Dear Wikibase Cloud Community,

We’re excited to share some important updates on Wikibase Cloud’s direction for the rest of 2025 🎉

First of all, we want to thank you. We know that many of you are investing significant time and energy into this platform, and we’re deeply grateful for your support.

As we move forward, we want to provide more context about our priorities and elaborate on the changes we’re making to ensure a sustainable, mission-aligned future for Wikibase Cloud.

One reason why Wikibase exists is because of its capacity to support Wikipedia and Wikidata communities. The software helps to redistribute certain types of specialized knowledge currently hosted on Wikidata across multiple dedicated Wikibase instances. This reduces the load on Wikidata’s technical infrastructure but also lessens the burden on the Wikidata community, allowing them to focus on curating encyclopedic content rather than handling every specialized dataset contributed to Wikidata.

In the past years, we built and developed Wikibase Suite and Cloud in ways that benefited the products on their own but not necessarily as databases that could be potentially paired up, connected among each other and become part of a greater ecosystem.

After thoughtful consideration, we decided to shift our focus towards enhancing the interconnectedness of the knowledge being re-distributed within the Linked Open Graph and ensuring responsible and impactful hosting practices.

We will do so by working towards more facilitation practices of federated querying https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/Federation#Federated_querying (querying multiple Wikibase instances at once via SPARQL) as well as establishing clear data governance policies. This work will support the entire Linked Open Data https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LinkedOpenData/Strategy2021 graph, including Wikidata, self-hosted Wikibase instances and of course, Wikibase Cloud.

Our Priorities for 2025

1.

Federated Queries: We are dedicated to improving the federated querying experience. This will allow data from multiple Wikibase instances to be accessed and integrated, enabling new insights and creating a foundation for meaningful data collaboration across the broader ecosystem. This work is essential to building a distributed and resilient Linked Open Data graph. 2.

Data Governance: As part of Wikimedia’s commitment to free, accessible, and educational content, we’ll be implementing policies to ensure that the data hosted in Wikidata and Wikibase Cloud’s infrastructure reflects Wikimedia’s mission and is compliant with the law. This means establishing clearer guidelines on the types of knowledge that can be hosted on Wikidata and Wikibase Cloud and on aligning the standards for representation of knowledge across databases so that the platform remains aligned with Wikimedia’s values. This governance work will be shaped at the ecosystem level to ensure consistent standards across the Linked Open Data graph. We will facilitate community conversations to ensure a collaborative approach to data governance decisions.

What This Means for You

-

Focus on platform stability and sustainability: To fully concentrate on federated queries and data governance, we will not be adding features unrelated to these releases to the product this year. Our resources will be dedicated to building a stable and sustainable platform that supports interconnected knowledge while ensuring responsible data hosting. -

Changes to Sign-Up and Compliance Requirements: Moving forward, we will be implementing a more structured sign-up process and compliance checks to align with our data governance policies. We aim to provide a clear and transparent process that respects both Wikimedia’s standards and the needs of our community. -

Continued Product Maintenance with Selective Instance Support: We are committed to keeping the platform operational for all current users. However, instances that clearly won’t meet the new data governance requirements may need to transition to self-hosted solutions. We’ll work with affected users to make this process as smooth as possible, providing migration support and resources for those who need to relocate their data.

What Success Looks Like

Our objectives and success indicators for 2025 are being prepared for publication. They reflect our commitment to building a meaningful and inclusive Wikibase ecosystem:

-

Understanding Instance Purposes: By the end of the year, we aim to understand the purpose of most of the active instances running on Cloud, differentiating between knowledge-sharing and experimental use cases. This understanding will help us create a balanced, mission-aligned community of instances. -

Defining Data Governance: Through community-centered discussions, we will document and implement clear data governance policies that outline which data and use cases are suitable for Wikibase Cloud. We will establish processes for evaluating and re-evaluating instances, ensuring that they align with our mission. -

Increasing Federation Capabilities: Our work on federated querying will enable knowledge sharing across instances, helping to relieve some of Wikidata’s load while providing a collaborative data ecosystem. Success here means that interconnectedness between instances improves measurably. -

Inclusivity for Marginalized Knowledge: We’re committed to making Wikibase Cloud an inclusive space for marginalized knowledge. Our policies will be explicitly designed to welcome and support instances that represent marginalized or underrepresented knowledge.

Moving Forward Together

We recognize that these changes may introduce new considerations for our users, and we’re here to support you every step of the way. We believe that with your continued engagement, we can create a sustainable and mission-aligned platform that serves diverse knowledge communities. As pioneers in this evolving ecosystem, your contributions are helping to shape a responsible, interconnected knowledge network that will have lasting impact.

We’ve also set up a survey to update our understanding of who is a part of the Wikibase Cloud and Suite ecosystem, as well as to provide a space for Wikibase Cloud users to share their thoughts on the new strategic update. We ask about which product(s) and features they use, for what purpose(s), and how their experience is with them towards continuing to support our community's needs in the next chapter of our product development.

Link to survey can be found: here https://wikimedia.sslsurvey.de/Shared-Wikibase-Survey-Q2-2025-

Thank you for being part of our journey. If you have any questions or would like further details, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

We’re looking forward to working together to make Wikibase Cloud a platform that is both sustainable and impactful for years to come.

With gratitude, Valerie on behalf of the Wikibase Cloud Team at Wikimedia Deutschland

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