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Transbordados: WikidataCon's preconference for Latin America - September 14, 21 and 28 (21h UTC) - with simultaneous translation for Portuguese and Spanish, via YouTube - set of events to discuss Wikidata and decoloniality, knowledge organization and digital dissemination of collections in Latin America contexts. Join us!
14/09 - Towards a decolonial wiki: overflowing knowledge from the Latin American horizon - speakers: Amanda Jurno (Wiki Movimento Brasil), Bianca Santana (journalist, writer and activist) and Silvia Gutiérrez (El Colégio de México) - watch it in PT-BR / ES
21/09 - The universe of libraries: Wikidata and the multiplication of knowledge potencies - speakers: Lilian Viana (GLAM das Bibliotecas da USP) and Maurício Genta (Wikimedia Argentina e Biblioteca Nacional da Argentina) - watch it in PT-BR / ES
28/09 - Digital collections and Wikidata: organizing a network of knowledge - speakers: Evelin Heidel (a.k.a. Scann; Wikimedistas do Uruguai) and Karen Worcman (Museu da Pessoa) - watch it in PT-BR / ES
Demo of the Query Builder live on Twitch and in French by Vigneron, September 14 at 18:00 CEST
Ongoing:
Data Quality Days - several sessions happened over the past days and more are coming this week. Recordings, slides and notes are linked in the program
Wwwyzzerdd for Wikidata is a browser extension that allows you to view and edit Wikidata information from Wikipedia (demo video). Install it in Firefox or Chrome
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Face The Facts mobile app allows you to scan election posters and see the true facts about politicians.
Mismatch Finder: The website part of the tool is taking shape but is not quite functional yet. We worked on creating the results page. You can see the current very much not finished state at https://mismatch-finder.toolforge.org/
Linked the Query Builder from the Query Service so it is discoverable (phab:T280229)
Finished work on normalizing filenames when linking to media files on Commons (phab:T251480)
All new wbstack.com wikis will now be created with elastic search support, including Wikibase indexes! All existing sites will have elastic search soon! (Source)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
A majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. The Growth team has published an FAQ page about the features. This translatable FAQ covers the description of the features, how to use them, how to change the configuration, and more.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 September. It will be on all wikis from 16 September (calendar).
Starting this week, Wikipedia in Italian will receive weekly software updates on Wednesdays. It used to receive the updates on Thursdays. Due to this change, bugs will be noticed and fixed sooner. [3]
You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [4]
The syntax highlight tool marks up code with different colours. It now can highlight 23 new code languages. Additionally, golang can now be used as an alias for the Go programming language, and a special output mode has been added to show a program's output. [5][6]
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call: Bionomia and maintaining Wikidata synchrony with David Shorthouse (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada). [7], Sep 21st.
Lightning Talk: Wikidata in your Civic Tech project | Summit 2021 - YouTube
Continuing the work on the Mismatch Finder. This week we focused on the remaining groundwork for showing the first mismatches for review.
Continuing to work on improvements to the underlying system of how edits are propagated from Wikidata to the other Wikimedia projects.
Implemented two improvements for constraints: the “distinct values” constraint type now supports the “separator” parameter (phab:T277855) and we no longer check qualifiers on some unusual™ properties (phab:T235292)
Adding tags to some of the remaining UI edits that didn't get them yet for edits on Lexemes (phab:T290950)
Making it possible to add tags to some remaining Lexeme API modules (phab:T290951)
Fixed a bug in the Query Builder where it didn't show labels when opening an existing visual query from a shared link (phab:T280684)
Made the Query Builder more visible in the Query Service UI (phab:T280229)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
MediaWiki had a feature that would highlight local links to short articles in a different style. Each user could pick the size at which "stubs" would be highlighted. This feature was very bad for performance, and following a consultation, has been removed. [8]
A technical change was made to the MonoBook skin to allow for easier maintenance and upkeep. This has resulted in some minor changes to HTML that make MonoBook's HTML consistent with other skins. Efforts have been made to minimize the impact on editors, but please ping Jon (WMF) on wiki or in phabricator if any problems are reported.
Problems
There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of an accidental restart of the search servers. [9]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 September. It will be on all wikis from 23 September (calendar).
The meta=proofreadpage API has changed. The piprop parameter has been renamed to prpiprop. API users should update their code to avoid unrecognized parameter warnings. Pywikibot users should upgrade to 6.6.0. [10]
Future changes
The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. [11]
The previously announced change to how you obtain tokens from the API has been delayed to September 21 because of an incompatibility with Pywikibot. Bot operators using Pywikibot can follow T291202 for progress on a fix, and should plan to upgrade to 6.6.1 when it is released.
We’re celebrating the 9th birthday of Wikidata on October 29 during the WikidataCon 🎂 Did you know that you can participate in the celebration by preparing a birthday present or attending events? Here’s how you can get involved!
User-level gender statistics for Wikipedia an Observable notebook which computes the share of articles created on fr.wikipedia.org by gender using P21 property through Wikidata's API.
Changed the formatting of low year numbers so that they now show as e.g. “5 CE” instead of “5” to reduce ambiugity in dates like “March 5 (CE)” (phab:T104750)
Working on fixing an issue where two Properties could have the same label in a given language (phab:T289473)
Working on preventing a few more cases where two Items could have the same sitelink (phab:T291377)
Mismatch Finder: Continuing to work on showing mismatches on the results page so that they can be reviewed
Continuing to work on technical improvements to how changes on Wikidata are propagated to Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
iOS 15 has a new function called Private Relay (Apple website). This can hide the user's IP when they use Safari browser. This is like using a VPN in that we see another IP address instead. It is opt-in and only for those who pay extra for iCloud. It will come to Safari users on OSX later. There is a technical discussion about what this means for the Wikimedia wikis.
Problems
Some gadgets and user-scripts add items to the portlets (article tools) part of the skin. A recent change to the HTML may have made those links a different font-size. This can be fixed by adding the CSS class .vector-menu-dropdown-noicon. [12]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 September. It will be on all wikis from 30 September (calendar).
The GettingStarted extension was built in 2013, and provides an onboarding process for new account holders in a few versions of Wikipedia. However, the recently developed Growth features provide a better onboarding experience. Since the vast majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features, GettingStarted will be deactivated starting on 4 October. [13]
A small number of users will not be able to connect to the Wikimedia wikis after 30 September. This is because an old root certificate will no longer work. They will also have problems with many other websites. Users who have updated their software in the last five years are unlikely to have problems. Users in Europe, Africa and Asia are less likely to have immediate problems even if their software is too old. You can read more.
You can receive notifications when someone leaves a comment on user talk page or mentions you in a talk page comment. Clicking the notification link will now bring you to the comment and highlight it. Previously, doing so brought you to the top of the section that contained the comment. You can find more information in T282029.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them has been enabled for the following 10 wikis: mediawiki.org, the Italian, Catalan, Hebrew and Vietnamese Wikipedias, French Wikisource, and English Wikivoygage, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikinews. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist on those wikis you can let the developers know.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 October. It will be on all wikis from 7 October (calendar).
Some gadgets and bots that use the API to read the AbuseFilter log might break. The hidden property will no longer say an entry is implicit for unsuppressed log entries about suppressed edits. If your bot needs to know this, do a separate revision query. Additionally, the property will have the value false for visible entries; previously, it wasn't included in the response. [15]
A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them will be enabled for all production wikis. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist you can let the developers know.
Future changes
You can soon get cross-wiki notifications in the iOS Wikipedia app. You can also get notifications as push notifications. More notification updates will follow in later versions. [16]
The JavaScript variables wgExtraSignatureNamespaces, wgLegalTitleChars, and wgIllegalFileChars will soon be removed from mw.config. These are not part of the "stable" variables available for use in wiki JavaScript. [17]
The JavaScript variables wgCookiePrefix, wgCookieDomain, wgCookiePath, and wgCookieExpiration will soon be removed from mw.config. Scripts should instead use mw.cookie from the "mediawiki.cookie" module. [18]
You can also sign up for a slot at the birthday presents lightning talks session at WikidataCon 2021 to present your gift for Wikidata birthday until October 16
Finished preventing a case where the same sitelink could be added to two different Items (phab:T291377)
Continuing work on the Mismatch Finder. Currently focusing on showing the details of the mismatches to the person reviewing mismatches.
Continued work on not allowing two Properties to have the same label after undo/revert (phab:T289473)
Continuing work on improving how changes on Wikidata are propagated to Wikipedia and the other other Wikimedia projects. The new system is being rolled out to all wikis now. It should not change anything for editors and just be a technical improvement in the backend.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 October. It will be on all wikis from 14 October (calendar).
We’re celebrating the 9th birthday of Wikidata on October 29 during the WikidataCon 🎂 Did you know that you can participate in the celebration by preparing a birthday present or attending events? Here’s how you can get involved!
Upcoming: WMF search platform team office hour, Wednesday, October 13th, 2021 at 15:00-16:00 GMT / 08:00-09:00 PDT / 11:00-12:00 EDT / 17:00-18:00 CEST. Etherpad, Google Meet. You can come and chat about the Wikidata & Commons Query Service.
LIVE Wikidata editing #57 - YouTube, Facebook, October 16 at 18:00 UTC
Modeling and Documenting Queer Voices and Topics on Wikidata, Panel on Metadata and Gender Diversity, Amber Billey, Clair A Kronk, John Samuel, Rachel Ivy Clarke, Sayward Schoonmaker, DCMI Virtual 2021, October 8, 2021, Slides
Videos
Introduction to Wikidata for beginners. Part 2 (in Italian) - YouTube
You can also sign up for a slot at the birthday presents lightning talks session at WikidataCon 2021 to present your gift for Wikidata birthday until October 16
Mismatch Finder: We are continuing the work on the review part of the system. We are now working on letting reviewers indicate if the mismatch is on Wikidata, the other database, both or neither.
Fixed a bug where it was possible for two Properties to have the same label in a given language by undoing/reverting an edit (phab:T289473)
Fixed a confusing error message that was being shown when trying to save geoshape / tabular data that doesn’t exist (phab:T285758)
Removing some unnecessary entity link formatting in edit summaries and special pages to improve performance (phab:T292203)
Fixing an issue with invalid dates that the API accepts but should not (phab:T289417)
Migrated all Wikimedia wikis to use the new change dispatching system. This system is responsible for notifying the other wikis about edits made on Wikidata that affect their articles so the article is refreshed and edits are added to recent changes and watchlists.
We’re celebrating the 9th birthday of Wikidata on October 29 during the WikidataCon 🎂 Did you know that you can participate in the celebration by preparing a birthday present or attending events? Here’s how you can get involved!
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call: Scottish Accused Witches Project with Ewan McAndrew and Emma Carroll (University of Edinburgh). [19], Oct 19th.
Learn Wikidata is an online interactive course created by the Vanderbilt University thanks to a WikiCite grant and available in English, Spanish and Chinese. More information here.
The 3rd edition of the Coolest Tool Award is looking for nominations (see announcement on wikimedia-l). Please submit your favorite tools by October 27th. The awarded projects will be announced and showcased in a virtual ceremony in December.
Mismatch Finder: We are continuing the work on the review part of the system. We are working on letting reviewers submit their decision if the mismatch is on Wikidata, the other database, both or neither.
In the previous week we migrated all Wikimedia wikis to use the new change dispatching system. This system is responsible for notifying the other wikis about edits made on Wikidata that affect their articles so the article is refreshed and edits are added to recent changes and watchlists. This week we monitored the new system and investigated and fixed a few issues that came up.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Toolhub is a catalogue to make it easier to find software tools that can be used for working on the Wikimedia projects. You can read more.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 October. It will be on all wikis from 21 October (calendar).
3–5% of editors may be blocked in the next few months. This is because of a new service in Safari, which is similar to a proxy or a VPN. It is called iCloud Private Relay. There is a discussion about this on Meta. The goal is to learn what iCloud Private Relay could mean for the communities.
Wikimedia Enterprise is a new API for those who use a lot of information from the Wikimedia projects on other sites. It is a way to get big commercial users to pay for the data. There will soon be a copy of the Wikimedia Enterprise dataset. You can read more. You can also ask the team questions on Zoom on 22 October 15:00 UTC.
User:Bargioni/UseAsRef has now a 2.0 version, allowing to use as references not only external IDs but also some other properties (P1343, P973, P8214 etc.)
Other Noteworthy Stuff
QID ("Initialism of Q-identifier, a unique identifier for an item in Wikidata. [from 2012]") now has an entry in Wiktionary
The 3rd edition of the Coolest Tool Award is looking for nominations (see announcement on wikimedia-l). Please submit your favorite tools by October 27th. The awarded projects will be announced and showcased in a virtual ceremony in December.
The new WDQS Streaming Updater now fully shipped to production. This will help the Query Service better deal with the amount of edits happening on Wikidata. (more information)
Mismatch Finder: Continuing work on the results page where mismatches are shown for review. We are focusing on showing all necessary information for a mismatch to make a good determination if it is a mismatch in Wikidata, the external source or neither.
Finishing the work on the new change dispatching system that improves how Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects are notified about edits happening on Wikidata that affect them. Currently tying up some lose ends.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Coolest Tool Award 2021 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 27 October.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 October. It will be on all wikis from 28 October (calendar).
Future changes
Diff pages will have an improved copy and pasting experience. The changes will allow the text in the diff for before and after to be treated as separate columns and will remove any unwanted syntax. [20]
The version of the Liberation fonts used in SVG files will be upgraded. Only new thumbnails will be affected. Liberation Sans Narrow will not change. [21]
Documentation of the sessions are currently ongoing. It may take a few weeks to publish all 80 hours of content but you can already watch some of them (linked from each session's Etherpad).
Wikidatapink pony session (a meetup where participants shared wishes and feature requests about Wikidata to the development team)
Continued the work on the first version of the Mismatch Finder. We are getting closer to the polishing phase now and will have something ready in the next weeks.
Lua access for Lexemes is now ready to test on English Beta Wiktionary.
Concluded work on the improved behind-the-scenes system for notifying Wikipedias and co about Wikidata edits that affect them. Nothing should have changed for you.
Started working on a new implementation of the search box to be ready for the upcoming skin changes the WMF is working on.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
There is a limit on the amount of emails a user can send each day. This limit is now global instead of per-wiki. This change is to prevent abuse. [22]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 November. It will be on all wikis from 4 November (calendar).
Documentation of the WikidataCon 2021 sessions are currently ongoing. It may take a few weeks to publish all 80 hours of content but you can already watch some of them (from each session's Etherpad)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Mobile IP editors are now able to receive warning notices indicating they have a talk page message on the mobile website (similar to the orange banners available on desktop). These notices will be displayed on every page outside of the main namespace and every time the user attempts to edit. The notice on desktop now has a slightly different colour. [23][24]
In the future, unregistered editors will be given an identity that is not their IP address. This is for legal reasons. A new user right will let editors who need to know the IPs of unregistered accounts to fight vandalism, spam, and harassment, see the IP. You can read the suggestions for how that identity could work and discuss on the talk page.
Sweden report: The Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk; More museum data on Wikidata; LGBT edit-a-thon; Local business history in Nyköping; Stockholm City Museum ♥ Wikipedia; Writing about fashion at Nordiska museet
UK report: British Library and Khalili Collections
USA report: Wikiconference North America + Workshops
Content Partnerships Hub report: Needs assessment interviews; Cultural heritage on Wikidata – thousands of monuments in Norway; Structured Data uploads continue
Plantilla:Infotaula persona, infobox for people on Catalan Wikipedia with extensive use of Wikidata, used 175000 times, with Bridge editing. Sample use at ca:Frits Zernike.
Mismatch Finder: Added various dialogs and help texts to make it easier to understand what reviewers need to do and what information they are seeing in the tool
Mismatch Finder: started polishing and bug fixing for release of the first version
Making the order of Lexeme's grammatical features consistent (phab:T232557)
Investigating how to share complex SPARQL queries in Wikidata Query Service via short URL (phab:T295560)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Most large file uploads errors that had messages like "stashfailed" or "DBQueryError" have now been fixed. An incident report is available.
Problems
Sometimes, edits made on iOS using the visual editor save groups of numbers as telephone number links, because of a feature in the operating system. This problem is under investigation. [26]
There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of a configuration error. [27]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 November. It will be on all wikis from 18 November (calendar).
This post about the question of the week is showing how questions can be answered over Wikidata. Also it gives some insights on how Google and Siri are using Wikidata.
A new openly accessible book on knowledge graphs has been published by prominent researchers in the field.
Working on displaying the grammatical features of Lexemes in a particular order in the UI (phab:T232557)
Mismatch Finder: continuing polishing before first release. Focusing on making API documentation available and adding a footer to the site
The ongoing work on MediaWiki skin improvements especially for Wikipedia will break the search box for Wikidata. We're working on addressing this. (phab:T275251)
Migrating a number of components to vue 3 to keep up with the rest of MediaWiki (phab:T294465)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Next LD4 Wikibase Working Hour. Thurs. 16 December 2021, 11AM-12PM Eastern, (time zone converter). "We will continue work developing our WBStack sandbox which seeks to explore how Wikibase could help track the usage of alternate labels for terms in vocabularies like LCSH"
LIVE Wikidata editing #64 - YouTube, Facebook, December 4 at 19:00 UTC
Mismatch Finder: Continued working on last remaining tickets for the first version. Added a footer to the site, improved documentation and added ability to delete a batch of mismatches.
Made good progress on migrating our on-wiki Vue apps to support the new Vue.createMwApp compatibility layer in MediaWiki core (phab:T294465)
Continued work on making it possible to define a custom ordering of grammatical features on Lexemes (phab:T232557)
More research and discussion on mul language code (phab:T285156)
Discussing with data re-users about their views on the ontology issue classification we worked on earlier this year to get their input (slides from Data Quality Days session)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 December. It will be on all wikis from 2 December (calendar).
"Knowledge Based Multilingual Language Model" Using the Wikidata to build the language models that not only memorize the factual knowledge but also learn useful logical patterns. (Liu et al, 2021)
Videos
Summary of Transbordados, the pre-WikidataCon conference organized by Wiki Movimento Brasil (in Brazilian Portuguese)
Tool of the week
Weaviate big graph (source) is a vectorised search engine which returns similar items in Wikidata.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Wikimedia Deutschland is running a survey to evaluate Wikibase Installation and Updating experience for users. Please answer a few questions so we can continue to identify areas of improvement for users. Survey links
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
MediaWiki 1.38-wmf.11 was scheduled to be deployed on some wikis last week. The deployment was delayed because of unexpected problems.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 December. It will be on all wikis from 9 December (calendar).
At all Wikipedias, a Mentor Dashboard is now available at Special:MentorDashboard. It allows registered mentors, who take care of newcomers' first steps, to monitor their assigned newcomers' activity. It is part of the Growth features. You can learn more about activating the mentor list on your wiki and about the mentor dashboard project.
The predecessor to the current MediaWiki Action API (which was created in 2008), action=ajax, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to the corresponding API module. [28]
An old ResourceLoader module, jquery.jStorage, which was deprecated in 2016, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to mediawiki.storage instead. [29]
Ukraine report: Aricle contest for librarians «Local cultural heritage and prominent people»
USA report: Smithsonian demos new Wiki API Connector tool and other meetups
Content Partnerships Hub report: We continue building for the hub; SDC for fun and profit: detecting bad coordinates; Needs assessment – video recorded interviews; Improving ISA
WMF GLAM report: Wikisource birthday celebration, Community Tech Wishlist, and upcoming conversation about courses for GLAM professionals
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call: Lightning talks on WikiProject Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, Wikidata use for a site-specific archaeological case study (Dura-Europos, Syria), and round tripping Wikidata into Alma using Alma Refine. Agenda, Dec. 14th.
Lukas Schmelzeisen, Corina Dima, Steffen Staab: "Wikidated 1.0: An Evolving Knowledge Graph Dataset of Wikidata's Revision History", https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.05003v1
"ARTchives: a Linked Open Data native catalogue of art historians’ archive" crowdsourcing curated information on notable art historians’ archives (including Wikidata) - paper, tool
embeds.js: This script shows embeds on external identifier statements such as YouTube videos, Twitter tweets, Spotify playlists, Genius lyrics, and more!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
There are now default short aliases for the "Project:" namespace on most wikis. E.g. On Wikibooks wikis, [[WB:]] will go to the local language default for the [[Project:]] namespace. This change is intended to help the smaller communities have easy access to this feature. Additional local aliases can still be requested via the usual process. [30]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 December. It will be on all wikis from 16 December (calendar).
The Affiliations Committee – the committee responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups – is looking for new members!
The main role of the AffCom is to guide groups of volunteers that are interested in forming Wikimedia affiliates. We review applications from new groups, answer questions and provide advice about the different Wikimedia affiliation models and processes, review affiliate bylaws for compliance with requirements and best practices, and update the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees as well as advise them on issues connected to chapters, thematic organizations and Wikimedia user groups.
The committee consists of five to fifteen members, selected at least once every year, to serve two-year terms.
Being a part of the AffCom requires communication with volunteers all over the world, negotiating skills, cultural sensitivity, and the ability to understand legal texts. We look for a mix of different skill sets in our members.
Responsibilities
Availability of up to 5-8 hours per month
Participate in monthly one and two-hour voice/video meetings
Commitment to carry out assigned tasks in a given time.
Facilitate and support communications
Affiliate Support and growth
Required and Recommended Abilities, Skills, Knowledge for Affiliations Committee Members
Strong interpersonal relationship among members of the committee and also with the Wikimedia community members. Across all committee members, there are additional relevant skills as well as requirements which help to support the committee and its sustainability which include both required and relevant general skills
Required
Fluency in English
Availability of up to 5 hours per week, and the time to participate in a monthly one and two-hour voice/video meetings.
Willingness to use one's real name in committee activities (including contacts with current and potential affiliates) when appropriate.
Strong track record of effective collaboration
International orientation
Relevant for all members
Public Communications (English writing and speaking skills)
Skills in other languages are a major plus.
Understanding of the structure and work of affiliates and the Wikimedia Foundation.
Documentation practices
Interviewing experience
Experience with, or in, an active affiliate is a major plus.
Teamwork: Project and people management skills to coordinate and collaborate with different parties on a shared plan and see it through to completion.
Problem-Solving: Ability to evaluate various solutions, consider multiple interests and points of view, revisit unresolved issues, seek compromise and work and communicate across languages and cultures.
Given the expectations for maintaining the course in 2022 and preparing for potential 2022 transitions as part of the Movement Strategy implementation process, it is important that we are also clear about two different skill sets critical to committee support at this time. The first skillset is oriented to understanding affiliate dynamics and organizational development patterns to successfully process affiliate applications for recognition; the other is oriented to conflict prevention and intervention support for affiliates in conflict.
Relevant to Affiliate Recognitions
Administration & Attention to detail
Readiness to participate in political discussions on the role and future of affiliates, models of affiliation, and similar topics.
Awareness of the affiliates ecosystem and models and understanding of community building, organizational development, and group dynamics
Relevant to Conflict Prevention & Intervention
Communication skills for active listening, clear instruction and turn-taking.
Stress Management skills for maintaining patience and positivity
Emotional intelligence to maintain awareness of emotions of oneself and others to practice empathy, impartiality, and mutual respect.
Facilitation, negotiation, and mediation skills to guide diverse individuals and groups toward cooperation.
Ability to work within a team
Do you have relevant skills and interest to support movement affiliates?
We are looking for people who are excited by the challenge of empowering volunteers to get organized and form communities that further our mission around the world. In exchange, committee members will gain the experience of supporting their world-wide colleagues to develop their communities as well as personal development in guiding organizational development, facilitating affiliate partnerships, and professional communications.
Selection process
As a reflection of our commitment to openness, transparency, and bilateral engagement with the Wikimedia community, the 2022 member selection process will include a public review and comment period and a self-assessment survey for candidates to share their skills and their experience. This self-assessment information will help the committee to identify the skill sets relevant and supportive to our affiliate support processes. We invite you to apply for membership to the committee and join us in supporting the affiliates. The data shared in the self-assessment will only be made available to the committee and the relevant staff support. The nomination, candidate Q&A, and endorsements will still take place posted on Meta for public review at January 2022 page. Here the global community is welcome to provide comments and feedback about each candidate.
Once the nomination window closes 31 January 2022, the sitting members who are not candidates for re-election in this cycle will deliberate and then vote, taking into account all inputs from the meta page, self-assessment, advisors, Wikimedia Foundation staff and board liaisons, and committee member discussion.
A final decision will be made in late-February 2022, with new members to be notified for onboarding in February.
How to apply
If you are interested in joining the committee, please:
Step 1. Post your application on the nomination page by 31 January 2022. Your application must include the following information:
Your full name and Wikimedia username
A statement describing your relevant education, experience, abilities, skills, knowledge, availability, and motivation for joining the committee.
Step 2. Complete the self-assessment survey between January 1, 2021 and January 31, 2021.
The privacy statement that applies to the survey can be found here.
NOTE: The survey will take 15 mins. Please do not close your browser. If you need a break, you are advised to keep the browser open. In case of losing the link, please reach out to mkaur-ctrwikimedia.org
This survey must be completed before Steps 3 & 4, as it will provide more background as to the type of work and expectations of members of AffCom.
Step 3. Answers the following questions:
NOTE: Questions 1-3 are required for all candidates.
Question 4 & 5 should be answered by those interested in joining the Recognitions subcommittee.
Question 6 & 7 should be answered by those interested in joining the Conflicts Intervention subcommittee.
If you are willing to nominate yourself for both subcommittees, answer all questions.
What roles have you served across any Wikimedia projects and affiliates that you think have prepared you for this role?
AffCom members need to manage time, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, and diverse situations across the global movement. How do you envision managing these?
Members of AffCom serve on one of two subcommittees: Recognitions OR Conflicts Intervention. Which one of these are you most interested in serving on?
If you are interested in serving on the Recognitions subcommittee, what do you think makes a group of Wikimedians ready to function together as an affiliate?
If you are interested in serving on the Recognitions subcommittee, what do you think are the benefits and responsibilities of functioning as formal affiliates?
If you are interested in serving on the Conflicts Intervention subcommittee, please describe your experience working with conflicts resolution.
If you are interested in serving on the Conflicts Intervention subcommittee, please describe how you have helped build consensus and support diversity.
Step 4. Once you have completed the above, send an email announcing your application to affcomwikimedia.org before the application deadline.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me and/or the committee as a whole. We are happy to chat or have a webinar call with anyone about our work if this helps them decide to apply. Please distribute this call among your networks, and do apply if you are interested!
The Affiliations Committee – the committee responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups – is looking for advisors!
