wmde

How much is “Wikibase Suite” (and deploy) used

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This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Wikibase ecosystem

At the start of this year, I spent some time visualizing the Wikibase ecosystem by making use of the data that has been collected on wikibase.world. As part of that, I tried to focus in on Wikibase Suite, trying to determine how many possible installations there were making use of the container images, and or the newer Wikibase Suite Deploy thing.

I came to the number 33, based on the fact that there were this many sites online on wikibase.world that have an exact match to the MediaWiki versions that have been released as part of the Wikibase Suite container images. And in all cases, this would be an overestimate, given that these versions would also be installed by some not using the images, so the likely number would be closer to ~16…

And of the 33 sites that might possibly be using “suite” as they are on the same version at least, probably 50% are installed via other means, so the “suite” installations probably account for ~16 of the wikibases in wikibase.world at a guesstimate, with ~50 using other methods and 711 using wikibase.cloud.

9th December 2025 Edit

Apparently this post attracted some attention, and I want to make it clear that “Wikibase suite” here is specifically talking about the packaging up of the container images / docker images into some single installable reusable magic component, and support system around it.

I personally believe the container images themselves are a great asset, and the idea of a suite of recommended extensions and applications that should be delivered alongside a Wikibase is also an asset that the ecosystem does need.

Also looking at the “Wikibase Suite Team” board for “Sprint 9 (Nov 25 – Dec 9)” federation is a key topic that is currently being worked on, and tasks like T404547 [Self-Hosting Ops] Define metric for ease of self-hosting show that the team is / has moved away from only thinking about the magic packaged layer.

Updated count

10 months on from this first look, while visiting the Wikimedia Germany offices, I found the need once again to try to come up with concrete numbers in terms of the users of Wikibase Suite, where my general motive would be to convince WMDE that resources are better spent in other places, such as supporting the underlying software, not just this fancy wrapper on top.

And with this new analysis, my revised number is roughly 18, of which 9 are possibly active, and 2 are likely lost to bot spam. You can find the list via this rather lengthy wikibase.world query.

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Visualizing Wikibase ecosystem, using wikibase.world

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This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Wikibase ecosystem

In October last year, I wrote a post starting to visualize the connections between Wikibases in the ecosystem that had been found and collected on wikibase.world thanks to my bot that I occasionally run. That post made use of the query service visualizations, and in this post I’ll take the visualizations a step further, making use of IPython notebooks and plotly.

Previously I reported the total number of Wikibases tracked in wikibase.world being around 784, with around 755 being active (however I didn’t write down exactly how I determined this). So I’m going to take another stab at that with some code backing up the determinations, rather than just my late night data ramblings.

All of the data shown in this post is generated from the IPython notebook available on Github, on 16 Feb 2025, based on the data on wikibase.world which is maintained as a best effort system.

General numbers

MetricValue
Wikibases with properties777
Wikibases with properties, and more than 10 pages600
Wikibases with properties, and more than 10 pages, and 1 or more active users264
Wikibases with properties, and more than 10 pages, and 2 or more active users129
Wikibases that link to other wikibases194
Wikibases that only link to non Wikimedia Foundation wikibases5
Wikibases that link to other wikibases, excluding Wikimedia Foundation35

A few things of note:

  • “with properties” is used, as a clear indicator that Wikibase is not only installed, but also used in at least a very basic way. (ie, it has a created Wikibase property). I would use the number of items ideally as a measure here, however as far as I can tell, this is hard to figure out?)
  • “with more than 10 pages” is my baseline measure of the site having some content, however this applies across all namespaces, so can also be wikitext pages…
  • “active users” are taken from MediaWiki statistics, and apply across all namespaces. These numbers also rely on MediaWiki being correctly maintained and these numbers actually being updated. (Users who have performed an action in the last 30 days)
  • “link to other wikibases” are links extracted from sites by Addbot either via external links or specific properties that state they are links to other wikibases. (The code is not pretty, but gives us an initial view)

And summarized in words:

  • 264 Wikibases with some content that have been edited in the past 30 days
  • 194 Wikibases link in some way to other Wikibases
    • Excluding links to Wikidata and Commons, this number comes down to 35 (So Wikidata is very much the centre)

And of course, take all of this with a pinch of salt, these numbers are an initial stab at trying to have an overview of the ecosystem.

An updated web

My October post included some basic visualizations from the query service of wikibase.world.

However, it’s time to get a little more fancy and interactive. (As well as showing all wikibases, not just the linked ones)

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Wikibase a history

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I have had the pleasure of being part of the Wikibase journey one way or another since 2013 when I first joined Wikimedia Germany to work on Wikidata. That long-running relation to the project should put me in a fairly good position to give a high-level overview of the history, from both a technical and higher-level perspective. So here it goes.

