Wikidata/Notes/Deployment

This page gives a draft of the Wikidata deployment plan. The goal for Wikidata is to release early, release often, and to eventually follow WMF's lead with their bi-weekly deployment cycle.

The very first version of Wikidata to deploy is almost there. We still have a number of bugs and wrinkles we are polishing, but in general we are ready to start moving towards deployment.

This will lead to a very organic introduction of Wikidata data into the Wikipedias. We can react to problems and use cases early. I think a plan where we implement the three phases completely and deploy them then is bound to lead to a less widely accepted solution.

Overview

The suggestion is to deploy the following steps. This all still only covers phase I.

• Step 1: start the Wikidata repository wiki. This only allows to add language links, and they are not displayed anywhere yet.
• Step 2: deploy the Wikidata client extension on one language edition of Wikipedia for testing (Hungarian Wikipedia stepped forward for this)
• Step 3: deploy the WIkidata client extension on a second language edition of Wikipedia (Hebrew Wikipedia, maybe also Italian)
• Step 4: deploy the Wikidata client extension on the English edition of Wikipedia
• Step 5: deploy on all Wikipedias.

Meanwhile we start developing Phase 2, and then also deployment of Phase 2 in a similarly staged manner:

• Enabling simple statements (i.e. "San Francisco - State -> California")
• Introduce sources
• Introduce qualifiers
• Introducing data type by data type (based on their prevalence in the current Wikipedia: links, geo coordinates, dates, numbers, etc.)
• In parallel allow exploiting these properties in the Wikipedias, i.e. deploy the query syntax there as soon as possible (probably again language by language at first)

Detailed implementation plan

• Step 1: Launch Wikidata
  • Step 1.1: the Wikidata team to provide a rather stable branch for review
  • Step 1.2: the ContentModel branch on master and the Sites management patchset to be reviewed and actually merged into core by early the week of October 1st
  • Step 1.3: a security review by Chris of the lib and base code in the Wikibase extension and of the Diff extension before October 1st
  • Step 1.4: a security review by Chris of the client code in the Wikibase extension and of ULS early October
  • Step 1.5: a review of the DB impact by Asher in time for the planned deployment
  • Step 1.6: deployment of the full-fledged repo, but still locked down for outside contribution, as a test system, setting up DNS, SSL, etc. as per bugzilla:40137
  • Step 1.7: two-week testing of the repo
  • Step 1.8: launch of wikidata.org (i.e. the repo) either by opening the setup or by starting a new one
• Step 2: Deploy the Wikidata client extension on a first language
  • Step 2.1: Decide on first language: Hungarian Wikipedia (done)
  • Step 2.2a: deployment of the client on test2
  • Step 2.2b: test2 accessing the repo for its language links
  • Step 2.3: Have a beta of a copy of the selected language Wikipedia, and run it on labs with the full extension setup (dropped)
  • Step 2.4: Stage the change on Hungarian
  • Step 2.5: Deploy
• Step 3: Re-iterate substeps 2.3-2.5 for Hebrew Wikipedia, then maybe Italian
• Step 4: Re-iterate substeps 2.3-2.5 for English Wikipedia
• Step 5: Re-iterate the substeps 2.3-2.5 for all other Wikipedias

See also

• mw:Wikidata deployment - deployment page on MediaWiki.org. This is the page Wikimedia Foundation is using for tracking this project.