Dear Wikibase and Wikidata Communities,
As mentioned in our latest announcements about upcoming strategic changes,
we decided to pour our energy into ecosystem-related activities such as
federation and data governance. As you might know, our Linked Open Data
Strategy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LinkedOpenData/Strategy2021/Wikibase> is
built on the idea that our products are capable of building synergies as
well as growing sustainably.
With this research project, we hope to get a more nuanced understanding of
which projects are perceived to belong into which product category. We aim
to synthesize and map how people currently use the three LOD products, what
their desired use cases are, and where the boundaries between these
platforms may need clarification or additional support.
This process is part of a broader strategy to ensure our hosting
infrastructure remains sustainable and mission-aligned.
A key outcome will be a clearer understanding of:
-
What kinds of projects are best suited for each LOD product
-
Where overlap, duplication, or ambiguity exists
-
How we can make more mission-aligned, predictable decisions on growth
and hosting
Process Design
You will be invited to participate in an asynchronous card sort exercise
where you will be asked to sort imagined projects into four categories:
-
1 - Wikibase Cloud
-
2 - Wikidata
-
3 - Suite or other ways of Wikibase hosting
-
4 - Wikibase is not a suitable software for this use case
Participants will be asked to explain their thought process aloud so that
we can also ensure that we’re considering the full dimensions of each use
case (e.g., technical needs, scope, resource requirements). The results
will inform product strategy across WBC, WBS, and WD—while also offering
key insights into ambivalent or complex areas that require further
discussion.
This approach ensures everyone can participate in their own time, without
needing to attend multiple meetings.
We’re offering two ways to participate:
1. Card Sort Research Activity (Primary Method)
-
Asynchronous (early- mid-July)
-
Approx. 30 minutes
-
No technical expertise required
-
Focused on sorting and classifying use cases
-
Recorded screen and microphone
-
Optional: follow-up interview (if you’d like to talk more)
2. Extended Stakeholder Group (Optional Additional Involvement)
Includes:
-
Asynchronous activity (above)
-
Research insights discussion (synchronous, 30-45 minutes, end of July)
-
Async policy draft review (end of August)
-
Group session (August, 1.5–2 hours)
Total time: ~3.5 hours
Compensation: 35 EUR (if eligible)
Participation
We aim to recruit at least 30, ideally up to 50 community members across
the LOD ecosystem to participate in the research activities, including:
-
Wikibase Cloud users
-
Self-hosted Wikibase users
-
Wikidata users who are invested in the broader Wikibase ecosystem.
-
At least 10 marginalized knowledge holders
Join us!
We will send a link to participate in the card-sort within the next week.
If you would like to participate in the Extended Stakeholder Group, please
reach out to us via email: annie.kim(a)wikimedia.de. We will share the
opportunities as they come up, likely at the end of July and the end of
August, respectively.
Thank you for your continued care and contributions. We're looking forward
to exploring this research with you! :)
On behalf of the Linked Open Data Ecosystem,
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
(Apologies for cross-posting)
The European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC) is a major venue for academic
research and developments in the area of the Semantic Web and Knowledge
Graphs. The 23rd edition will take place from May 10 to 14, 2026, in
Dubrovnik, Croatia.
The Posters and Demos Track of ESWC 2026 welcomes submissions for
presenting late-breaking results, ongoing research, innovative ideas, and
early-stage prototypes within the Semantic Web domain. This track
encourages discussions and interaction between researchers and
practitioners, facilitating feedback on emerging work and demonstrations of
cutting-edge technologies.
Important Dates
Submission deadline March 03, 2026
Notification of acceptance March 31, 2026
Camera-ready final version April 15, 2026
All deadlines are 23:59 anywhere on earth (UTC-12).
More information: http://2026.eswc-conferences.org/calls/poster-demo/
Posters and Demos Chairs
Pasquale Lisena
EURECOM - France
pasquale.lisena(a)eurecom.fr
Marta Sabou
Vienna University Economics and Business (WU) - Austria
marta.sabou(a)wu.ac.at
Hello everyone,
Our first Wikidata + Wikibase Office Hour
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Events#Office_hours> for the year
will be held on Wednesday, January 14th, at 17:00 UTC (18:00 Berlin)
on the Wikidata
Telegram channel <https://t.me/joinchat/IeCRo0j5Uag1qR4Tk8Ftsg>.
