Talk:MediaWiki Usage Report 2015

Trailer (Chris?)

Distribution

There's a huge wiki world beyond Wikimedia Foundation. (Sabine?)

Downloads

• The downloads in China are remarkable high

Hosting

• Thousands of installed MediaWiki on shared hosting (one-click) providers

Most downloaded extensions

Even to know, which extensions are popular is nearly impossible. Some data from December 2014 (shared by Legoktm) are interesting. And give a first impression of needed add-ons in wikis beyond the Wikimedia Foundation. Many "top 20" extensions already prove the intense use of MediaWiki in companies and organizations.

Comparisons with Wordpress and other content management systems

(Richard)

• Compare trends. Searches for Wordpress and MediaWIki, Confluence ...
• Comparison searches for wiki and blog: Wiki more popular. But MediaWiki is not the most important player
• Reason: No ecosystem for MediaWiki established, SMW, BlueSpice, Wikia, WMF ... working separated.

Typical MediaWiki users

The typical survey participant is either a developer/administrator or in management and works in a small organization with 25 or less people. Using MediaWiki now for over 5 years, he counts as long time user. He is managing 2–5 wikis, from which at least 1 is public and 1 private. The user sees 25 or less people on his wiki. The user uses MediaWiki because of it being Open Source and easy to use due to its similarity to Wikipedia. His public wiki is a fun site and his enterprise wiki is used for internal knowledge creation and management. He is unhappy with the upgrade process and the installation of new extensions and would like to see WordPress-like simple update buttons in the admin backend. For the enterprise wiki, access control and a functioning easy Visual Editor are important, but even more important is a slick, superpretty GUI. The user is part of the software community and contributes some feedback and bug reports. He also spreads the word. Irritating is the connection to Wikipedia and the scrambled software documentation, which isn't very user-friendly. Community-wise, he wishes for a master plan, good communication and easy ways of involvement to give back to the community and support the project.

Position/Title

„Sysadmin, high Queen, that idiot.“

Out of 134 participants of the survey, almost every fifth (20 %, 27) is in software development, every sixth (1  %, 22) is a software admin. External functions like management and leadership can be fond in every sixth participant (1  %, 20), one eight (12 %, 17) has science and academic background. Defined wiki-users only acount for 12 % (12 %, 16) of the participants. 1 out of 10 have any other external background. (10 %, 14). A maximum 4 percent of the participants (4 %, 5) have direct or indirect relation to WMF or are software distributors. About one eighth of the answers (12 %, 16) were either unclear or unanswered.

In 10 survey participants:

• 2 are software developers
• 2 administrators
• 2 are in management/leadership position
• 1 have academic background
• 1 are solely wiki-users
• 2 are doing something else...
• 1 does not answer the question

Details: MediaWiki Usage Report 2015/What is your position or title?

Sizes of organization

About half of all participants work in organizations with 25 or less people (48,12 %, 64). Every fourth participant is part of an organization between 25 and 500 people (21 %, 28). Organizations with 500 or more people account for almost a third of all (28 %, 37).

Details: MediaWiki Usage Report 2015/How large is your organization?

Usage time of MediaWiki

More than half of the survey participants are long time users of MediaWiki, they use it 5+ years (54 %, 72). Almost a quarter is still using the software for 3–5 years (22 %, 30). The last quarter of participants is using the software for 1-2 years or less than 6 months. (24 %, 32). New users, who use the software for less than 6 months, account for about 5 % of the participants (5 %, 7). This figure can be an indication for how visible the survey was to new users.

Details: MediaWiki Usage Report 2015/How long have you been using MW?

Number of MediaWiki sites

The vast majority of users is managing 2 or more MediaWiki sites (almost 70 % of all). More than a third of all users / 4 out of 10 users manage 2–5 wikis. This is the highest figure in total (40 %, 54). Together with managers of 5-10 wikis, this accounts for half of all users. Every third participant is managing 5 or more. (30 %, 40). The figure of users managing more than 10 wikis is double as high (19 %, 26) as those managing 5 to 10 wikis (10 %, 14). Still, a quarter of the participants is managing 1 single MW site (25 %, 34). Only a few participants (4,5 %, 6) are not managing any MW site.

Details: MediaWiki Usage Report 2015/How many MediaWiki sites do you manage?

Public and private sites

Out of 133 answers, 36 users manage public wikis (27 %), 38 users manage private wikis (28,5 %) and 59 users manage a mix of both (44 %).

Details: MediaWiki Usage Report 2015/Are your sites public or private?

Feature requests

(Richard)

Next steps and requirements

(Chris, Mark, Markus, all .....)

• Reliability
• Standardization
• Services in core
• MediaWiki Foundation

See also

• Chris Koerner: MediaWiki User Report, Wikimania 2015
• MediaWiki Usage Questions