An introduction to WBStack

November 6, 2019 8 By addshore
This entry is part 1 of 12 in the series WBStack

WBStack is a project that I have been working on for a couple of years that finally saw the light of day at Wikidatacon 2019. It has gone through a couple of different names along the way, MWaas, WBaas, WikWiki, OpenCura and finally WBStack.

The idea behind the project is to provide Wikibase and surrounding services, such as a blazegraph query service, query service ui, quick statements, and others on a shared platform where installs, upgrades and maintenance are handeled centrally.

The initial release is very much an MVP (minimum viable product) aimed to get people talking about about the idea and to have a few keen users trying out the project. The registration is hidden behind an invite code system (if you want one then get in touch). Currently there are roughly 20 users on the project with 30 Wikibase installs, and some early bugs are being ironed out.

You can watch the demo of WBStack in its initial version in the video below at roughly 19:07. The video is also availbile here.

I’d like to thank Rhizome for supporting the project starting from this month by covering the initial infrastructure / hosting costs. You can read more about them on Wikipedia or by visiting their website. There is also a great blog post on the Wikimedia Foundation blog talking about their use of Wikibase.

I’m going to continue working on this project in my spare time, hopfully working on the features that matter most to the people that are already using it first, alongside any needed technical stuff.

Keep an eye out for more blog posts relating to WBStack. I’ll try to keep this blog updated.

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