entityschema

EntitySchema, and the entity flip-flop

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This entry is part 5 of 7 in the series Wikibase Entities

The EntitySchema extension, previously called WikibaseSchema, has had an interesting life since its initial creation back in early 2019.

The main point this story is intended to highlight is that EntitySchema started off its planned life as an Entity within a Wikibase. As the development team started work on an initial version, it flipped away from an entity. And in continued development, it has slowly inched its way back towards perhaps being an Entity.

Background

As is noted in the first ADR of the extension (which was actually written in 2023), the team initially decided to try and develop the extension entirely separate from Wikibase

Although Entity Schemas relate to Wikibase entities by name and purpose, the implementation of the EntitySchema extension, at the time of this decision, is completely decoupled from Wikibase, and the concept of Entities that it adds to MediaWiki. Thus, a MediaWiki instance can theoretically operate with only the EntitySchema extension, and without the Wikibase extension installed.

Keeping EntitySchema separate from Wikibase, and the idea of an Entity it provides altogether, was a conscious decision to not marry its implementation to the inherent complexity of Wikibase itself. As well as an attempt to avoid overloading EntitySchema with unnecessary functionality so that its ongoing implementation could be done iteratively and in a more flexible, organic manner, to answer user’s needs as they are brought to us.

0001 Extend Entity Schema to support additional “traits” ADR

In a nutshell, this extension, and the developments and discussions about it over the past years (and that are still happening today), was one of the things that has led me to recently writing a series of blog posts about what I think an “entity” is from my perspective, as well as looking at some other entities, and the use of EntityDocument in the codebase.

Project kick-off

Internally within WMDE, the extension started off (having already been planned and discussed for some time) with a series of kick-off meetings in December 2018. The first of which was deemed to have too many open questions, hence the follow-up of a second. Ultimately, a team formed around the creation of the extension and this started further discussions.

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Wikibase: What is an entity?

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This entry is part 1 of 7 in the series Wikibase Entities

I left the Wikidata and Wikibase teams roughly a year ago, and at the time there were some long and deep discussions going on inside the team trying to define what an entity was, and what should and should not be an entity.

At the recent Hackathon in Tallinn, this topic resurfaced to me, as current and previous members of the Wikidata and Wikibase teams were in attendance, along with myself.

I have opinions, others have opinions, and feel that a short blog post summarizing the currently publicly written details, as well as some of the more on point things I have heard people say may help further discussion, or perhaps bring it to some kind of conclusion.

What I actually found when pulling the various written details together is they mostly describe what I would say is the ideal path forward without rewriting the world (of Wikibase), but it’s taken me a while to sit back, relax, and actually reread all the things that we have written over the years.

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