Wikibase Community User Group/Reports/2019

2019 is the second year of existence of the Wikibase Community User Group. You can read the 2018 report.

Activities

January 2019

• Addshore published a blog post on how to update an existing Docker-powered Wikibase instance.

February 2019

• Wikimedia Deutschland improved the integration of QuickStatements in Docker-powered Wikibase instances.

April 2019

• The University of Erfurt and the German National Library (GND) announced to base the FactGrid project on a Wikibase instance.
• Wikimedia Foundation removed the ElasticSearch dependancy from Wikibase extension code and put it into a separate extension. This allows to set up a Wikibase instance more easily, without requiring an ElasticSearch instance (announcement).

May 2019

• Barbara Fischer, from German National Library (GND), and Jens Ohlig, from Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE), published a blog post on how the two institutions intend to test Wikibase on several projects.
• Wikimedia Hackathon (Prague, Czech Republic)
  • Many improvements to Wikibase code and documentation have been made during the hackathon.
  • Around 15 participants attended the Wikibase Install Party.
  • Wikibase meetup

June 2019

• ABES and BnF initiated a six months Proof of Concept for the National Entity File (FNE) based on Wikibase.
  • Repository of the PoC is public.
  • Press release (in French)

July 2019

Attendees of Ghent University Wikidata and Wikibase Workshop.

• Wiki Valley published (in French) a complete guide of the Wikibase installation made for the NOEMI project with the National Library of France (BnF).
• Ghent University Wikidata and Wikibase Workshop (Ghent, Belgium)
  • Program
  • Report

August 2019

Wikidata and Wikibase Vision.

Strategy for the Wikibase Ecosystem.

• Wikimania (Stockholm, Sweden)
  • Everyone gets one - Wikibase and the Wikibase Ecosystem (slides)
  • Open Data Partnerships
  • Wikibase meetup (notes)
• OCLC published a report on their experience using Wikibase on Library Linked Data in their Project Passage.
• The vision and strategy papers for Wikidata and Wikibase have been published, including Vision and high level overview for Wikidata and Wikibase and Strategy for Wikibase Ecosystem.

September 2019

• Community was invited to provide input about Federation.
• Europeana published a blog post about the projects of using Wikibase in National Libraries.
• Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) (Seoul, South Korea)
  • Hack Day
• ウィキベースワークショップ (Tokyo, Japan)
  • Wikibase workshop
  • slides
  • example notebook to add data

October 2019

• WikidataJS became WikibaseJS to highlight the fact that it can be used with any Wikibase instance: wikidata-sdk became wikibase-sdk, wikidata-edit became wikibase-edit, and wikidata-cli became wikibase-cli.
• Wikidata goes Library (Vienna, Austria)
  • Uses of Wikidata and Wikibase in France
  • How to deploy your very own Wikibase on your local machine?
• WikidataCon (Berlin, Germany)
  • Wikibase inspiration panel (video, notes)
  • Wikibase for Canadian Indigenous Content (video, slides, notes)
  • Wikibase meetup (notes)
  • Wikibase workshop (notes). The day after WikidataCon, around 50 people gathered at Wikimedia Deutschland offices. A first group worked on the installation of Wikibase instances using Docker images, with the assistance of Wikimedia Deutschland. A second group worked on specific cases, like how to upgrade existing instances.
    • What I Learned from WikidataCon 2019 in Berlin, Germany, a blog post that mention the Wikibase workshop.
• WBStack, a service to set up Wikibase instances without technical knowledge, with all the useful stack (Query Service, Quickstatements, ...), went live (announcement).
• Wikimedia Deutschland is hiring a Product Manager dedicated to Wikibase.

November 2019

• Wikimedia Deutschland removed non-functional site link groups for Wikibase installations that don't need them.
• Linking The Past, Study Day on Linked Data (Brussels, Belgium)
  • From CegeSoma spreadsheets to Linked Data: a Wikibase journey, by Anne Chardonnens, Université Libre de Bruxelles – ULB (slides)

December 2019

• Semantic Web Applications and Tools for Healthcare and Life Sciences (SWAT4(HC)LS) (Edinburgh, Scotland)
  • Creating a federated linked data landscape with Wikidata and Wikibase, by Andra Waagmeester
• Celebrating FactGrid’s Q100000: Conrad Alexandre Gérard, by Olaf Simons

Communication

At the end of 2019, the most active communication channel is by far the Wikibase Telegram group. The community also relies on Twitter and discusses on a daily basis using this channel. The mailing list is still active. IRC channels #wikibase-cug^connect and #wikibase^connect are more or less dead.

From a single Wikidata to a Wikibase ecosystem

2019 was a turning point in the life of the Wikibase project.

Main contribution tools are migrated from a dedicated use to Wikidata to a generic use with any Wikibase instance. It started with Quickstatements, WikibaseJS followed in September, and OpenRefine is on its way.

Wikimedia Deutschland, by hiring a Project Manager dedicated to Wikibase, shows that it now considers Wikibase as a whole project, distinct from Wikidata.

In 2019, several organizations started to test Wikibase with their own instances, expanding the Wikibase community. 2020 will be challenging, as it will be necessary to prove that Wikibase is a viable solution for use cases outside of Wikidata, and not only proofs of concept.