Wikimedia Deutschland/Data Partnerships Model/Challenges and questions

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Executive Summary

Background

Partners

Our Three Focus Areas

Data Partnerships Scenarios and Working Method

Assessing Partner Requests

Challenges and questions

Conclusion

Challenges and questions To create space for reflection, we need to be aware of all current challenges and unanswered questions in the data partnerships team and its relation to the open knowledge movement as a whole. Current challenges to be tackled include (but are not limited to) resource delegation and capacity building, providing access to marginalized knowledge, and determining how the data partnerships team can contribute to the Wikibase Ecosystem. Resource delegation How do we make decisions and delegate resources when we receive a number of equally promising requests for collaboration? While this is not currently an issue, the question remains: How would we deal with such a challenge in the future? We must revisit and evaluate our decision-making criteria to ensure that our decisions are fair, structured and consistent with our linked open data strategy and with the 2030 movement strategy. The WMDE data partnerships team is the primary driver of Wikidata and Wikibase partnerships within the movement. As interest in Wikibase and Wikidata grows, it will become more difficult to provide meaningful support to partners interested in these projects across the globe. Additionally, it is important that the ecosystems surrounding both projects stay self-sustaining and continue to grow without our constant influence. For these reasons, we must establish capacity-building initiatives that enable others outside of our team to collaborate in this work. Marginalized Knowledge An important goal of the open knowledge movement is to increase access to marginalized knowledge. In this connection, we would like to support holders of marginalized knowledge to join the Linked Open Data ecosystem. However, data partnerships face numerous challenges in this regard. To summarize: How do we find and connect with interested partners from marginalized knowledge communities? How do we deal with the fact that there are limits to what knowledge can be well represented as linked data? How do we ensure that we continue to develop the software in an inclusive way? Which knowledge areas are most vulnerable and therefore most critical to capture? Data partnerships within the Wikibase ecosystem Although our strategy papers contain a description of the Wikibase Ecosystem, we still need clarity about what the Wikibase Ecosystem means for data partnerships work. Our work has begun, but we are still looking for concrete answers to the following questions: How do we create an environment conducive to users giving back the Wikibase ecosystem? What is our role in building that environment and supporting partners to become active members of the ecosystem? How do we encourage partners, particularly commercial partners, to make their data collections free and open?