Wikidata Bridge/en

The Wikidata Bridge (formerly known as “client editing”) is a project aiming to make it possible to edit Wikidata’s data directly from Wikipedia. This will be achieved by an interface, connected to the infobox, that users can access directly from their local wiki. The development will be made in several phases, working together with the communities to understand their needs and build a tool that will connect the data and the communities in a better way.


 * To learn more, see Development

The need
“I want the information that appears on Wikipedia to be editable on Wikipedia”

Wikidata aims to be a central hub of information for the Wikimedia projects. Many Wikipedia communities already use Wikidata’s data, for example in infoboxes. But the situation and current features are causing issues within the Wikipedia communities: lack of control over the data, not enough information about when and where the information is updated, differences in the way Wikipedias and Wikidata structure information. Over the years and during many discussions, Wikipedians expressed the need of having the ability to edit Wikidata’s data from Wikipedia, and to adapt Wikidata’s data to the existing structure of their infoboxes.


 * To learn more, see Research

Our process
In order to make sure that we’re building a tool that is answering editors’ needs, we’re using agile methods in our development process. We don’t start with a fixed idea of the tool we want to deliver: we will build it together with the communities, based on feedback loops that we will regularly organize. We don’t wait to have a “finished” product to deploy it: we will start enabling features step by step, deploy small chunks over the next months, try it with the editors on a trial & error basis.


 * To learn more, see Get involved

Timeline
Here’s our current plan, that might change based on development progress and communities wishes. At every step of the process, we will communicate with the communities and gather feedback.
 * Past:
 * User Research: intermittent since 2015
 * June-August 2019: setup and technical groundwork
 * September-November 2019: development of first iteration
 * December 2019: publishing a test system to get feedback
 * January-August 2020: more development, getting the first version ready
 * August 2020: deployment of the v1 on Catalan Wikipedia, test & feedback
 * Later: Development of next versions
 * Later: Test on a few projects in collaboration with the communities
 * Early adopters communities who already implemented a shortcut from their infoboxes to edit Wikidata (for example Russian, Catalan, Basque Wikipedias)
 * Big Wikipedias in order to see if the project scales and to address their potentially different needs
 * Even later: on all the other projects