Federated knowledge graphs/Wikibase

Chat w/ H. Mary GerardM

How should we think about linking wikibases?

Current approaches:

• Federated Wikidata -- an idea that means different things to different people
• Structured Wikidata on Commons
• Wikibase Community User Group -- just start one :)
• Wikibase docs don't address this yet.

A simple spec

• All wikibases register @ wikidata [w/ a Wikibase entity + Wikibase ID property]
  • Wikibases that want to federate, indicate this there [w/ a property]
• Local properties drawn from Wikidata are marked as such [maybe cached locally]
  • Similar to global filename/template: if no local property, look globally? That can be a separate flag
  • Nuisance: you could have multiple such [remote-ID] relations, for 1-to-n identification
• Local properties that /may/ be the same as a property on [WD] are also flagged that way
  • with notes about the mapping/crosswalk/relation
• Mechanism to flag properties that would make sense on [WD]

Examples:

+ WikiCite: all citation and biblio data in one wikibase, referencable by WM projects.

Q: Copied into WD on use?

+ ZineWiki:

More complex

• Instances of [WD] above can be replaced by [any other wikibase] for more decentralization
• Locally: mention properties you infer from another wikibase. (ex: create a gender property; allow 'WD values + other')
• You can explicitly say you're overriding a global property? for linting (to avoid flagging this as a mistake)