The “Federated Properties” feature allows / allowed a local Wikibase instance to access and utilise properties directly from a remote Wikibase, primarily Wikidata. Its primary purpose is to enable partial federation between a local Wikibase and Wikidata, broadening the base of available data without needing to create a property set from scratch.
I’m split between using the present and past tense here, as all of this code still exists within the Wikibase extension, however no one has used it since 2022, and it certainly doesn’t seem to be on the short or medium term (or maybe even long term) roadmaps.
This overview comes from the Wikibase – Federated Properties Phabricator project, which I’ll quote the whole of here for prosperity.
Federated Properties v2 (2021)
An initiative to give users the ability to access remote properties from their local Wikibase and use them in combination with custom local properties. The primary use case is enabling partial federation between a Wikibase and Wikidata. This version of the feature will allow you to:
- Opt-in to use Wikidata’s properties in addition to your own custom local properties
- Create and view statements about local entities that contain both local and federated properties
- Query your Wikibase using both local and federated properties
Federated Properties v1 (2020-2021)
An initiative to give users the ability to access remote properties from their local Wikibase (no local properties were possible in this MVP). This version was launched in the Wikibase Spring Release in May 2021.
As far as I remember, the project died with v2, and I don’t even recall if v2 really saw the light of day outside WMDE internal testing and or hidden testing on wikibase.cloud.