The main role of the Affiliations Committee is to guide groups of volunteers that are interested in forming Wikimedia affiliates. We review applications from new groups, answer questions and provide advice about the different Wikimedia affiliation models and processes, review affiliate bylaws for compliance with requirements and best practices, and advise the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees on issues connected to chapters, thematic organizations and Wikimedia user groups.
We are looking for advisors who are excited by the challenge of empowering volunteers to get organized and form communities that further our mission around the world. In exchange, committee advisors selected will gain the experience of supporting their world-wide colleagues to develop their communities as well as personal development in guiding organizational development, facilitating affiliate partnerships, and professional communications.
AffCom advisors can engage with the committee in a variety of capacities:
Consultant
Individuals with extensive movement experience can be engaged as Consultants for specific cases or initiatives by AffCom.
Trainer
Individuals with specific expertise may be engaged for short-term projects for training AffCom or Affiliates. They might also lead the Capacity Building initiatives for AffCom or affiliates.
Observer
AffCom can request specific or all advisors to act as an observer in different cases to ensure neutrality & compliance with guidelines.
AffCom Support
Development of Policies: While advisors cannot create legally binding policies for the committee, they can help create policies that provide direction and support for the committee.
Planning and Implementing Community Relations: The advisors are long-term wikimedians & also include influential community leaders who can be effective at spreading the word about initiatives and services.
Supporting Subcommittees: The advisors can support subcommittees that have assigned tasks in specific areas.
Other Tasks: Advisors can be engaged to address a specific need. Such engagements are usually short-lived and are disbanded as soon as their specific goals are met.
Key skills
We look for a healthy mix of different skill sets in our advisors, including the following key skills and experience:
Strong understanding of the structure and work of Wikimedia affiliates and the Wikimedia Foundation.
Readiness to participate in political discussions on the role and future of affiliates, models of affiliation, and similar topics.
Availability of up to 2 hours per week, and the time to participate in a monthly two-hour voice/video meeting
International orientation and ability to work and communicate with other languages and cultures.
Knowledge of different legal systems and experience in community building and organizing are a plus.
Fluency in English is required; skills in other languages are a major plus.
Experience with or in an active Wikimedia affiliate is a major plus.
Strong track record of effective collaboration (such as evidenced skills at facilitation, mediation, negotiation, and so forth) is a major plus.
Willingness to use one's real name in committee activities (including contacts with current and potential affiliates) when appropriate.
Selection process
As a reflection of our commitment to openness, transparency, and bilateral engagement with the Wikimedia community, the 2022 advisors selection process will include a public review and comment period. All applications must be posted on Meta between January 01 and January 31, 2022 at the nomination page, and the community will be invited to provide comments and feedback about each candidate. At the end of the nomination period, the applications will be voted on by the members of the committee, taking into account comments put forward by the committee's members, advisors, Wikimedia Foundation staff and board liaisons, and the community. A final decision will be made in February 2022, with new advisors expected to begin later that month.
How to apply
If you are interested in advising the committee, please submit your candidacy on the nomination page between January 01 to January 31, 2022. Your application must include the following information:
Your full name and Wikimedia username
A statement describing your relevant experience, skills, and motivation for joining the committee as an advisor.
The advisor role you would like to serve
Answers to the following three questions:
How do you think affiliates work best together to partner on effective projects and initiatives?
What do you see as the role of affiliates in the Wikimedia movement in the next three years?
What do you feel you will bring as an advisor to the committee that makes you a uniquely qualified candidate?
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact the committee. We are happy to chat or have a phone call with anyone about our work if this helps them decide to apply. Please distribute this call among your networks, and do apply if you are interested!
The next Wikibase live session is 16:00 GMT on Thursday 30th December 2021 (17:00 Berlin time). This month we will have a guest presentation by the team at The Semantic Lab at Pratt Institute. They will present how they are using Linked Open Data (LOD) in their projects with the help of Wikibase. All are welcome!
The 500th Wikidata weekly summary is 2 issues away. We are putting together interesting things related to the number 500 to include in that issue. Do you know any Wikidata facts or queries or anything cool related to 500? Please add them to Wikidata:Status updates/Next#Welcome to the 500th Weekly Summary!
Wikimedia Deutschland is running a survey to evaluate Wikibase Installation and Updating experience for users. Please answer a few questions so we can continue to identify areas of improvement for users. Survey links
Due to the winter holidays, the development team is taking a break and no deployment is happening for Wikidata at the moment. Happy holidays, everyone :)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 10 January 2022.
Recent changes
Queries made by the DynamicPageList extension (<DynamicPageList>) are now only allowed to run for 10 seconds and error if they take longer. This is in response to multiple outages where long-running queries caused an outage on all wikis. [31]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from February. [32]
The next Wikibase live session is 16:00 GMT on Thursday 30th December 2021 (17:00 Berlin time). This month we will have a guest presentation by the team at The Semantic Lab at Pratt Institute. They will present how they are using Linked Open Data (LOD) in their projects with the help of Wikibase. All are welcome!
Wikidata. Lecture - master class in Russian is 16:07 GMT on Sunday 26th December 2021 (19:07 Moscow time) in Minsk Hackerspace. For those who are not familiar and want to know what it is.
Articles created by country of citizenship : a javascript notebook which looks at the distribution of articles created by a user by country of citizenship (P27). It uses Wikidata's API through wikibase-sdk library.
If you are using the Modern Vector skin on Wikidata then search might break for you near the end of January for a few days. To fix it you can temporarily switch back to the Vector skin. A proper fix is being worked on in phab:T275251.
Wikimedia Deutschland is running a survey to evaluate Wikibase Installation and Updating experience for users. Please answer a few questions so we can continue to identify areas of improvement for users. Survey links
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, January 19th 2022 at 17:00 UTC (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group.
SPARQL queries live on Twitch and in French by Vigneron, January 4 at 19:00 CEST
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, January 19th 2022 at 17:00 UTC (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group.
Next Wikidata Bug Triage Hour on January 13th at 18:00 Central Europe Time (17:00 UTC/GMT), in this Jitsi room. This edition will be an open discussion without a specific theme: you can bring 1-2 Phabricator tickets that you really care about, and we will look at them together and see how we can add relevant information and triage them.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call: Review Wikimedia Foundation’s Linked Open Data Strategy 2021 and community discussion. Agenda, January 11th. to local time!
Upcoming Search Platform Office Hours. Date: Wednesday, January 12th, 2022. Time: 16:00-17:00 GMT / 08:00-09:00 PST / 11:00-12:00 EST / 17:00-18:00 CET & WAT
SPARQL queries live on Twitch and in French by Vigneron, January 12 at 19:00 CEST (exceptionally on Wednesday)
Introduction to the interwiki links between Wikidata and Wikipedia (in French) - YouTube
Exploring Wikipedia infobox from Wikidata (in French) - YouTube
WIkimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021
Implementing Wikidata in Educational Institutions — CEE Challenges and Opportunities - YouTube
Add your country to the Wikidata Govdirectory - YouTube
Wikidata automatization and integration with web resources - YouTube
Tool of the week
OneZoom "tree of life explorer" is an interactive map of the evolutionary links between all living things known to science using Wikidata.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
The Celtic Knot Conference (dedicated to underserved languages on the Wikimedia project, with a strong focus on Wikidata and lexicographical data) will take place online in 2022. You can help the organizers with giving input on topics you'd like to see at the conference. Feel free to fill in the survey before January 17.
if you want to declare that you are available for merging duplicate articles in one or more given Wikipedias, please add your name to this page
if you want to find some user able to merge articles in a certain Wikipedia, you can see if there are already available users for that Wikipedia and contact them directly
New open positions at Wikimedia Deutschland (Wikidata/Wikibase teams)
New updater for the Wikidata Query Service to help it keep up with the large number of edits on Wikidata
Query Builder to make it easier for people to create SPARQL queries without having to know SPARQL
Item Quality Evaluator to make it easy to find the highest and lowest quality Items in a topic area
Constraints Violations Checker is a small command-line tool that gives constraint violation statistics for a set of Items to make it easier to find the Items that need more work
Curious Facts finds anomalies in the data in Wikidata and offers them up for review and amusement
Wikidata Map to see the distribution of Wikidata's Items across the world and the connections between them
Current Events to make it easy to see what's currently a hot topic in the world and being edited a lot on Wikidata
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
A oauth_consumer variable has been added to the AbuseFilter to enable identifying changes made by specific tools. [33]
Gadgets are now able to directly include JSON pages. This means some gadgets can now be configured by administrators without needing the interface administrator permission, such as with the Geonotice gadget. [34]
Gadgets can now specify page actions on which they are available. For example, |actions=edit,history will load a gadget only while editing and on history pages. [35]
Gadgets can now be loaded on demand with the withgadget URL parameter. This can be used to replace an earlier snippet that typically looks like withJS or withCSS. [36]
Four special pages (and their API counterparts) now have a maximum database query execution time of 30 seconds. These special pages are: RecentChanges, Watchlist, Contributions, and Log. This change will help with site performance and stability. You can read more details about this change including some possible solutions if this affects your workflows. [40]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 January. It will be on all wikis from 13 January (calendar).
Events
Community Wishlist Survey 2022 begins. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC. Learn more.
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, January 19th 2022 at 17:00 UTC (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team present what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
SPARQL queries live on Twitch and in French by Vigneron, January 18 at 19:00 CEST
LIVE Wikidata editing #67 - YouTube, Facebook, January 22 at 19:00 UTC
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
When using WikiEditor (also known as the 2010 wikitext editor), people will now see a warning if they link to disambiguation pages. If you click "Review link" in the warning, it will ask you to correct the link to a more specific term. You can read more information about this completed 2021 Community Wishlist item.
When asked to create a new page or talk page section, input fields can be "preloaded" with some text. This feature is now limited to wikitext pages. This is so users can't be tricked into making malicious edits. There is a discussion about if this feature should be re-enabled for some content types.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 January. It will be on all wikis from 20 January (calendar).
Events
Community Wishlist Survey 2022 continues. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC. Learn more.
The next Wikibase live session is 16:00 UTC on Thursday 27th January 2022 (17:00 Berlin time). What are you working on around Wikibase? You're welcome to come and share your project with the community.
Editing with OpenRefine live on Twitch and in French by Vigneron, January 25 at 19:00 CET (UTC+1)
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call: Professor Pascal Martinolli speaking on tabletop role-playing game citations practices and Wikidata, January 25th.
LIVE Wikidata editing #68 - YouTube, Facebook, January 29 at 19:00 UTC
Implementing basic version of mul language code and deploying it to Test Wikidata (phab:T297393)
Preparing an event centered on reusing Wikidata's data
Mismatch Finder: Been in touch with people who can potentially provide the first mismatches to load into the new tool for the launch. Finalized the statistics part.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 January. It will be on all wikis from 27 January (calendar).
The following languages can now be used with syntax highlighting: BDD, Elpi, LilyPond, Maxima, Rita, Savi, Sed, Sophia, Spice, .SRCINFO.
You can now access your watchlist from outside of the user menu in the new Vector skin. The watchlist link appears next to the notification icons if you are at the top of the page. [42]
Events
You can see the results of the Coolest Tool Award 2021 and learn more about 14 tools which were selected this year.
This is a friendly reminder that the Affiliations Committee – which is responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing and sustaining Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups – is seeking new members and advisors! The deadline to post your application on the Member nomination page and Advisor nomination is 31 January 2022.
If you know somebody you think may be interested, please share and encourage them to consider applying. If you have any questions please email affcom@wikimedia.org before the application deadline or reach out to any of the current members. Good luck to all the candidates!
Talk to the Search Platform Team about anything related to Wikimedia search, Wikidata Query Service, Wikimedia Commons Query Service, etc.! February 2nd, 2022. Etherpad.
LIVE Wikidata editing #69 - YouTube, Facebook, February 5 at 19:00 UTC
Continuing work on adding the mul language code for labels, descriptions and aliases. (phab:T297393)
Enabled statement usage tracking for Cebuano, Armenian and Warai Warai to ensure fine-grained notifications about edits on Wikidata on those Wikipedias (phab:T296383, phab:T296382, phab:T296384)
Continuing work on fixing a bug where Wikidata changes do not get sent to Wikipedia and co for the first sitelink adding leading to missing information in the page_props table (phab:T233520)
Continuing work on making sure the Wikidata search box works with the new Vector skin improvements (phab:T296202)
Mismatch Finder: Debugging some issues with the first files we got with mismatches that we can load into the Mismatch Finder
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
If a gadget should support the new ?withgadget URL parameter that was announced 3 weeks ago, then it must now also specify supportsUrlLoad in the gadget definition (documentation). [43]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 February. It will be on all wikis from 3 February (calendar).
Future changes
A change that was announced last year was delayed. It is now ready to move ahead:
The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in three weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections. As usual, these labels can be translated on translatewiki (direct links are available) or by administrators on your wiki.
The Data Reuse Days will bring together Wikidata editors and data reusers on March 14-24 - we're currently building the schedule. Join us and discover many cool projects!
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call: Andy Mabbett on the "Cite Q" template that uses data from Wikidata in Wikipedia citations and Crystal Clements on setting the framework for a future discussion on addressing ethical concerns surrounding representation of gender for living persons in Wikidata, February 8th. Agenda
Wikidata Query Service scaling: You can join 2 calls and provide feedback at the 2 WDQS scaling community meetings on Thursday, 17 Feb 2022 18:00 UTC, and Monday 21 Feb 2022 18:00 UTC. Full details here.
Live on Twitch and in French about Academic bibliographical data and Scholia by Vigneron and Jsamwrites, February 8 at 19:00 CET (UTC+1)
LIVE Wikidata editing #70 - YouTube, Facebook, February 12 at 19:00 UTC
Wikidata has 2,540,891 items for people with both date of birth and date of death. There are 9 redirects for every 100 such items. (source). 2000 people share dates of birth and death with another person.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Category counts are sometimes wrong. They will now be completely recounted at the beginning of every month. [44]
Problems
A code-change last week to fix a bug with Live Preview may have caused problems with some local gadgets and user-scripts. Any code with skin-specific behaviour for vector should be updated to also check for vector-2022. A code-snippet, global search, and example are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 February. It will be on all wikis from 10 February (calendar).
Krbot's constraint reports are now generally updated daily, after code optimizations and hardware upgrades.
Call for Mentors: Wiki Mentor Africa is a mentorship project for tool creators/contributors. Interested to become a mentor (experienced tool creators/contributors), please visit this page!
Wikidata ESR is a tool to visualize evolutions of universities and schools, such as creations, mergers, deletions and relations. Feedback and help to develop this project further is requested.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Purging a category page with fewer than 5,000 members will now recount it completely. This will allow editors to fix incorrect counts when it is wrong. [45]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 February. It will be on all wikis from 17 February (calendar).
In the AbuseFilter extension, the rmspecials() function has been updated so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of rmspecials() with rmwhitespace() wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [46]
The Data Reuse Days will bring together Wikidata editors and data reusers on March 14-24 - we're currently building the schedule. Join us and discover many cool projects!
The next Wikibase live session is 16:00 UTC on Thursday 24th February 2022 (17:00 Berlin time). What are you working on around Wikibase? You're welcome to come and share your project with the community.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call: Huda Khan and Astrid Usong on their Linked Data for Production 3 (LD4P3) grant work to use Wikidata in knowledge panels in Cornell’s library catalog Agenda - 2022-02-22 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET (Time zone converter)
Call for Mentors: Wiki Mentor Africa is a mentorship project for tool creators/contributors. Interested to become a mentor (experienced tool creators/contributors), please visit this page!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
At Wikipedias, all new accounts now get the Growth features by default when creating an account. Communities are encouraged to update their help resources. Previously, only 80% of new accounts would get the Growth features. A few Wikipedias remain unaffected by this change. [48]
You can now prevent specific images that are used in a page from appearing in other locations, such as within PagePreviews or Search results. This is done with the markup class=notpageimage. For example, [[File:Example.png|class=notpageimage]]. [49]
There has been a change to the HTML of Special:Contributions, Special:MergeHistory, and History pages, to support the grouping of changes by date in the mobile skin. While unlikely, this may affect gadgets and user scripts. A list of all the HTML changes is on Phabricator.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 February. It will be on all wikis from 24 February (calendar).
Future changes
The software to play videos and audio files on pages will change soon on all wikis. The old player will be removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [50][51]
Toolforge's underlying operating system is being updated. If you maintain any tools there, there are two options for migrating your tools into the new system. There are details, deadlines, and instructions on Wikitech. [52]
Mismatch Finder, the tool that lets you review mismatches between the data in Wikidata and other databases, is now ready to be used for checking potential mismatches and uploading lists of new potential mismatches.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Mentors using the Growth Mentor dashboard will now see newcomers assigned to them who have made at least one edit, up to 200 edits. Previously, all newcomers assigned to the mentor were visible on the dashboard, even ones without any edit or ones who made hundred of edits. Mentors can still change these values using the filters on their dashboard. Also, the last choice of filters will now be saved. [54][55]
The user group oversight was renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. You may need to update any local references to the old name, e.g. gadgets, links to Special:Listusers, or uses of NUMBERINGROUP.
Problems
The recent change to the HTML of tracking changes pages caused some problems for screenreaders. This is being fixed. [56]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 March. It will be on all wikis from 3 March (calendar).
Future changes
Working with templates will become easier. Several improvements are planned for March 9 on most wikis and on March 16 on English Wikipedia. The improvements include: Bracket matching, syntax highlighting colors, finding and inserting templates, and related visual editor features.
If you are a template developer or an interface administrator, and you are intentionally overriding or using the default CSS styles of user feedback boxes (the classes: successbox, messagebox, errorbox, warningbox), please note that these classes and associated CSS will soon be removed from MediaWiki core. This is to prevent problems when the same class-names are also used on a wiki. Please let us know by commenting at phab:T300314 if you think you might be affected.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot: EnvlhBot 3. Task/s: add dictionaries IDs to French lexemes
Closed request for permissions/Bot: IndoBot (Approved). Task/s: I would like to import all Indonesian schools, more than 100000. The data includes school type, location, and coordinates as well as external identifiers
LIVE Wikidata editing #74 - YouTube, Facebook, March 12th at 19:00 UTC
LD4 Wikibase Working Hour. Presentation and discussion: "Introduction to Linked Open Data Strategy with Lea Voget, Head, Product Management WMDE". Lea is not only the team lead of product, project and program managers at WMDE, she is also one of the main thinkers behind the Linked Open Data strategy. When: 11 March 2022, 11AM-12PM Eastern US (Time zone converter). Registration: Registration link
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call: Associate Librarian Stacy Allison-Cassin and her students on Wikidata in the classroom. Agenda
Creating a new item on Wikidata (in Italian) - YouTube
Connecting Wikidata with OpenStreetMap (in Italian) - YouTube
Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons (in French) - YouTube: 1, 2, 3.
Tool of the week
Wikxhibit is a tool that allows anyone, even non-programmers, to create cool presentations of Wikidata, and other sources of data on the web, only using HTML and without any additional programming. Are you interested in creating presentations of Wikidata? We would like to understand your experience with Wikidata to better improve our tool. It would help if you can fill out our survey https://mit.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cvZKKlRu2S7C9Fk
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Wikidata dumps: Due to technical issues the JSON and RDF dumps for the week of March 1st couldn't be properly generated (phab:T300255#7746418). The situation is expected to get back to normal this week.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
There was a problem with some interface labels last week. It will be fixed this week. This change was part of ongoing work to simplify the support for skins which do not have active maintainers. [57]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 March. It will be on all wikis from 10 March (calendar).
Data Reuse Days, on March 14-24: you can select the sessions you'd like to join among the many presentations, workshops and discussions in the schedule. You can also look at a selection of sessions based on your areas of interest.
LIVE Wikidata editing #75 - YouTube, Facebook, March 19th at 19:00 UTC
Mismatch Finder: Discussing the next batches of potential mismatches with MusicBrainz data and some remaining Freebase data
Lexicographical data: Continuing work on the basic version of the new Special:NewLexeme page, focusing on putting in the base data about the new Lexeme
REST API: Continuing coding on the basic version of the GET Item endpoint
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
In the Wikipedia Android app it is now possible to change the toolbar at the bottom so the tools you use more often are easier to click on. The app now also has a focused reading mode. [58][59]
Problems
There was a problem with the collection of some page-view data from June 2021 to January 2022 on all wikis. This means the statistics are incomplete. To help calculate which projects and regions were most affected, relevant datasets are being retained for 30 extra days. You can read more on Meta-wiki.
There was a problem with the databases on March 10. All wikis were unreachable for logged-in users for 12 minutes. Logged-out users could read pages but could not edit or access uncached content then. [60]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 March. It will be on all wikis from 17 March (calendar).
Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights through their group memberships. Before, only those with the deleterevision right could access this special page. [62]
On the Special:Undelete pages for diffs and revisions, there will be a link back to the main Undelete page with the list of revisions. [63]
Future changes
The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the IP Masking implementation strategy and next steps. The announcement can be read here.
The Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place as a hybrid event on 20-22 May 2022. The Hackathon will be held online and there are grants available to support local in-person meetups around the world. Grants can be requested until 20 March.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
PodcastBot. Task/s: Upload new podcast episodes, extract: title, part of the series, has quality (explicit episode), full work available at (mp3), production code, apple podcast episode id, spotify episode ID. Regex extraction: talk show guest, recording date (from description)
AradglBot. Task/s: Create between 100,000 and 200,000 new lexemes in Aragonese language Q8765
Closed request for permissions/Bot: EnvlhBot 3 (approved). Task/s: add dictionaries IDs to French lexemes
Data Reuse Days, on March 14-24: you can select the sessions you'd like to join among the many presentations, workshops and discussions in the schedule. For a recap of the event so far:
a selection of sessions are recorded, you can find the videos here or below
speakers will progressively add their slides in this Commons category
Cartographier des données de Wikidata avec Umap (in French) - YouTube
Mapping Einstein Researchers on Wikidata (in Portuguese) - YouTube
Tool of the week
Linked People project let's you explore the family trees of all known people at Wikipedia/Wikidata.
Gene of the Day (gene-wordle) uses Wikidata for gene names and crafting an answer list by number of sitelinks.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
There are Rapid Grants available for local meetups during the Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 from May 20-May 22. Apply to host a social for your local community. The deadline to apply is March 27, 2022.
The proposed config change to remove the changetags right from users – so that they can apply change tags to their own actions as they are made, but not change the tags of other actions after the fact anymore – has been deployed.
Lexicographical data: We're continuing with the work on the new Special:NewLexeme page. We worked on saving a valid new Lexeme with the new page. We are now focusing on the suggesters for language and lexical category so editors can select the right Item for them.
Data Reuse Days: We ran sessions on how to use Wikidata's data programmatically and the best practices around it. Slides and videos are available already (see above).
REST API: Continuing coding on the basic version of the GET Item endpoint. We have the very initial version of the get item endpoint ready and are now adding more parameters to it.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
New code release schedule for this week
There will be four MediaWiki releases this week, instead of just one. This is an experiment which should lead to fewer problems and to faster feature updates. The releases will be on all wikis, at different times, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. You can read more about this project.
The Jupyter notebooks tool PAWS has been updated to a new interface. [66]
Future changes
Interactive maps via Kartographer will soon work on wikis using the FlaggedRevisions extension. Please tell us which improvements you want to see in Kartographer. You can take this survey in simple English. [67]
The next Wikibase live session is 15:00 UTC on Thursday 31st March 2022 (17:00 Berlin time). What are you working on around Wikibase? You're welcome to come and share your project with the community.
ArtandFeminism 2022 editathon by Achiri Bitamsimli. Theme: Add Dagbani labels and descriptions of female lawyers in West Africa. Date: April 1st, 2022 - March 8th, 2022. Location: Tamale College of Education, Ghana. Time: 9:00am — 9:00pm UTC. Register.
LIVE Wikidata editing #77 - YouTube, Facebook, April 2nd at 18:00 UTC
Cultural Venues Datathon: April 25 - May 2, 2022. This online editing event is organized by the Canadian Association for the Performing Arts, LaCogency and many partners, with support from Wikimedia Foundation Alliances Fund. Guided editing sessions will be facilitated in English and in French.
The Celtic Knot Conference, dedicated to underrepresented languages on the Wikimedia projects, with a focus on Wikidata, will take place online and onsite on July 1-2, 2022.
Ongoing:
Wikimedia Indonesia's Datathon program under 2022 Wiki Women's Month started on March 18th 18:00 UTC+7 and will last until March 25th 23:59 UTC+7. 70+ users enrollled. Page.
Call for Mentors: Wiki Mentor Africa is a mentorship project for tool creators/contributors. Interested to become a mentor (experienced tool creators/contributors), please visit this page!
Wikidata now has over 1,600,000,000 edits! The milestone edit was made by Ruky Wunpini.
Lexicographical data: Working on the lookup for language and lexical category and displaying potential errors during Lexeme creation
Improved the API response of the wbsearchentities endpoint by adding the language to the labels and descriptions in the API response (phab:T104344)
Data Reuse Days: Second and final week - organized, attended and held a few sessions incl. bug triage hour and pink pony session
REST API: Continuing work on getting the the data of an Item, we almost have filtering of the data returned by the API and basic error handling is in place. Next up: not returning the data if the client already has the most recent data, and authentication
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
There is a simple new Wikimedia Commons upload tool available for macOS users, Sunflower.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 March. It will be on all wikis from 31 March (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of regular database maintenance. It will be performed on 29 March at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 31 March at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [68][69]
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot: APSbot 4: Task/s: Regularly create organizations from the Research Organization Registry (ROR - https://ror.org/) that are missing in Wikidata.
Highlighting linked data projects. "...Cornell University Library, Stanford Libraries, and the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa are engaging in the grant-funded Linked Data for Production project. Broadly, the project uses linked data to show patrons information from outside sources (such as Wikidata) and build longer, more nuanced links between resources".
Videos
The Share-VDE project and its relationship with Wikidata (in Italian) - YouTube
Create a Wikidata page from scratch (in French) - YouTube
Clinical Trials, Wikidata and Systems Biology (in Portuguese) - YouTube
Lexicographical data: Continued work on the new Special:NewLexeme page and focused on displaying sensible error messages if an error occurs during Lexeme creation. We're also working on adding a dropdown for the language variant.
