMF Product and Tech, or for the community volunteers? It is important to note that the Recommendation is for the Product and Technology team, but also to signal to the community that we are embracing and encouraging a mobile-first approach.
We had a great discussion about the role of PTAC in representing the community. We agreed that it is each PTAC member’s responsibility to reach out and talk to the right stakeholders, and bring that back to the council, especially on technical topics.
One of the key things we need to do is package our process-learnings from making this Recommendation. This will be a task to be tackled over the next few months.

2025-03

19 March 2025 (Virtual)

Agenda covered

Feedback and discussion regarding the recent New York Strategy Retreat
Revisit of the PTAC Recommendation in the Annual Plan
Discussed a proposed timeline towards Wikimania in August
Freestyle generation of topics to inform a possible next topic to make a recommendation on

Key notes

The strategy retreat was an opportunity to engage as a broader community, with a focus on what the world needs from us in context of global trends. Two big topics surfaced through the retreat include the need for neutrality across all projects, and the responsible use of infrastructure.
We discussed the emphasis of mobile experience work in the next annual plan, including but not limited to Structured Tasks on mobile, Edit Check and a mobile-first design in everything we do. In addition we are researching article creation on mobile and additions to mobile Visual Editor.
PTAC talked about two upcoming events at which PTAC members can share messages and gather more input: Hackathon in May and Wikimania in August.

Our next meeting will be 23 April 2025.

2025-04

23 April 2025 (Virtual)

Agenda covered

Published FY25-26 Annual Plan
Upcoming Co-Created Community Spaces
Two new topics for PTAC to engage with

Key notes

The upcoming community spaces present a great opportunity for PTAC to talk about the Recommendation and listen curiously to what's important to volunteers. We also talked about how PTAC can engage with the community at the Hackathon and Wikimania.
We discussed the importance of Wikipedia’s Neutral Point of View policy. Following a Diff Post and deep engagement with global trends, a working group has been established with 4 workstreams. We discussed 3 asks of PTAC: (1) Ensure PTAC members’ projects / working groups are represented in this Wikidata link, (2) To support the workstream on Research on Contentious Topics, we asked if PTAC members who have a background in research, those with connections to researchers, and/or knew of relevant research/essays to participate, and (3) There will be a dedicated day at Wikimania for editors with extended rights. Our goal is to have people share knowledge on NPOV with each other across different projects. We asked PTAC to share ideas for the session, or indicate interest if they want to support it.
We discussed the current process for prioritizing and reviewing requests for support related to unsupported extensions, gadgets, bots, and tools. We invited the PTAC to share their thoughts on this process, and asked whether any members would be interested in actively contributing to this work. It was agreed that we would continue the discussion at the next meeting.

Our next meeting will be 28 May 2025.

2025-05

28 May 2025 (Virtual)

Agenda covered

Mobile Editing: Working group scope discussion and recommendations sought from PTAC on priorities and direction.
Communications Channels: A checklist to use to communicate with the community.
Hackathon feedback: Hearing from those who were in attendance what community members wanted to learn from PTAC members.
Reminders of work in progress: (1) NPOV Working Group and (2) Working Group for Unsupported Tools.

Key notes

Following PTAC's Recommendation made in January, WMF included mobile-first initiatives - particularly focused on editing - in the Annual Plan for FY25-26. In parallel, WMF product teams formed a Mobile Editing Working Group to coordinate efforts in this area. We are now seeking PTAC’s guidance on prioritization to help shape the focus for the second half of the fiscal year and beyond.
The first question we sought a recommendation on from PTAC related to the audience we should focus on and prioritize. Below outlines the order of priority PTAC recommended:
- Mobile readers who are not yet editing – and encourage them to start editing on mobile.
- Less prolific / new editors – and help them reach a reasonable level of proficiency on mobile.
- Highly prolific editors – and try to make them highly prolific on mobile.
This recommendation shows that PTAC has identified new editors as our largest addressable market in terms of potential impact. While existing editors primarily contribute via desktop, new editors are more likely to encounter barriers - especially if they rely on mobile devices. Many potential contributors may be interested in editing but are limited by the technology they have access to. Supporting mobile editing could significantly lower these barriers.
The second question we sought a recommendation on focused on the prioritization between improvements to the mobile editing experience vs innovation of the experience. PTAC recommended a balanced approach: we should address existing usability issues to bring the current experience up to a reliable baseline (improvements), while also remaining open to reimagining the experience entirely (innovation). The ways people currently contribute on mobile may not be ideal, and there’s value in exploring novel, more effective approaches to mobile editing.
Lastly, we asked PTAC for their recommendation on research priorities. Specifically, we asked which topics - based on their community engagement and experience - should be prioritized given limited resources, considering both urgency and potential impact. Based on their guidance, we will prioritize our research efforts in the following order:
- User Journey: Mapping the full mobile editing funnel - from opening the editor to saving an edit - to find specific points of friction.
- User Intent: Understanding what mobile users are trying to do when they edit, and how that affects edit completion, dropout or reversion.
- Community Requests & Feedback on Mobile: Analyzing community requests, Phabricator tasks, and survey input on mobile editing challenges.
- Technical Bottlenecks: Identifying crashes, latency, or performance issues that cause mobile edits to fail or be abandoned.
- User Experience/Moderation: From the moderator perspective, exploring how editing interfaces and moderation signals interact to impact mobile contributor outcomes.
- Moderation: Investigating if/how filters, blocks, and review practices may disproportionately affect mobile editors.
Given time constraints, we only briefly referenced the various communication channels we could use as PTAC and agreed that these should serve as a checklist to reference.
At the Hackathon in May, PTAC members were approached with mainly two topics: more details about the Recommendation made, as well as how the PTAC works and opportunity for participation in the next cycle. As a reminder, the PTAC was set up as a one year experiment and continuation is something we will address in the coming months.
At Wikimania in August, the NPOV (Neutral Point of View) working group will lead a “Day 0” for editors with extended rights. The purpose of this day is skill sharing across projects. Another part of the day will be focused on NPOV policies in draft format for input and iteration. We welcome PTAC’s input on topics and suggestions for this day.
A working group will be established in July to prioritize work on Unsupported Tools as highlighted through the Wishlist system. Sohom from PTAC will participate and we welcome any other PTAC members who want to volunteer.

