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Metabase

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 Introduction

Metabase is a platform (a Wikibase instance in Wikibase Cloud) set up by Wikimedia Sverige. The goal is to collect information about the activities and documents of the Wikimedia movement as Linked Open Data. Wikibase Cloud offers us a possibility to experiment with this innovative project without having to adhere to the relevance criteria and modeling practices of Wikidata; at the same time, we are trying to stay as close to Wikidata structures as reasonably possible.

A commonly highlighted problem limiting capacity building has been the lack of findability of existing resources such as training material, reports, and case studies. The hope is that Metabase will be able to help to alleviate this issue by improving searchability and findability of the knowledge and experience of the Wikimedia Movement. The first stage of its development, which is currently ongoing as of 2023, is to focus on the content produced by Wikimedia Sverige, such as data about its reports, events, projects etc. with a special focus on initiatives connected to Content Partnerships. This data is currently stored on the chapter's wiki in text form. By making the data structured, we hope to be able to get a better overview of what the chapter has done over the years.

In the next stage we aim to scale the efforts to add a broader set of data around content partnerships from the international Movement this includes adding data on informational resources requested through the Content Partnership Hub Helpdesk and identified by the connected Working Groups. The hope is that we can build further on this foundation to then invite other Wikimedia affiliates and interest groups to join in and contribute with their data.

 Get started

Some reading material about the project and our work:

• Get started by learning about what sort of data is included and how it is modeled.
• Learn about the personas we imagine could use Metabase to get an insight into our vision for the project.
• If you come from Wikidata, learn about the practical differences of Metabase.

 Explore

Here are some examples of the types of items Metabase works with (Find more)

Use the queries to find all items of a particular type.

• [QUERY] document (Q21)
  • application (Q43): Strategic Inclusion of Library Data in Wikidata 2018 ‒ application (Q74)
  • final report (Q76): GLAM 2021 ‒ final report (Q21951)
  • slide deck (Q62): Wikidata at the museum (Q21958)

• [QUERY] event (Q40)
  • conference (Q42): DHNB2023 (Q21956)
  • presentation (Q48): Wikidata for authority control: sharing museum knowledge with the world (Q21980)
  • edit-a-thon (Q41): Metadata edit-a-thon at the Swedish Air Force Museum (Q82)
  • batch upload (Q22186): 2021 bilder år 2021 ‒ upload from the Museum of Gothenburg (Q22187)
• [QUERY] project (Q2)
  • Content partnerships support (Q1)
  • (subproject) Gothenburg museums – 2021 images year 2021 (Q21932)

More queries to explore:

• Map of all event locations
• Number of events 2021-2022 and total number of participants
• People and how many documents they have authored

 Resources

Useful links and resources:

• Query interface: https://metabase.wikibase.cloud/query/
• Query examples
• Sandbox (Q21897)
• Quickstatements - Manual

 In other places

What has been published about Metabase on other platforms:

• MSIG Grant used to fund some of the work on Metabase: Capacity building in the Content Partnerships Hub
• Wikimania 2023 presentation: It's on Meta, but discoverable – organizational knowledge in a structured form