REST API: Continued work on conditional requests and authorization
Made use of the new fields added in the wbsearchentities API and added language information to the markup of entity searches that you see when editing a statement or searching with the little searchbox at the top of the page on Wikidata. Now these search results should make a bit more sense to people who use screen readers.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
For a few days last week, edits that were suggested to newcomers were not tagged in the Special:RecentChanges feed. This bug has been fixed. [70]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 April. It will be on all wikis from 7 April (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 7 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Future changes
Starting next week, Tech News' title will be translatable. When the newsletter is distributed, its title may not be Tech News: 2022-14 anymore. It may affect some filters that have been set up by some communities. [71]
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, April 20th 2022 at 17:00 UTC (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
April 22nd - 24th, from Wiki Mentor Africa, A three days workshop on Linking biodiversity data through wikidata using Webaps and jupyter notebooks to attend, register here
May 5th: Wikidata Bug Triage Hour, open discussion. Come with your favorite Phabricator task and we will improve its description together.
DigAMus goes Wikidata workshop: make digital projects in museums visible and findable. April 29, 3-5 p.m. TIB Open Science Lab. Register here.
Live Coding - PyORCIDAtor, integrating ORCID with Wikidata - YouTube
How to add location coordinates to Wikidata Items (in Dagbani) - YouTube
Bundestag + Wikidata = Open Parliament TV (in German) - YouTube
Tool of the week
Glitter another R package to write SPARQL queries and query Wikidata and other SPARQL endpoints. This package provides a domain specific language to write queries directly from R.
Conzept is a topic-exploration tool based on Wikidata and other information sources.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
The Wikidata MOOC (online course) has been developed by Wikimedia France, involving several French-speaking Wikidata editors. The first version of the course will start on April 26 (in French only - registration here)
Wikibase cloud update (April): the closed beta of Wikibase.cloud is planned to start in mid-April. If you want to apply for closed beta access, please register with this form.
Lexicographical data: Continued work on the new Special:NewLexeme page. We worked on displaying error messages and inferring the spelling variant from the language. We also looked into the non-JavaScript version of the page.
REST API: Worked on conditional requests (do not return data the client already has) and authorization.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
There is a new public status page at www.wikimediastatus.net. This site shows five automated high-level metrics where you can see the overall health and performance of our wikis' technical environment. It also contains manually-written updates for widespread incidents, which are written as quickly as the engineers are able to do so while also fixing the actual problem. The site is separated from our production infrastructure and hosted by an external service, so that it can be accessed even if the wikis are briefly unavailable. You can read more about this project.
On Wiktionary wikis, the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [72][73]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 April. It will be on all wikis from 14 April (calendar).
India report: Wikimedian-in-Residence program initiated at the Research Institute of World's Ancient Traditions, Cultures and Heritage in Arunachal Pradesh
Italy report: The growth of sharing on Wikimedia projects
Netherlands report: Letters from Sierra Leone: the Sjoerd Hofstra photo collection in a new light
New Zealand report: Forming Wikimedia Aotearoa and the Aotearoa New Zealand Theses Project
Serbia report: News in Wikipedian in residence projects
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, April 20th 2022 at 17:00 UTC (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
LD4 Wikibase Working Hour: Learn about Wikibase system exploration, data model development, and the road ahead for Digital Scriptorium. When: Thurs. 21 April 2022, 3PM Eastern US (time zone converter). Where: Registration Link
WeDigBio Transcription workflow "...blogpost...showing how I go from finding the name of a collector when transcribing labels to adding them to Wikidata & then linking them to their collections via Bionomia."
Bird O'Clock! is a tool based on Wikidata and other data sources that shows pictures and numbers from actual people counting actual birds in the actual world!
Tiago's Coin Herbarium is a coin collection depicting different plant information displayed via Wikidata SPARQL queries.
Lexicographical data: Worked on inferring the spelling variant from the language's Item on the new Special:NewLexeme page and started building a little help box on the special page to explain what lex. data is.
REST API: Getting closer to having a first version of the REST API that returns Item data.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 April. It will be on all wikis from 21 April (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 19 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 21 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
On selected wikis, 50% of logged-in users will see the new table of contents. When scrolling up and down the page, the table of contents will stay in the same place on the screen. This is part of the Desktop Improvements project. [74]
Message boxes produced by MediaWiki code will no longer have these CSS classes: successbox, errorbox, warningbox. The styles for those classes and messagebox will be removed from MediaWiki core. This only affects wikis that use these classes in wikitext, or change their appearance within site-wide CSS. Please review any local usage and definitions for these classes you may have. This was previously announced in the 28 February issue of Tech News.
The next Wikibase live session is 15:00 UTC on Thursday 28th April 2022 (17:00 Berlin time). What are you working on around Wikibase? You're welcome to come and share your project with the community.
Cultural Venues Datathon: April 25 - May 2, 2022. The aim of this online editing event is to increase the quantity and quality of performing arts building/venue items.
Daily guided editing sessions will be facilitated in English and in French between April 25 and April 29.
Wikidata Coffee Breaks From April 25 - April 29, 2022 to fill in missing information on Swiss Performing Arts Institutions and venues.
From May 4 to 18 there will be the International Museum Day - Wikidata competition. The aim is to improve data about museums in the countries and regions participating. Contributors from anywhere can take part.
The Wikimedia Hackathon will take place online on May 20–22, 2022. If you’re interested in presenting something around Wikidata and Wikibase during the hackathon, don’t wait too long to book a slot: Wikimedia Hackathon 2022/Schedule#The Wikidata and Wikibase Room.
Lexicographical data: Worked on showing the name of language variants in the language variant selector and added the new information box to help people get a better understanding of lex. data.
REST API: Finished the initial implementation of the endpoint for getting data for a full Item and discussed feedback, testing and roll-out plans.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
On many wikis (group 1), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [79][80]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 April. It will be on all wikis from 28 April (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 26 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Some very old browsers and operating systems are no longer supported. Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in very old browsers like Internet Explorer 9 or 10, Android 4, or Firefox 38 or older. [81]
Wikidata Bug Triage Hour on May 5th at 16:00 UTC, online. Open discussion - you can bring a Phabricator ticket that you care about or that needs to be improved.
May 3rd. Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call: The call will include presentations on two projects using Wikidata to enhance discoverability of archival and museum collections. Sharon Garewal (JSTOR) will present “Adding Wikidata QIDs to JSTOR Images,” and Daniela Rovida and Jennifer Brcka (University of Notre Dame) will present “‘Archives At’: An opportunity to leverage MARC to create Linked Open Data.” [82]
Workshop "Wikidata, Zotero and Cita": tools to understand the construction of knowledge (in Spanish) - YouTube
Georeferencing cultural heritage on Wikidata - YouTube
Theory of Machine Learning on Open Data: The Wikidata Case by Goran S. Milovanovic - YouTube
Introduction to SPARQL (Wikidata Query Service (in Czech) - YouTube
Wikidata: A Knowledge Graph for the Earth Sciences - YouTube
Tool of the week
User:Nikki/LowercaseLabels.js - is a userscript that adds a button when editing labels to change the text to lowercase.
EqualStreetNames - is a tool that maps the inequality of name attributions.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
OpenRefine is running its two-yearly user survey! Do you use OpenRefine? Then fill in the survey to tell us how and why you use OpenRefine. Results and outcomes will inform future decisions about the tool.
The April update for the Wikidata Query Service scaling project is now available.
Lexicographical data: We are finishing up the information box that should help new users understand quickly what lexicographical data is. We also added the help text to encourage people to check if the Lexeme already exists before creating one.
REST API: We started working on the REST routes to get all statements of an Item and retrieve a single statement from an Item.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
On all remaining wikis (group 2), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [83][84]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 May. It will be on all wikis from 5 May (calendar).
Future changes
The developers are working on talk pages in the Wikipedia app for iOS. You can give feedback. You can take the survey in English, German, Hebrew or Chinese.
Several CSS IDs related to MediaWiki interface messages will be removed. Technical editors should please review the list of IDs and links to their existing uses. These include #mw-anon-edit-warning, #mw-undelete-revision and 3 others.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Last week, there was a problem with Wikidata's search autocomplete. This has now been fixed. [89]
Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 20 minutes, for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a problem with a database change. [90]
The Vector (2022) skin will be set as the default on several more wikis, including Arabic and Catalan Wikipedias. Logged-in users will be able to switch back to the old Vector (2010). See the latest update about Vector (2022).
Future meetings
The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place on 17 May. The following meetings are currently planned for: 7 June, 21 June, 5 July, 19 July.
The Wikimedia Hackathon will take place online on May 20–22, 2022. If you’re interested in presenting something around Wikidata and Wikibase during the hackathon, don’t wait too long to book a slot: Wikimedia Hackathon 2022/Schedule.
MapComplete is an OpenStreetMap viewer and editor that searches Wikidata for species - which means that it is super-easy to link the Wikidata item to a tree one sees!
REST API: We are continuing to implement the REST routes to get all statements of an Item and retrieve a single statement from an Item (phab:T305988, phab:T307087, phab:T307088)
Lexicographical data: We are finishing the version of the page for browsers without JavaScript support (phab:T298160). We started working on the feature to pre-fill the input fields by URL parameter (phab:T298154). And we started working on better suggestions for lexical categories so commonly-used ones can more easily be added to avoid mistakes (phab:T298150).
We fixed an issue with recently added new language codes not being usable for Lexemes and not being sorted correctly on Special:NewItem (phab:T277836).
Sweden report: Training at the National Archives of Sweden; Training at the Stockholm City Museum; Training at the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology; Improved images from Swedish Performing Arts Agency
The Wikimedia Hackathon will take place online on May 20–22, 2022. Are you interested in presenting something around Wikidata and Wikibase during the hackathon? Book a slot in the Wikidata+Wikibase room: Wikimedia Hackathon 2022/Schedule.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call May 17, 2022: Anson Parker and Lucy Carr-Jones (University of Virigina Claude Moore Health Sciences Library) will be talking about their Open Data Dashboard for analyzing University of Virginia Health publications using EuropePMC publication data as well as work to group publications based on institutional departments in Wikidata and how much of their content is "open." Agenda
LIVE Wikidata editing #80 - YouTube, Facebook, May 21 at 18:00 UTC
REST API: We continued implementing the REST routes to get all statements of an Item and retrieve a single statement from an Item (phab:T305988, phab:T307087, phab:T307088)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place online on May 20–22. It will be in English. There are also local hackathon meetups in Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Nigeria and the United States. Technically interested Wikimedians can work on software projects and learn new skills. You can also host a session or post a project you want to work on.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 May. It will be on all wikis from 19 May (calendar).
Future changes
You can soon edit translatable pages in the visual editor. Translatable pages exist on for examples Meta and Commons. [93]
6 and 8 June: Scholia hackathon with focus on software-related visualizations and curation workflows
29 July 2022: The submission deadline for the Wikidata Workshop 2022 that will be co-located with the 21st International Conference on Semantic Web (ISWC 2022).
Interrogating linked open data and Wikidata with SPARQL Lorenzo Losa - YouTube
Tool of the week
LOD4Culture is a web application for exploring world-wide cultural heritage.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
UNLOCK, a Wikimedia Deutschland program, is looking for your project ideas. These could be the development of tools building on top of Wikidata's data, of applications for social and public good or related to civic tech. Apply until May 29th, 2022!
Wikibase REST API: Initial implementation of a route providing all statements of an item (phab:T305988), an a route to retrieve a single statement (phab:T307087) completed.
First batch of WBstack.com accounts successfully migrated to Wikibase.cloud. You can keep track of our progress on this phabricator ticket phab:T303852.
Lexicographical data: We updated the input placeholders on the new version of the NewLexeme special page (T302877, T307443). We finished the feature to prefill the inputs from URL parameters if present (T298154) and to suggest common lexical category items (T298150). We are working on some accessibility improvements (T303806, T290733, T305359) and improving validation / error messages (T305854).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. [94]
The Growth team maintains a mentorship program for newcomers. Previously, newcomers weren't able to opt out from the program. Starting May 19, 2022, newcomers are able to fully opt out from Growth mentorship, in case they do not wish to have any mentor at all. [96]
Some editors cannot access the content translation tool if they load it by clicking from the contributions menu. This problem is being worked on. It should still work properly if accessed directly via Special:ContentTranslation. [97]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 May. It will be on all wikis from 26 May (calendar).
Future changes
Gadget and user scripts developers are invited to give feedback on a proposed technical policy aiming to improve support from MediaWiki developers. [98]
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call May 31, 2022: Felicia Smith, Nicole Coleman, and Akosua Kissi on the Know Systemic Racism Project Agenda
Want to know more about Abstract Wikipedia & Wikifunctions? You can now subscribe to the weekly newsletter and get a friendly reminder every time a new issue is published!
Radioactivity map: Mind map about radioactive radiation built by importing from Wikidata with InfoRapid KnowledgeBase Builder
Wikibase REST API: Expanding statement reading routes (a single statement specified by ID (phab:T307087), all statements of an item (phab:T305988), a single statement for a specific item (phab:T307088))
Fetch revision metadata and entity data separately in all use cases (phab:T307915, decision)
Update installation instructions in WikibaseLexeme.git readme file (phab:T306008)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
In the AbuseFilter extension, an ip_in_ranges() function has been introduced to check if an IP is in any of the ranges. Wikis are advised to combine multiple ip_in_range() expressions joined by | into a single expression for better performance. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [99]
The IP Info feature which helps abuse fighters access information about IPs, has been deployed to all wikis as a beta feature. This comes after weeks of beta testing on test.wikipedia.org.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 June. It will be on all wikis from 2 June (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 31 May at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at most wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences. [100][101]
The list=usercontribs API will support fetching contributions from an IP range soon. API users can set the uciprange parameter to get contributions from any IP range within the limit. [102]
A new parser function will be introduced: {{=}}. It will replace existing templates named "=". It will insert an equal sign. This can be used to escape the equal sign in the parameter values of templates. [103]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 June. It will be on all wikis from 9 June (calendar).
Lexicographical data: We finished work on input validation and displaying errors for faulty input (phab:T305854) and are continuing work on accessibility improvements such as screen reader support and keyboard navigation (phab:T290733, phab:T30535).
REST API: We finished implementation of conditional statement requests (phab:T307031, phab:T307032) and published the OpenAPI specification document (still subject to change as the API develops). We started working on the write part of the API with adding statements to an Item (phab:T306667).
Kosovo report: Cooperation with the National Gallery of Kosova and Summer of Wikivoyage 2022
Malaysia report: WikiGap Malaysia 2022 @ Kuala Lumpur Library
New Zealand report: Pacific Arts Aotearoa Wikiproject, Auckland Museum's Exploratory Study and Report back on #1Lib1Ref
Poland report: Wikipedian in residence in the National Museum in Cracow; Training at the Wawel Royal Castle National Art Collection; How can we make GLAM’s digital resources more reusable in education?; The International Museum Day 2022 Wikidata Competition
Sweden report: Rembrandt and others – drawings from the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm; Stockholm Museum of Women’s History; The map book of Heinrich Thome; Sörmland Museum; Wikidata competition – International Museum Day 2022
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call June 14, 2022: Will Kent (Wikidata Program Manager at Wiki Education) and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (Wikimedia Foundation Trustee; Visiting Scholar at Northeastern University; co-founder of Wiki Women in Red) will present on Leveraging Wikidata for Wikipedia – running a multi-language wiki project and the role of Wikidata in improving Wikipedia's content gender gap. Agenda
ExtraInterwiki. Some language links will never show up in your favorite Wikipedia, those who don’t have a corresponding article in this Wikipedia. This new tool aims to give them more visibility by searching topics closed to the one on an article with no article on your wiki.
Fixed a bug where Item IDs where shown instead of the label after selecting an Item in an Item selector (phab:T306214)
Lexicographical data: finished accessibility improvement for the new Special:New Lexeme page (phab:T290733), improving error messages for the new page (phab:T310134) and worked on a new search profile to make selecting languages easier (phab:T307869)
REST API: continued work on creating statements (phab:T306667)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 June. It will be on all wikis from 16 June (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 14 June at 06:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [107]
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [108]
The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at Commons, Wikidata, and some other wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences. [109][110]
Future meetings
The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place today (13 June). The following meetings will take place on: 28 June, 12 July, 26 July.
Future changes
By the end of July, the Vector 2022 skin should be ready to become the default across all wikis. Discussions on how to adjust it to the communities' needs will begin in the next weeks. It will always be possible to revert to the previous version on an individual basis. Learn more.
Hello and welcome to the June 2022 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since April 2022. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.
Blitz: of the 16 editors who signed up for our April Copy Editing Blitz, 12 completed at least one copy-edit, and between them removed 21 articles from the copy-editing backlog. Barnstars awarded are here.
Drive: 27 editors signed up for our May Backlog Elimination Drive; of these, 20 copy-edited at least one article. 144 articles were copy-edited, and 88 articles from our target months August and September 2021 were removed from the backlog. Barnstars awarded are here.
Progress report: As of 07:12, 14 June 2022 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have completed 209 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 1,404 articles.
Election news: Nominations for our half-yearly Election of Coordinators continues until 23:50 on 15 June (UTC), after which, voting will commence until 23:59, 30 June (UTC). All Wikipedians in good standing (active and not blocked, banned, or under ArbCom or community sanctions) are eligible and self-nominations are welcomed.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Tenryuu
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
Next installment of the LD4 Wikibase Working Hour: Featuring speaker Barbara Fischer, Liaison Counsel at the German National Library’s Agency for Standardization (DNB). On behalf of the DNB, Fischer initiated the WikiLibrary Manifesto. Fischer works to increase the quality of metadata through Authority Control to foster retrieval and linked data. Where: Zoom (Registration link). When: 30 June 2022, 11AM-12PM Eastern US (Time zone converter)
Wikidata:Wiki Mentor Africa 3rd edition - Creating tools on Wikimedia Toolforge using Python and Flask. Friday 24th June and Sunday 26th June 2022 - 16:00 - 17:00 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Wikipedia App for Android now has an option for editing the whole page at once, located in the overflow menu (three-dots menu ). [111]
Some recent database changes may affect queries using the Quarry tool. Queries for site_stats at English Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikidata will need to be updated. Read more.
A new user_global_editcount variable can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. [112]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 June. It will be on all wikis from 23 June (calendar).
Users of non-responsive skins (e.g. MonoBook or Vector) on mobile devices may notice a slight change in the default zoom level. This is intended to optimize zooming and ensure all interface elements are present on the page (for example the table of contents on Vector 2022). In the unlikely event this causes any problems with how you use the site, we'd love to understand better, please ping Jon (WMF) to any on-wiki conversations. [113]
Parsoid's HTML output will soon stop annotating file links with different typeof attribute values, and instead use mw:File for all types. Tool authors should adjust any code that expects: mw:Image, mw:Audio, or mw:Video. [114]
The next Wikibase live session is 15:00 UTC on Thursday 30th June 2022 (17:00 Berlin time). What are you working on around Wikibase? You're welcome to come and share your project with the community.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call June 28, 2022: Andrew McAllister will introduce us to Scribe, an app that provides keyboards for second-language learners, and its use of Wikidata. This presentation should appeal to anyone who has worked on or is interested in learning more about the applications of lexicographical data in Wikidata as well as anyone who has an interest in language, open information, data and programming. Agenda
IsisCB Explore - is a research tool for the history of science whose books and subjects use imagery from Wikidata.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Template Item documentation now includes a query to the corresponding lexemes. This is an attempt to make navigation between lexemes and items easier. For the record, Item documentation is available in the header of the talk page for each item.
Lexicographical data: We are wrapping up the coding on the new Special:NewLexeme page. Testing and rolll-out will follow soon. We are still working on making it easier to find languages in the language selector on the Special:NewLexeme page. (phab:T307869)
REST API: We are continuing to code on the ability to create statements on an Item (phab:T306667)
Investigating an issue with labels not being shown after merges (phab:T309445)
Preparation for upcoming work: We are planning the next work on the Mismatch Finder to address feedback we have received so far as well as EntitySchemas to make them more integrated with other areas of Wikidata.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 June. It will be on all wikis from 30 June (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 28 June at 06:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [115]
Some global and cross-wiki services will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 30 June at 06:00 UTC. This will impact ContentTranslation, Echo, StructuredDiscussions, Growth experiments and a few more services. [116]
Users will be able to sort columns within sortable tables in the mobile skin. [117]
Future meetings
The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place tomorrow (28 June). The following meetings will take place on 12 July and 26 July.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
ListedBuildingsUKBot. Task/s: Add wikidata site links to appropriate wiki commons category pages for listed buildings with matching ID numbers. I've identified about 1000 entities that can be updated. e.g. [118] should have a wiki commons link to [119] since they both refer to [120].
Job openings in the software development team at Wikimedia Deutschland
Junior Product Manager Wikidata - "In this role you will be part of a cross-functional team, and be the product manager of product initiatives for Wikidata, the largest knowledge base of free and open data in the world."
Product Manager Wikibase Suite - In this role "you will be part of an interdisciplinary team and the product team, and work closely with a broad variety of stakeholders in the Wikibase Ecosystem."
We are continuing to work on the new search profile for languages to make setting the language of a new Lexeme easier (phab:T307869)
REST API: We are putting finishing touches on the first version of the API route to add statements to an Item. It is still lacking support for automated edit summaries.
We are working on word-level diffs to make it easier to see what changed in an edit (phab:T303317)
We are investigating the issue of labels not being shown after some merges (phab:T309445)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 July. It will be on all wikis from 7 July (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 5 July at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 7 July at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
This change only affects pages in the main namespace in Wikisource. The Javascript config variable proofreadpage_source_href will be removed from mw.config and be replaced with the variable prpSourceIndexPage. [121]
Italy report: Opening and closing projects in June
Kosovo report: Edit-a-thon with Kino Lumbardhi; DokuTech; CEE Spring 2022 in Albania and Kosovo
New Zealand report: West Coast Wikipedian at Large and Auckland Museum updates
Poland report: Wikipedian in residence in the National Museum in Cracow; The next online meeting within the cycle of monthly editing GLAM meetings; Steps to communicate GLAM partnerships better and involve the Wikimedian community
Sweden report: 100 000 memories from the Nordic Museum; Report from the Swedish National Archives
USA report: Fifty Women Sculptors; Juneteenth Edit-a-thon; Juneteenth Photobooths 2022; Wiknic June 2022; New York Botanical Garden June 2022; LGBT Pride Month
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, July 27th 2022 at 17:00 UTC (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call July 12, 2022: Houcemeddine Turki will speak on "Enriching and Validating Wikidata from Large Bibliographic Databases." This call will be part of the 2022 LD4 Conference on Linked Data, “Linking Global Knowledge.” While you can attend the call directly via the links below without registering for the conference, we encourage everyone to check out the full conference program and all the excellent sessions on Sched at Agenda
Due to summer vacations and our current workloads the response times from the Wikidata communications team (Léa and Mohammed) to requests and queries may be delayed. We will resume full capacity by October.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
In the Vector 2022 skin, the page title is now displayed above the tabs such as Discussion, Read, Edit, View history, or More. Learn more. [122]
The Anti-Harassment Tools team recently deployed the IP Info Feature as a Beta Feature at all wikis. This feature allows abuse fighters to access information about IP addresses. Please check our update on how to find and use the tool. Please share your feedback using a link you will be given within the tool itself.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 12 July at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, July 27th 2022 at 17:00 UTC (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
Next Linked Data for Libraries Wikidata Working Hour July 18, 2022: Working with diverse children's book metadata. The second Wikidata Working Hour in the series will cover reconciliation in OpenRefine, so we can identify which authors from our spreadsheet of children's book metadata already exist and/or need to be created in Wikidata. You are, as always, welcome to bring your own data to work on. Event page
Placing a scientific article on Wikidata (in Portuguese) - YouTube
Teaching Wikidata Editing Practices (in Chinese) - YouTube
Threads
OpenSexism has created the Wednesday Index: each wednesday, it show gender diversity in Wikipedia articles. Gender diversity is computed using a SPARQL query.
Fixed an issue where the grammatical form of a Lexeme was rendered as `[object Object]` (phab:T239208) This also solves similar issues in other places.
REST API: Continued working on the API route to replace or remove a statement of an Item
We are making Wikibase resolve redirects when showing Item labels and descriptions in a lot more places; notably, this includes the wbsearchentities API. (phab:T312223)
Mismatch Finder: We are discussing options for how to improve its handling of dates, specifically calendar model and precision.
EntitySchemas: We are trying to figure out how to best technically go about implementing some of the most-needed features for version 2.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
The feature on mobile web for Nearby Pages was missing last week. It will be fixed this week. [124]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 July. It will be on all wikis from 21 July (calendar).
BboberBot. Task/s: The "robot" will browse the latest VIAF Dump, select the lines with a Idref (P269) and a Qitem, and add a P269 when it doesn't already exist in Wikidata.
ADSBot English Paper. Task/s: Importing scholarly articles from ADS database to Wikidata, by creating Wikidata Item of a scholarly article (optionally author items) and adding statements and statements-related properties to the item. Part of Outreachy Round 24.
ADSBot English Statement. Task/s: Adding missing statements and statement-related properties to existing scholarly articles on Wikidata from the ADS database. Part of Outreachy Round 24.
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, July 27th 2022 at 17:00 UTC (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
[Small wiki toolkits] [Upcoming bots & scripts workshop. "How to maintain bots" is coming up on Friday, July 29th, 16:00 UTC
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call July 26, 2022: Clair Kronk, Crystal Clements, and Alex Jung will be providing an update to Wikidata/gender discussions from the February 8 call with a focus on pronouns. Clair will introduce us to LGBTdb, a Wikibase instance created for and by LGBTQIA+ people from which we draw insight in Wikidata-related discussions. We also hope to discuss current pain points and share action items for future collaboration. Input from community members who are familiar with lexicographical data would be greatly appreciated. Agenda
Teaching Wikidata Editing Practices II (in Chinese) - YouTube
Tool of the week
User:Magnus Manske/referee.js - is a userscript that automatically checks external IDs and URLs of a Wikidata item as potential references, and adds them with a single click.
Lexicographical data: We went over all the feedback we received for teh testing of the new Special:NewLexeme page and started addressing it and fixing the uncovered issues. One issue already fixed is a bug that prevented it from working on mobile view. (phab:T313116)
Mismatch Finder: investigated how we can make it work for mismatches in qualifiers instead of the main statement (phab:T313467)
REST API: Continued working on making it possible to replace and remove a statement of an Item
We enabled the profile parameter to the wbsearchentities API on Test Wikidata (phab:T307869)
We continued making Wikibase resolve redirects when showing Item labels and descriptions in more places (phab:T312223)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Last week, some wikis were in read-only mode for a few minutes because of an emergency switch of their main database (targeted wikis). [126]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 July. It will be on all wikis from 28 July (calendar).
