Wikidata:Wikidata Platform team/Newsletter
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This is a monthly update from the WMF Wikidata Platform team on our work to maintain stable, reliable and sustainable data access for Wikidata.
January 2026
[edit]This is the second issue of our new monthly newsletter! The next issue will be published in February 2026.
User agent header policy
[edit]- User agent header policy: On August 29, 2025, the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) was granted an exception to the WMF policy requiring API requests to have a user-agent header. This exception will be removed on February 18, 2026. This policy primarily impacts federated queries. To avoid regressions on existing workstreams, we encourage WDQS users to explore the following mitigation strategies:
- Configure a UA header: After reviewing documentation for the most common RDF databases employed by Wikibase users, we believe most impacted queries can avoid regression simply by configuring a user-agent string that is compliant with the WMF user-agent header policy.
- Adjust the directionality of a federated query: Query federation is a bidirectional process, meaning queries can originate from either WDQS and federate out or a separate knowledge base and federate into WDQS. There are compliance requirements for both options. Queries that originate in a separate knowledge base and use WDQS for federation will be blocked if they do not set an acceptable user agent header. However, queries that originate from WDQS only require that the target endpoint for federation is on the WDQS Allowlist. If users are unable to set a user agent header because of software limitations, they can switch the direction of their request by going through the process to get an endpoint added to our allowlist.
- Support use cases through different access points: If users are unable to set a compliant UA header or change the direction of their federated query, we recommend accessing the required data through alternative methods. The Wikidata Query Service is one of many ways that users can access Wikidata. Alternatives like data dumps, QLever’s Wikidata endpoints, and eventstreams may be a more suitable long-term solution. Read more about data access methods.
- Please direct questions on this change to the Wikidata Platform team on Phabricator.
Migration office hours starting in January
[edit]- Migration office hours starting in January: The Wikidata Platform (WDP) is launching a new office hours series. We will host a 60-minute office hours session starting January 27th, 2026 and continuing on the first Tuesday of each month. The scope of this series will be limited to Blazegraph migration support for the entirety of 2026. General inquiries, feature requests, and troubleshooting help will continue to be offered through team processes on Phabricator and talk pages. Participants are encouraged to register in advance for each session and may optionally add a brief description of their migration-related questions to the shared Etherpad to help guide preparation. See Blazegraph Migration office hour page for more details
Legacy endpoint decommissioning
[edit]- Legacy endpoint decommissioning: The legacy full graph endpoint (wdqs-legacy-full) will be decommissioned on January 20, 2026. This WDQS endpoint was created to prevent negative impact to users with scholarly use cases following the graph split in March 2025 and was originally scheduled to be turned off in December 2025. This work can be tracked on Phabricator (T411410).
Journal file available for download
[edit]- Journal file available for download: As part of our efforts to mitigate regressions caused by the decommissioning of the legacy full graph endpoint, we will make a Blazegraph journal file for the entire Wikidata dataset (both scholarly and main) available via HTTP download at https://dumps.wikimedia.org once the service is decommissioned. This static file can then be used to build self-hosted instances of Wikidata Query Service and will be available until March 2026.
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