Requests for Comment/Premium offerings

Recently, our good friend Universal Omega started a new wiki hosting service called WikiForge, which offers some great features for premium wiki hosting. WikiForge shares many similarities with Miraheze, like focusing on its community, wanting to be a non-profit, and using extensions such as CreateWiki and ManageWiki. After talking with Universal Omega about this, we thought it would be a good idea to join forces and create a unified service that will help ensure our users satisfaction and the continued success of Miraheze. We wanted to bring this proposal to the Miraheze community for feedback, review, and discussion.

If approved, this would provide a great opportunity for Miraheze to gain some additional revenue to expand our services to accommodate growing demand and to combat slow loading speeds and infrastructure shortcomings. As always, Miraheze will remain free and will never paywall anything nor show you ads, this will just be an extra option available to those who choose it. We invite you to read the entire RfC and the FAQ for further information.

This is a preliminary advisory vote on whether the community supports the general idea. The Board, who will ultimately choose whether or not to implement the idea and how to, cannot consider it without this vote first. Any subsequent proposed legal agreements will be posted for community review after such a Board vote.

Introduction
Given the unique operation model for a premium service proposed by Universal Omega and the working example they have established under the brand name of WikiForge, the following partnership is proposed for community review:

WikiForge is merged into Miraheze and will now operate as the premium service branch of Miraheze Limited. WikiForge branding will be reserved exclusively for Premium and would not be used for any other Miraheze service.

Miraheze, as it currently operates, would see no change at all in terms of structure; the Board will continue to operate as normal and see no change and the community and technical structures of Miraheze will continue to operate as usual.

Description of Service
WikiForge will be catered to those seeking a premium hosting experience and who currently cannot be served by Miraheze due to their project requirements (for example, a perennial request to SRE is the ability to use a third-party SSO provider to log users in. This cannot be done as it would be incompatible with CentralAuth).

As a premium service funded with a reasonable monthly fee paid by its customers, WikiForge would offer its users additional benefits such as faster page loading speeds through dedicated server hosting, support for different versions of MediaWiki, a higher limit on expensive parser functions and much more. Such features have been requested by users in the past and provide an untapped opportunity to provide not-for-profit hosting for those who would otherwise find another provider for such services.

No initial funding will be provided by Miraheze for this project, WikiForge is intended to operate as a self-funding entitity with the potential to donate excess funds after operating costs to the Miraheze project.

Operation of Service
WikiForge will operate separately from Miraheze proper but would be overseen by a council that would report to the Miraheze Board of Directors.

A director of Premium Operations position will be established, and the individual in this role will have technical and operational control under the WikiForge branding, in partnership with the oversight council. The Director of Premium Operations will report to the Miraheze Board and will coordinate work alongside Engineering Managers for Miraheze SRE when necessary for operational stability.

WikiForge's technical team will be separate from Miraheze -- their (future) system administrators would not be entitled to access to Miraheze infrastructure and vice versa, though they would still be under Miraheze NDA.

A contract will be signed between Miraheze and Universal Omega (as the originator of the WikiForge project), stating that if Miraheze begins to wind down operations, WikiForge will revert to the control of Universal Omega. This agreement will ensure that WikiForge will continue to operate even if Miraheze is no longer operational.

WikiForge branding will be kept for Premium only, and it will not be funded by Miraheze user donations. Instead, WikiForge will only be funded by its paying customers. Any leftover revenue generated from WikiForge (after operational expenses are accounted for) will go to Miraheze and help ensure that Miraheze remains solvent along with ensuring continued growth and expansion of our infrastructure. However, WikiForge's budget will be separate from Miraheze's budget and will never tap into Miraheze's budget.

WikiForge's infrastructure will be separate from Miraheze's. No impact will be borne on Miraheze infrastructure nor will any changes occur. WikiForge will utilize cloud services to ensure the best experience for its users and to ensure Miraheze infrastructure is not overloaded by the need for new, dedicated servers.

While some policies such as the Terms of Use (and thus, the current Trust and Safety team and setup) and Privacy Policy will likely also apply to WikiForge (some, like the Terms of Use, in a slightly modified manner to remove Miraheze-specific mentions such as Dormancy Policy mentions), most Miraheze community policies will not. This is because some do not make sense in applying to a premium service.

Some examples:
 * Closing a paying wiki after 60 days of no edits under the Dormancy Policy, in this case non-payment policy would take precedence.
 * Wiki governance policies would not apply on premium wikis such as corporate intranet wikis, as those are not ruled by consensus but rather by a separate hierarchy.

In cases where there is incompatibility with Miraheze policy or new policy is needed, the oversight council will be charged with development and approval of policies/reconciliation of conflicts.

Benefit to the Community
By launching WikiForge, Miraheze will be able to offer additional services to users who require more features than what the standard free service provides. Furthermore, WikiForge's revenue (after operational costs) will support Miraheze's ongoing operations, providing another source of funds to ensure the sustainability of the organization.

Miraheze will benefit from the increased revenue generated by WikiForge, and our users will benefit from the additional features and services offered by the premium service if they choose. Additionally, it is our intent that WikiForge can act as an incubator for new features that will migrate back where possible to Miraheze users at no additional cost.