The external link icon will change slightly in the skins Vector legacy and Vector 2022. The new icon uses simpler shapes to be more recognizable on low-fidelity screens. [127]
Administrators will now see buttons on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. [128]
Wikidata Birthday is taking place in October 2022, and together we are celebrating 10 amazing years of Wikidata with decentralized community events! Discover more Wikidata:Tenth Birthday -- organize an event and get funding
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 August. It will be on all wikis from 4 August (calendar).
This week, three meetings about Vector (2022) with live interpretation will take place. On Tuesday, interpretation in Russian will be provided. On Thursday, meetings for Arabic and Spanish speakers will take place. See how to join.
Wikimania 2022, August 11 to 14, online event. The Hackathon will take place August 12-14. On this page you can find a summary of sessions and community gatherings related to Wikidata and Wikibase.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call August 9, 2022: Pieter Vander Vennet on MapComplete, a thematic OpenStreetMap viewer and editor which uses species, language, and image data from Wikidata. Agenda.
The Wikimania Hackathon starts next Friday, August 16-22! There are still lots of spots in the schedule to add your Wikidata related sessions or project ideas (anyone can present a session)
Toolhub is a catalog of 1500+ tools used every day in a wide variety of workflows across many Wiki projects. We are currently improving the search functionality and need your input – whether you are already familiar with Toolhub or not. Please take 5-10 minutes to leave feedback.
First online meet-up fully organized by volunteers of the Indonesian Wikidata Community has been held on 30th July where we edited items on Indonesian ethnic groups.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 9 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 11 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Wikidata Working Hour August 15, 2022: Fourth session of our summer/fall project working with diverse children's book metadata. We'll be covering manually creating publisher items: showing how to create items, add statements to items, add references, and use gadgets. You are, as always, welcome to bring your own data to work on. All sessions in our project series will be recorded for those who cannot attend. Links will be added to the event page when available. Event page
Ongoing:
Toolhub is a catalog of 1500+ tools used every day in a wide variety of workflows across many Wiki projects. We are currently improving the search functionality and need your input – whether you are already familiar with Toolhub or not. Please take 5-10 minutes to leave feedback.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia community decided to block IP editing from October 2021 to April 2022. The Wikimedia Foundation's Product Analytics team tracked the impact of this change. An impact report is now available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 August. It will be on all wikis from 18 August (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 16 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 18 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
List of created Wikidata items - a tool which combines Xtools pages created API with Wikidata API to get the list of items created by a user with their label.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Two problems with Kartographer maps have been fixed. Maps are no longer shown as empty when a geoline was created via VisualEditor. Geolines consisting of points with QIDs (e.g., subway lines) are no longer shown with pushpins. [133][134]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 August. It will be on all wikis from 25 August (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
The colours of links and visited links will change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. [135]
The latest round of Outreachy internships wrapped up on 26 August. Two interns worked on improving author-name data; their bots have made over 340,000 edits. Their project description, documentation, blog posts and code are available.
The August 2022 summary for the Wikidata Query Service backend update is out!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
In recent months, there have been inaccurate numbers shown for various Special:Statistics at Commons, Wikidata, and English Wikipedia. This has now been fixed. [137]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 August. It will be on all wikis from 1 September (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 30 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Future changes
The Wikimedia Foundation wants to improve how Wikimedia communities report harmful incidents by building the Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) to make it easy and safe for users to make reports. You can leave comments on the talk page, by answering the questions provided. If you have ever faced a harmful situation that you wanted to report/reported, join a PIRS interview to share your experience. To sign up please emailMadalina Ana.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call September 6, 2022: Dominic Byrd-McDevitt will talk about the Digital Public Library's Wikimedia program, an effort to provide national leadership around access and discoverability of digital collections by leveraging Wikipedia and its sister projects. 2 years ago, DPLA launched a digital asset pipeline to enable participating institutions in the DPLA network to share their collections with Wikimedia Commons. DPLA is continuing to innovate by taking advantage of Wikidata entities and Structured Data on Commons to continually synchronize data and improve discoverability. We'll discuss issues around large datasets, aggregation, reconciliation, and other challenges DPLA has faced. Agenda
We are continuing to work on the PATCH endpoint to make it possible to edit existing statements (phab:T306934)
We started the security review process for one of the libraries we are using. Until that is finished this part of the REST API can unfortunately not be tested on beta Wikidata. (phab:T316523)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 September. It will be on all wikis from 8 September (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 6 September at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 8 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
On Special pages that only have one tab, the tab-bar's row will be hidden in the Vector-2022 skin to save space. The row will still show if Gadgets use it. Gadgets that currently append directly to the CSS id of #p-namespaces should be updated to use the mw.util.addPortletLink function instead. Gadgets that style this id should consider also targeting #p-associated-pages, the new id for this row. Examples are available. [138][139]
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Wikidata Working Hour September 12, 2022: Sixth session of our summer/fall project working with diverse children's book metadata. We'll be creating items for books (works and editions) in Wikidata. You are, as always, welcome to bring your own data to work on. All sessions in our project series will be recorded for those who cannot attend. Links will be added to the event page when available. Wikidata Working Hour Event page
REST API: Continued work on the endpoint for changing a statement (phab:T306934)
Lexicographical data: Made sure that the new Lexeme creation page also is shown in older browsers (phab:T311157), which was one of the last remaining issues before we can switch out the existing page (phab:T307866)
Continued work on enabling sitelinks for redirects under certain conditions (phab:T278962)
Spend a few days with people from Wikimedia Indonesia to discuss our partnership
Poland report: The summary of GLAM editing contest and the end of residency at the National Museum in Cracow; Cooperation with Wawel Royal Castle; Hack(art)hon for Zachęta
Serbia report: Contemporary Art Edit-a-thon and Wikipedian in residence at the Historical Archive of Negotin
Sweden report: 100 000 Bildminnen; Uniforms, images from New Sweden, colonial officers, the map book of Fryderyk Getkant, and more!; Swedish general election 2022
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The search servers have been upgraded to a new major version. If you notice any issues with searching, please report them on Phabricator. [140]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 September. It will be on all wikis from 15 September (calendar).
Dual script support for Punjabi Wikidata labels and descriptions in Gurmukhi (pa) and Shahmukhi (pnb), taking a conservative approach (only making "obvious" transliterations).
Addition of labels and descriptions entirely consistent of information which can be inferred from other language labels (again, only for "obvious" cases).
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call September 20, 2022: Michael Jones (National Library of Wales) on his work using machine learning, Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), and Wikidata with historical newspaper collections. Agenda
The Climate Knowledge Hunt Hackathon: IPCC reports → Wikidata event on September 24. Registration
Finished the endpoint for editing statements (phab:T306934)
Working on automated edit summaries (phab:T312811)
Making small modifications to the response format for statements (phab:T317866)
Lexicographical data:
Special:NewLexemeAlpha now uses the new search profile for languages, which makes it easier to select a language Item for the language of the new Lexeme (phab:T312853)
Finished the work on making sure that the example Lexeme falls back to other locally defined examples for languages other than English instead of the pre-set example Lexeme (phab:T313599)
Working on making sure that only *-x-Q123, not *-x-q123, can be used as a Lexeme language code (phab:T317863)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Two database fields in the templatelinks table are now being dropped: tl_namespace and tl_title. Any queries that rely on these fields need to be changed to use the new normalization field called tl_target_id. See T299417 for more information. This is part of normalization of links tables. [142][143]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 September. It will be on all wikis from 22 September (calendar).
In Kartographer maps, you can use icons on markers for common points of interest. On Tuesday, the previous icon set will be updated to version maki 7.2. That means, around 100 new icons will be available. Additionally, all existing icons were updated for clarity and to make them work better in international contexts. [144][145]
Future changes
In a group discussion at Wikimania, more than 30 people talked about how to make content partnership software in the Wikimedia movement more sustainable. What kind of support is acceptable for volunteer developers? Read the summary and leave your feedback.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Wikidata Working Hour September 30, 2022: the seventh Wikidata Working Hour in the series will be a review session of creating contributor and publisher items in Wikidata. The primary goal of this session is to generate as many contributor and publisher items as we can in advance of the two following sessions which have to do with batch editing -- we want enough to make a good batch! We will review how to add items, but then reserve the bulk of the session for open editing, kind of like a mini-editathon! Naturally, participants can ask questions and share thoughts at any point during the editing! You are, as always, welcome to bring your own data to work on. All sessions in the project series will be recorded. Links will be added when available. Event page
User:Bovlb/notability.js is a userscript that adds a small notability indicator to the top right of an item showing how well the item satisfies the three notability criteria. Left to right, the three columns indicate sitelinks, identifiers and references, and structural need.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Parsoid clients should be updated to allow for space-separated multi-values in the rel attribute of links. Further details are in T315209.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 September. It will be on all wikis from 29 September (calendar).
Visual diffs will become available to all users, except at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias. [146]
Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. [147][148]
In the Module namespace, pages ending with .json will be treated as JSON, just like they already are in the User and MediaWiki namespaces. [149]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Kartographer maps can now show geopoints from Wikidata, via QID or SPARQL query. Previously, this was only possible for geoshapes and geolines. [150][151]
The Coolest Tool Award 2022 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 12 October.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 October. It will be on all wikis from 6 October (calendar).
Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. (Last week's release was delayed) [152][153]
The scribunto-console API module will require a CSRF token. This module is documented as internal and use of it is not supported. [5]
The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikimedia projects. Learn more.
October 4, 2022: Lana Soglasnova and Roman Tashlitskyy will talk about their preliminary work in creating and editing items for Slavic people and some of the complications involved in this work, especially around transliterating names in various languages. Agenda
Wikibase Working Hour! 25 October 2022, 2pm Eastern (Time zone converter) Amy Ruskin of Northeastern University Library, will speak on the topic of Wikidata vs. custom Wikibases: Community history case studies, Boston’s Chinatown. The Boston Research Center (BRC) is a digital community history and archives lab based in the Northeastern University Library. One of our current projects involves taking an inventory of historical materials related to Boston’s Chinatown, and we have been using Wikibase to store multilingual data about the linked collections, organizations, and people. In this presentation, we will discuss our experience of getting started with a custom Wikibase and give an overview of our progress so far on the Chinatown Collections project. Amy Ruskin is the Data Engineer in the Digital Scholarship Group in the Northeastern University Library. She has a Master's degree in Information Studies from McGill University and a background in computer science and statistics. Registration link
Wikidata Office Hour GLAM-Hack − online meet-up about the "library world" with Wikidata. October 5th, 12.00 UTC (online via Zoom)
Ongoing
Wikimedia Österreich, in cooperation with Wikimedia Deutschland, started the DACH Culture Contest as a Börthday present for Wikidata 10th anniversary! It features two categories: "libraries in Austria, Germany and Switzerland" and "Culture in Austria, Germany and Switzerland". So if you would like to improve data about libraries, books, music, art, video games, cinema etc as a börthday treat, join us and get the chance to win some nice prizes! The contest will last until October 16, 2022.
The fourth edition of the Coolest Tool Award is looking for nominations. Please submit your favorite tools by October 12, 2022. The awarded projects will be announced and showcased in a virtual ceremony in December.
Australia report: Behind the scenes with Australia's Wiki Loves Earth 2022 winner
Austria report: A Börthday present for Wikidata - the DACH Culture Contest
Brazil report: Reopening of Museu Paulista and other news
France report: Meeting with Prime minister cultural adviser; Residence at the Brittany Museum
India report: Digitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949
Indonesia report: GLAM Socialization; Wikistories for GLAM Competition
Italy report: September month of results and planning
Netherlands report: Wiki Loves Monuments Suriname first edition: 554 photos
New Zealand report: New Zealand Thesis Project and Te Papa Forget-me-nots
Poland report: The results of GLAM editing contest; GLAM Coordinators Meeting
Serbia report: External projects, great results and high level of independence
Sweden report: Bookfair back on site; Cultural history in High Schools; More identifiers from National Historical Museums of Sweden on Wikidata; Swedish general election 2022
USA report: Advocacy and Invention; New Smithsonian WiR; Called to Create; DC Statehood and Home Rule; Annual meeting; Wikipedian in Residence Opportunity at the Pérez Art Museum Miami
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 October. It will be on all wikis from 13 October (calendar).
On some wikis, Kartographer maps in full size view will be able to display nearby articles. After a feedback period, more wikis will follow. [154][155]
Wikidata Tenth Birthday Speaker Series Week 1 (n part one we learn how Wikidata is (or is not) integrated into Wikipedia, how it helps an enormous cultural institution like the Smithsonian achieve its goals)
The fourth edition of the Coolest Tool Award is looking for nominations. Please submit your favorite tools by October 12, 2022. The awarded projects will be announced and showcased in a virtual ceremony in December.
MUL language code: fixed the order of languages shown in the termbox on desktop, especially when mul is used (phab:T311617)
Lexicographical data:
Made Special:NewLexemeAlpha use the same font as the rest of the wiki (phab:T313166) – this should be the last blocker for replacing the old special page
Disallowed *-x-qid with lowercase Q as Lexeme language codes in favor of *-x-Qid (phab:T317863)
REST API: worked on handling conditional HTTP request headers
Changed the unexpectedUnconnectedPage page prop so that Special:UnconnectedPages can show the latest pages first, which should finally resolve this old security task in production (phab:T300770)
Cleaned up the Wikibase and WikibaseLexeme ontology files (phab:T314360)
Added a few more globes for geocoordinates (phab:T314611) - Thanks, Mike!
Hello and welcome to our latest newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since June. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.
Drive: Of the 22 editors who signed up for our July Backlog Elimination Drive, 18 copy-edited, between them, 116 articles. Barnstars awarded are noted here.
Blitz: Participants in our August Copy Editing Blitz copy-edited 51,074 words in 17 articles. Of the 15 editors who signed up, 11 claimed at least one copy-edit. Barnstars awarded are noted here.
Blitz: Our October Copy Editing Blitz begins on 16 October at 00:01 (UTC) and will end on 22 October at 23:59 (UTC). Barnstars awarded will be posted here.
Progress report: As of 19:57, 12 October 2022 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 303 requests for copy edit – including withdrawn and declined ones – since 1 January. At the time of writing, there are 77 requests awaiting attention and the backlog of tagged articles stands at 1,759. We always need more active, skilled copyeditors – particularly for requests – so please get involved if you can.
Election news: In our mid-year election, serving coordinators Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Reidgreg and Tenryuu were returned for another term, and were joined by new coordinator Zippybonzo. No lead coordinator was elected for this half-year. Jonesey95, a long-serving coordinator and lead, was elected as coordinator emeritus; we thank them for their service. Thank you to everyone who took part. Our next election of coordinators takes place throughout December. If you'd like to help out at the GOCE, please consider nominating yourself or other suitable editors (with their permission, of course!). It's your Guild, after all!
Task/s: I'm using Openrefine to edit items related to Wikidata:Wikiproject_Lieder, beginning by adding the new subclass lyrico-musical work (Q114586269) to the actual lieder in WD. I hope to gain some experience before going with further edits.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call October 18th: session where community members can share their favorite Wikidata gadgets, user scripts, or SPARQL queries Agenda
Learn Wikidata and celebrate #WikidataBirthday in Sydney! (An introduction to wikidata: how worlds of wikimedia link). Saturday 22 October from 11am to 2pm. Sign up.
The Welsh Government's new mapping platform Data Map Wales (for publishing public geo data) now has an optional base layer entirely in Welsh. This is largely based on OSM data with additional place names from Wikidata.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
A bug that caused problems in loading article thumbnails in Special:Search has been fixed. Further details are in T320406.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 October. It will be on all wikis from 20 October (calendar).
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, November 9th 2022 at 17:00 UTC (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Wikidata Working Hour October 24, 2022: ninth Wikidata Working Hour in the series will be batch loading data using QuickStatements to create items for works and editions in Wikidata. You are, as always, welcome to bring your own data to work on. All sessions in our project series will be recorded for those who cannot attend. Links will be added to the event page when available. Event page
The Biodiversity Information Standards annual conference (TDWG 2022) took place from 17-21 October in Sofia, Bulgaria, and online. It included a session about the role of the Wikimedia ecosystem in linking biodiversity data, which featured six talks, all of which with strong Wikidata components. Slides and/ or video recordings are already available for some (more to follow):
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
There have been some minor visual fixes in Special:Search, regarding audio player alignment and image placeholder height. Further details are in T319230.
On Wikipedias, a new preference has been added to hide article thumbnails in Special:Search. Full details are in T320337.
Problems
Last week, three wikis (French Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Russian Wikipedia) had read-only access for 25 minutes. This was caused by a hardware problem. [160]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 October. It will be on all wikis from 27 October (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 October at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 27 October at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Assamese Wikipedia, Bashkir Wikipedia, Balinese Wikipedia, Bavarian Wikipedia, Samogitian Wikipedia, Bikol Central Wikipedia, Belarusian Wikipedia, Belarusian (Taraškievica) Wikipedia, Bulgarian Wikipedia, Bhojpuri Wikipedia, Bislama Wikipedia, Banjar Wikipedia, Bambara Wikipedia, Bishnupriya Wikipedia, Breton Wikipedia, Bosnian Wikipedia, Buginese Wikipedia, Buryat Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [161]
Pages with titles that start with a lower-case letter according to Unicode 11 will be renamed or deleted. There is a list of affected pages at m:Unicode 11 case map migration. More information can be found at T292552.
The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikipedias. Learn more.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call November 1, 2022: Egon Willighagen (d:User:Egonw) on SARS-CoV-2 queries, a a well-documented series of Wikidata queries around the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the pandemic. This work contributes to d:Wikidata:Wikiproject COVID-19 and documentation is currently available in Japanese, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese. Agenda.
Some additional materials have been made available from the Wikimedia session at the Biodiversity Information Standards annual conference (TDWG 2022) that took place from 17-21 October in Sofia, Bulgaria, and online:
sparklis (source) : query builder in natural language that allows people to explore and query SPARQL endpoints with all the power of SPARQL and without any knowledge of SPARQL, nor of the endpoint vocabulary.
✨ Other Noteworthy Stuff
Word Finder is a tool based on Wikidata Lexemes that solves anagrams and find missing letters in crosswords.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
When using keyboard navigation on a Kartographer map, the focus will become more visible. [166]
In Special:RecentChanges, you can now hide the log entries for new user creations with the filter for "⧼rcfilters-filter-newuserlogactions-label⧽". [167]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 November. It will be on all wikis from 3 November (calendar).
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Wikidata Working Hour November 7, 2022: tenth and final Wikidata Working Hour in the series will be using SPARQL to query and visualize the data we’ve added to Wikidata during our series. You are, as always, welcome to bring your own data to work on. All sessions in our project series will be recorded for those who cannot attend. Links will be added to the event page when available. Event page
Wikidata and Wikibase office hour, taking place online on November 9th at 17:00 UTC (more details here)
Raising an Artist Profile with Wikidata: Thursday November 10, 2022 at 20:00 UTC (Session A) and 23:00 UTC (Session B). This free, step-by-step Wikidata workshop will focus mainly on Indigenous artists. Participants may choose to attend either Session A or Session B: both will cover the exact same material.
Wikidata editathon in Swedish with focus on climate politics and COP27, online and in Stockholm, 11 November 13.00-18.00 UTC
A Hands-On Introduction to Wikidata: Thursday December 1, 2022 at 17:00 UTC. By the end of this session, you will be able to edit Wikidata records about the cultural venues that matter most to you.
Lexicographical data: Replaced the old Special:NewLexeme page with the new one (phab:T307866) - a few remaining issues will still be fixed
Vue 3: Almost finished the Vue 3 migration in Wikibase and WikibaseLexeme (phab:T321595 and (phab:T304534) - this is needed for finalizing the migration in MediaWiki overall
Mismatch Finder: Worked on improving the handling of dates (phab:T288511)
Search: Working with the WMF on making the new Vue-based Vector search understand Wikidata (phab:T316093)), especially regarding “load more” behavior
REST API:
Continued improving error reporting for PATCH routes (phab:T320358)
Ensuring that the API correctly marks bot edits as bot edits and treats them as such in various other places
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
An updated version of the Event Registration tool is now available for testing at testwiki and test2wiki. The tool provides features for event organizers and participants. Your feedback is welcome at our project talkpage. More information about the project is available. [172]
Problems
Twice last week, for about 45 minutes, some files and thumbnails failed to load and uploads failed, mostly for logged-in users. The cause is being investigated and an incident report will be available soon.
Poland report: Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 selection process in progress; GLAM online meeting on evaluation of ten editions Wiki Loves Monuments in Poland
Serbia report: GLAMorous October; Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade; CEE Meeting
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call November 15, 2022: We will be discussing the first Wikidata Affinity Group Working Hour series, which ran from July to early November of this year. We will offer visualizations based on our data, listen to some of our volunteers talk about their experience helping to build the series, and discuss the results of our participant survey. We want to hear your questions and suggestions for future series! Agenda
Enrichissement des données sur la danse: Wednesday 16 November at 6:30 pm UTC (Session A) and Thursday 17 November at 6:30 pm UTC (Session B). Join the Regroupement québécois de la danse (RQD) and the Linked Digital Future Initiative (LDFI) for two dynamic sessions focusing on dance data. Session A will focus on artists, while Session B will focus on organizations and dance companies. Note: These sessions are offered in French only.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
At Wikidata, an interwiki link can now point to a redirect page if certain conditions are met. This new feature is called sitelinks to redirects. It is needed when one wiki uses one page to cover multiple concepts but another wiki uses more pages to cover the same concepts. Your feedback on the talkpage of the new proposed guideline is welcome. [173]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 November. It will be on all wikis from 17 November (calendar).
There will be a new link to directly "Edit template data" on Template pages. [175]
Future changes
Wikis where mobile DiscussionTools are enabled (these ones) will soon use full CSS styling to display any templates that are placed at the top of talk pages. To adapt these “talk page boxes” for narrow mobile devices you can use media queries, such as in this example. [176]
Wiki <3 Data - How to use Wikidata for data visualization. Join us on Monday 28 Nov. from 13:15 - 17:00 at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland or online! - Hosted by Visual Communication Design programme at Aalto Arts, workshop by Yamen Bousrih.
Next Wikidata Bug Triage Hour about Entity Schemas and other topics, on December 6th at 17:00 on Jitsi
Template:Quickquery can be used to quickly write and link SPARQL queries on the Wikidata wiki
Development
REST API: continuing work on adjusting JSON request and response format (phab:T321459)
Lexicographical data:
Added separation between identifiers and other statements on Lexemes (phab:T318310)
Fixed the case where language fallback indicators where shown on Special:NewLexeme when they should not be (phab:T322687)
Adjusted the help link for the spelling variant input field (phab:T315161)
Mismatch Finder:
Finished work on better handling of dates (phab:T288511)
Finished work on allowing mismatches with empty Wikidata values to make it possible to use the Mismatch Finder also for suggesting missing data (phab:T313468)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The display of non-free media in the search bar and for article thumbnails in Special:Search has been deactivated. Further details are in T320661.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 22 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 24 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Save the date! The next WikidataCon will take place on October 28-29, 2023, and will be organized by Wikimedia Taiwan and Wikimedia Germany. The hybrid event will be streamed from Taipei and accessible for everyone online. More information and updates on d:Wikidata:WikidataCon_2023
Next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call November 29, 2022: We will be discussing openly managed data gathering and management with Holly Little (Smithsonian), Sabine von Mering (Museum für Naturkunde), Erica Krimmel (Florida State University), and Debra Paul (University of Illinois)! Agenda
A Hands-On Introduction to Wikidata: Thursday December 1, 2022 at 17:00 UTC. By the end of this session, you will be able to edit Wikidata records about the cultural venues that matter most to you.
Finished the adjusted statement data structure (phab:T321459)
Simplifying the structure of sitelinks in Item data (phab:T321483)
Simplifying the value format for entity ID, time and globecoordinate value types (phab:T322734)
Investigating the way forward for rate limiting (phab:T322746)
Ontology issues: Preparing a survey for re-users of Wikidata's data about the different types of ontology issues and which ones are causing the most issues for application builders
Mismatch Finder:
Finishing the work on making it possible to provide mismatches with an empty Wikidata value so the tool can also be used to suggest new data (phab:T313468)
Finishing the work on better handling of calendar models and precision for dates (phab:T288511)
Lexicographical data: Fixing bugs:
Improved the markers that indicate the field is required input (phab:T322683)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
A new preference, “Enable limited width mode”, has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also available as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. It allows for increasing the width of the page for logged-out and logged-in users. [177]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 November. It will be on all wikis from 1 December (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 29 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 December at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Mathematical formulas shown in SVG image format will no longer have PNG fall-backs for browsers that don't support them. This is part of work to modernise the generation system. Showing only PNG versions was the default option until in February 2018. [178][179][180]
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Working Hour on December 5. We will be working on Structured Data on Commons with a WINTER FUN theme, adding depicts statements to images and playing with some tools. You are, as always, welcome to bring your own data to work on. This will be our last scheduled Working Hour for 2022. Please join us for a relaxing and enjoyable session to wrap up a year of excellent work together. Event page
Bug Triage Hour on December 6 at 17:00 UTC, on the topic of Entity Schemas (other topics also welcome). Come with your favorite Phabricator ticket so we can improve its description together!
Save the date! The next WikidataCon will take place on October 28-29, 2023, and will be organized by Wikimedia Taiwan and Wikimedia Germany. The hybrid event will be streamed from Taipei and accessible for everyone online. More information and updates on the WikidataCon 2023 page.
How many edits does Wikidata get per second? listen.hatnote.com/#wikidata is a tool that allows you to listen to the sound of Wikidata's recent changes feed.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Wikisources use a tool called ProofreadPage. ProofreadPage uses OpenSeadragon which is an open source tool. The OpenSeadragon JavaScript API has been significantly re-written to support dynamically loading images. The functionality provided by the older version of the API should still work but it is no longer supported. User scripts and gadgets should migrate over to the newer version of the API. The functionality provided by the newer version of the API is documented on MediaWiki. [183][184]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 December. It will be on all wikis from 8 December (calendar).
Hello and welcome to our latest newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since October. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.
Blitz: Our October Copy Editing Blitz focused on July and August 2022 request months; and articles tagged for c/e in December 2021 and January 2022. Seventeen of those who signed up claimed at least one copy-edit, and between them copy-edited forty-six articles. Barnstars awarded are here.
Drive: In the November Backlog Elimination Drive, thirty editors signed up, twenty-two of whom claimed at least one copy-edit. Both target months—December 2021 and January 2022—were cleared, and February was added to the target months. Sixteen requests were copy-edited and 239 articles were removed from the backlog. Barnstars awarded are here.
