Instructions
- Define the problem or opportunity (WHAT).
- Outline the importance of addressing the problem or opportunity (WHY).
What?
Write your problem statement using layperson's terminology.
In one sentence, what is the problem or opportunity?
Moving forward Google will be using Cumulative Layout Shift in their SEO calculations (sometimes referred to as “banner bump” at WMF). This occurs when a banner loads into the top of the page and shifts content down. This is noticeable on all CentralNotice (CN) banners. Even small community banners have some impact on this calculation. There is no concrete evidence that this is impacting our pageviews at the moment. However this impact is expected to increase over time.
What does the future look like if this is achieved?
- We can continue running fundraising and community banners, meeting our revenue targets and maintaining an informed and engaged community without negatively impacting our search ranking.
What happens if we do nothing?
- Site traffic will continue to suffer due to the increasingly poor search rankings. Revenue targets will get increasingly harder to reach. Overall popularity of the site will suffer.
- In the event this has a low or slowly increasing negative effect, this will pull multiple teams into lengthy investigations multiple times a year. If we don’t work to solve this, we will be constantly distracted trying to evaluate its impact.
- If this has a sudden and severe negative impact, multiple teams will have to stop what they are doing and address this asap.
Why?
Identify the value(s) this problem/opportunity provides. Add links to relevant OKRs.
Rank values in order of importance and be explicit about who this benefits and where the value is.
User Value/Organization Value AND Objective it supports and How
- This represents an existential threat to the movement. All OKRs are affected in some way
- maintains or increases readership
- maintains the ability to raise money through banners and communicate to the community
- maintains or increases our SEO
Why are you bringing this decision to the Technical Forum?
What about the scope of this problem led you and your team to seek input across departments/organizations?
This issue would be best described as complex and involves many teams. With that, we need to give all involved teams the chance to consider the problem and constraints. They need time to research solutions as well as assessing budgeting/schedule impact. This needs to happen as soon as possible to be incorporated into annual planning.