Dear Wikibase Cloud Community,
As communicated before, we would like to invite you to an open discussion
on the 28th of January to build more clarity and context about the hosting
policy.
Detailed information on how to participate below:
When: 28th of January, 16:00–17:00 (Berlin time, CET see
https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1769612400 for your timezone)
Where: meet.google.com/oio-mfyv-cnb
Please give us a small heads-up and let us know if you will be there :)
You are welcome to mention specific topics that you want to talk about
within this Etherpad:
https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Hosting_Policy_Discussion
<https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Hosting_Policy_Discussion>.
We're looking forward to seeing you there!
Valerie Wollinger (She/Her)
Community Communications Manager Wikibase
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0https://wikimedia.de
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe
now <https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>.
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our
vision!https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR
23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende
Vorständin: Franziska Heine
Dear Wikibase Cloud Community,
We wanted to give a short heads-up to the concerns raised about the recent
announcement on the hosting policy draft; see:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikibase-cloud@lists.wikimedia.…
.
We carefully went through your comments on the Telegram chat and wrote some
action points for us to rethink framing and ideas. It was helpful; thanks
for caring about this.
We would like to invite you to an open discussion on the 28th of January to
go more in-depth and explore what is needed to improve the policy. Our UX
researcher, Annie, will guide us through the meeting.
Detailed information on how to participate below:
When: 28th of January, 16:00–17:00 (Berlin time, CET see
https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1769612400 for your timezone)
Where: meet.google.com/oio-mfyv-cnb
Let’s move on to some of your concerns about the current draft.
We recognized that there were some overlapping concerns that most of you
agreed on.
One of them being concerns on our framing around sustainability and limited
resources.
We wish to clarify some things here.
-
The policy exists to help us spend our resources more intentionally,
rather than indiscriminately.
-
The goal is not to reduce usage or costs, but to understand who we are
spending our infrastructure and team capacity on, and to be able to decide
whether that aligns with the role we want Wikibase Cloud to play in the
ecosystem.
-
In practice, this means we can’t be a generic free hosting service for
anyone and any purpose. We need more visibility into how the platform is
used and the ability to say no to use cases that clearly contradict
Wikimedia Movement values and encourage use cases that align with the
Cloud’s intended goal (lowering barriers to participation
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/Wikibase.cloud/Hosting_policy_draft…>).
For non-disruptive instances, that resource use is not a concern; it only
becomes relevant in cases of disproportionate load or problematic behavior.
Another one was the perceived judgment about treating “ability to
self-host” as a concerning signal. This was related to concerns about us
discouraging low-risk experimentation on Cloud.
First, thanks for flagging these. Using the ability to self-host as a
concerning signal might not have been the best way to frame our intention,
and we will look into reframing it within the policy. Other than that, we
would like to emphasize that the hosting policy assumes that short-term
experimentation will be available to everyone through the ‘Temporary by
default
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/Wikibase.cloud/Hosting_policy_draft…>’
rule.
There has also been confusion around decision-making regarding which signal
would turn into which actions. It helped us see that we can do a better job
explaining how we weighed certain indicators when making approval decisions.
Some of the concerns, just like the distinction of personal use Wikibase,
need further clarification and exploration with you. That’s why we are
hoping for your participation in our pilot project - which we will talk
more about soon-, where we will look at real instances and assess how the
policy performs against real-life use cases.
Regarding the proposal to change formatting from a table to a list: while
it might improve readability, it would also remove the explicit
relationship between positive and negative signals within the same
category. In some cases (for example, Target Audience or License), having
both signals in the same row is intentional and helps show that they are
two ends of the same dimension.
Apart from that, there’s been confusion around why the Wikidata policies
were mentioned in the Hosting Policy draft.
Thanks for sharing this perspective; we were not aware that our intended
boundaries were unclear in the section where we mentioned the policies.
It appears that some of you interpreted the mention of Wikidata policies as
implying that these policies would also apply to Wikibase Cloud instances.
This interpretation was not our intent. The references were meant to
provide context about the broader governance landscape of the Wikibase
ecosystem, not to suggest that Wikidata policies are enforceable on Cloud.
We want to add here that we aim to host content that does not fall within
Wikidata’s notability policy to take the load off Wikidata and instead
distribute it within the ecosystem.
Other than that, there has been confusion around the relationship of our
Terms of Use and the upcoming Hosting Policy, and in particular about the
clause that allows WMDE to suspend instances “without cause''.
The hosting policy is not a binding legal document (and there is a section
in it that explains just that). It is meant as a shared understanding with
the community about what kinds of use are acceptable on Wikibase Cloud and
how we intend to make hosting decisions.
The Terms of Use remain the legal contract with users. The clause in the
ToU allowing suspension without cause with 2 weeks notice is the formal
mechanism that will enable us to act on the hosting policy in practice,
without turning the policy itself into a legal document.
We will make sure to restate this clearly and understandably.
Next to this, we would like to clarify what we mean by ‘prioritizing,’ as
this has been a vague framework to some of you.
Some of you understood “prioritizing” as meaning that instances would be
compared against each other and that at some point some instances might be
deprioritized or removed in favor of others.
That is not what we meant. There is no specific technical or cost limit we
are trying to fit into, and no intention to compare instances against each
other or to accept one at the expense of another.