Blitz: Our seven-day-long December 2022 Copy Editing Blitz begins on 17 December at 00:01 (UTC)*. It will focus on articles tagged for copy-edit in February 2022, and pending requests from September and October. Barnstars awarded will be available here.
Progress report: As of 22:40, 8 December 2022, GOCE copyeditors have processed 357 requests since 1 January, there were seventy-four requests outstanding and the backlog stands at 1,791 articles. We always need skilled copy-editors; please help out if you can.
Election news: Nomination of candidates for the GOCE's Election of Coordinators for the first half of 2023 is open and continues until 23:59 on 15 December. Voting begins at 00:01 on 16 December and closes at 23:59 on 31 December. All editors in good standing (not under ArbCom or community sanctions) are eligible and self-nominations are welcomed. Coordinators serve a six-month term that ends at 23:59 on June 30. If you've thought about helping out at the Guild, please nominate yourself or any editor you consider suitable—with their permission, of course!. It's your Guild and it doesn't coordinate itself.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers and best seasonal wishes from your GOCE coordinators, Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Tenryuu, and Zippybonzo.
*All times and dates on this newsletter are UTC. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
New Zealand report: Integrating with the BHL, loading natural science specimens and data
Poland report: How Wiki helps to explore and enjoy art & culture; Wiki workshop for the National Museum in Krakow; GLAM online meeting on ideas for 2023; Wiki Loves Monuments 2022
Serbia report: Wikipedian in residence at Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and National Museum of Zrenjanin
Sweden report: Wikipedian in Residence at Musikverket; Women and architecture; Gymnasiearbete; New uploads from the Swedish National Archives; WLM winners; Images of Äpplet
The fourth edition of the Coolest Tool Award will happen online on Friday 16 December 2022 at 17:00 UTC! The event will be live streamed on Youtube in the MediaWiki channel.
Planning the final pieces that still need doing before the first release
Vektor 2022: Finished work on making Vector’s new Search work with Wikidata. The changes roll out for testing on test.wikidata.org next week (phab:T275251)
Query Service:
Getting a link to the query is now possible in the same place as getting a link to the result of the query (phab:T324218)
Removed the gif that showed on hover over the button that advertises the Query Builder to make it less annoying (phab:T296135)
Added wikibase:identifiers to the autocomplete feature (phab:T302057)
Adjusted the layout of the Query Builder header to be more in line with other application (phab:T288939)
Constraint violations: When a language name is mentioned in the constraint it will now show the name of the language in the interface language instead of the language itself to make it easier to understand (phab:T316936)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The character = cannot be used in new usernames, to make usernames work better with templates. Existing usernames are not affected. [186]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 December. It will be on all wikis from 15 December (calendar).
You can now register for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023, taking place on May 19-21 in Athens, Greece. You can also apply for a scholarship until January 14th. More information: Wikimedia Hackathon 2023/Participate
Call for Papers on Linked Open Data on Journal BiD: Deadline: Sun, 04/09/2023. Some of the ideas and issues to be included in this issue: Creation and exploitation of knowledge graphs, Information services based on linked open data and knowledge graphs, Artificial intelligence and linked open data, Textual corpora and linked open data, Textual corpora and knowledge graphs, Application of bots in linked open data, Application of bots in knowledge graphs, Linked open data and diversity of genres, Graphs of knowledge and diversity of genres, FAIR and linked open data, FAIR and knowledge graphs, Ontologies and linked open data, Ontologies and knowledge graphs, Application of ontologies in information services.
Wikidata Atlas is a system allows the user to search for different types of entities (with geo-coordinates) on Wikidata and visualize them on a world map. (Feedback is very welcome to help evaluate and improve the tool.)
The French Wikipedia now uses a Wikidata-based list for the pages on specific dates, without relying on ListeriaBot. Who was born on a December 19th and has an article in French? You now can have the answer thanks to a Wikidata query by going to the page 1er décembre on frwiki and clicking on the infobox link "Naissances du jour". This is a link to a Wikidata list provided by the query service. The query is generated by the template fr:Modèle:Naissances un jour du mois. This follows another such template used to find all persons with a certain surname on frwiki, used on all surnames pages and on some disambiguation pages, fr:Modèle:Liste des personnes ou_personnages par prénom. For the surname Victor (Q539581) (view with Reasonator, SQID) this generates on the page w:fr:Victor_(prénom) a query such as this one.
Wikidata now has more than 100,000,000 items! Exactly which item was the 100 millionth is unknown as of writing, but there are some clues for anyone who wants to dig into it.
Newest properties: This section is currently empty due to technical issues with the bot responsible for filling it. If you are interested in keeping track of new properties on Wikidata, you can check the property proposal page for updates.
REST API: We are getting ready for a release in January and would really love more people to test the current state on beta. You can find details for testing at Wikidata:REST API feedback round.
Vector 2022 search: We have worked on making the new search in the Vector 2022 skin work for Wikidata. You can now test it on test.wikidata.org and soon on Wikidata.
Query Service:
Removed the SVG download options for result views where SVG downloads are not supported, such as Map (phab:T311594)
Fixed the indentation of autocompletion suggestions (phab:T291695)
Fixed downloading query results in the Query Builder (phab:T323451)
Lexicographical data:
Working on showing the Lexeme lemmas when you look at a Lexeme’s history (phab:T312660)
Fixing a keyboard navigation issue in the lookups on Special:NewLexeme (phab:T324743)
mul language code:
Continuing to investigate how to implement language fallbacks on mobile termbox (phab:T323098)
Investigating how to disallow `mul` descriptions (phab:T313027)
Improving and harmonizing the footers in the Query Builder (phab:T324356) and Mismatch Finder (phab:T324366)
Preparing for showing constraint violations to visitors who aren’t logged in (phab:T272132)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 9 January 2023.
Recent changes
On a user's contributions page, you can filter it for edits with a tag like 'reverted'. Now, you can also filter for all edits that are not tagged like that. This was part of a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [188]
A new function has been used for gadget developers to add content underneath the title on article pages. This is considered a stable API that should work across all skins. Documentation is available. [189]
One of our test wikis is now being served from a new infrastructure powered by Kubernetes (read more). More Wikis will switch to this new infrastructure in early 2023. Please test and let us know of any issues. [190]
Problems
Last week, all wikis had no edit access for 9 minutes. This was caused by a database problem. [191]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
The word "Reply" is very short in some languages, such as Arabic ("ردّ"). This makes the Discussion tools button on talk pages difficult to use. An arrow icon will be added to those languages. This will only be visible to editors who have the Beta Feature turned on. [192][193]
Future changes
Edits can be automatically "tagged" by the system software or the Edit filter configuration system. Those tags link to a help page about the tags. Soon they will also link to Recent Changes to let you see other edits tagged this way. This was a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [194]
The Trust & Safety tools team have shared new plans for building the Private Incident Reporting System. The system will make it easier for editors to ask for help if they are harassed or abused.
Realtime Preview for Wikitext is coming out of beta as an enabled feature for every user of the 2010 Wikitext editor in the week of January 9, 2023. It will be available to use via the toolbar in the 2010 Wikitext editor. The feature was the 4th most popular wish of the Community Wishlist Survey 2021.
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, November 9th 2022 at 17:00 UTC (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 17:00 UTC on Wednesday, 18th January 2023 (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
Andriy.vBot (approved). Task/s: I need to connect a lot of pages (more than 10 thousand) about russian villages that were created with interwiki links in ukwiki.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call January 10, 2023: Egon Willighagen will be introducing us to SARS-CoV-2 queries, a well-documented series of Wikidata queries around the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the pandemic. This work contributes to Wikiproject COVID-19 and documentation is currently available in Japanese, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese. Agenda
The full version of View it! Tool is out! The new user script uses structured data to display related media in any Wikimedia content pages—including Wikidata items—in an on-wiki image panel or gallery view. Please join the public launch and demo of the full version of this new tool on Thursday, January 12th, 5:00 UTC via Zoom (Meeting ID: 160 454 5329) to learn more and discuss forthcoming editing features.
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 17:00 UTC on Wednesday, 18th January 2023 (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
About 2 months left to register for the first digital@IANLS workshop: Learn the basics of Wikidata and how to use it in your Neo-Latin research. Event is online, free, and open to all. More info on event and registration.
REST API: Preparing the first release to test.wikidata.org on January 17th and to Wikidata on January 24th
Entity Schemas: Continuing to investigate and prototype technical approaches for version 2
Mismatch Finder: Working on giving mismatch providers access to the reviews of the mismatches they uploaded (phab:T304794)
Investigated how to best do language switching for the Query Builder and Mismatch Finder. So far they only support it by specifying the language via a URL parameter and not yet via the UI (phab:T324653)
Query Service:
Lexeme IDs now have tooltips so you can see the Lemma in the SPARQL code, similar as for Items and Properties (phab:T255245)
Fixed a bug where the y-axis label on a graph were misaligned and hard to read (phab:T325808)
Lexicographical data:
Statements linking to a Sense now also show the language of the Lexeme to make it easier to see for example which language a translation statement refers to (phab:T207392)
Fixed a bug in the language dropdown on Special:NewLexeme (phab:T324743)
The Lemma of a Lexeme is now shown in the title of the revision history of the Lexeme as well (phab:T312660)
Vector 2022 theme: worked on making the search on Wikidata work in this new theme. You can test it on test.wikidata.org now and next week on Wikidata. (phab:T316093)
mul language code:
Continued investigation around how to handle language fallbacks on mobile, which is a blocker for adding this language code (phab:T323098)
Preventing the addition of descriptions for mul (phab:T313027)
Constraint violations: Working on also showing them to non-logged in users (phab:T272132)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can use tags to filter edits in the recent changes feed or on your watchlist. You can now use tags to filter out edits you don't want to see. Previously you could only use tags to focus on the edits with those tags. [195]
You can now use the thanks function on your watchlist and the user contribution page. [196]
A wiki page can be moved to give it a new name. You can now get a dropdown menu with common reasons when you move a page. This is so you don't have to write the explanation every time. [197]
Matrix is a chat tool. You can now use matrix: to create Matrix links on wiki pages. [198]
You can filter out translations when you look at the recent changes on multilingual wikis. This didn't hide translation pages. You can now also hide subpages which are translation pages. [199]
Changes later this week
Realtime preview for wikitext is a tool which lets editors preview the page when they edit wikitext. It will be enabled for all users of the 2010 wikitext editor. You will find it in the editor toolbar.
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 10 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 12 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 January. It will be on all wikis from 12 January (calendar).
New Zealand report: The Great Macron War, Critter of the Week, and West Couast Wikisource
Nigeria report: WikiLovesLibraries Nigeria:An initiative beyond 1Lib1Ref for Librarians in Nigeria
Poland report: The first European GLAM Coordinators online meet-up; New articles on the collection of Wawel Royal Castle; Results of Wiki Loves Monuments 2022
Portugal report: Wikibase in social sciences and Public Domain Day celebrations
Spain report: Wikidata Birthday and ongoing projects
Sweden report: Musikverket; Media literacy graphics; Reports for project and to project partners
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 17:00 UTC on Wednesday, 18th January 2023 (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
General datatypes: does not use: item or concept not used by the subject but that could have been expected, member of Roman tribe: Roman tribe in which one was inscribed
Vector 2020 skin: the search that works properly with Wikidata has been deployed
Entity Schemas: Making progress on the proof of concept that will help us figure out the technical way forward
REST API: getting ready to deploy the first version to test.wikidata.org on February 17th
Lexicographical data: When linking to a Sense in a statement the language of the Lexeme for that Sense is now also shown. This makes it easier to understand translation statements for example (phab:T207392)
Constraints: Constraint violations are now also shown to logged out users (phab:T272132)
Fixing a regression where Wikipedia and co are no longer notified about a disconnected sitelink when the Item that contains the sitelink is deleted (phab:T326082)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
The URLs in "prev" links on page history now contain diff=prev&oldid=[revision ID] in place of diff=[revision ID]&oldid=[revision ID]. This is to fix a problem with links pointing to incorrect diffs when history was filtered by a tag. Some user scripts may break as a result of this change. [200]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 January. It will be on all wikis from 19 January (calendar).
Some changes to the appearance of talk pages have only been available on Talk: and User talk: namespaces. These will be extended to other talk namespaces, such as Wikipedia talk:. They will continue to be unavailable in non-talk namespaces, including Wikipedia: pages (e.g., at the Village Pump). You can change your preferences (beta feature). [201]
On Wikisources, when an image is zoomed or panned in the Page: namespace, the same zoom and pan settings will be remembered for all Page: namespace pages that are linked to a particular Index: namespace page. [202]
The Vector 2022 skin will become the default for the English Wikipedia desktop users. The change will take place on January 18 at 15:00 UTC. Learn more.
Future changes
The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey, which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts next week on 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC. You can start drafting your proposals in the CWS sandbox.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call January 24, 2023: We will be discussing plans for 2023, and requesting feedback and ideas for future programming. Based on a previous recommendation to host a discussion on advocacy for Wikidata within libraries, we will introduce and provide time to complete a short survey to foster conversation in a future Group Call. Please come ready to share your thoughts Agenda
Introductions to Wikidata, online meetings organized by Wikimedia Australia on January 25, 26 and 31
General datatypes: attracts (organisms attracted by this taxon), salary level (level of someone's salary), change of (property this process changes), database contains records about (indicate the types of items that the database has records about)
Ontology issues: We finalized and published the survey to better understand which types of ontology issues are most problematic for reusers of our data.
Wikipedia and co: Fixing a regression where there is no entry in recent changes and watchlist when an Item is deleted that was connected to an article on that wiki (phab:T326082)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
Last week, for ~15 minutes, all wikis were unreachable for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a timing issue. [203]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 January. It will be on all wikis from 26 January (calendar).
If you have the Beta Feature for DiscussionTools enabled, the appearance of talk pages will add more information about discussion activity. [204][205]
The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS), which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts on Monday 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC.
A citation hunt program was organized for secondary school students at IIS School in Dubai as part of the 74th Republic Day celebration of India. 16 students participated, with different mother tongues and from different states of India living as expatriates in Dubai. The goal was to increase references for Wikidata statements based on research. The students were introduced to the importance of protecting India's history on the internet, and were taught how to edit Wikipedia and Wikidata. They were given a special event page on Wikidata with instructions and a list of Wikidata items to add citations to, and they searched for references in their textbooks and search engines to add to the Wikidata items.More details are given here.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Working Hour January 30, 2023: The #1Lib1Ref campaign is afoot, so we will be working on adding references to Wikidata statements. We'll have some data for you to work with, but you're welcome to bring your own. We'll be mainly working with adding webpages as sources, but if you want to get experience using books or articles as sources, we recommend bringing some to the session to use as references for Wikidata items you have identified. You are, as always, welcome to bring your own project to work on Event page
theyrule.net is a website that helps to explore the boardroom connections of the largest US companies.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
AfLIA's online course Wikidata is open. Participation is free for all librarians, museums, archives and other information professionals in Africa. Call is open until 7th February 2023 (12 midnight GMT).
LetsQuiz is a new website generating quizzes using data from Wikidata.
Building cool apps and services on top of Wikidata's data but running into ontology issues? We'd love to hear from you in this survey to make things better for you.
General datatypes: place of resident registration at death (the place or administrative unit where the deceased person was registered as having his or her residence at the time of their death), has instance (thing(s) which this subject describes or encompasses, inverse property of P31), Norwegian media rating (In short, the Norwegian version of Denmark's Medierådet rating (P5970), an age rating system for motion pictures, video, internet and tv content), iconically alludes to (item that is iconically represented in the execution of this lexeme), credits URL (URL of an official webpage with a list of credits and roles attributed to various people, organizations or applications that contribute(d) to this item's existence), alternate universe counterpart (this fictional character/entity is an alternate universe counterpart of the subject), number of penalty kicks scored, precedes/follows various things (this lexeme form appears only when preceding another lexeme form with this phonological feature)
Property Suggester: We updated the data for the Property Suggester so suggestions for new statements to add to an Item should be more in line with current Property usage on other similar Items again.
Fixed an issue with Item deletions not showing up on Wikipedia and co if they affect an article on that wiki (phab:T326082)
Vector 2022: Made it possible to add a new sitelink on Wikipedia and co in the new Vector 2022 language selector (phab:T310259)
Lua: Working on two new Lua functions, getDescriptionByLang (phab:T230839) and getBadges (phab:T305378)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
Last week, for ~15 minutes, some users were unable to log in or edit pages. This was caused by a problem with session storage. [206]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 February. It will be on all wikis from 2 February (calendar).
Future changes
Wikis that use localized numbering schemes for references need to add new CSS. This will help to show citation numbers the same way in all reading and editing modes. If your wiki would prefer to do it yourselves, please see the details and example CSS to copy from, and also add your wiki to the list. Otherwise, the developers will directly help out starting the week of February 5.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
In the Vector 2022 skin, logged-out users using the full-width toggle will be able to see the setting of their choice even after refreshing pages or opening new ones. This only applies to wikis where Vector 2022 is the default. [207]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 February. It will be on all wikis from 9 February (calendar).
Previously, we announced when some wikis would be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. These switches will not be announced any more, as the read-only time has become non-significant. Switches will continue to happen at 7AM UTC on Tuesdays and Thursdays. [208]
Across all the wikis, in the Vector 2022 skin, logged-in users will see the page-related links such as "What links here" in a new side menu. It will be displayed on the other side of the screen. This change had previously been made on Czech, English, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. [209]
Gadgets and user scripts will be changing to load on desktop and mobile sites. Previously they would only load on the desktop site. It is recommended that wiki administrators audit the gadget definitions prior to this change, and add skins=… for any gadgets which should not load on mobile. More details are available.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
BiodiversityBot 3 Task/s: TreatmentBank (Q54857867) is a CC0 resource that contains data on taxonomic treatments, treatment citations, figures, tables, material citations and bibliographic reference. It contains valuables links mapping scholarly articles, taxa and taxonomic treatments. This bot task involves linking research papers on taxa to taxa and related taxonomic treatments.
Closed request for permissions/Bot:
Bean49Bot 4 Task/s: Add Springer Nature person ID and Springer Nature article ID by moving from exact match property.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call February 7, 2023: We thought we'd try something different next week, in honor of Valentine's Day month: What's Your Wikidata Passion? What is your central Wikidata interest right now? It can be a work or personal project or just what you like to edit when you have time. We'd love to have an open mic session, completely informal. Please add yourselves to the list on our agenda here if you would like to talk for 5 minutes or so and share your screen, with no need for formal slides. Or just show up and talk on the spur of the moment. This will be a community session where we welcome all to participate! Agenda
Let's Quiz is a game that generates random quizzes to test your knowledge & learn something new every day.
User:Nikki/AddTermboxLanguage.js - makes it easier to add/edit labels to an item in a language other than the ones shown by default.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Building cool apps and services on top of Wikidata's data but running into ontology issues? We'd love to hear from you in this survey to make things better for you.
General datatypes: Happy Planet Index score (The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is an index of human well-being and environmental impact that was introduced by the New Economics Foundation in 2006), credits URL (URL of an official webpage with a list of credits and roles attributed to various people, organizations or applications that contribute(d) to this item's existence), digital equivalent of (the subject is the digital equivalent of what?)
General datatypes: precedes/follows various things (this lexeme form appears only when preceding another lexeme form with this phonological feature), footnote (for use in the references section of statements: to state which footnote of the source material supports the claim in question), agent of action (thing that does the action), natural enemy (One of the causes of death of this living creatures referred to in this item, which is eaten by that creature), change of (property this process changes), object of action (thing an action is done to), variety of sense (dialect, variety or register of language that the sense applies to), bust/waist/hip measurements (chest measurement; aliases: bust measurement), usage label (list of sets of context label property (Q116547761) (language style (P6191), field of usage (P9488), has quality (P1552), variety of form (P7481), location of sense usage (P6084)). Other individual context label property (Q116547761) statement will be treated as and with this statement.), thesaurus' properties (primary topic of the subject Wikimedia thesaurus)
REST API: adding a new GET /entities/items/{item_id}/descriptions endpoint (phab:T327881)
Lua: added two Lua functions, getDescriptionByLang (phab:T230839) and getBadges (phab:T305378) that make it easier to get this data on Wikipedia and co
Action API: fixed a bug that prevented the wblistentityusage API module from being used as a generator (phab:T254334)
Dates: working together with Matěj Suchánek to fix date parsing issues in Czech (phab:T221097)
Constraints: working on showing constraint clarification messages to make it easier to understand why a constraint violation is happening and how to fix it (phab:T219037)
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
CJMbot (CJMbot lets users upload a CSV file in a certain format. The data inside this file is then validated and processed. New items wil be created based on the data in the CSV file and existing items wil updated by adding statements and references).
RPI2026F1Bot 5 Task/s: Import dependency and version data from PyPi
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikibase Working Hour February 13, 2023. The February Working Hour will feature a presentation by Steve Baskauf on using VanderBot with Wikibase: The Wikibase API provides a mechanism for programmatic control of uploads, and its behavior is consistent across instances (Wikidata, Structured Data in Commons, and those that are established privately). In this session, Steve will discuss basic interactions with the API and demonstrate using the VanderBot Python application to rapidly upload tabular data to a wikibase.cloud instance. After performing a mass deletion, Steve will conclude by describing how he's used the Wikibase API to facilitate addition of structured data to Commons. Registration link
Wikidata Graph Builder released a major update, introducing new layouts and visualization ideas. You can read the full changelog here.
The new Service Level Objective for the Wikidata Query Service has been implemented: the current aim is to maintain a 95% uptime based on a 90 day rolling window. You can read the full announcement here.
a.gup.pe provides group features for Mastodon. @wikidata@a.gup.pe is a group about Wikidata in general. @querywikidata@a.gup.pe is a group about Wikidata queries. Anyone can join those groups simply by following them in Mastodon. Anyone can share a message with all members of those groups by mentioning them in a publication in Mastodon or any other application of the Fediverse.
The hashtag #Wikidata can be used to tag all publications related to Wikidata in Mastodon. Anyone can find recent publications using this tag using the search feature: https://wikis.world/tags/Wikidata.
Went over the feedback on the first release and deciding on the next routes to add
Added a new endpoint for getting descriptions (phab:T327881)
Worked on throwing exceptions when something goes wrong (validation failed, Item not found, etc.) instead of returning an error response object (phab:T327527)
Entity Schemas: Finished the technical exploration that will unblock the next steps for actual development
Query Service: Changed URLs with URL-encoded characters to be shown un-encoded for better line-breaks and readability (phab:T327514)
Query Builder:
Adding support for a few additional datatypes (phab:T328528)
Adding a basic language selector to make it easier to switch the language of the page (phab:T328764)
Constraint checks: Working on showing constraint clarification messages to make it easier to understand how to fix a violation on a statement (phab:T219037)
Search: Exploring design options for how to make it easier to search for entities other than Items (phab:T327507)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
On wikis where patrolled edits are enabled, changes made to the mentor list by autopatrolled mentors are not correctly marked as patrolled. It will be fixed later this week. [210]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 February. It will be on all wikis from 16 February (calendar).
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [212][213][214]
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
Cmtqwikibot 2 (Task/s: Add credits (cast and crew) for audiovisual work produced in Quebec based on the Cinémathèque québécoise's catalogue data. Adds reference. Deletes redundant, more general existing statements in certain circumstances.)
Gabrabot (Bulk upload Maltese lexeme data to wikidata from Gabra.)
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call February 21, 2023: Jim Hahn and John Mark Ockerbloom will be presenting on Penn Libraries' Linked Data Vision. They will discuss their framework for activities and goals around linked data, which includes both existing standards and new functionality. Additionally, they will share successes and areas where progress has not yet been made. The presentation will cover projects with Wikidata tie-ins, such as the Digital Scriptorium Wikibase project and the Deep Backfile copyright information project. The presenters also plan to have ample time for conversation with those interested in using linked data to bring new functionality to their libraries. Agenda
Wikidata and Wikibase - SEMIC workshop 2 physical hands-on workshop in Brussels on the 23rd of February (Register here)
If you are interested in organizing or joining the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023 satellite events, you can apply for funds by March 20 via the Rapid Grants maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
Last week, during planned maintenance of Cloud Services, unforeseen complications forced the team to turn off all tools for 2–3 hours to prevent data corruption. Work is ongoing to prevent similar problems in the future. [215]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 February. It will be on all wikis from 23 February (calendar).
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [216][217][218]
ScikingBot (Task/s: The bot is going to fix interwiki links for the Lombard Wikipedia)
fromCrossrefBot (Task/s: Importing licenses for 1.45 million CC licensed papers from the Crossref April 2022 dump.)
Closed requests for permissions/Bot:
Cmtqwikibot 2 (Task/s: Add credits (cast and crew) for audiovisual work produced in Quebec based on the Cinémathèque québécoise's catalogue data. Adds reference. Deletes redundant, more general existing statements in certain circumstances.)
Bug Triage Hour on dates input, March 13th: Following up on an issue on date parsing in the Czech language (T221097), fixed earlier in February, we would like to look at the changes induced by this fix together, check how the date input parsing works in your language, and identify some possibly remaining issues.
Eager to discover the potential of Wikidata and Wikibase for semantics? SEMIC is organising a series of workshops that are very much hands-on. Join the first workshop online on 24 January 2023 from 14:00 to 16:00 (CET) via Webex. Register for the first event via this link!
Wikibase Suite Survey is now open! The goal is to understand what role Wikibase plays in your organization and identify what you need from Wikibase based on how you currently make use of it.
rebuilt (year or date when the structure was reconstructed, rebuilt, repurposed or replaced by similar one (if the new and old structures have separate items, use P167/P1398 links instead))
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
Last week, in some areas of the world, there were problems with loading pages for 20 minutes and saving edits for 55 minutes. These issues were caused by a problem with our caching servers due to unforseen events during a routine maintenance task. [219][220]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 March. It will be on all wikis from 2 March (calendar).
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [221]
Biondibot (Task/s: Import us patent from a csv file)
bitbotje (Task/s: Property MovieMeter film ID (P1970) has a suggested constraint that the item should have a Dutch ('nl') label. The MovieMeter website has suitable labels and provides an API for structured data access. I have a script that reads the relevant section in Wikidata:Database reports/Constraint violations/P1970 and for each listed item does an API call to moviemeter.nl and adds a label.)
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call March 7, 2023: Lydia Pintscher and Silvan Heintze will tell us about the new Wikidata REST API and Silvan will demonstrate some of its aspects. Agenda
Bug Triage Hour on dates input, March 13th: Following up on an issue on date parsing in the Czech language (T221097), fixed earlier in February, we would like to look at the changes induced by this fix together, check how the date input parsing works in your language, and identify some possibly remaining issues.
