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_d.... 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@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

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