Annual Report 2024/Fail fest: Metabase – growing fast, but few contribute

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In this fail fest, we focus on the challenges we've faced when trying to engage the Wikimedia community with the Metabase platform, possible reasons behind them, and the ways forward that we want to explore.

In 2024, we intensified our work with Metabase, our platform for compiling knowledge about the Wikimedia movement's work and activities in a linked, structured format. Metabase grew by several thousand new items and gained a number of new users, and we presented the platform at events such as Wikimania. While we are pleased with how we use Metabase within our team, a crucial piece is still missing: user engagement. Most of the items have been created by us, and the number of users remains low, with only occasional edits. This has made it difficult to build a broader user base and generate the engagement we had hoped for. To become a truly useful resource, Metabase must cross the threshold from being a purely WMSE-driven project to a platform that many in global community use, contribute to, and care about.

We have had multiple opportunities to introduce Metabase to the community, such as at Wikimania 2024. Our presentations are always met with curiosity, insightful questions, and appreciation. Attendees confirm that it is difficult to navigate all the information about the movement's activities and are excited that someone is finally trying to solve the problem. They create user accounts and make a few edits, but after the initial enthusiasm fades, they stop contributing. Why?

One particular target group we have in mind for Metabase is staff members at Wikimedia affiliates worldwide. We hope the platform can help them structure the data about their work, which is currently scattered across affiliate wikis and internal documents. At the same time, getting people to adopt an entirely new infrastructure that changes how they work is not easy. They must dedicate valuable time to learning the platform and then regularly contributing to it. They need to be convinced that the effort is worthwhile and will bring long-term benefits. It is understandable that they might be concerned about it adding to their workload rather than improving their workflow.

One possible solution is to engage interns to work on data entry, which benefits both the organization and the individual. Regular staff receive support for a task that, while valuable in the long run, might be deprioritized in the moment, and the intern gains a valuable introduction to structured data and the organization's (and the movement's!) activities. We have tested this approach ourselves, and a former intern is now a valued member of our team.

Another contributing factor might be concerns about Metabase's long-term sustainability. As we develop the platform on our own, using Wikibase Cloud as the technical infrastructure, its future depends on our resources and financial situation. If Metabase were developed and maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation as part of the Wikimedia ecosystem, it would be a different story. It's understandable that potential contributors hesitate to invest time in something that may not last. At the same time, we want to emphasize that we have had good contact with Wikimedia Deutschland, which runs Wikibase Cloud, and they appreciate our project; they welcome our feedback to improve Wikibase Cloud and have even showcased Metabase on their blog. An important step in ensuring stability and demonstrating our long-term commitment is that we have successfully secured funding to hire a data entry specialist for three years. This staff member will focus primarily on Metabase, not only editing and adding new data but also monitoring contributions and engaging with new users.

Despite all these open questions, our work with Metabase has made it abundantly clear to both us and the community just how great the need is for structured and well-organized information about the movement's activities. From experience, we know that many find Meta-Wiki, despite its vast content, neither easy to navigate nor pleasant to edit. And that doesn't even account for the information that is not there but is instead spread across affiliates' wikis, blogs, and project pages on various language editions of Wikipedia. Just as we put knowledge about world in Wikidata, there should also be a Wikidata for the movement's internal knowledge — and that's exactly what we aim to create.

In 2025, we want to redouble our efforts not only to attract new users but also to keep them engaged and encourage them to spread awareness of Metabase within their networks. For example, we will invite both existing users and newcomers to regular online meetups where they can interact with Wikimedia Sverige's team in a relaxed form, ask questions, and discuss their experiences. We will also launch a newsletter and conduct user interviews to better understand how we can improve their experience with the platform. We want all newcomers to feel welcome and receive the support they need. The insights gained from this work will help determine what kinds of data belong in Metabase, how it should be modeled, and how it could be used. We will also explore the possibility of bringing in additional staff resources to further strengthen our efforts.

Internally, we will hold workshops to build our own competence and engagement, as well as meet with other Wikimedia affiliates to learn from their experiences. We also plan to do mass data uploads to lower barriers to entry and communicate more clearly what Metabase can offer.

By analyzing and learning from our experiences with Metabase, we can refine our strategies for engaging more users and improving our communication and implementation of new tools. Wikimedia Sverige has extensive experience in developing services and tools that benefit the entire Wikimedia movement, such as OpenRefine — a tool for analyzing and cleaning data — and the ISA Tool — an interface for enriching Wikimedia Commons with structured data. We are a learning organization within a learning movement; ultimately, Metabase is a tool to make it easier for everyone to learn from one another, find interesting and relevant resources, and build on each other's experiences. We are convinced that our work with Metabase, though more challenging than we initially expected, will bear fruit, engage, and inspire Wikimedians for many years to come.