Tech Lead Digest – Q3/4 2021
It’s time for the 5th instalment of my tech lead digest posts. I switched to monthly for 2 months, but decided to back down to quarterlyish. You can find the other digests by checking out the series. 🧑‍🤝‍🧑Wikidata & Wikibase The biggest event of note in the past months was WikidataCon 2021 which took place…
Reflection on filling a new Wikidata item
A few days ago I watched a Twitch stream by Molly / GorillaWarfare where they created the Louis W. Roberts English Wikipedia page. I decided to follow along and populate the matching Wikidata item (Q109662645) with as much information as I could from the same references that were being found for the Wikipedia article. Along…
Tech Lead Digest – August 2021
Welcome to the 4th instalment of my Wikidata & Wikibase Tech lead Digest for August 2021. For previous instalments see Q1, Q2 & July. 🧑‍🤝‍🧑Wikidata & Wikibase The Wikidata Query Builder has been deployed. The Wikidata Query Builder provides a visual interface for building a simple Wikidata query. It is ideal for users with little…
Tech Lead Digest – July 2021
Welcome to the third installment of my tech lead digest digest. In order to allow myself some extra space to write, and also to provide these public updates and thoughts on a more regular basis, this is now becoming a monthly digest. I’m going to try to incorporate some of the ongoings from other Wikidata…
What happens in Wikibase when you make a new Item?
A recent Wikibase email list post on the topic of Wikibase and bulk imports caused me to write up a mostly human readable version of what happens, in what order, and when, for Wikibase action API edits, for the specific case of item creation. There are a fair few areas that could be improved and…
Tackling Technical Debt, big and small, in Wikidata and Wikibase
If you’re working with legacy code, chances are you’ve inherited some technical debt. Infact, if you’re working with code, chances you’re already surrounded by technical debt of varying sizes, at least by some measures. Some believe that technical debt is something to be avoided, and that technical debt that exists is a dirty secret that…
Tech Lead Digest – Q2 2021
This is the second installment of my tech lead digest digest with my tech lead hat on for the Wikidata Wikibase team. This is a digest of my internal digest emails. These contain lots of links to reading, podcasts and general goings on that could be useful to a wider audience. 🧑‍🤝‍🧑Wikidata & Wikibase Federated…
Tech Lead Digest – Q1 2021
At some point last year I started sending a weekly internal digest to the Wikidata Wikibase team with my tech lead hat on. The emails are internal only but contain lots of links to reading, podcasts and general goings on that could be useful to everyone. So here is my first Wikidata Wikibase tech lead…
WBStack setting changes, Federated properties, Wikidata entity mapping & more
During the first 3 months of 2021, some Wikimedia Deutschland engineers, from the Wikidata / Wikibase team, spent some time working on WBStack as part of an effort to explore the WBaaS (Wikibase as a service) topic during the year, as outlined by the development plan. We want to make it easier for non-Wikimedia projects…
WBStack Infrastructure
WBStack is a platform allowing shared scalable hosting of Wikibase and surrounding services. A year ago I made an initial post covering the state of WBStack infrastructure. Since then some things have changed, and I have also had more time to create a clear diagram. So it is time for the 2021 edition. WBStack currently…