Open Data Day Taiwan 2023 recorded livestreams: Day 1; Day 2
Wikidata for History of Science projects, by Martin Poulter - YouTube
How to add Wikidata properties using PetScan in Finnish Wikipedia via categories - YouTube
How to add Wikidata properties using PetScan in Finnish Wikipedia 2 - YouTube
LD4P3 - Browsing Across Music With Obtainable Wikidata - YouTube
Extracting political data & relations from Wikidata - YouTube
Operation of Wikidata and its centralized management of metadata linked to multiple databases (in French) - YouTube
Wikidata and higher education and research libraries (in French) - YouTube
Wikidata supporting open student research projects in plant chemistry - YouTube
Tool of the week
wikidata-todo is a tool that helps you find Commons categories with files, where none of the files are used on Wikidata.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
The WMDE Wikibase.Cloud team is currently seeking individuals who are interested in participating in interviews regarding the pressing issue of data modeling. Please reach out if you'd like to participate.
Search: We are looking deeper into how we can make it possible to search for Properties, Lexemes and EntitySchemas in the search box, not just Items (phab:T321543)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Community Wishlist Survey 2023 edition has been concluded. Community Tech has published the results of the survey and will provide an update on what is next in April 2023.
On wikis which use LanguageConverter to handle multiple writing systems, articles which used custom conversion rules in the wikitext (primarily on Chinese Wikipedia) would have these rules applied inconsistently in the table of contents, especially in the Vector 2022 skin. This has now been fixed. [222]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 March. It will be on all wikis from 9 March (calendar).
A search system has been added to the Preferences screen. This will let you find different options more easily. Making it work on mobile devices will happen soon. [223]
Brazil report: GLAM-Wiki initiatives in Brazil spark academic investigation
Croatia report: Activities during first two months of 2023
Indonesia report: Launching of Wikisource Loves Manuscripts; Bincang GLAM continues
Italy report: New project and collaboration in February
Kosovo report: I Edit Wikipedia Online Campaign 2023
New Zealand report: Wikidata and the Biodiversity Heritage Library, Wellington WikiCon 2023 and Auckland Museum local suburb project funding
Poland report: The European GLAM Coordinators online meet-up; GLAM-Wiki workshop at the Wawel Royal Castle State Art Collection; Wikimedians-in-residence online meet up
Sweden report: 100 000 Bildminnen; Report from The Association of Swedish Museums; Wikipedia for all of Sweden; ArkDes edit-a-thons
UK report: In Memoriam Jo Pugh / Cultural Diversity
bitbotje (Task/s: Property MovieMeter film ID (P1970) has a suggested constraint that the item should have a Dutch ('nl') label. The MovieMeter website has suitable labels and provides an API for structured data access. I have a script that reads the relevant section in Wikidata:Database reports/Constraint violations/P1970 and for each listed item does an API call to moviemeter.nl and adds a label.)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 March. It will be on all wikis from 16 March (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Chavacano de Zamboanga Wikipedia, Min Dong Chinese Wikipedia, Chechen Wikipedia, Cebuano Wikipedia, Chamorro Wikipedia, Cherokee Wikipedia, Cheyenne Wikipedia, Central Kurdish Wikipedia, Corsican Wikipedia, Kashubian Wikipedia, Church Slavic Wikipedia, Chuvash Wikipedia, Welsh Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [224][225]
Hello and welcome to the March 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since December and our Annual Report for 2022. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. We extend a warm welcome to all of our new members, including those who have signed up for our current March Backlog Elimination Drive. We wish you all happy copy-editing.
Election results: In our December 2022 coordinator election, Reidgreg and Tenryuu stepped down as coordinators; we thank them for their service. Incumbents Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo were returned as coordinators until 1 July. For the second time, no lead coordinator was chosen. Nominations for our mid-year Election of Coordinators open on 1 June (UTC).
Drive: 21 editors signed up for our January Backlog Elimination Drive, 14 of whom claimed at least one copy-edit. Between them, they copy-edited 170 articles totaling 389,737 words. Barnstars awarded are here.
Blitz: Our February Copy Editing Blitz focused on October and November 2022 requests, and the March and April 2022 backlogs. Of the 14 editors who signed up, nine claimed at least one copy-edit; and between them, they copy-edited 39,150 words in 22 articles. Barnstars awarded are here.
Progress report: As of 12:08, 19 March 2023 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 73 requests since 1 January 2023, all but five of them from 2022, and the backlog stands at 1,872 articles.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo.
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
Upcoming: WikiCite Monthly Meeting, online on 28 March 2023 at 16:00 UTC. Information and notes
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
Blogs
In this week's update by the Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions team, they are asking where the right place to store and maintain Abstract Wikipedia should be. All of the options involve Wikidata to some extent, some more, some less. If the content of Abstract Wikipedia is hosted on Wikidata, that would lead to an increased scope for the Wikidata community (and likely more contributors joining). But that is a decision the Wikidata community needs to be involved in as well. (Also, if you are interested, the Abstract Wikipedia updates might be worth to follow.)
EntitySchemas: We are preparing for adding a new datatype and other changes by improving tests, documentation, etc.
Date input: We did a bug triage hour around issues with date parsing and improved it for Japanese dates (phab:T214002)
Ontology issues: We started evaluating the survey responses for the survey about different types of ontology issues reusers are facing. More work is needed before we have results.
REST API: We finished work on including the URL of an article in sitelink data (phab:T330252) as well as providing all aliases of an Item (phab:T327882)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
Last week, some users experienced issues loading image thumbnails. This was due to incorrectly cached images. [226]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).
There will be a new option for Administrators when they are unblocking a user, to add the unblocked user’s user page to their watchlist. This will work both via Special:Unblock and via the API. [227]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Wikipedia mobile apps teams. During the meeting, we will discuss the current features and future roadmap. The meeting will be on 24 March at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Working Hour March 27, 2023: We will be creating items related to notable book podcasts. You are, as always, welcome to bring your own project to work on.Event page
WikiCite Monthly Meeting, online on 28 March 2023 at 16:00 UTC. Information and notes
ISCED Attainment (ISCED attainment is the UNESCO main classification of educational level, it is used to map each level to the global classification used by UNESCO. This is useful because the same local level can mean different things in different countries. It identifies the specific levels of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) Attainment model. Has two sub qualifiers - code and label.)
first performance by (performer or performing group for the first performance of a work)
EntitySchemas: We started working on the new datatype to link to EntitySchemas in statements (phab:T214884)
Query Builder: We finished the work on the language selector so you can swithc the interface language of the tool (phab:T328148) It will be available on the site in the next days.
Wikibase REST API: We implemented the functionality to provide an Item's label, description or aliases in a specific language (phab:T323173)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The AbuseFilter condition limit was increased from 1000 to 2000. [228]
Desktop users are now able to subscribe to talk pages by clicking on the Subscribe link in the Tools menu. If you subscribe to a talk page, you receive notifications when new topics are started on that talk page. This is separate from putting the page on your watchlist or subscribing to a single discussion. [230]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 March. It will be on all wikis from 30 March (calendar).
The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Developers are encouraged to switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity. [232]
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call April 4, 2023: Magnus Manske will discuss Wikidata editing tools and tools that use linked data from other sources (eg GND, VIAF) to integrate in Wikidata. Agenda
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The system for automatically creating categories for the Babel extension has had several important changes and fixes. One of them allows you to insert templates for automatic category descriptions on creation, allowing you to categorize the new categories. [233][234][235][236][237]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).
Some older Web browsers will stop being able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can try to upgrade to a newer version. [238]
The deprecated jquery.hoverIntent module has been removed. This module could be used by gadgets and user scripts, to create an artificial delay in how JavaScript responds to a hover event. Gadgets and user scripts should now use jQuery hover() or on() instead. Examples can be found in the migration guide. [239]
Some of the links in Special:SpecialPages will be re-arranged. There will be a clearer separation between links that relate to all users, and links related to your own user account. [240]
You will be able to hide the Reply button in archived discussion pages with a new __ARCHIVEDTALK__ magic word. There will also be a new .mw-archivedtalk CSS class for hiding the Reply button in individual sections on a page. [241][242][243]
Future changes
The Vega software that creates data visualizations in pages, such as graphs, will be upgraded to the newest version in the future. Graphs that still use the very old version 1.5 syntax may stop working properly. Most existing uses have been found and updated, but you can help to check, and to update any local documentation. Examples of how to find and fix these graphs are available.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
There was a problem with all types of CentralNotice banners still being shown to logged-in users even if they had turned off specific banner types. This has now been fixed. [246]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Dinka Wikipedia, Lower Sorbian Wikipedia, Ewe Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Emiliano-Romagnolo Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Estonian Wikipedia, Basque Wikipedia, Extremaduran Wikipedia, Tumbuka Wikipedia, Fulah Wikipedia, Finnish Wikipedia, Võro Wikipedia, Fijian Wikipedia, Faroese Wikipedia, Arpitan Wikipedia, Northern Frisian Wikipedia, Friulian Wikipedia, Irish Wikipedia, Guianan Creole Wikipedia, Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia, Galician Wikipedia, Gilaki Wikipedia, Guarani Wikipedia, Goan Konkani Wikipedia, Gothic Wikipedia, Gujarati Wikipedia, Manx Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [247][248]
BotFunast (Task: The bot is already operational in the Tachelhit Wikipedia. One of its main tasks is editing template tags and categories, and creating new ones when necessary, based on a csv database (that you can find in github) . When adding new pages though, a common problem is to link those to Wikidata. This can be unfeasible by hand in a reasonable amount of time, when hundreds of pages, e.g. categories, are added at once. The idea is to have the bot approved for Wikidata, so it can link the pages to their counterparts in other languages automatically.)
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 16:00 UTC on Wednesday, 19th April 2023 (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
orchestration (the instruments used in a musical composition or arrangement in notated form)
part of other combined lexeme (qualifier on P5238 to indicate that a component appearing in a compound lexeme actually comes from the appearance of another compound lexeme)
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 16:00 UTC on Wednesday, 19th April 2023 (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Call, Tuesday, April 14, 2023 - Indigenous Artists and Wikidata: Report launch and discussion. Agenda.
Christos started a Wikibase to collect and organise existing research-related resources about Wikibase. Feel free to add to it. researchwb.wikibase.cloud
EntitySchemas: We are continuing the work on creating the new datatype that allows linking to EntitySchemas in statements. It will be available on test systems next. (phab:T332139)
QueryBuilder: We are putting finishing touches on the language selector so you can switch the UI language of the Query Builder. (phab:T328764)
Wikibase REST API: We continued working on making it possible to create or replace labels and descriptions in a iven language. (phab:T323813)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
At Wikimedia Commons, some thumbnails have not been getting replaced correctly after a new version of the image is uploaded. This should be fixed later this week. [252][253]
For the last few weeks, some external tools had inconsistent problems with logging-in with OAuth. This has now been fixed. [254]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 April. It will be on all wikis from 20 April (calendar).
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Working Hour April 24, 2023: Would you like to know how to join and use Telegram? Two regular Wikidata Telegram users will provide an introduction to Telegram and its available Wikidata channels. They will discuss how they use it, how it can provide help with Wikidata work, and how it can facilitate connections with other Wikidata users Event page
User:Nikki/colour icons.css - is a Userscript to add colour to the editing icons. It uses green for add/save, yellow for edit, red for remove, orange for cancel and blue for help.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
The Wikibase newbie docs are here (to help to onboard new Wikibase users easier).
REST API: We continued work on making it possible to create or replace a label, or a description in a given language (phab:T323813)
EntitySchemas: We continued working on the new datatype for linking to EntitySchemas. It is now available on beta in a very bare-bones version but not ready for wider testing yet. (phab:T332139)
Ontology issues: We are evaluating the results of the survey we ran earlier this year.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Due to security issues with the Graph extension, graphs have been disabled in all Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Foundation teams are working to respond to these vulnerabilities. [256]
For a few days, it was not possible to save some kinds of edits on the mobile version of a wiki. This has been fixed. [257][258][259]
Changes later this week
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on April 26. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [260]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The Video2commons tool has been updated. This fixed several bugs related to YouTube uploads. [264]
The Special:Preferences page has been redesigned on mobile web. The new design makes it easier to browse the different categories and settings at low screen widths. You can also now access the page via a link in the Settings menu in the mobile web sidebar. [265]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 May. It will be on all wikis from 4 May (calendar).
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
ForgesBot (Task: Add licensing information to software forges entries in accordance to what is found in the corresponding Wikipedia page. It is used as a helper in the context of the Forges project)
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call May 2, 2023: Fudie Zhao will be presenting on Wikidata in Digital Humanities projects. Agenda
WeChangEd is an ERC-funded research project and online database by Ghent University, about women editors in Europe. The database shows stories about women editors and their publications, and is powered by Wikidata and Sciencestories.io.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Last week, Community Tech released the first update for providing better diffs, the #1 request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. This update adds legends and tooltips to inline diffs so that users unfamiliar with the blue and yellow highlights can better understand the type of edits made.
When you close an image that is displayed via MediaViewer, it will now return to the wiki page instead of going back in your browser history. This feature request was voted #65 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [266]
The SyntaxHighlight extension now supports wikitext as a selected language. Old alternatives that were used to highlight wikitext, such as html5, moin, and html+handlebars, can now be replaced. [267]
Graph Extension update: Foundation developers have completed upgrading the visualization software to Vega5. Existing community graphs based on Vega2 are no longer compatible. Communities need to update local graphs and templates, and shared lua modules like de:Modul:Graph. The Vega Porting guide provides the most comprehensive detail on migration from Vega2 and here is an example migration. Vega5 has currently just been enabled on mediawiki.org to provide a test environment for communities. [269]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May (calendar).
Until now, all new OAuth apps went through manual review. Starting this week, apps using identification-only or basic authorizations will not require review. [270]
There will be an A/B test on 10 Wikipedias where the Vector 2022 skin is the default skin. Half of logged-in desktop users will see an interface where the different parts of the page are more clearly separated. You can read more. [272][273]
jquery.tipsy will be removed from the MediaWiki core. This will affect some user scripts. Many lines with .tipsy( can be commented out. OO.ui.PopupWidget can be used to keep things working like they are now. You can read more and read about how to find broken scripts. [274]
Indonesia report: GLAM Mini Grants; Structured Data Marathon VIII; Wikisource Online Workshop
Italy report: Bridges between Wikimedia and culture
New Zealand report: BHL Whitepaper and outreach for Citizen Science Month and WeDigBio, Auckland Museum suburbs project update, New Zealand Women in Architecture Wikidata Project
Poland report: Another meeting of EU GLAM Coordinators; Guided tours for Wikipedians in museums in Krakow; Presentation on Art in Wikipedia; Online training on the basics of copyright law; Polish monuments among the top winners of WLM
Sweden report: ISOF workshop; More articles from students; SAAB veterans shared their knowledge during metadata edit-a-thon; ArkDes edit-a-thons
UK report: Democratising knowledge and cultural diversity
USA report: Into the Wikiverse; Earth Day 2023 Bushwick
EntitySchemas: We've continued work on the new datatype to link to EntitySchemas in statements. (phab:T214884)
Converted a number of Properties from string to external ID datatype (phab:T334450)
mul language code: We've worked on preparing the special pages related to labels, descriptions and aliases for the new language code. (phab:T330193, phab:T329626)
Wikibase REST API: We continued working on the ability to modify labels of an Item using the HTTP PATCH method. (phab:T332739).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
Citations that are automatically generated based on ISBN are currently broken. This affects citations made with the VisualEditor Automatic tab, and the use of the citoid API in gadgets and user scripts. Work is ongoing to restore this feature. [275]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 May. It will be on all wikis from 18 May (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Gorontalo Wikipedia, Hausa Wikipedia, Hakka Chinese Wikipedia, Hawaiian Wikipedia, Fiji Hindi Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Upper Sorbian Wikipedia, Haitian Creole Wikipedia, Interlingua Wikipedia, Interlingue Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Iloko Wikipedia, Ingush Wikipedia, Ido Wikipedia, Icelandic Wikipedia, Inuktitut Wikipedia, Jamaican Patois Wikipedia, Javanese Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [276]
Gadget and userscript developers should replace jquery.cookie with mediawiki.cookie. The jquery.cookie library will be removed in ~1 month, and staff developers will run a script to replace any remaining uses at that time. [277]
Wikimedia Deutschland is launching a laptop donation program to support Wikidata contributors with limited access to technology. If you've been actively contributing to Wikidata for at least a year, you can request a free laptop to support your work. WMDE Hardware Donation Program#Applying
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
An improved impact module will be available at Wikipedias. The impact module is a feature available to newcomers at their personal homepage. It will show their number of edits, how many readers their edited pages have, how many thanks they have received and similar things. It is also accessible by accessing Special:Impact. [279]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 May. It will be on all wikis from 25 May (calendar).
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call May 30, 2023: We will discuss results from our community survey on advocacy for Wikidata in libraries and hear from community members Mary Aycock, Steve Baskauf and Eric Willey about their experiences with advocacy and gaining support for Wikidata work within their respective libraries. Agenda
TalkPageHeader.js shows the talk page header for languages other than English.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
The libraries of the London School of Economics and the University of York have collaborated to produce a toolkit for uploading research theses metadata to Wikidata. Full announcement and access to the toolkit
The contents of most Wikimedia Cloud Services Wiki Replicas are out-of-date owing to large & increasing replication lag; see https://replag.toolforge.org/ & Phab T337446. Exercise caution using data from any tools that have a dependency on these databases.
ISCED category orientation (International Standard Classification of Education category (based on focus/orientation) applicable to an educational program)
Learning outcome (specific knowledge, skills, and abilities that students are expected to acquire as a result of participating in a particular education program)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Citations can once again be added automatically from ISBNs, thanks to Zotero's ISBN searches. The current data sources are the Library of Congress (United States), the Bibliothèque nationale de France (French National Library), and K10plus ISBN (German repository). Additional data source searches can be proposed to Zotero. The ISBN labels in the VisualEditor Automatic tab will reappear later this week. [280]
For a few days earlier this month, the "Add interlanguage link" item in the Tools menu did not work properly. This has now been fixed. [282]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 May. It will be on all wikis from 1 June (calendar).
VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on small and medium wikis this week. Large wikis will follow in the coming weeks. This is part of the effort to move Parsoid into MediaWiki core. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here. [283]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The RealMe extension allows you to mark URLs on your user page as verified for Mastodon and similar software.
Previously, clicking on someone else's link to Recent Changes with filters applied within the URL could unintentionally change your preference for "Group results by page". This has now been fixed. [285]
Problems
For a few days last week, some tools and bots returned outdated information due to database replication problems, and may have been down entirely while it was being fixed. These issues have now been fixed. [286]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June (calendar).
Bots will no longer be prevented from making edits because of URLs that match the spam blacklist. [287]
Hello and welcome to the June 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since March. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.
Election news: Fancy helping out at the Guild? Nominations for our half-yearly Election of Coordinators are open until 23:59 on 15 June (UTC)*. Starting immediately after, the voting phase will run until 23:59 on 30 June. All Wikipedians in good standing are eligible and self-nominations are welcomed; it's your Guild and it doesn't organize itself!
Blitz: Of the 17 editors who signed up for our April Copy Editing Blitz, nine editors completed at least one copy-edit. Between them, they copy-edited 24 articles totaling 53,393 words. Barnstars awarded are here.
Drive: 51 editors signed up for the month-long May Backlog Elimination Drive, and 31 copy-edited at least one article. 180 articles were copy-edited. Barnstars awarded are posted here.
Blitz:Sign up here for our week-long June Copy Editing Blitz, which runs from 11 to 17 June. Barnstars awarded will be posted here.
Progress report: As of 03:09 on 6 June 2023, GOCE copyeditors have processed 91 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 1,887 articles.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybongo.
*All times and dates in this newsletter are in UTC, and may significantly vary from your local time.
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Introduction workshop about Wikidata for employees of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB, national library of the Netherlands), to make them more familiar and self-reliant with Wikidata - 6 June 2023, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, The Netherlands - Slides (in Dutch) on Commons.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Working Hour June 5, 2023: In collaboration with the Black Bibliography Project, we will be adding metadata for undescribed or under-described African-American women authors listed in The Pen Is Ours: a Listing of Writings by and about African-American Women before 1910, compiled by Jean Fagan Yellin and Cynthia D. Bond.Event page
Registration has opened for the workshop on mathematical research data taking place on 9-11 October 2023 in Leipzig. Talks, demos and lightning talks can be suggested, including Wikidata-related ones.
Tool of the week
IdentifierInput makes it easier to add identifier properties by letting you put in the full url and then stripping it down to just the identifier for you.
beforehand owned by (person or institution that owned the subject just before stated event. Meant to be used as qualifier of "significant event (P793)" for events like sales, auctions, gifts, etc)
afterward owned by (person or institution that owned the subject after stated event. Meant to be used as qualifier of "significant event (P793)" for events like sales, auctions, gifts, etc)
solubility product constant (equilibrium constant for a sparingly soluble solid chemical substance dissolved in an aqueous solution)
funded by grant (title or name of the grant funding this item)
Wikibase REST API: We finished the new endpoint for patching labels (phab:T332739). We also started work on the new endpoint for retrieving Property data (phab:T337720)
Client wikis: We drastically reduced the size of a ResourceLoader module that’s loaded on most Wikipedia page views (phab:334682)
Language code: With awesome help from Nikki, we improved documentation for how to add language codes to Wikibase/Wikidata (phab:T335857)
EntitySchemas: We are getting the new datatype ready for testing.
UK report: Promoting cultural diversity on Wikipedia
USA report: A Spotlight on Black Women Birders; DC Nobel Solution Sessions; Women of Color in the Renwick Gallery; Anthropology and Community Connections; SAGE edit-a-thon; WikiWednesday Salon; Into the Wikiverse: AANHPIs in Science Fiction and Pop Culture; Queering Wikipedia 2023
Special story: Help Wikimedia Map Your Efforts to Improve Copyright!
GLAM Wiki conference report: GLAM Wiki Conference 2023: Announcing the venue & scholarship application process open
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Call June 13, 2023: Helen Williams will discuss her work with Wikidata at the London School of Economics Agenda
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The Search Preview panel has been deployed on four Wikipedias (Catalan, Dutch, Hungarian and Norwegian). The panel will show an image related to the article (if existing), the top sections of the article, related images (coming from MediaSearch on Commons), and eventually the sister projects associated with the article. [289]
The RealMe extension now allows administrators to verify URLs for any page, for Mastodon and similar software. [290]
The default project license has been officially upgraded to CC BY-SA 4.0. The software interface messages have been updated. Communities should feel free to start updating any mentions of the old CC BY-SA 3.0 licensing within policies and related documentation pages. [291]
Problems
For three days last month, some Wikipedia pages edited with VisualEditor or DiscussionTools had an unintended __TOC__ (or its localized form) added during an edit. There is a listing of affected pages sorted by wiki, that may still need to be fixed. [292]
Currently, the "Sort this page by default as" feature in VisualEditor is broken. Existing {{DEFAULTSORT:...}} keywords incorrectly appear as missing templates in VisualEditor. Developers are exploring how to fix this. In the meantime, those wishing to edit the default sortkey of a page are advised to switch to source editing. [293]
Last week, an update to the delete form may have broken some gadgets or user scripts. If you need to manipulate (empty) the reason field, replace #wpReason with #wpReason > input. See an example fix. [294]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 June. It will be on all wikis from 15 June (calendar).
VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on English Wikipedia on Monday, and all other large wikis on Thursday. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here. [295]
Future changes
From 5 June to 17 July, the Foundation's Security team is holding a consultation with contributors regarding a draft policy to govern the use of third-party resources in volunteer-developed gadgets and scripts. Feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome at Third-party resources policy on meta-wiki.
The role of Wikidata within the research lifecycle, Wednesday 21 June, 10am BST (UTC+1), online event hosted by the University of York, UK. International participation is welcome, despite "available to White Rose institutions only" on the booking page.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Working Hour June 23, 2023: Returning to Podcasts, we will be working on creating podcast episode pages. We will discuss how this episodic content can be transferred to other serialized items. You are, as always, welcome to bring your own project to work on Event page
Webinar: Common European Data Space for cultural heritage (The ontology of Wikidata, how to interact with it for a better quality). Tuesday 20th June 2023, from 3.00 p,.m. to 5.00 p.m. CET. Register
Mapping Diversity is a platform that utilizes Wikidata to discover key facts about diversity and representation in street names across Europe. E.g. 59% of the streets and squares in Paris are named after people. Of those, 8.9% are named after women.
mul language code: We've continued working on making the mobile termbox (labels, descriptions, aliases) ready for the new language code. (phab:T329644, phab:T338302, phab:T329655, phab:T316767)
Vector 2022 skin: We are fixing an issue with the bolding of results in the main search suggester. (phab:T327510)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Flame graphs are now available in WikimediaDebug. [296][297]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
There is now a toolbar search popup in the visual editor. You can trigger it by typing \ or pressing ctrl + shift + p. It can help you quickly access most tools in the editor. [298][299]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Action API modules and Special:LinkSearch will now add a trailing / to all prop=extlinks responses for bare domains. This is part of the work to remove duplication in the externallinks database table. [300]
Problems
Last week, search was broken on Commons and Wikidata for 23 hours. [301][302]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 June. It will be on all wikis from 29 June (calendar).