For those that don’t know Wikibase is code that powers wikidata.org, and a growing number of other sites. If you want to know more read about it on Wikipedia, or the Wikibase website.

For this reason, a lot of the early timeline is quite heavy on the Wikidata side. There are certainly some key points missing, if you think they are worthy of mentioning then leave a comment or reach out!

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Pre-launch Announcement of Wikibase.Cloud [WikidataCon Writeup]

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This entry is part 10 of 12 in the series WBStack

WikidataCon 2021 was in October 2021, and one of the sessions that I spoke in was a “Pre-launch Announcement and Preview of Wikibase.Cloud”.

The recording is now up on YouTube, and below you’ll find a write-up summary of what was said.

You can also find:

So what is wikibase.cloud?

It’s a new platform that has yet to be launched, that is based on WBStack code, but that will be managed and maintained by Wikimedia Deutschland (or Wikimedia Germany).

This is a Wikibase as a service platform, that exists to offer open knowledge projects a new way to create their own Wikibase very quickly and very easily.

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SMWCon 2021, Development environments using containers

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SMWCon 2021 is happening as I write this post. I was invited to give a short talk as part of a MediaWiki and Docker workshop organized by Cindy Cicalese on day 2. As I am writing a month of blog posts I’m going to turn my slides into a more digestible and searchable online blog post.

The original slides can still be found on Google Slides, and when the conference recording is up you should find it on the associated event page.

Disclaimer

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WBStack in 2021 and the future

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This entry is part 9 of 12 in the series WBStack

2021 is nearly over, WBStack is over 2 years old (initially announced back in 2019), and has continued to grow. The future is bright with wikibase.cloud looking to be launched by Wikimedia Deutschland in the new year (announced at WikidataCon 2021), and as a result, the code under the surface has had the most eyes on it since its inception.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the developments this year, and the progress that WBStack has made.

Current Usage

WBStack now has 148 individual user accounts registered on the platform that enabled wiki creation. These accounts have created 510 wikis with Wikibase installed since the platform was initially put online, and 335 of those wikis are still currently published (the other 175 have been deleted).

Nov 2019April 2020May 2020Nov 2021Dec 2021
Platform Users387076139148
Non deleted Wikis145306335
All Wikis65178226476510
Pages1.4 million1.9 million
Edits200,000295,0004.1 million4.6 million

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Tech Lead Digest – August 2021

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This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series Tech Lead Digest (wmde)

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 or no experience in SPARQL.

The Wikibase fall release, which will be compatible with MediaWiki 1.36 will be made in the next month or so. At some point in the next 3-6 months we will likely also make a Wikibase 1.37 release. Keep an eye out on the mailing list for these.

Work is about to wrap up on the next iteration of Wikibase Federated Properties which will enable the use of properties from multiple sources at once, such as Wikidata and also the local Wikibase.

Work continues on the Wikidata Mismatch Finder. You can read more about this future tool on wikidata.org.

The campsite worked on many other things. Most notably Ladsgroup spotted that SpamBlacklist was rendering content on Wikidata twice (phabricator). This fix resulted in a rather significant improvement in save times for Wikidata, and users of Wikibase and SpamBlacklist in combination.

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Tech Lead Digest – July 2021

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This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series Tech Lead Digest (wmde)

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 / Wikibase projects, as well as my regular digest and reading.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑Wikidata & Wikibase

Work continues on the next iteration of Wikibase Federated Properties (phabricator board). This work will allow use of properties from multiple sources at once, such as Wikidata and also the local Wikibase.

Work also continues on the Wikidata Mismatch Finder (phabricator board) which is a tool to enable finding mismatches between Wikidata’s data and data in other databases.

The Campsite continues to work on a variety of smaller tasks, in the last month including a new release of our Design System, dealing with the Query Builder security review and preparing for deployment, performing some maintenance on WBStack including preparing for 1.36 and adding Elasticsearch. We also continue to support a university team in deploying a new Property Suggester algorithm (announcement coming soon), work towards tagging all edits made from the UI (T236893), as well as many other smaller tasks.

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Tackling Technical Debt, big and small, in Wikidata and Wikibase

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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 should be hidden. The reality is that technical debt is a fact of life when code iteratively changes to deliver product solutions.

Striving for programming perfection is great in principle, but ultimately code is meant to deliver features, and there is always a good, better and best approach, with many other variations in-between.

Over the last year at Wikimedia Deutschland we have worked on refining how we record, triage, prioritize and tackle technical debt within the Wikidata and Wikibase product family.

There are many thoughts out there about how to track, tackle, and prioritize technical debt. This post is meant to represent the current status of the Wikidata / Wikibase team. Hopefully you find this useful.

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Tech Lead Digest – Q2 2021

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This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series Tech Lead Digest (wmde)

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

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