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Project

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Wikibase.cloud is a cloud-based platform developed by Wikimedia Deutschland (Wikimedia.de) to host instances of Wikibase. Wikibase is an open-source software suite for creating collaborative knowledge bases. Originally developed for Wikidata, the Wikibase project is being actively developed and maintained by the team at Wikimedia Deutschland. With Wikibase.cloud, we want to make it easier than ever to create, connect and grow a linked open database. In so doing, we aim to liberate data from silos and increase access to knowledge around the world.

Wikibase.cloud is now in Open Beta -- feel free to sign up now! Consider adding your instance to wikibase.world, an invaluable community-run site for Wikibase and the various instances you can find across the net.

We'd like to say a special thanks to Adam Shorland for building WBStack on which Wikibase Cloud is based, and Rhizome, for their support, innovation and leadership.

Resources

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Connect with the Wikibase.cloud community:

Documentation:

Contact us

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As with all Wikimedia projects, we use the public ticketing system Phabricator (phabricator.wikimedia.org). You can keep up with our progress via the Wikibase.cloud Phabricator board. Otherwise, reach out to us at swe_partnerships@wikimedia.de.

Updates

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October 16th 2024

  • Status of cloud access
    • 1502 wikis in total, incl. 418 deleted ones
  • News from the product team:
    • We enabled federated queries across already existing instances. We plan to automatically include emerging instances into the scope of federation later.
    • The usability research to identify opportunities that will improve experience for novice users is complete.
    • We established an approach to measuring health metrics for the product and tried it out. We will build on this to settle on a sustainable solution in the future.
    • We performed some important software updates and addressed a security problem.
  • Here is what we are currently focusing on:
    • Including emerging instances into the scope of federation.
    • Addressing low-hanging bug fixes, features familiar from Wikidata, quick copy and UI improvements.

September 5th 2024

  • Status of cloud access
    • 1415 in total, incl. 390 that have already been deleted
  • News from the product team:
    • First important milestones achieved in the initiatives related to automation of testing and deployment
    • A new dialog introduced to learn more about the reasons why managers delete their Wikibase Cloud instances
    • First iteration of the feature to import entities from Wikidata implemented. Managers can import a fixed set of entities curated by the Wikibase Cloud team once per instance. The list of entities currently includes several properties (Mother, Father, Child, Image, Instance of, Subclass of) and items (Universe, World, Human, Berlin, Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). In the future we might let the users choose the entities for import. Due to incompatibility with the Wikidata’s default label feature, the entities are currently imported in a state from July 28, 2024. The problem will be resolved when Wikibase Cloud switches to the same long term support version of Wikibase that Wikidata is running on.
    • Each new Wikibase now gets a new default main page that guides the users in kicking off their instance.
    • Users can now illustrate their entities with images from Wikimedia Commons.
    • We optimized how the search engine (Elasticsearch) is shared across instances. This reduces costs for maintenance, complexity, stability of the system and makes it easier to manage. We expect that this will also significantly increase our capacity to work on new features.
  • Here is what we are currently focusing on:
    • Synthesizing the results of the recent usability research to identify opportunities to improve experience for novice users
    • Revising our metrics and improving data instrumentation to be able to track our progress more reliably
    • Identifying the useful features familiar from Wikidata that could easily be enabled on all instances to improve feature parity between different Wikimedia products and facilitate transition of users between them
    • Identifying the confusing features that would benefit from better documentation
    • Exploring ways to differentiate between instances with valuable knowledge that is intended for re-use and instances used for experimentation and data preparation
  • Anything else worth mentioning:
    • We completed our first research of knowledge equity in Linked Open Data. The results are published here.

February 9th 2024

January 10th 2024

  • Status of cloud access
    • 824 Wikibases on cloud total
  • News from engineering:
  • Anything else worth mentioning:
    • Next Wikibase Live Session on 25th of January
    • End of the year survey share-out coming soon!
    • Wikidata & Wikibase office hours on 17th of January

More at /Updates/2023 and /Updates/2022

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