The Minerva skin now applies more predefined styles to the .mbox-text CSS class. This enables support for mbox templates that use divs instead of tables. Please make sure that the new styles won't affect other templates in your wiki. [303][304]
Gadgets will now load on both desktop and mobile by default. Previously, gadgets loaded only on desktop by default. Changing this default using the |targets= parameter is also deprecated and should not be used. You should make gadgets work on mobile or disable them based on the skin (with the |skins= parameter in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition) rather than whether the user uses the mobile or the desktop website. Popular gadgets that create errors on mobile will be disabled by developers on the Minerva skin as a temporary solution. [305]
All namespace tabs now have the same browser access key by default. Previously, custom and extension-defined namespaces would have to have their access keys set manually on-wiki, but that is no longer necessary. [306]
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Discussions
Open request for adminship: Wolverène (RfP scheduled to end after 2 July 2023 18:46 UTC)
Closed request for adminship: Vargenau (successful) Welcome onboard \o/
New requests for permissions/Bot: RomesfulImporterBot (Task: Creating and updating Russian Lexemes by transferring information from the Russian Wiktionary)
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 16:00 UTC, 12th July 2023 (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
re:publica 2023 - Peer learning methods and Open Educational Resources (OER) on Wikidata for a viable digital culture of remembrance (in German) - YouTube
Workshop - Aligning Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology Foundry ontologies with Wikidata - YouTube
Managing conflations and duplications of personal items in Wikidata, National Library of Greece - YouTube
Why Wikidata in Linked Data and Libraries (in Greek)- YouTube
Adding metadata utilities in the Koha staff interface based on Wikidata - YouTube
From authority control to identity management - YouTube
DSI Webinar - The ontology of Wikidata: how to interact with it for a better quality - YouTube
Wikidata as a tool for biocuration of cell types, Biocuration Conference 2023 - YouTube
Webinar: Wikidata, a useful knowledge base for any study - YouTube
KGC '23 Talk — The Error Is The Message: Extracting Insights From Deceptive Data for Nazi-Looted Art - YouTube
TU Berlin research group "The Restitution of Knowledge" are exploring the use of Wikidata to build a Linked Open Data (LOD) project that maps German colonial military expeditions into Africa. Interested in getting involved or learning more about their project? Reach out on the project's talk page: Wikidata:WikiProject TheRoK/Data Models.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Discussions
Open request for adminship: koavf 3 (RfP scheduled to end after 8 July 2023 13:16 UTC)
Closed request for adminship: Wolverène Welcome onboard \o/
New requests for permissions/Bot: UrbanBot (Task: UrbanBot's task is to mass-add English descriptions to items that don't have one)
Closed request for permissions/Bot: RomesfulImporterBot (Task: Creating and updating Russian Lexemes by transferring information from the Russian Wiktionary)
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Working Hour July 7, 2023: Let's collaborate to upgrade our community infrastructure! We'll transfer notes and content from Google Docs to our WikiProject subpages. We'll be practicing our Wiki markup skills and learning to manage Wikidata Project pages Event page
Ongoing: Weekly Lexemes Challenge #99, Breast milk (Challenge started on 2023-07-03 12:01:21)
m:User:Base/Scripts/HaveWikibaseLabelLowercased.js - is a Userscript that adds an arrow next to the main label (page title) which upon double click (a tap and a confirmation on touch devices) automatically makes the label's first letter lowercase for the current interface language. If there was already a matching alias it gets removed.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
The WikidataCon 2023 call for proposals is running until July 31st. If you have questions or need advice before sending a program proposal, join the program team during one of the office hour sessions (online or in Taiwan, in Chinese or in English). More information
Nigerian registered company (RC) id (RC number (Registration Number), identifier assigned to a business by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) in Nigeria)
Cent cols (A property to link Wikidata entries to the dedicated pages of each pass by the Cent Cols)
WikiProject Scotland's Accused Witches aims at producing structured data documenting witchhunts, and prosecuted Scotland's accused witches on Wikidata using the University of Edinburgh's landmark Survey of Scottish Witchcraft database (1563 to 1736).
Development
Wikibase REST API:
We finished the GetProperty endpoint with fields filter and Conditional headers (phab:T338141, phab:T338138)
We started working on the endpoints for reading statement data of Properties (both a single statement, and a list of all of a Property’s statement) (phab:T339356), phab:T338383)
Ontology issue survey: We put together an overview of solutions for the various types of issues and will share them this week.
mul language code: We are continuing to work through the language fallback issues that were uncovered.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
From this week all gadgets automatically load on mobile and desktop sites. If you see any problems with gadgets on your wikis, please adjust the gadget options in your gadget definitions file. [310]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 July. It will be on all wikis from 6 July (calendar).
Kosovo report: CEE Spring Campaign 2023, Albania and Kosovo
Netherlands report: A new book, new Wikipedia articles, videos and further images on Africa
New Zealand report: Report on the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections Conference 2023 and Auckland suburb updates
Philippines report: GLAM outreach activity at University of Nueva Caceres: Digitization, workshops and proofread-a-thons as future collaboration
Poland report: GLAM-Wiki workshops for the Czartoryski Library; Work on the GLAM-Wiki Project Page Continues; End of Internship within the "Praktykuj w Kulturze" Program
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Discussions
Closed request for adminship: koavf 3 Welcome onboard \o/
New requests for permissions/Bot: FromCrossrefBot 1: Publication dates (Task/s: Using information from Crossref: 1 - Add publication date to items where they are not present in Wikidata 2 - Fix publication dates where they are erroneous)
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 16:00 UTC, 12th July 2023 (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
How to create a Wikidata Lexeme with ease - Beginner's Guide (in Twi and English) YouTube
Tool of the week
Duplicity is a tool on Toolforge that helps find articles on Wikipedia that do not have a Wikidata Item, and match them to an existing Item, or create a new one. (example for English Wikipedia)
HasProperty.js displays presence/absence of specific properties (configurable) after the Statements heading. Clicking a property name will jump to that properties section. For absent property, clicking property name will jump to the end of the page.
mul language code: We continued work on it focusing on showing it in the right place in the desktop termbox (phab:T316767)
Wikibase REST API: We continued working on the endpoints for reading statement data of Properties (both a single statement, and a list of all of a Property’s statement) (phab:T339356, phab:T338383)
Vector 2022 skin: We continued work on improving the search display (phab:T327510)
WMF Governance wiki is now connected to Wikidata so can be linked to in the sitelink section under multilingual sites (phab:T321967)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Section-level Image Suggestions feature has been deployed on seven Wikipedias (Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Catalan, Hungarian, Finnish and Norwegian Bokmål). The feature recommends images for articles on contributors' watchlists that are a good match for individual sections of those articles.
Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool for administrators to help fight spam. It provides a clearer interface for blocking plain domains (and their subdomains), is more easily searchable, and is faster for the software to process for each edit on the wiki. It does not support regex (for complex cases), nor URL path-matching, nor the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist, but otherwise it replaces most of the functionalities of the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. There is a Python script to help migrate all simple domains into this tool, and more feature details, within the tool's documentation. It is available at all wikis except for Meta-wiki, Commons, and Wikidata. [312]
The WikiEditor extension was updated. It includes some of the most frequently used features of wikitext editing. In the past, many of its messages could only be translated by administrators, but now all regular translators on translatewiki can translate them. Please check the state of WikiEditor localization into your language, and if the "Completion" for your language shows anything less than 100%, please complete the translation. See a more detailed explanation.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 July. It will be on all wikis from 13 July (calendar).
The default protocol of Special:LinkSearch and API counterparts has changed from http to both http and https. [313]
Special:LinkSearch and its API counterparts will now search for all of the URL provided in the query. It used to be only the first 60 characters. This feature was requested fifteen years ago. [314]
Future changes
There is an experiment with a ChatGPT plugin. This is to show users where the information is coming from when they read information from Wikipedia. It has been tested by Wikimedia Foundation staff and other Wikimedians. Soon all ChatGPT plugin users can use the Wikipedia plugin. This is the same plugin which was mentioned in Tech News 2023/20. [315]
There is an ongoing discussion on a proposed Third-party resources policy. The proposal will impact the use of third-party resources in gadgets and userscripts. Based on the ideas received so far, policy includes some of the risks related to user scripts and gadgets loading third-party resources, some best practices and exemption requirements such as code transparency and inspectability. Your feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome until July 17, 2023 on on the policy talk page.
Wikidata Recent Changes API (simple front-end to the actual API) lets you query Wikidata edits by either properties, or labels/aliases/descriptions/sitelinks. You can retrieve any changes, or specify added/changed/removed. Current lag to Wikidata: 1 seconds. (blog)
autosuggest value (qualifier for P1963 that suggests which values should be autosuggested to the user that uses the property for items that are instances of the subject)
WikiProject Antiquity (aims to gather all contributors working in an aspect or another of Antiquity)
WikiProject Lodging (aims at creating, improving, and organizing Wikidata items related to lodging, such as hotels, motels, inns, guest houses and lodging-related topics)
Development
Vector 2022 skin: We finished working on removing the strange bolding pattern of the Search Results on Wikidata. Should be rolled out in the next train (phab:T327510)
EntitySchemas: We are working on showing the Label of EntitySchema in Statements and Special pages (phab:T339924)
Mismatch Finder: We are working on adding the Language Selector to the Mismatch Finder (phab:T328149)
mul: We trying out changing how placeholders in Wikibase termboxes work: They’ll soon start falling back across the fallback chain of the language until they hit mul (phab:T340832)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 July. It will be on all wikis from 27 July (calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Synchronizer tool is now available to keep Lua modules synced across Wikimedia wikis, along with updated documentation to develop global Lua modules and templates.
The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. For example, you can hide edits that were made using an automated tool. [316][317]
The Wikipedia ChatGPT plugin experiment can now be used by ChatGPT users who can use plugins. You can participate in a video call if you want to talk about this experiment or similar work. [318]
Problems
It was not possible to generate a PDF for pages with non-Latin characters in the title, for the last two weeks. This has now been fixed. [319]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 August. It will be on all wikis from 3 August (calendar).
Starting on Tuesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Georgian Wikipedia, Kara-Kalpak Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Kabardian Wikipedia, Kabiyè Wikipedia, Kikuyu Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Khmer Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia, Kashmiri Wikipedia, Colognian Wikipedia, Kurdish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [320]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Mobile Web editors can now edit a whole page at once. To use this feature, turn on "⧼Mobile-frontend-mobile-option-amc⧽" in your settings and use the "Edit full page" button in the "More" menu. [321]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Content translation system is no longer using Youdao's machine translation service. The service was in place for several years, but due to no usage, and availability of alternatives, it was deprecated to reduce maintenance overheads. Other services which cover the same languages are still available. [322]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 August. It will be on all wikis from 17 August (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Latin Wikipedia, Ladino Wikipedia, Luxembourgish Wikipedia, Lak Wikipedia, Lezghian Wikipedia, Lingua Franca Nova Wikipedia, Ganda Wikipedia, Limburgish Wikipedia, Ligurian Wikipedia, Lombard Wikipedia, Lingala Wikipedia, Latgalian Wikipedia, Latvian Wikipedia, Maithili Wikipedia, Basa Banyumasan Wikipedia, Moksha Wikipedia, Malagasy Wikipedia, Armenian Wikipedia, Kyrgyz Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [323]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 August. It will be on all wikis from 24 August (calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
As part of the changes for the better diff handling of paragraph splits, improved detection of splits is being rolled out. Over the last two weeks, we deployed this support to group0 and group1 wikis. This week it will be deployed to group2 wikis. [334]
All Special:Contributions pages now show the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. [335]
Wikisource users can now use the prpbengalicurrency label to denote Bengali currency characters as page numbers inside the <pagelist> tag. [336]
Two preferences have been relocated. The preference "Enable the visual editor" is now shown on the "Editing" tab at all wikis. Previously it was shown on the "Beta features" tab at some wikis. The preference "Use the wikitext mode inside the visual editor, instead of a different wikitext editor" is now also shown on the "Editing" tab at all wikis, instead of the "Beta features" tab. [337][338]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 August. It will be on all wikis from 31 August (calendar).
All right-to-left language wikis, plus Korean, Armenian, Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian Wikipedias, will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. This feature will come to more wikis in future weeks. [339]
Future changes
The removal of the DoubleWiki extension is being discussed. This extension currently allows Wikisource users to view articles from multiple language versions side by side when the <=> symbol next to a specific language edition is selected. Comments on this are welcomed at the phabricator task.
A proposal has been made to merge the second hidden-categories list (which appears below the wikitext editing form) with the main list of categories (which is further down the page). More information is available on Phabricator; feedback is welcome!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
EditInSequence, a feature that allows users to edit pages faster on Wikisource has been moved to a Beta Feature based on community feedback. To enable it, you can navigate to the beta features tab in Preferences. [340]
There is a new option for Administrators when they are changing the usergroups for a user, to add the user’s user page to their watchlist. This works both via Special:UserRights and via the API. [342]
The LoginNotify extension was not sending notifications since January. It has now been fixed, so going forward, you may see notifications for failed login attempts, and successful login attempts from a new device. [344]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 September. It will be on all wikis from 7 September (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Eastern Mari Wikipedia, Maori Wikipedia, Minangkabau Wikipedia, Macedonian Wikipedia, Malayalam Wikipedia, Mongolian Wikipedia, Marathi Wikipedia, Western Mari Wikipedia, Malay Wikipedia, Maltese Wikipedia, Mirandese Wikipedia, Erzya Wikipedia, Mazanderani Wikipedia, Nāhuatl Wikipedia, Neapolitan Wikipedia, Low German Wikipedia, Low Saxon Wikipedia, Nepali Wikipedia, Newari Wikipedia, Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia, Novial Wikipedia, N'Ko Wikipedia, Nouormand Wikipedia, Northern Sotho Wikipedia, Navajo Wikipedia, Nyanja Wikipedia, Occitan Wikipedia, Livvi-Karelian Wikipedia, Oromo Wikipedia, Oriya Wikipedia, Ossetic Wikipedia, Punjabi Wikipedia, Pangasinan Wikipedia, Pampanga Wikipedia, Papiamento Wikipedia, Picard Wikipedia, Pennsylvania German Wikipedia, Palatine German Wikipedia, Norfuk / Pitkern Wikipedia, Piedmontese Wikipedia, Western Punjabi Wikipedia, Pontic Wikipedia, Pashto Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [345][346]
Hello and welcome to the September 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since June. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.
David Thomsen: Prolific Wikipedian and Guild member David Thomsen (Dthomsen8) died in November 2022. He was a regular copy editor who took part in many of our Drives and Blitzes. An obituary was published in the mid-July issue of The Signpost. Tributes can be left on David's talk page.
Election news: In our mid-year Election of Coordinators, Dhtwiki was chosen as lead coordinator, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo continue as assistant coordinators, and Baffle gab1978 stepped down from the role. If you're interested in helping out at the GOCE, please consider nominating yourself for our next election in December; it's your WikiProject and it doesn't organize itself!
June Blitz: Of the 17 editors who signed up for our June Copy Editing Blitz, 12 copy-edited at least one article. 70,035 words comprising 26 articles were copy-edited. Barnstars awarded are here.
July Drive: 34 of the 51 editors who took part in our July Backlog Elimination Drive copy-edited at least one article. They edited 276 articles and 683,633 words between them. Barnstars awarded are here.
August Blitz: In our August Copy Editing Blitz, 13 of the 16 editors who signed up worked on at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 79,608 words comprising 57 articles. Barnstars awarded are available here.
September Drive:Sign up here for our month-long September Backlog Elimination Drive, which is now underway. Barnstars awarded will be posted here.
Progress report: As of 14:29, 9 September 2023 (UTC), GOCE copy editors have processed 245 requests since 1 January. The backlog of tagged articles stands at 2,066.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo.
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
ORES, the revision evaluation service, is now using a new open-source infrastructure on all wikis except for English Wikipedia and Wikidata. These two will follow this week. If you notice any unusual results from the Recent Changes filters that are related to ORES (for example, "Contribution quality predictions" and "User intent predictions"), please report them. [347]
When you are logged in on one Wikimedia wiki and visit a different Wikimedia wiki, the system tries to log you in there automatically. This has been unreliable for a long time. You can now visit the login page to make the system try extra hard. If you feel that made logging in better or worse than it used to be, your feedback is appreciated. [348]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (calendar).
As part of the changes for the Better diff handling of paragraph splits wishlist proposal, the inline switch widget in diff pages is being rolled out this week to all wikis. The inline switch will allow viewers to toggle between a unified inline or two-column diff wikitext format. [349]
Future changes
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 20 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [350]
The Enterprise API is launching a new feature called "breaking news". Currently in BETA, this attempts to identify likely "newsworthy" topics as they are currently being written about in any Wikipedia. Your help is requested to improve the accuracy of its detection model, especially on smaller language editions, by recommending templates or identifiable editing patterns. See more information at the documentation page on MediaWiki or the FAQ on Meta.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
MediaWiki now has a stable interface policy for frontend code that more clearly defines how we deprecate MediaWiki code and wiki-based code (e.g. gadgets and user scripts). Thank you to everyone who contributed to the content and discussions. [351][352]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 September. It will be on all wikis from 21 September (calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Vector 2022 skin will now remember the pinned/unpinned status for the Table of Contents for all logged-out users. [355]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September (calendar).
Gadget definitions will have a new "namespaces" option. The option takes a list of namespace IDs. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages in the given namespaces.
Future changes
New variables will be added to AbuseFilter: global_account_groups and global_account_editcount. They are available only when an account is being created. You can use them to prevent blocking automatic creation of accounts when users with many edits elsewhere visit your wiki for the first time. [356][357]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Wikipedia mobile apps teams. During the meeting, we will discuss the current features and future roadmap. The meeting will be on 27 October at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
There is a new user preference for "Always enable safe mode". This setting will make pages load without including any on-wiki JavaScript or on-wiki stylesheet pages. It can be useful for debugging broken JavaScript gadgets. [358]
Gadget definitions now have a new "contentModels" option. The option takes a list of page content models, like wikitext or css. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages with the given content models.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October (calendar).
Future changes
The Vector 2022 skin will no longer use the custom styles and scripts of Vector legacy (2010). The change will be made later this year or in early 2024. See how to adjust the CSS and JS pages on your wiki. [359]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Fon (w:fon:) [360]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 October. It will be on all wikis from 12 October (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Swahili Wikipedia, Walloon Wikipedia, Waray Wikipedia, Wolof Wikipedia, Kalmyk Wikipedia, Xhosa Wikipedia, Mingrelian Wikipedia, Yiddish Wikipedia, Yoruba Wikipedia, Zhuang Wikipedia, Zeelandic Wikipedia, Min Nan Wikipedia, Zulu Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [361]
At some wikis, newcomers are suggested images from Commons to add to articles without any images. Starting on Tuesday, newcomers at these wikis will be able to add images to unillustrated article sections. The specific wikis are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table. You can learn more about this feature.[362]
In the mobile web skin (Minerva) the CSS ID #page-actions will be replaced with #p-views. This change is to make it consistent with other skins and to improve support for gadgets and extensions in the mobile skin. A few gadgets may need to be updated; there are details and search-links in the task.
WMF GLAM report: Wikisource Loves Manuscripts, ICOM outreach, Flickr Foundation partnership, OpenRefine adoption, new sources in The Wikipedia Library, Image Description Month events, and the GLAM Wiki Conference
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Unified login system's edge login should now be fixed for some browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera). This means that if you visit a new sister project wiki, you should be logged in automatically without the need to click "Log in" or reload the page. Feedback on whether it's working for you is welcome. [363]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 October. It will be on all wikis from 19 October (calendar).
Future changes
In 3 weeks, in the Vector 2022 skin, code related to addPortletLink and #p-namespaces that was deprecated one year ago will be removed. If you notice tools that should appear next to the "Discussion" tab are then missing, please tell the gadget's maintainers to see instructions in the Phabricator task.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
There is a new Language and internationalization newsletter, written quarterly. It contains updates on new feature development, improvements in various language-related technical projects, and related support work.
Source map support has been enabled on all wikis. When you open the debugger in your browser's developer tools, you should be able to see the unminified JavaScript source code. [364]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 October. It will be on all wikis from 26 October (calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Structured Content team, as part of its project of improving UploadWizard on Commons, made some UX improvements to the upload step of choosing own vs not own work (T347590), as well as to the licensing step for own work (T347756).
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 November. It will be on all wikis from 2 November (calendar).
Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 2 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for many languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [365][366]
Starting November 1, the impact module (Special:Impact) will be upgraded by the Growth team. The new impact module shows newcomers more data regarding their impact on the wiki. It was tested by a few wikis during the last few months. [367]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
In the Vector 2022 skin, the default font-size of a number of navigational elements (tagline, tools menu, navigational links, and more) has been increased slightly to match the font size used in page content. [368]
Problems
Last week, there was a problem displaying some recent edits on a few wikis, for 1-6 hours. The edits were saved but not immediately shown. This was due to a database problem. [369]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 November. It will be on all wikis from 9 November (calendar).
The Growth team will reassign newcomers from former mentors to the currently active mentors. They have also changed the notification language to be more user-friendly. [370][371]
South Africa report: Edit-a-thon for Librarians at the annual Library and Information Association of South Africa 2023 Conference
Sweden report: Wikipedia for all of Sweden; Museums and Wikidata – why and how?; Photo memories from Stockholm and Rome; Negotiating Knowledge on Wikipedia
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Last week, users who previously visited Meta-Wiki or Wikimedia Commons and then became logged out on those wikis could not log in again. The problem is now resolved. [376]
Last week, some pop-up dialogs and menus were shown with the wrong font size. The problem is now resolved. [377]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 November. It will be on all wikis from 16 November (calendar).
Future changes
Reference Previews are coming to many wikis as a default feature. They are popups for references, similar to the PagePreviews feature. You can opt out of seeing them. If you are using the gadgets Reference Tooltips or Navigation Popups, you won’t see Reference Previews. Deployment is planned for November 22, 2023.
Canary (also known as heartbeat) events will be produced into Wikimedia event streams from December 11. Streams users are advised to filter out these events, by discarding all events where meta.domain == "canary". Updates to Pywikibot or wikimedia-streams will discard these events by default. [378]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week. [379][380]
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Quechua Wikipedia, Romansh Wikipedia, Romani Wikipedia, Rundi Wikipedia, Aromanian Wikipedia, Tarandíne Wikipedia, Rusyn Wikipedia, Kinyarwanda Wikipedia, Sanskrit Wikipedia, Sakha Wikipedia, Santali Wikipedia, Sardinian Wikipedia, Sicilian Wikipedia, Scots Wikipedia, Sindhi Wikipedia, Northern Sami Wikipedia, Sango Wikipedia, Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, Sinhala Wikipedia, Slovak Wikipedia, Slovenian Wikipedia, Samoan Wikipedia, Somali Wikipedia, Albanian Wikipedia, Serbian Wikipedia, Sranan Tongo Wikipedia, Swati Wikipedia, Southern Sotho Wikipedia, Saterland Frisian Wikipedia, Sundanese Wikipedia, Silesian Wikipedia, Tamil Wikipedia, Tulu Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Tetum Wikipedia, Tajik Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkmen Wikipedia, Tagalog Wikipedia, Tswana Wikipedia, Tongan Wikipedia, Tok Pisin Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Tsonga Wikipedia, Tatar Wikipedia, Twi Wikipedia, Tahitian Wikipedia, Tuvinian Wikipedia, Udmurt Wikipedia, Uyghur Wikipedia, Uzbek Wikipedia, Venda Wikipedia, Venetian Wikipedia, Veps Wikipedia, West Flemish Wikipedia, Volapük Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [381][382][383]
The Vector 2022 skin will have some minor visual changes to drop-down menus, column widths, and more. These changes were added to four Wikipedias last week. If no issues are found, these changes will proceed to all wikis this week. These changes will make it possible to add new menus for readability and dark mode. Learn more. [384]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 November. It will be on all wikis from 30 November (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week. [385][386]
MediaWiki's JavaScript system will now allow async/await syntax in gadgets and user scripts. Gadget authors should remember that users' browsers may not support it, so it should be used appropriately. [387]
The deployment of "Add a link" announced last week was postponed. It will resume this week.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The spacing between paragraphs on Vector 2022 has been changed from 7px to 14px to match the size of the text. This will make it easier to distinguish paragraphs from sentences. [388]
The "Sort this page by default as" feature in VisualEditor is working again. You no longer need to switch to source editing to edit {{DEFAULTSORT:...}} keywords. [389]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week. [390][391]
Registration & Scholarship applications are now open for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2024 that will take place from 3–5 May in Tallinn, Estonia. Scholarship applications are open until 5 January 2024.
Hello, and welcome to the December 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since September. Don't forget that you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.
Election news: The Guild needs coordinators! If you'd like to help out, you may nominate yourself or any suitable editor—with their permission—for the Election of Coordinators for the first half of 2024. Nominations will close at 23:59 on 15 December (UTC). Voting begins immediately after the close of nominations and closes at 23:59 on 31 December. All editors in good standing (not under current sanctions) are eligible, and self-nominations are welcome. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term that ends at 23:59 on 30 June.
Drive: Of the 69 editors who signed up for the September Backlog Elimination Drive, 40 copy-edited at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 661,214 words in 290 articles. Barnstars awarded are listed here.
Blitz: Of the 22 editors who signed up for the October Copy Editing Blitz, 13 copy-edited at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 109,327 words in 52 articles. Barnstars awarded are listed here.
Drive: During the November Backlog Elimination Drive, 38 of the 58 editors who signed up copy-edited at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 458,620 words in 234 articles. Barnstars awarded are listed here.
Progress report: As of 20:33, 10 December 2023 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 344 requests since 1 January, and the backlog stands at 2,191 articles.
Other news: Our Annual Report for 2023 is planned for release in the new year.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo.
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
Portugal report: Catalan culture and showcasing Wikimedia on both side of the Atlantic
Serbia report: Wikipedians in Residence, GLAM Wiki Conference
Sweden report: National Historical Museums of Sweden contributions; Photo memories from all over the world engage the community; Museum of medieval photo safari
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
On Wikimedia Commons, there are some minor user-interface improvements for the "choosing own vs not own work" step in the UploadWizard. This is part of the Structured Content team's project of improving UploadWizard on Commons. [393][394]
Problems
There was a problem showing the Newcomer homepage feature with the "impact module" and their page-view graphs, for a few days in early December. This has now been fixed. [395][396]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 December. It will be on all wikis from 14 December (calendar). [397][398]
Future changes
The 2023 Developer Satisfaction Survey is seeking the opinions of the Wikimedia developer community. Please take the survey if you have any role in developing software for the Wikimedia ecosystem. The survey is open until 5 January 2024, and has an associated privacy statement.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2024 because of the holidays.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 December. It will be on all wikis from 21 December (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week. [399][400]
Starting December 18, it won't be possible to activate Structured Discussions on a user's own talk page using the Beta feature. The Beta feature option remains available for users who want to deactivate Structured Discussions. This is part of Structured Discussions' deprecation work. [401]
There will be full support for redirects in the Module namespace. The "Move Page" feature will leave an appropriate redirect behind, and such redirects will be appropriately recognized by the software (e.g. hidden from Special:UnconnectedPages). There will also be support for manual redirects. [402]
Future changes
The MediaWiki JavaScript documentation is moving to a new format. During the move, you can read the old docs using version 1.41. Feedback about the new site is welcome on the project talk page.
The Wishathon is a new initiative that encourages collaboration across the Wikimedia community to develop solutions for wishes collected through the Community Wishlist Survey. The first community Wishathon will take place from 15–17 March. If you are interested in a project proposal as a user, developer, designer, or product lead, you can register for the event and read more.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
mediawiki2latex is a tool that converts wiki content into the formats of LaTeX, PDF, ODT, and EPUB. The code now runs many times faster due to recent improvements. There is also an optional Docker container you can install on your local machine.
