WIT/Approach

Wikidata Integrations Team

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Our Approach to Software Development

Wikimedia Deutschland builds products for a huge international community spanning a multitude of Wikimedia projects. To ensure the 'right' products are being built, it is necessary to integrate the Wikimedia community into the product development process. We call this approach community-centered development.

This prioritises the needs and wishes of the community first, in the spirit of collaboration when developing solutions where Wikidata is integrated to a sibling project or client wiki.

Our goals

Identify opportunities and build products that serve, expand or enhance localized integrations between Wikidata and the sibling (other Wikimedia) projects. By doing so, we will:

Increase the positive impact of Wikidata

At Wikidata's inception, its primary function was to serve Wikipedia by replacing the manual interlanguage links by centralising the data in a multilingual format. Since then, Wikidata has grown exponentially in size and scope, to fulfil a multitude of functions and purposes. The products we will ultimately develop will build on that same idea of serving the Wikimedia projects by increasing Wikidata's utility.

Promote the adoption of Wikidata

There are thousands of passionate individuals editing and contributing to the various Wikimedia projects. The majority contribute only to an individual project, perhaps only in a single language. Many editors might not even know other Wikimedia projects exist, or believe the barriers to contribute to them are too high, whether technical or otherwise. By building products that promote the reuse of data from Wikidata into the sibling projects, we hope to reduce those barriers, whether real or perceived, and grow the Wikidata community.

Increase equity of editors

By identifying the blockers or 'roadbumps' in editor workflows and creating products or solutions to remove them, we will help create a more equitable environment which we hope will ultimately lead to the reduction of knowledge gaps.

Who are we serving

A community comprises individuals of all types and it is important for us to serve the communities needs equally. All of our work will create space to discuss and address differences for:

• Visual or physical impairment
• Support non-standard languages,
• Products available in multiple browsers
• Mobile-device and other peripheral support
• New editors, expert editors and the skill levels in between

Why do we exist

WIP

How do we contribute to the movement

WIP

How will we work towards our goals

Just some of the tools in our toolbox include

• surveys
• online meetings and calls
• on-wiki collection of reported issues [link]
• interviews
• discussions and informal chats during in-person meetups and conferences

The Wikimedia Community can always see the Status-Quo of our project:

• Keep our Project pages up to date
• Provide consistent feedback about developments

Accessibility

• Keep the language of our communication as understandable for all audiences as possible. Keep the use of techno-babble or technical jargon as little as possible.
• When sending messages to a wide audience, provide translations as much as possible.