The product manager is an expert on the market (our users) and product. This person defines the product.
The product designer designs the experience (the interaction and how it looks). Design lead also works with the product manager and engineer on product discovery and definition.
Engineers develop the product. Engineering lead works with the product manager and design lead early and participate in discovery and definition.
Quality assurance tests the product and makes sure it looks and works like it’s supposed to.
The community manager represents the community needs, supports rollout, and gathers feedback.
The project manager facilitates, clears obstacles, and keeps the process moving.
What do the teams at Wikia work on?
Community Management: admin tools, permissions, groups, moderation
Platform and Ops: issues of scale (millions of pages of content delivered to people in 200+ different countries plus need to make sure it’s localized to the right countries), site performance, international needs
Mobile: works predominantly on apps. Mobile web should be every team’s responsibility.
Revenue generation: advertising and partnerships
Core product and content: Wiki creation and shaping, content creation, editing, and formatting
Community Management[]
The community team and product managers try to address the biggest needs in this area.
A lot of work is done responsive by nature but there is a forward looking roadmap
examples
Groups and permissions are not complete - wild project
tools for vstf and staff to revert bad edits
moderation tools to deal with bad edits and users
legality of content that we host - the DMCA process adherence/take down requests
Social features[]
this is an area Wikia did not prioritize for a few years, but we are working on ‘straightening up’
Sign up and login flow has been improved
Email systems have been rebuilt
We are looking at user profiles next
The new discussion experience
We do not intend to be a social network but a place for people who have shared interests to connect
We are working on a way to facilitate more active and engaging discussions for everyone, both contributors working together and casual fans who want to connect with other fans
Platform[]
A lot goes into running a platform that delivers nearly 40 millions of pages of customized content across nearly 340k different communities to 140 million unique visitors (per month) from over 240 different countries
Site has to load quickly
Respond to 3k http requests per second
Cut page download times in half since the beginning of 2014
Weathered 300+GB/sec sustained DDoS attacks
Mobile[]
Community apps
Over 120 apps representing 540 different communities
Curation and customization capabilities for admins
The ability to quickly build new apps
New ‘mobile first’ and potentially app only features
Discussions
Main page curation
Data
Last 2 years, mobile apps usage has grown. It went from less than 100k to now 3m monthly users of apps
Revenue generation[]
Keeps the site running and funds our evolution of the product and platform
Digital advertising is rapidly evolving market
Programmatic, performance standards, pricing
international considerations (different ads to run in China, Russia, USA, etc)
Mobile - close to half our traffic is consumed on a mobile device and we have to invest to stay ahead of the curve
Good ads are our goal!
We are working to have high quality, relevant ads and programs
Today, a significant percentage of Wikia’s traffic blocks ads
Ad blocking in certain areas of the world is over 50% and this continues to increase
Without ads
Wikia would not exist and neither would some of your favorite sites like Facebook, Netflix, etc.
Core Product[]
In the process of making content more portable, we are building better contribution tools for users to complete the most common and important tasks
For example, portable infoboxes! We are making them easier to build and manage going forward while also making them portable.
Also working on tools to help admins and frequent contributors better assess and manage their content
Insights and flags
Curation tools
We are placing an emphasis on striking the best balance between the creativity and uniqueness of communities, the evolving ‘connected’ world, and reliability, security, and longevity of the platform.