What we meant by “prioritizing” in the context of the hosting policy is
different. We did not mean comparing instances to each other. We meant that
alignment with the intended goals of Wikibase Cloud results in more, which
in turn improves an instance’s chances of staying hosted.
We will look into rewording this in the policy to discourage further
confusion. Thanks for flagging it!
Generally, we also recognized that there were many confusions around the
wording we used to describe some of the concepts we wanted the Hosting
Policy to reflect, such as licensing criteria, mission-aligned use,
activity and owner availability, or the Contributor’s Economy Sector.
We will look closely at them and come up with ways on how to clarify and
possibly reframe them.
Lastly, we recognized that some of you are not sure about whether you want
to remain with Wikibase Cloud, as well as whether your project will be
mission-aligned and within the framework of the Hosting Policy. If you are
unsure about whether your project fits within those criteria, please get in
touch. We're happy to take a look at it together!
Some of you mentioned a wish to possibly migrate without knowing at hand
how that would be made possible, e.g., through data dumps or other ways.
We realized that this topic should have its own section within the policy,
and we will work towards offering different paths on how to migrate your
instances if you wish to do so, though we do believe this will not be
necessary for the vast majority of current instances.
Did you make it until here? Wow!
Thank you 🙂
We hope to see you on the 28th for our next discussion meeting.
Stay tuned!
Valerie on behalf of Wikibase Cloud
Community Communications Manager Wikibase
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0https://wikimedia.de
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe
now <https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>.
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our
vision!https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR
23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende
Vorständin: Franziska Heine
Dear everyone,
We are still looking to receive more feedback from you on the current
Hosting Policy draft.
For context, check the latest announcement:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikibase-cloud@lists.wikimedia.…
.
We invite you to read the draft and share your thoughts following this
link:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/Wikibase.cloud/Hosting_policy_draft_.
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/Wikibase.cloud/Hosting_policy_draft…>
We
set up a dedicated feedback page that you can use to share your thoughts on
the policy with us:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikibase/Wikibase.cloud/Hosting_policy_d...
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikibase/Wikibase.cloud/Hosting_policy_…>
.
If you wish to provide us with your feedback through other means, you can
e-mail Annie Kim (WMDE) - UX Researcher for Wikibase Cloud - too via
annie.kim(a)wikimedia.de.
Cheers!
Valerie Wollinger (She/Her)
Community Communications Manager Wikibase
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0https://wikimedia.de
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe
now <https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>.
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our
vision!https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR
23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende
Vorständin: Franziska Heine
Dear Wikibase Cloud Community,
Those of you who participated in our data governance card sort might have
been waiting for this already. Today, we’re finally sharing the draft of
our new policy for Wikibase Cloud and would be grateful for your feedback.
Today, Wikibase Cloud is governed only by its Terms of Use
<https://www.wikibase.cloud/terms-of-use> and Privacy Policy
<https://www.wikibase.cloud/privacy-policy>. This new policy we are
drafting will sit alongside those documents and focus specifically on who
and what Cloud can sustainably host. Since we opened Cloud for public
sign-ups in open beta, anyone has been able to create an instance and keep
it online indefinitely. This model is no longer sustainable: our
infrastructure, budget, and support capacity are limited, and we want to
ensure Cloud remains healthy, stable, and available, especially for those
with fewer technical and financial resources.
To ensure that those wishing to remain long-term can do so, we are planning
to implement a formal review process. We expect that the majority of
instances today that are meant for long-term hosting do fulfill the
expected criteria, but please make sure to double-check the policy draft to
see how your Wikibase fits within them. In doubt or feeling excluded,
please reach out and help us clarify. We hope to ensure a sustainable and
secure place within the ecosystem for all those longing to give their data
a long-term home. At the same time, we remain committed to reducing
barriers to lightweight experimentation and early exploration of Wikibase.
Before finalizing the policy, we would like to hear from you—especially
people actively using or planning to use Wikibase Cloud and those working
with linked open data, open knowledge, or knowledge equity.
We aim to build a policy that is transparent, reliable, and aligned
with Wikimedia’s
mission <https://wikimediafoundation.org/who-we-are/mission/>—and we want
to do this in a way that respects and supports the communities that are
using and contributing to Wikibase Cloud today.
Timeline:
-
Feedback collection until January 19 2026
-
Updated draft shared for community feedback: February 2026
-
First version of the policy officially published: March 2026
-
Pilot of the review process with a subset of instances: Q2 2026
-
Iteration and expansion of the process to the rest of the platform: Q3-Q4
2026
We invite you to read the draft and share your thoughts following this
link:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/Wikibase.cloud/Hosting_policy_draft….
We set up a dedicated feedback page that you can use to share your thoughts
on the policy with us:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikibase/Wikibase.cloud/Hosting_policy_….
If you wish to provide us with your feedback through other means, you can
e-mail Annie Kim (WMDE) - UX Researcher for Wikibase Cloud - too via
annie.kim(a)wikimedia.de.
Thank you so much for your help in this!
On behalf of Wikibase Cloud
Valerie Wollinger (She/Her)
Community Communications Manager Wikibase
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0https://wikimedia.de
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe
now <https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>.
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our
vision!https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR
23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende
Vorständin: Franziska Heine