Miraheze proper will still be the main focus of everyone, new and existing features will NEVER be paywalled just because we can. WikiForge's goal is to provide additional services to those who require more features than possible on Miraheze (for example, providing the ability to run memory-intensive operations that would otherwise be declined on Miraheze due to technical limitations, or the ability to use a third-party SSO provider).

Miraheze will still be continued to be run by volunteers and this new endeavor would be purposefully separate from Miraheze proper in order to ensure that community and volunteer resources are not disproportionately allocated to WikiForge. By operating separately, WikiForge's staff will be able to focus on it and ensure success while Miraheze proper looks over its current community and ensures that it continues to thrive.

Miraheze's overall vision is unchanged, we will never stop being a not-for-profit and bow down to shareholders. Our users are the #1 focus and I believe that this proposal offers a unique opportunity to for Miraheze to provide a better experience for users. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on this proposal.

Proposed by: Agent Isai  Talk to me! 07:24, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Co-proposed by: Universal Omega (talk) 07:27, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Why is there a community vote on this proposal?
Part of Miraheze project's commitment to the community is that major decisions about the project will be community-driven. This is your opportunity to ask questions and help guide the project -- we encourage you to participate!

Based on the comments on this Request for Comments, the Board will then decide whether to enter this partnership or not and if to ratify this agreement.

How will this benefit Miraheze?
Surplus revenue from WikiForge (after operational/server costs) will be reinvested into Miraheze and will go into upgrading and expanding our services. This may mean that Miraheze will be able to scale up better to accommodate demand without fearing hitting budgetary constraints and limitations.

Why does Miraheze need a premium option?
A subset of both our current community of wikis and those interested in joining Miraheze have complications today that drive them towards competitors or self-hosting.

Rather than excluding these individuals, we see a partnership as an opportunity to meet some of needs that a volunteer-driven, donation-funded project cannot:
 * High-availability cloud-based infrastructure
 * Extra services like SSO/opportunity to scale resources to meet needs without impacting unpaid services
 * Opportunity for professional assistance on setup/management of wikis
 * Meeting ISO compliance requirements for corporate clients w/ specialized needs, e.g. intranet wikis that may contain sensitive data.

Will this affect Miraheze's 100% free commitment?
No, only features that are incompatible with Miraheze's current setup will be premium. Other features will always remain free and Miraheze will never paywall any features. Some potential examples of premium features include:


 * External SSO login
 * Dedicated cloud server hosting with advanced performance options
 * Lockdown extension
 * Installation of custom/high-compute extensions (with review)

Will this service be funded by Miraheze user donations?
No, WikiForge's budget will be completely separate and initial funding will not come from Miraheze.

Donations to the Miraheze project will never go towards WikiForge operations.

Will this new service use Miraheze infrastructure?
No. WikiForge will use its own cloud-based infrastructure.

Will Miraheze volunteers neglect Miraheze proper to focus on this new project?
No. WikiForge is a project separate from Miraheze proper which will be overseen by its own team. Our current volunteers will not be drafted nor ordered to contribute to this new project and their focus will always be on Miraheze.

Why does control revert to Universal Omega? Why is there a contract at all?
The WikiForge project already exists today as an independent organization, created by Universal Omega. This proposal forms a partnership between Miraheze and WikiForge, bringing it under the banner of Miraheze Limited.

Not only does the contract recognize Universal Omega's role as founder of the service, it also gives assurance of continuity of services to paying customers should WikiForge's partnership with Miraheze be terminated.

What happens if the community doesn't like the partnership later?
This proposal is a partnership, first and foremost. If community approval should shift to disapproval at a later date, a similar proposal can be raised to dissolve the partnership and WikiForge ownership would revert to Universal Omega if successful.

Where will information about WikiForge be displayed on Miraheze, if anywhere?
This is yet to be decided, but the likely location will be on some Meta pages. We do not intend to add any 'upsell' language to local wiki management pages nor add any advertisements to wikis.

Proposal 1 (Premium offering)
WikiForge is established as Miraheze's premium branch per the above proposal.

Support

 * 1)  >> I might not be the one who'd use this service anytime soon, but I'm definitely excited to see Miraheze grow as a community. I believe that the promises listed are sufficiently realistic and trust that the executives would try their best to keep them. Good luck guys! --Átkýv L. (talk) 09:42, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Oppose

 * 1)  >> I think there is a risk that, in the long term, the implementation of premium benefits could give way to the monetization of other features that were previously free. --Imontegav (talk) 10:27, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
 * 2)   >> To be honest, I don't like things being locked behind paywall. Sure, things getting expensive and servers needs money to operate but I'm a bit concerned about features that were previously free gonna become paid and one day maybe Miraheze needs to rely on ads.-- SpazJR61 12:00, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments

 * I'd like to remind everyone that you are not permitted to vote until this RfC is officially opened. This RfC is currently a draft, so it's not open yet. Tali64³ (talk) 12:09, 13 April 2023 (UTC)