Wikibase a history
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…
Pre-launch Announcement of Wikibase.Cloud [WikidataCon Writeup]
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: Original conference schedule entry Etherpad notes for the lightning talk…
SMWCon 2021, Development environments using containers
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…
WBStack in 2021 and the future
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…
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…
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 2020 Update 1
WBStack has now been up and running for 6 months. During that time it has helped 70 people create 178 MediaWiki installs running Wikibase, a SPARQL query service and quickstatements, all at the click of a button, with a total of around 200,000 edits across all sites. The most active site is currently virus-taxonomy.wiki.opencura.com which…