Our next meeting will be 25 June 2025.

2025-06

25 June 2025 (Virtual)

Agenda covered:

June’s PTAC call was centered around community feedback and various conversations on English Wikipedia around AI.

Key notes:

WMF Product and Technology team members provided an overview of the community conversations, and shared lessons learned.
The team asked PTAC for reflections and proposals on how to move forward.
A proposal was made to create two working groups who would focus on making recommendations to WMF on the following topics:

Product Communications: How can WMF improve messaging and transparency with the community about product updates, especially updates that may draw varied perspectives (e.g. AI tools)?
Experimentation: How can WMF build understanding and support for experimentation and product iteration?

The working groups were formed and targeted to present draft recommendations in the July PTAC call.

Our next meeting will be 23 July 2025.

2025-07

23 July 2025 (Virtual)

Agenda covered:

Feedback from the working groups formed around Experimentation and Product Communications.

Key notes:

This was a working call with breakout groups. PTAC members iterated on their proposals, discussed additions and tested ideas with WMF staff.
The next step is to finalize these recommendations for WMF Product and Technology staff.

Our next meeting will be 20 August 2025.

2025-08

20 August 2025 (Virtual)

Agenda covered:

Wikimania Debrief
Synthesizing community feedback on PTAC’s second draft recommendation

Key notes:

We celebrated Egbe, a PTAC member, who was awarded Technical Contributor for 2025!

Key takeaways from Wikimania:

Community members are keen to explore opportunities to get more involved in / with PTAC
Let’s Connect is an opportunity in Africa to present PTAC’s work
Mobile-first is a generally accepted recommendation
Volunteers expressed the need to raise particular and specific issues over and above long term strategic recommendations; PTAC and WMF will explore how we better handle these requests
PTAC is generally regarded as a trusted group because of what we’re working on, and how we’re showing up

Working groups divided into break-out sessions and agreed next steps on the second draft recommendation:

Iterate on the recommendation to include responses to community input
Publish and share with WMF teams

Our next meeting will be 17 September 2025.

2025-09

1 October (Virtual)

Agenda covered:

Product Safety and Integrity topic discussed: How can we be working to reduce the size and impact of IP-based blocking?
Mobile Web Editing: an update
WikiCon North America: attendance and preparation
Preparing to reflect on the PTAC 1 year experiment

Key notes:

Group Product Manager for Product Safety and Integrity, Eric Mill, facilitated a discussion about IP-based blocking. The PTAC members shared their views on what they believe the problems are, and some ideas for responding to these problems. A project page is being created to discuss this further with the community.
The Mobile Web Editing team provided PTAC with an update on progress. This has been captured in a Diff post.
We also agreed to add more detail to the Recommendation on Experimentation and Product Communication off the back of community feedback and input. We shared an update on how we’ve been using this recommendation - as follows: Over the last couple weeks, our Reader Growth and Reader Experience teams have started to implement those recommendations. First, the team announced that the search suggestions feature would be coming to English Wikipedia — a feature that was shown to increase reader session length. Community members did not comment on our announcement, and the feature launched with no issues! And last week, the team brought up an early “image browsing” idea for mobile readers, which is starting to get community reactions. In both of these situations, the team explained the problem that needs to solved, the idea to solve it, what stage it’s in, and the risks to consider. Coming up, program managers will help us implement a PTAC recommendation to maintain a public list of all our experimental work so that volunteers can follow along.
WikiCon North America is happening 16-19 October; some PTAC members will be there to discuss the council and recommendations made so far.
Our next call will be focused on reflecting on the success and learnings of PTAC as a council.

Our next meeting will be 29 October 2025.