Wikibase/Wikibase.cloud/Updates/2022

December 12th, 2022

As of today:
- a total of 383 Wikibases on cloud.
- 8 new invite codes were sent out this week.
News from engineering:
- Some frontend adjustments will be released this week and the next (minor adjustments to the sign-up flow and the release of the contact page).
- We’ll be starting with Search until the end of the year, and continue into next year to release a solution for everyone. This is not expected to finish this year.
Anything else worth mentioning:
- Wikibase Cloud logo will soon be released.
- The survey closes tonight. We will need some time for processing and generating insights, so the results will be presented early next year.

November 30th, 2022

As of today:
- there are 378 Wikibases on cloud total
- 23 new invite codes were sent out this week
News from engineering:
- Captcha issue for Wikibases with a custom domain has been solved: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T323498.
- Kubernetes upgrade is completed, we’re now running on a stable, supported version: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T311205
- Working ofinishingup the new contact page and aiming to release in the coming weeks so that we can end the year with full focus on Search
Anything else worth mentioning:
- check out last Wikibase Live Session (see notes)

November 15th, 2022

As of today:
- there are 351 wikibases on cloud total
- 50 new invite codes will be sent out this week
News from engineering:
- we are done with secret rotation.
- wbaas-deploy is officially open-source!
- Alerts were modified to make them less sensitive and spamming emails.
- We switched to ingress API version to GA v1 from v1beta1 in a few charts
- Kubenetes upgrade is still blocked by other tasks
Anything else worth mentioning:
- Wikibase/Wikidata office hour took place last week on Wikidata telegram channel.
- Wikibase Survey is out! Check: https://wikimedia.sslsurvey.de/Wikibase.cloud-User-Research-11-22/

November 2nd, 2022

As of today
- there are 344 wikibases on cloud total
- codes are sent out regularly to applicants for closed beta
News from the engineering team
- tackling some user requests who want to change account details
- Not yet everything open-source, getting very close
- Kubernetes updatesare due
Anything else worth mentioning:
- Wikibase live session recap and link to notes
- Qichwabase created an introduction video to explain more about their Wikibase.cloud instance
- Save the date: Office hour on Telegram next Wednesday, 9th of November. Event announcement will come soon!
- A survey for Wikibase.cloud is being drafted, scheduled to be sent out this month. Please participate, we’re excited to hear your feedback!

October 11th, 2022

As of today
- 334 wikis created
- Since September we sent out 101 codes to people on the waiting list
- We sent reminders to 48 people who have not yet used their requested invite codes
What has our engineering team worked on this week? What challenges did we face?
- Working on open-sourcing the deployment code of wikibase.cloud
- Running maintenances on Wikibases to correct a bug from migration from all Wikibases task T312256
- Some work on the front end for the contact page
Anything else worth mentioning?
- Our new Wikibase ComCom Manager, Valerie, introduced herself to the community. In her own words she will support constructive information flows to enable co-creation among the Community and the Software Development team.
- This week 3 people in the Wikibase.Cloud team will present Wikibase at the Kubernetes community event
- Upcoming user group meeting will take place on October 27th

September 27th, 2022

As of today
- We have generated 105 invite codes
- We have sent out 92 invite codes to new users
Dashboard stats
- 304 wikis created
- 193 have been actively maintained
- 69 have not yet seen any data added
- 42 have been deleted
What has our engineering team worked on this week? What challenges did we face?
- We made some UI improvements
- Worked on Bug report for unexpected values in labels for units
- Existing metrics dashboards were added to terraform and can be re-created
- Reworked and deployed Wikibase.cloud password reset flow
Anything else worth mentioning?
- The team welcomed a new Community Communications manager for Wikibase. They are currently being onboarded and will introduce themself to the community at the start of October.

September 09th, 2022

As of today there are 283 wikis created of which 180 have been actively maintained over the last 3 months. 62 have not yet seen any data added and 41 have been deleted.
We sent out 75 invite codes to new (non-Wbstack) users from the early access waiting list. If you're interested in receiving an invite code, please can fill out this application form.

August 25th, 2022

We are still preparing for onboarding. We now have metrics in place and are working on further extending Wikibase.Cloud documentation and FAQs.
Dashboards with metrics are in place that will help us monitor and analyse before onboarding.
The Wiki limit per user will be set to 6 task T311121. We encourage you to delete empty wiki's to free up space as to not hit the limit so fast. This would help to reduce the load on our resources.
ElasticSearch will be disabled for new users task T314937

August 04th, 2022

We are still in the process of setting up monitoring and metrics to analyse our readiness and ensure a smooth onboarding for future users.
We added a waiting list link to the wikibase.cloud landing page.

July 21st, 2022

Wrapping up the past sprint by completing bug-fixing and other migration-related topics to tie off loose ends.

July 14th, 2022

We have started brainstorming setting up monitoring and metrics to analyze our readiness and ensure a smooth onboarding for future users.
Fixing user-reported bugs such as task T312747 and task T311602
To reduce migration complexity, in mid-June we temporarily put in place a Wikibase creation limit of 1 for Wikibase.cloud users. We’ve since analysed the amount of Wikibases our current user base have, and decided to increase the limit to 6, and will continuously analyse the optimal limit. This will be implemented in the near future
task T312801: An issue related to search indexing newly created items was reported this week. We suspect this might be related to multiple other issues, as mentioned in the ticket, and need some time to find the root cause.

July 07th, 2022

During migration issues and bugs arose, so the team is taking some time to get ready for access by users from the waiting list.
- task T311602: We discovered that log in to Wikibase.Cloud fails for accounts registered using task-specific emails.
- task T311495: Wikibase.cloud instance does not update triple store

June 29th, 2022

task T311495: We had an outage of the queryservice-updater on June 23rd. This has since been resolved.

June 21th, 2022

The 3rd and final migration batch was successfully completed on Friday 17.06.2022
Our new Wikibase Cloud Product Manager, Evelien Zandbergen, introduced herself to the community. In her own words, she will be “...focusing on understanding what Wikibase users need, finding what adds real value for you, and turning this into a beautiful roadmap so that I, together with the team, can improve Wikibase.cloud for you and we all can fulfill our vision in the long run.”

June 14th, 2022

Batch B is concluded and the final Batch (C) migration has started. We hope to finish the migration by June 17th.
This week we limited the number of new wikis that can be created on Cloud. That means users with no wikis yet (only an account) can only create one wiki. All others cannot create more wikis than what they already have.
Due to the overhead of Wikis on ElasticSearch we have disabled the feature. We want to prioritize migrating people in.
The deadline to accept Wikibase.Cloud Privacy Policy and Terms of Use (ToS) for Wbstack users ended on June 14th. If you are a Wbstack user who did not agree to the ToS or a new user, you can apply for early access to Wikibase.Cloud using this form.

June 7th, 2022

task T303852: We have paused the migration of batch B users due to issues with Elasticsearch. Batch B users have been informed, and we expect to have more clarity around when migration will resume this week.
task T309019: The focus has been on increasing the stability and observability of Elasticsearch. For instance, in the future, we would like to gather more data on the resources required to run Wikibase.cloud.
task T309692: We discovered an issue related to the query service. Unfortunately, this means that Wikibase instances that have already been migrated to Wikibase.cloud are not updating as they usually would.
Once we have completed the migration of all WBstack.com users, we will begin to contact early access applicants. If you’ve not yet submitted an application for early access, you can do so here.
We published a post on the Wikimedia Deutschland tech news blog.