Huh. This actually explains about Wikibase tbh.

Wikibase, while it powers Wikidata, is not the only extension which can be used with MediaWiki. [..] Since a text field with wikitext of all pages on MediaWiki database wouldn’t be queryable, these extensions actually use MediaWiki as permanent, versioned storage, but they take the responsibility of synchronize such data with some more specialized database engine (or at least use same database, but with additional tables). Even Wikibase still relies on external RDF triplestore to allow running SPARQL; it’s user interface (the one humans edit on sites like Wikidata) are an abstraction to store the data like a page in the MediaWiki (Wikibase extension actually uses undocumented JSON, not Wikitext). ^(new emphasis mine)

One of the mysteries to me was “how does this thing work in the first place??”, in the sense that you edit them with a UI that looks like a MediaWiki page, is rendered similarly to a MediaWiki page, and with an editor that sort of..? looks like a glorified VisualEditor, but doesn’t function as one?

But it isn’t a duck.

It’s JSON, which explains just how disconnected it actually is to the MediaWiki experience. That’s why it feels so foreign and disorienting, and functions like the completely tacked-onto experience it provides.

Wow, congrats!

I’d love to see this implemented here in the Philippines too, as most post-World War II residential developments here use a system of “Block [number] Lot [number]” for house addresses, similar to that in Japan.