Wikidata Platform/Decision Log

The purpose of this page is to document quick and lightweight decisions made by Wikidata Platform team members. A decision should be logged on this page if it meets the following criteria:

Was made asynchronously, resulting in some members of the team not participating in the decision making process.
Needs to be referenced in the future.
Does not fit squarely within a separate decision making/logging mechanism (e.g. Sprint Planning, Decision Briefs).

Decisions

ID	Title	Background & Decision Summary	Alternatives Considered	Responsible Parties*	Date	Context & OKRs
0001	Use AWS for Q2 FY26 benchmarking	As part of defining the methodology for a Q2 benchmarking study on RDF backends, the team needed to decide what infrastructure we wanted to use to conduct our tests. To ensure the fastest path to begin testing while accounting for our key learnings, we decided to use AWS compute instead of securing dedicated, on premises hardware.	A machine was procured for a similar benchmarking analysis ~2 years ago that QLever leaders recommended. We also considered using WDQS production servers.	R: Gabriele Modena D: Brandon Tracy, Gabriele Modena	2025-10-06	T405395 KR 2.4
0002	Ownership of data dumps for Wikidata	Following an unsuccessful run of the entity dumps pipeline used for Wikibase, the question of which airflow instance this job should run on and who should own escalations was posed. The Data Platform, Wikidata Platform, and WMDE teams aligned that ownership of entity dumps should remain shared between WMDE, as the owners of the Wikibase codebase, and Data Platform SREs, as owners of dumps infrastructure globally. This is distinct from other WMF dumps, which are owned by DPE. Technical issues outside of the business logic for the entity dumps pipeline owned by WMDE will be escalated to DPE. WDP will monitor downstream impact, but will not maintain MediaWiki or Wikibase code.	Moving Wikibase dumps under the airflow-wmde or airflow-wikidata instances.	R: Brandon Tracy, Gabriele Modena, D&P: Guillaume Lederrey, Lydia Pintscher	2025-10-08	T406429
0003	Preserving the unified RDF update stream	The RDF update stream was not forked along the same lines as the graph split (launched March 2025) because we deployed and maintained a full graph legacy endpoint. The legacy endpoint was decommissioned on Jan 20 2026, presenting the question of whether the update stream should be split. We decided not to alter the RDF update stream. Our decision to do nothing is based on the precedent for maintaining a unified approach to updates via XML dumps and the ability to support SPARQL endpoints that load the full graph for data reusers, with real-time updates consistent with the weekly entities dump. There is no cost associated with this decision and were advised by SREs that the full graph mutation stream is trivial to keep.	Removing the full Wikidata update stream and exposing only streams split along scholarly lines.	R: Gabriele Modena, Brandon Tracy A: Amy Tsay I: Guillaume Lederrey	2026-01-21	n/a
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Decision Roles*

Roles define which actions each person is responsible for when making a decision. Not every decision that meets the criteria for inclusion in our decision log will require each of these roles to be filled.

Role	Responsibilities
Recommend/Drive	Making a proposal, gathering input, and providing data and analysis to make a sensible, timely choice Consulting with input providers and agreers -- hearing and incorporating their views, winning their buy-in Driving the process -- following up as necessary to move the decision forward
Agree	Negotiating a modified proposal with the recommender if they have concerns about the original proposal Escalate unresolved issues with the Recommender to the Decider If necessary, exercising veto power over the recommendation
Perform	Executing a decision once it's made Seeing that the decision is implemented promptly and effectively
Input	Providing relevant facts to the recommender that shed light on the proposal's feasibility and practical implications
Decide	Serving as the single point of accountability Bringing the decision to closure by resolving any impasse in the decision-making process Committing the organization to implementing the decision

Adapted from Decision Brief template and Who Has the D?: How Clear Decision Roles Enhance Organizational Performance