*What’s the Wikidata + Wikibase Office Hour?*
It’s your chance to:
✅ Hear about what the WMDE development team has been working on and our
plans for the year ahead
✅ Ask questions, discuss topics that matter to you, and share your thoughts
on all things Wikidata and Wikibase
✅ Connect with fellow community members and discover what everyone’s been
up to.
Happy new year!
Cheers,
--
Mohammed S. Abdulai
*Community Communications Manager, Wikidata*
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0) 30 577 116 2466
https://wikimedia.de
Grab a spot in my calendar for a chat: cal.com/masssly.
A lot is happening around Wikidata - Keep up to date!
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Status_updates> 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 Vorstände: Franziska Heine
Hi everyone,
We’re excited to announce that starting today, mobile statement editing is
available as a beta feature on Wikidata.
Following your feedback from our earlier prototypes, we’re now rolling out
live editing for String and Wikibase Entity ID datatypes directly in the
mobile view. This marks a big step toward making contributing to Wikidata
easier and more accessible for editors using mobile devices.
How you can help us refine
-
Enable the Beta feature: Go to your Preferences --> Beta features -->
check "Edit Wikidata Items on mobile devices" and save.
-
Try mobile editing: Visit the Wikidata Item Wikidata Sandbox (Q4115189)
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4115189> on your mobile device (or use
mobile view on your desktop)
-
Test the edits: Try editing statements with the supported String and
Wikibase Entity ID datatypes
-
Share your feedback: Tell us what works, what doesn’t, and what you’d
like to see next on the project discussion page: Mobile editing of
statements
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:Usability_and_usefulness/Item_e…>
Please note: This initial release supports only String and Entity ID
datatypes. Support for additional datatypes will follow in upcoming
releases.
If you’re interested in participating in deeper testing or user interviews
with our UX team, sign up here
<https://greatquestion.co/wikimediadeutschland/bo2e7e2a/apply> to join our
mobile editing testing group.
Thanks a lot for your help.
--
Mohammed S. Abdulai
*Community Communications Manager, Wikidata*
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0) 30 577 116 2466
https://wikimedia.de
Grab a spot in my calendar for a chat: cal.com/masssly.
A lot is happening around Wikidata - Keep up to date!
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Status_updates> 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 Vorstände: Franziska Heine
Hi all,
I hope this is the right place for this discussion :)
First of all, as developer of software for RDF Linked Data
consumption, I am naturally delighted that Wikidata serves Linked Data
and supports content negotiation (not many services get it right).
However, IMO, the amount of meta-triples not relevant to the requested
entity, and the sheer size of the RDF data that it causes, make
Wikidata's RDF responses pretty much unusable.
Let's take a single entity as an example:
curl -L -H "Accept: text/turtle" 'https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1748'
The size of the Turtle response is 1.6MB!
All of the schema metadata such as property and class descriptions are
not needed as they can be discovered by dereferencing the respective
term URIs:
wdno:P2960 a owl:Class ;
owl:complementOf _:e8842935d39a233def3d267ae3737d8c .
_:e8842935d39a233def3d267ae3737d8c a owl:Restriction ;
owl:onProperty wdt:P2960 ;
owl:someValuesFrom owl:Thing .
p:P518 a owl:ObjectProperty .
psv:P518 a owl:ObjectProperty .
pqv:P518 a owl:ObjectProperty .
prv:P518 a owl:ObjectProperty .
wdt:P518 a owl:ObjectProperty .
ps:P518 a owl:ObjectProperty .
pq:P518 a owl:ObjectProperty .
pr:P518 a owl:ObjectProperty .
wd:Q1775415 a wikibase:Item ;
rdfs:label "feminine"@en ;
skos:prefLabel "feminine"@en ;
schema:name "feminine"@en ;
schema:description "grammatical gender"@en .
and so on and so forth.
Then I would argue that the provenance statements such as
<http://www.wikidata.org/entity/statement/Q1748-cfb94fd5-464b-1b83-a513-dd75…>
are also *not* necessary for the majority of use cases of the majority
of users.
I suppose they are included to provide a complete and "truthy"
response, but by doing so the usability of the data is diminished. I
think the provenance statements should be removed from the default
responses and relegated to some "complete" or "truthy" profile with a
distinct URI, linked to from the default response.
What do you think?
Martynas
atomgraph.com