Refreshing Movement Reporting: Introducing the Wikimedia Affiliate Data Portal

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After fifteen years of wikitext and tables, Wikimedia Affiliate reporting is getting a update.

Since the first Wikimedia affiliates formed as chapters and started reporting out their finances and activities in the mid-2000s, using wikitext and tables on Meta has been standard. This shared workflow for reported has shared pains:

  • Reporting tables can grow to be too long and too wide to read comfortably.
  • Filling out reporting tables requires affiliate members to have advanced knowledge in using wikitext markup in tables.
  • Static data – there is no comparative history for reports, and they are not easy to search, query, or export.

The Learning and Evaluation team at the Wikimedia Foundation has launched a revamped portal on Meta, with the goal of addressing these issues. The portal serves all three types of Wikimedia affiliates: chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups.

  • Reports are now submitted through a form, no longer using wikitext.
  • Reports can be updated as needed through forms, no longer needing to manually update static tables.
  • A data query service – simple at launch, more complex queries will be added over time. This service is available to any logged-in Wikimedia user.

The Wikimedia Affiliates Data Portal is available for immediate use; trainings by way of webinars are being organized in March and April 2020 with exact dates to be announced later. Basic information for affiliates has been filled out based on previous reports; affiliates are encouraged to go ahead and update any outdated information. The old Reports page will be available through the end of June 2020, after which time it will be marked historical and archived.

This is only the beginning for the Wikimedia Affiliate Data Portal, it is still in active development, and the team is looking forward to its coming use and feedback around the new processes. There may be bugs or feature requests, which can be reported on the portal talk page. The talk page is also where other questions, comments, or other feedback about the portal can be posted, and updates will be shared there as well.

We look forward to seeing you in the portal!

Archive notice: This is an archived post from Wikimedia Space, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

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