Community Tech development team disbanded
Community Tech development team disbanded, engineering roles eliminated
On May 20, Wikimedia Foundation announced the disbandment of the Community Tech team at meta:Community Wishlist#May 20, 2026: Community Tech becomes a program:
After noticing that having a centralized team was leading to frequent bottlenecks and delays ... we've decided to shift Community Tech into a program that multiple teams are officially responsible for supporting ... disbanding the Community Tech team and the roles of five engineers and one manager.
(emphasis added by The Signpost)
The community reacted strongly to the announcement (see this issue's Technology report and other sections).
Upon reaching its 763rd signature, the Wiki Workers United solidarity petition became the 2nd-most supported proposal or petition ever on the English-language Wikipedia, behind only the 2024 open letter about Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation, which has 1374 signatures.[1]
meta:Talk:Community Wishlist#Proposed direction for Wishlist; Chief Product and Technology Officer S. Deckelmann has stated they are "in listening mode" to the feedback.
Footnotes
- ^ See Wikipedia:Times that 300 or more Wikipedians supported something, sections "Regarding policy" and "Miscellaneous". All entries outside those sections either concern an individual user (permissions requests and elections) or took place on other wikis.
Wikimedia Café
Two upcoming Wikimedia Café sessions will focus on the editor reflections project, featuring Clovermoss. If you would like to attend the session, please see these instructions.
The dates of the sessions are:
- Saturday 27 June 2026 15:00 UTC
- equivalent to 8:00 A.M. in Los Angeles (UTC-7)
- Sunday 28 June 2026 03:00 UTC
- equivalent to 13:00 in Sydney (UTC+10)
– M
Brief notes
- WikiProject Feminism revival: Several editors have been revitalizing WikiProject Feminism, and are welcoming editors interested in the topic.
- WikiProject Computer security revival: Other editors are reviving WikiProject Computer security, and invite editors to help tackle the todo list.
- Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects have reached milestones:
- English Wikipedia reaches 1,000 editors who have made more than 100,000 edits, according to this list.[a] Edit counts can be affected by the type of edits a user makes, such as copyediting, script assisted editing, and the size of each edit, and very high edit counts can also be calculated innaccurately as a result of a software bug.
- Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Khoekhoe, followed by Injury (beginning 22 June). Please be bold in helping improve these articles!
- Chinese Wikipedia There is an ongoing RfC on formalisation of Arbitration Committee and possible return of local CheckUsers.
- New account creation flow: Wikimedia Foundation announced a new account-creation user experience to address what they described as a "broken" process.
Footnotes
- ^ 1,002 at the time of publication
Discuss this story
New account creation flow: The WMF has finally noticed, after being told for years by the volunteer community, that the account-creation UX is fundamentally broken. Not only is there a drop in the number of registrations, but while the stream of new articles has not decreased, the shape of it has evolved into new challenges to be surmounted. (WMF announcement); where is the evidence of this other than deeply buried discussions with a few selectively appointed representatives of minor affiliates? Too often, experienced editors' warnings about reader and contributor behaviour are overridden by the WMF’s assumptions about what users ought to want. The result is predictable: features are built, volunteers explain why they will fail, they fail, and only then are they reconsidered.
The issue is not programming ability but organisational culture; volunteers with experience in UX and UI design who build and maintain the encyclopaedia have repeatedly warned that these changes would create unnecessary barriers, yet those concerns have largely been dismissed. Fifteen years ago, it was still possible for experienced volunteers to discuss these issues directly with the Foundation's technical leaderships and influence the outcome. As the organisation has grown, that dialogue has largely disappeared and until the political and cultural divide between the Foundation and its volunteer communities is addressed and the Foundation learns to treat its volunteer communities as a source of expertise rather than simply a constituency to be consulted, I see little reason to expect meaningful change for potential new users any time soon. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:18, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]