Wikidata Turns 10
Wikidata went live on 29 October 2012. Now, in 2022, we are celebrating 10 years of Wikidata together!
Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. It acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects including Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary, Wikisource, and others.
It is a common source of open data that anyone can use under the CC0 public domain license, providing support to many other sites and services beyond Wikimedia!
Using Wikidata
Wikidata is already used by virtual assistants and search engines to find information, but it can be used by everyone.
Wikidata can connect other databases and collections of information, allowing computers and software to see connections between hundreds of data sources.
The Wikidata entry on Australian musician Nick Cave has links to libraries, museums, and archives who hold information related to him. While the Wikidata entry for The Forum Theatre in Melbourne has links to venue databases, the Victorian Heritage Register, and Wikipedia articles in two languages.
Recent Wikidata projects we've supported include:
- Growing the representation of Australian Women in Religion
- Bringing the whole zoo to Wikidata
- Mapping the Barassi Line
- Populating Wikipedia with Australian Census data.
You can even visualise your data using the Wikidata Query Service to see occupations of people born in Australia or finding who the first librarian was.
Learning Wikidata
There are many Wikidata tutorials online, from videos to interactive websites. Here's some we've found useful.
- Wikidata Training on WMF Labs - This set of modules covers the basics of contributing to Wikidata through slides and interactive tasks.
- Learn Wikidata: An Interactive Course - Aimed at librarians, these videos teach Wikidata basics and also include how to edit bibliographic information on Wikidata.
- Wikidata's Help page - With resources for all levels
- Wikidata Query Service Tutorial - Learn how to visualise Wikidata.
Events
To celebrate its tenth birthday, there are Wikidata celebrations and events being held around the world.
In Australia we have the following events scheduled:
- Saturday 8 October 2022 - Perth Meetup 76 - Celebate Wikidata's 10th birthday with a social gathering for Wikimedians and friends in Fremantle. Special guest Margaret Donald will share her recent work on improving biota Wikidata items.
- Wednesday 12 October 2022 - Community Meeting with presentations on Wikidata projects including the NZ Thesis project by Tamsin Braisher, and Improving biota articles by Margaret Donald
- Saturday 22 October 2022 - An introduction to Wikidata - Discover how the worlds of Wikimedia link together at Darling Square Library, Sydney.
Many international sessions will also be held online, including Wiki Education's Speaker Series which will look at the state of Wikidata and its future.
Find more online and international events at Wikidata's Tenth Birthday page. You can use the hashtag #WikidataBirthday to celebrate.
Further Reading
- Wikipedia's Wikidata page - Includes the history of Wikidata
- Wikidata's Tenth Birthday page - Join in the celebration
- Wikidata The Game - Find Wikidata entries without images, or missing information such as date of birth or occupation, and add them!