Content Partnerships Hub/Metabase/Current state of Metabase
 |
Content Partnerships Hub |
Improving the Wikimedia movement’s work with content partners |
Current state of Metabase
Here we present the state of Metabase in Summer of 2025, the current focus and most relevant concerns.
People
[edit]The bulk of the work with Metabase (content creation, ideation and outreach), is done by two Wikimedia Sverige workers, Andreas Kettelhoit and Alicia Fagerving. Until mid-2025, André Costa was also heavily involved in the work.
Focus
[edit]The Metabase team is currently focusing on filling the platform with content from different topic areas, as well as exploring the possible roles the platform can fulfill in the future and the problems it could solve. It is important to us to communicate with members of the Wikimedia movement, especially those who work for other affiliates, in order to learn about their needs and possible ways to contribute.
While we also do outreach about the platform (see below), the number of non-WMSE contributors to Metabase is small right now, and most of them do not edit regularly.
We acknowledge that this is not ideal. In our initial planning, we hoped for Metabase to become an important part of the Wikimedia movement in a shorter timeframe. Once the Hub is established, we intend to put more resources into this, with a focus on lowering the threshold and being clearer in our communications about how Metabase can benefit the movement (and how we could work together to achieve this!) In particular, we are interested in working together with other affiliates to support them in systematically contributing to Metabase with data about their work.
Contents
[edit]Metabase has over 14 thousands items. A large part of them was created by WMSE staff working on specific, topic-focused projects.
The focus this year has been on adding content from different thematic areas across the movement, allowing us to experiment and discuss what could create the most value. For example:
- Episodes of the Swedish podcast about Wikimedia, Wikipediapodden
- All issues of the This Month in GLAM newsletter (we have an established plan to update them regularly)
- Sessions from various conferences organized by the Wikimedia movement; we are currently working on Wikimania 2024
- Educational materials (presentations, videos, tutorials) about OpenRefine, as a proof of concept of how Metabase can be used to store information about materials on a certain topics that are spread across different platforms
- People who work with different aspects of the Wikimedia movement, such as affiliate staff, volunteers who contribute to published materials, authors of presentations etc.
- Wikimedia projects in different languages, which will make it easier for future contributors
- Support items, such as countries, languages, museums and libraries, which will also make it easier to add future content about GLAM collaboration
See an overview of the topical projects in Metabase
Outreach and community building
[edit]Since the launch of Metabase, we have tested different ways of outreach and communication. There are many ways in which people can participate in the Wikimedia movement, from contributing with content to the platforms, to taking on more active volunteer and leadership roles, to working as affiliate staff. These different roles, of course, will approach and use Metabase in different ways, and after initial testing we realized that before actively inviting new contributors, we need to work on lowering the thresholds and adjusting our message to different target groups. For this reason, throughout 2024 and 2025, we focused our limited resources on:
- working with the content of Metabase (different types, as exemplified in the Content section), in order to provide the structure, foundational data and examples future contributors can use;
- documentation and instructional texts.
Our goal has been for Metabase to contain enough useful content for new contributors to be able to explore and learn from it. With a lot of basic data in place (geographical locations, the different language versions of the WIkimedia platforms, different types of events and documents), we want to make it easier for editors to build on top of it.
In order to foster a relationship with the community, this year we started to organize virtual office hours (example). Anyone can join these events and meet the Metabase staff. There's no set agenda; the meetings are shaped by the interests and questions of the participants. The meet-up info is hosted in the Event namespace of Meta-Wiki, and everyone who has edited Metabase receives an invitation on their talk page. Attendance has been low, but this does not meet the meetings have not been successful - if anything, it's the opposite. Having just a couple people in the room gives us an opportunity for in-depth discussion about their ideas.
We attempt to spread the word about Metabase at Wikimedia events. Below we list the most important events in which we've had the opportunity to participate.
Apart from the specific events, we have also had the pleasure of regularly discussing the platform with several topical groups, such as:
- The GLAM pages revamp project, in the context of Metabase serving as a centralized database of GLAM-related activities,
- Wikimedia Deutschland, in particular the Wikibase Cloud team, as our experiences and insights helps them develop the infrastructure,
- Wikimedia Italia, whose experience involving an intern to contribute to Metabase has provided valuable feedback about how the platform works for newcomers.
- The Capacity Exchange project, in discussions about how Metabase could support their infrastructure
| When | Where | Information |
|---|---|---|
| August 2023 | Wikimania 2023 | It's on Meta, but discoverable, probably the first major presentation about Metabase. |
| November 2023 | Data Modelling Days 2023 | Building and modelling a Wikibase instance from scratch was an introductory presentation about Metabase. It was followed by a discussion / data modelling clinic where we discussed the challenges and possible solutions to modelling financial data, such as budgets and grants, in Metabase. |
| August 2024 | Wikimania 2024 | Learn from each other with linked data was a presentation and a workshop where we invited the community to learn about and start contributing to Metabase. |
| September 2024 | Wikimedia Tech News | Interview by WMDE about the project. |
| February 2025 | Wikimedia Europe and Friends | WMSE was invited to hold a presentation about Metabase. |
Challenges
[edit]The most pressing concerns the Metabase team are experiencing now are:
- How to involve more active users? On the one hand, the most desirable type of user is an affiliate worker, willing to devote their time to working on their organization's data. On the other hand, this requires that their organization is able to put down the necessary resources (for training and their work hours), which is not something WMSE can control.
- What should we focus on next? We do have plenty of ideas and a long to-do list, but the team is small, so prioritization is a must. This ties with the previous problem, as the priorities we set will influence the community's thoughts on Metabase and their willingness to get involved.
- The technical limitations of the Wikibase Cloud infrastructure. Occasionally, the platform is very slow or even goes down for a short time.