The way that Random pages are selected has been updated. This will slowly reduce the problem of some pages having a lower chance of appearing. [403]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar). [404][405]
Poland report: Intense end to a year of GLAM-Wiki activities in Poland
Sweden report: Photo memories project concludes; Sörmlands museum passes 1000 uploads to Wikimedia Commons; Wikimedian in Residence supports an upload of music content; Subject terms from Queerlit; Wikidata for authority control: 3 years of work
USA report: WikiConference North America 2023; TSU and USF; Philadelphia WikiSalon; Wikimedia DC Annual Membership Meeting; Wikipedia Editing 101 for All; NYC Hacking Night; Upstate NY workshop; Wikiquote She Said Project
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. [406]
Gadgets and personal user scripts may now use JavaScript syntax introduced in ES6 (also known as "ES2015") and ES7 ("ES2016"). MediaWiki validates the source code to protect other site functionality from syntax errors, and to ensure scripts are valid in all supported browsers. Previously, Gadgets could use the requiresES6 option. This option is no longer needed and will be removed in the future. [407]
An update on the status of the Community Wishlist Survey for 2024 has been published. Please read and give your feedback.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (calendar). [410][411]
Starting on January 17, it will not be possible to login to Wikimedia wikis from some specific old versions of the Chrome browser (versions 51–66, released between 2016 and 2018). Additionally, users of iOS 12, or Safari on Mac OS 10.14, may need to login to each wiki separately. [412]
The jquery.cookie module was deprecated and replaced with the mediawiki.cookie module last year. A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses, and this week the temporary alias will be removed. [413]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
A bug in UploadWizard prevented linking to the userpage of the uploader when uploading. It has now been fixed. [414]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 January. It will be on all wikis from 25 January (calendar). [415][416]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Starting Monday January 29, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they are looking for, even if this comment was moved elsewhere. This will affect all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. You can read more about this change on Diff or on Mediawiki.org. [417]
There are some improvements to the CAPTCHA to make it harder for spam bots and scripts to bypass it. If you have feedback on this change, please comment on the task. Staff are monitoring metrics related to the CAPTCHA, as well as secondary metrics such as account creations and edit counts.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 January. It will be on all wikis from 1 February (calendar). [418][419]
Gadgets which only work in some skins have sometimes used the targets option to limit where you can use them. This will stop working this week. You should use the skins option instead. [421]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. If you hear of any problems relating to mobile history usage please point them to the phabricator task.
On most wikis, admins can now block users from making specific actions. These actions are: uploading files, creating new pages, moving (renaming) pages, and sending thanks. The goal of this feature is to allow admins to apply blocks that are adequate to the blocked users' activity. Learn more about "action blocks". [422][423]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (calendar). [424][425]
Talk pages permalinks that included diacritics and non-Latin script were malfunctioning. This issue is fixed. [426]
Future changes
24 Wikipedias with Reference Tooltips as a default gadget are encouraged to remove that default flag. This would make Reference Previews the new default for reference popups, leading to a more consistent experience across wikis. For 46 Wikipedias with less than 4 interface admins, the change is already scheduled for mid-February, unless there are concerns. The older Reference Tooltips gadget will still remain usable and will override this feature, if it is available on your wiki and you have enabled it in your settings. [427][428]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The WDQS Graph Split experiment is working and loaded onto 3 test servers. The team in charge is testing the split's impact and requires feedback from WDQS users through the UI or programmatically in different channels. [429][430][431] Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service. [432][433]
Problems
There was a bug that affected the appearance of visited links when using mobile device to access wiki sites. It made the links appear black; this issue is fixed.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (calendar). [434][435]
As work continues on the grid engine deprecation,[436] tools on the grid engine will be stopped starting on February 14th, 2024. If you have tools actively migrating you can ask for an extension so they are not stopped. [437]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
If you have the "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" option enabled, edits by bot accounts no longer trigger notification emails. Previously, only minor edits would not trigger the notification emails. [438]
There are changes to how user and site scripts load for Vector 2022 on specific wikis. The changes impacted the following Wikis: all projects with Vector legacy as the default skin, Wikivoyage, and Wikibooks. Other wikis will be affected over the course of the next three months. Gadgets are not impacted. If you have been affected or want to minimize the impact on your project, see this ticket. Please coordinate and take action proactively.
Newly auto-created accounts (the accounts you get when you visit a new wiki) now have the same local notification preferences as users who freshly register on that wiki. It is effected in four notification types listed in the task's description.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (calendar). [440][441]
Selected tools on the grid engine have been stopped as we prepare to shut down the grid on March 14th, 2024. The tool's code and data have not been deleted. If you are a maintainer and you want your tool re-enabled reach out to the team. Only tools that have asked for extension are still running on the grid.
The CSS filter property can now be used in HTML style attributes in wikitext. [442]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The mobile visual editor is now the default editor for users who never edited before, at a small group of wikis. Research shows that users using this editor are slightly more successful publishing the edits they started, and slightly less successful publishing non-reverted edits. Users who defined the wikitext editor as their default on desktop will get the wikitext editor on mobile for their first edit on mobile as well. [443]
The mw.config value wgGlobalGroups now only contains groups that are active in the wiki. Scripts no longer have to check whether the group is active on the wiki via an API request. A code example of the above is: if (/globalgroupname/.test(mw.config.get("wgGlobalGroups"))). [444]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 February. It will be on all wikis from 29 February (calendar). [445][446]
Future changes
The right to change edit tags (changetags) will be removed from users in Wikimedia sites, keeping it by default for admins and bots only. Your community can ask to retain the old configuration on your wiki before this change happens. Please indicate in this ticket to keep it for your community before the end of March 2024.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Special:Book page (as well as the associated "Create a book" functionality) provided by the old Collection extension has been removed from all Wikisource wikis, as it was broken. This does not affect the ability to download normal books, which is provided by the Wikisource extension. [447]
Maintenance on etherpad is completed. If you encounter any issues, please indicate in this ticket.
Gadgets allow interface admins to create custom features with CSS and JavaScript. The Gadget and Gadget_definition namespaces and gadgets-definition-edit user right were reserved for an experiment in 2015, but were never used. These were visible on Special:Search and Special:ListGroupRights. The unused namespaces and user rights are now removed. No pages are moved, and no changes need to be made. [448]
A usability improvement to the "Add a citation" in Wikipedia workflow has been made, the insert button was moved to the popup header. [449]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar). [450][451]
Future changes
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [452]
The HTML markup of headings and section edit links will be changed later this year to improve accessibility. See Heading HTML changes for details. The new markup will be the same as in the new Parsoid wikitext parser. You can test your gadget or stylesheet with the new markup if you add ?useparsoid=1 to your URL (more info) or turn on Parsoid read views in your user options (more info).
New Zealand report: WikiProject Te Papa Research Expeditions, wrapping up the Auckland / Tāmaki Makaurau local histories project, and the Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large
Poland report: WikiMatejko editing action; The eighth European GLAM Wiki coordinators meet up
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar). [453][454]
After consulting with various communities, the line height of the text on the Minerva skin will be increased to its previous value of 1.65. Different options for typography can also be set using the options in the menu, as needed. [455]
The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices. [456]
Structured data on Commons will no longer ask whether you want to leave the page without saving. This will prevent the “information you’ve entered may not be saved” popups from appearing when no information have been entered. It will also make file pages on Commons load faster in certain cases. However, the popups will be hidden even if information has indeed been entered. If you accidentally close the page before saving the structured data you entered, that data will be lost. [457]
Future changes
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [458][459]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The notice "Language links are at the top of the page" that appears in the Vector 2022 skin main menu has been removed now that users have learned the new location of the Language switcher. [460]
IP info feature displays data from Spur, an IP addresses database. Previously, the only data source for this feature was MaxMind. Now, IP info is more useful for patrollers. [461]
The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. [462][463][464]
RevisionSlider is an interface to interactively browse a page's history. Users in right-to-left languages reported RevisionSlider reacting wrong to mouse clicks. This should be fixed now. [466]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar). [467][468]
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [469][470]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
An update was made on March 18th 2024 to how various projects load site, user JavaScript and CSS in Vector 2022 skin. A checklist is provided for site admins to follow.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar). [471][472]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Users of the reading accessibility beta feature will notice that the default line height for the standard and large text options has changed. [473]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar). [474][475]
Future changes
The Wikimedia Foundation has an annual plan. The annual plan decides what the Wikimedia Foundation will work on. You can now read the draft key results for the Product and Technology department. They are suggestions for what results the Foundation wants from big technical changes from July 2024 to June 2025. You can comment on the talk page.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Web browsers can use tools called extensions. There is now a Chrome extension called Citation Needed which you can use to see if an online statement is supported by a Wikipedia article. This is a small experiment to see if Wikipedia can be used this way. Because it is a small experiment, it can only be used in Chrome in English.
A new Edit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as a user preference. Once you enable it, your in-progress edits will be stored in your web browser, and if you accidentally close an editing window or your browser or computer crashes, you will be prompted to recover the unpublished text. Please leave any feedback on the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings. [478]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar). [479][480]
New accounts and logged-out users will get the visual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. [481]
WMF GLAM report: Learn to upload to Commons with OpenRefine and get up to date on the International Museum Day, GLAM CSI, WiLMa Network, and WikiWorkshop
Hello and welcome to the April 2024 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since December. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. We extend a warm welcome to all of our new members. We wish you all happy copy-editing.
Election results: In our December 2023 coordinator election, Zippybonzo stepped down as coordinator; we thank them for their service. Incumbents Dhtwiki and Miniapolis were reelected coordinators, and Wracking was newly elected coordinator, to serve through 30 June. Nominations for our mid-year Election of Coordinators will open on 1 June (UTC).
Drive: 46 editors signed up for our January Backlog Elimination Drive, 32 of whom claimed at least one copy-edit. Between them, they copy-edited 289 articles totaling 626,729 words. Barnstars awarded are here.
Blitz: 23 editors signed up for our February Copy Editing Blitz. 18 claimed at least one copy-edit and between them, they copy-edited 100,293 words in 32 articles. Barnstars awarded are here.
Drive: 53 editors signed up for our March Backlog Elimination Drive, 34 of whom claimed at least one copy-edit. Between them, they copy-edited 300 articles totaling 587,828 words. Barnstars awarded are here.
Blitz: Sign up for our April Copy Editing Blitz, which runs from 14 to 20 April. Barnstars will be awarded here.
Progress report: As of 23:17, 11 April 2024 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 109 requests since 1 January 2024, and the backlog stands at 2,480 articles.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from Baffle gab1978 and your GOCE coordinators Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Wracking.
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
Between 2 April and 8 April, on wikis using Flagged Revisions, the "Reverted" tag was not applied to undone edits. In addition, page moves, protections and imports were not autoreviewed. This problem is now fixed. [482][483]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar). [484][485]
Default category sort keys will now affect categories added by templates placed in footnotes. Previously footnotes used the page title as the default sort key even if a different default sort key was specified (category-specific sort keys already worked). [486]
A new variable page_last_edit_age will be added to abuse filters. It tells how many seconds ago the last edit to a page was made. [487]
Future changes
Volunteer developers are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. Learn more.
Four database fields will be removed from database replicas (including Quarry). This affects only the abuse_filter and abuse_filter_history tables. Some queries might need to be updated. [488]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
You can nominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 April. It will be on all wikis from 25 April (calendar). [490][491]
Future changes
This is the last warning that by the end of May 2024 the Vector 2022 skin will no longer share site and user scripts/styles with old Vector. For user-scripts that you want to keep using on Vector 2022, copy the contents of Special:MyPage/vector.js to Special:MyPage/vector-2022.js. There are more technical details available. Interface administrators who foresee this leading to lots of technical support questions may wish to send a mass message to your community, as was done on French Wikipedia. [492]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.
The appearance of talk pages changed for the following wikis: Azerbaijani Wikipedia, Bengali Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia. These wikis participated to a test, where 50% of users got the new design, for one year. As this test gave positive results, the new design is deployed on these wikis as the default design. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at all wikis in the coming weeks. [493]
Kartographer maps can use an alternative visual style without labels, by using mapstyle="osm". This wasn't working in previews, creating the wrong impression that it wasn't supported. This has now been fixed. [502]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar). [503][504]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.
The appearance of talk pages changed for all wikis, except for Commons, Wikidata and most Wikipedias (a few have already received this design change). You can read the detail of the changes on Diff. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at remaining wikis in the coming weeks. [505][506]
Interface admins now have greater control over the styling of article components on mobile with the introduction of the SiteAdminHelper. More information on how styles can be disabled can be found at the extension's page. [507]
Wikimedia Enterprise has added article body sections in JSON format and a curated short description field to the existing parsed Infobox. This expansion to the API is also available via Wikimedia Cloud Services. [508]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar). [509][510]
When you look at the Special:Log page, the first view is labelled "All public logs", but it only shows some logs. This label will now say "Main public logs". [511]
Albania report: International Roma Day Editathon in Albania and Kosovo, 2024
Australia report: New images from Central Australia on Wikimedia Commons, Library Science WikiProject students edit Wikipedia & 1Lib1Ref in Australia and New Zealand
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
On Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word __EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__ to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list. [513]
If you use the user-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template (what's this?)" will now also work without reloading the page. [514]
Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the alt= attribute. This is identical in usage to the alt= attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive. [515]
The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people. [516]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [517][518]
The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [519]
Future changes
In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more. [520]
Two columns of the pagelinks database table (pl_namespace and pl_title) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the new linktarget table instead (lt_namespace and lt_title). In your existing SQL queries:
Replace JOIN pagelinks with JOIN linktarget and pl_ with lt_ in the ON statement
Below that add JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. [523]
New changes have been made to the UploadWizard in Wikimedia Commons: the overall layout has been improved, by following new styling and spacing for the form and its fields; the headers and helper text for each of the fields was changed; the Caption field is now a required field, and there is an option for users to copy their caption into the media description. [524][525]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar). [526][527]
The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It will change on 22 May in some skins (Timeless, Modern, CologneBlue, Nostalgia, and Monobook). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in all other skins. The developers are also considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Several bugs related to the latest updates to the UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons have been fixed. For more information, see T365107 and T365119.
In March 2024 a new addPortlet API was added to allow gadgets to create new portlets (menus) in the skin. In certain skins this can be used to create dropdowns. Gadget developers are invited to try it and give feedback.
Some CSS in the Minerva skin has been removed to enable easier community configuration. Interface editors should check the rendering on mobile devices for aspects related to the classes: .collapsible, .multicol, .reflist, .coordinates, .topicon. Further details are available on replacement CSS if it is needed.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar). [528][529]
When you visit a wiki where you don't yet have a local account, local rules such as edit filters can sometimes prevent your account from being created. Starting this week, MediaWiki takes your global rights into account when evaluating whether you can override such local rules. [530]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
It is now possible for local administrators to add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without JavaScript. Documentation is available. [531]
The message name for the definition of the tracking category of WikiHiero has changed from "MediaWiki:Wikhiero-usage-tracking-category" to "MediaWiki:Wikihiero-usage-tracking-category". [532]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 June. It will be on all wikis from 6 June (calendar). [534][535]
Future changes
Next week, on wikis with the Vector 2022 skin as the default, logged-out desktop users will be able to choose between different font sizes. The default font size will also be increased for them. This is to make Wikimedia projects easier to read. Learn more.
Hello and welcome to the June 2024 newsletter, a quarterly-ish digest of Guild activities since April. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.
Election news: Wanted: new Guild coordinators! If you value and enjoy the GOCE, why not help out behind the scenes? Nominations for our mid-year coordinator election are now open until 23:59 on 15 June (UTC). Self-nominations are welcome. Voting commences at 00:01 on 16 June and continues until 23:50 on 30 June. Results will be announced at the election page.
Blitz: Nine of the fourteen editors who signed up for the April 2024 Copy Editing Blitz copy edited at least one article. Between them, they copy edited 55,853 words comprising twenty articles. Barnstars awarded are available here.
Drive: 58 editors signed up for our May 2024 Backlog Elimination Drive and 33 of those completed at least one copy edit. 251 articles and 475,952 words were copy edited. Barnstars awarded are here.
Progress report: As of 05:23, 8 June 2024 (UTC) , GOCE copyeditors have completed 161 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 2,779 articles.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from Baffle gab1978 and your GOCE coordinators Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Wracking.
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
Albania report: Summer of Wikivoyage Edit-a-thon in Kruja; Traditional Albanian food photography competition
Brazil report: Open licensing guide from Midiateca Capixaba; Activities in Rio de Janeiro; First batch from LabDOC; New batch from NeuroMat; Hercule Florence photowalk
Czech Republic report: International discussion on the role of media and new GLAM partnership on the horizon
India report: Digitization concludes for Behar Herald and a digitization workshop held for libraries in Maharashtra
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The software used to render SVG files has been updated to a new version, fixing many longstanding bugs in SVG rendering. [536]
The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It was changed last week in some skins (Vector legacy and Minerva). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in Vector-2022. The developers are still considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
The HTML markup used for citations by Parsoid changed last week. In places where Parsoid previously added the mw-reference-text class, Parsoid now also adds the reference-text class for better compatibility with the legacy parser. More details are available. [537]
Problems
There was a bug with the Content Translation interface that caused the tools menus to appear in the wrong location. This has now been fixed. [538]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 June. It will be on all wikis from 13 June (calendar). [539][540]
The new version of MediaWiki includes another change to the HTML markup used for citations: Parsoid will now generate a <span class="mw-cite-backlink"> wrapper for both named and unnamed references for better compatibility with the legacy parser. Interface administrators should verify that gadgets that interact with citations are compatible with the new markup. More details are available. [541]
On multilingual wikis that use the <translate> system, there is a feature that shows potentially-outdated translations with a pink background until they are updated or confirmed. From this week, confirming translations will be logged, and there is a new user-right that can be required for confirming translations if the community requests it. [542]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
People who attempt to add an external link in the visual editor will now receive immediate feedback if they attempt to link to a domain that a project has decided to block. Please see Edit check for more details. [543]
The dark mode beta feature is now available on category and help pages, as well as more special pages. There may be contrast issues. Please report bugs on the project talk page. [546]
Problems
Cloud Services tools were not available for 25 minutes last week. This was caused by a faulty hardware cable in the data center. [547]
Last week, styling updates were made to the Vector 2022 skin. This caused unforeseen issues with templates, hatnotes, and images. Changes to templates and hatnotes were reverted. Most issues with images were fixed. If you still see any, report them here. [548]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar). [549][550]
Starting June 18, the Reference Edit Check will be deployed to a new set of Wikipedias. This feature is intended to help newcomers and to assist edit-patrollers by inviting people who are adding new content to a Wikipedia article to add a citation when they do not do so themselves. During a test at 11 wikis, the number of citations added more than doubled when Reference Check was shown to people. Reference Check is community configurable. [551]
Mailing lists will be unavailable for roughly two hours on Tuesday 10:00–12:00 UTC. This is to enable migration to a new server and upgrade its software. [552]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Editors will notice that there have been some changes to the background color of text in the diff view, and the color of the byte-change numbers, last week. These changes are intended to make text more readable in both light mode and dark mode, and are part of a larger effort to increase accessibility. You can share your comments or questions on the project talkpage. [553]
The text colors that are used for visited-links, hovered-links, and active-links, were also slightly changed last week to improve their accessibility in both light mode and dark mode. [554]
Problems
You can copy permanent links to talk page comments by clicking on a comment's timestamp. This feature did not always work when the topic title was very long and the link was used as a wikitext link. This has been fixed. Thanks to Lofhi for submitting the bug. [555]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 June. It will be on all wikis from 27 June (calendar). [556][557]
Starting 26 June, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link at English Wikipedia, making this feature available for you to use at all wikis. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they were linked to, even if this comment has since been moved elsewhere. You can read more about this feature on Diff or on Mediawiki.org. [558]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Over the next three weeks, dark mode will become available for all users, both logged-in and logged-out, starting with the mobile web version. This fulfils one of the top-requested community wishes, and improves low-contrast reading and usage in low-light settings. As part of these changes, dark mode will also work on User-pages and Portals. There is more information in the latest Web team update. [559]
Logged-in users can now set global preferences for the text-size and dark-mode, thanks to a combined effort across Foundation teams. This allows Wikimedians using multiple wikis to set up a consistent reading experience easily, for example by switching between light and dark mode only once for all wikis. [560]
If you use a very old web browser some features might not work on the Wikimedia wikis. This affects Internet Explorer 11 and versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari older than 2016. This change makes it possible to use new CSS features and to send less code to all readers. [561][562]
Wikipedia Admins can customize local wiki configuration options easily using Community Configuration. Community Configuration was created to allow communities to customize how some features work, because each language wiki has unique needs. At the moment, admins can configure Growth features on their home wikis, in order to better recruit and retain new editors. More options will be provided in the coming months. [563]
Editors interested in language issues that are related to Unicode standards, can now discuss those topics at a new conversation space in MediaWiki.org. The Wikimedia Foundation is now a member of the Unicode Consortium, and the coordination group can collaboratively review the issues discussed and, where appropriate, bring them to the attention of the Unicode Consortium.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The CampaignEvents extension is now available on Meta-wiki, Igbo Wikipedia, and Swahili Wikipedia, and can be requested on your wiki. This extension helps in managing and making events more visible, giving Event organizers the ability to use tools like the Event registration tool. To learn more about the deployment status and how to request this extension for your wiki, visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-wiki.
Editors using the iOS Wikipedia app who have more than 50 edits can now use the Add an Image feature. This feature presents opportunities for small but useful contributions to Wikipedia.
A problem with the color of the talkpage tabs always showing as blue, even for non-existent pages which should have been red, affecting the Vector 2022 skin, has been fixed.
Future changes
The Trust and Safety Product team wants to introduce temporary accounts with as little disruption to tools and workflows as possible. Volunteer developers, including gadget and user-script maintainers, are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. The team has created documentation explaining how to do the update. Learn more.
Australia report: Partner Project between Wikimedia Australia, the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers (ANZSI) and the School of Information and Communication Studies at Charles Sturt University (CSU SICS)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Wikimedia developers can now officially continue to use both Gerrit and GitLab, due to a June 24 decision by the Wikimedia Foundation to support software development on both platforms. Gerrit and GitLab are both code repositories used by developers to write, review, and deploy the software code that supports the MediaWiki software that the wiki projects are built on, as well as the tools used by editors to create and improve content. This decision will safeguard the productivity of our developers and prevent problems in code review from affecting our users. More details are available in the Migration status page.
The Wikimedia Foundation seeks applicants for the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). This group will bring technical contributors and Wikimedia Foundation together to co-define a more resilient, future-proof technological platform. Council members will evaluate and consult on the movement's product and technical activities, so that we develop multi-generational projects. We are looking for a range of technical contributors across the globe, from a variety of Wikimedia projects. Please apply here by August 10.
Editors with rollback user-rights who use the Wikipedia App for Android can use the new Edit Patrol features. These features include a new feed of Recent Changes, related links such as Undo and Rollback, and the ability to create and save a personal library of user talk messages to use while patrolling. If your wiki wants to make these features available to users who do not have rollback rights but have reached a certain edit threshold, you can contact the team. You can read more about this project on Diff blog.
Next week, functionaries, volunteers maintaining tools, and software development teams are invited to test the temporary accounts feature on testwiki. Temporary accounts is a feature that will help improve privacy on the wikis. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page. [566]
Editors who upload files cross-wiki, or teach other people how to do so, may wish to join a Wikimedia Commons discussion. The Commons community is discussing limiting who can upload files through the cross-wiki upload/Upload dialog feature to users auto-confirmed on Wikimedia Commons. This is due to the large amount of copyright violations uploaded this way. There is a short summary at Commons:Cross-wiki upload and discussion at Commons:Village Pump.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature News
Stewards can now globally block accounts. Before the change only IP addresses and IP ranges could be blocked globally. Global account blocks are useful when the blocked user should not be logged out. Global locks (a similar tool logging the user out of their account) are unaffected by this change. The new global account block feature is related to the Temporary Accounts project, which is a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors that are no longer made public.
Later this week, Wikimedia site users will notice that the Interface of FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") is improved and consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface and Wikimedia's design system. The FlaggedRevs interface experience on mobile and Minerva skin was inconsistent before it was fixed and ported to Codex by the WMF Growth team and some volunteers. [567]
Wikimedia site users can now submit account vanishing requests via GlobalVanishRequest. This feature is used when a contributor wishes to stop editing forever. It helps you hide your past association and edit to protect your privacy. Once processed, the account will be locked and renamed. [568]
Have you tried monitoring and addressing vandalism in Wikipedia using your phone? A Diff blog post on Patrolling features in the Mobile App highlights some of the new capabilities of the feature, including swiping through a feed of recent changes and a personal library of user talk messages for use when patrolling from your phone.
Wikimedia contributors and GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) organisations can now learn and measure the impact Wikimedia Commons is having towards creating quality encyclopedic content using the Commons Impact Metrics analytics dashboard. The dashboard offers organizations analytics on things like monthly edits in a category, the most viewed files, and which Wikimedia articles are using Commons images. As a result of these new data dumps, GLAM organisation can more reliably measure their return on investment for programs bringing content into the digital Commons. [569]
Project Updates
Come share your ideas for improving the wikis on the newly reopened Community Wishlist. The Community Wishlist is Wikimedia’s forum for volunteers to share ideas (called wishes) to improve how the wikis work. The new version of the wishlist is always open, works with both wikitext and Visual Editor, and allows wishes in any language.
Learn more
Have you ever wondered how Wikimedia software works across over 300 languages? This is 253 languages more than the Google Chrome interface, and it's no accident. The Language and Product Localization Team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports your work by adapting all the tools and interfaces in the MediaWiki software so that contributors in our movement who translate pages and strings can translate them and have the sites in all languages. Read more about the team and their upcoming work on Diff.
How can Wikimedia build innovative and experimental products while maintaining such heavily used websites? A recent blog post by WMF staff Johan Jönsson highlights the work of the WMF Future Audience initiative, where the goal is not to build polished products but test out new ideas, such as a ChatGPT plugin and Add a Fact, to help take Wikimedia into the future.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
Editors using the Visual Editor in languages that use non-Latin characters for numbers, such as Hindi, Manipuri and Eastern Arabic, may notice some changes in the formatting of reference numbers. This is a side effect of preparing a new sub-referencing feature, and will also allow fixing some general numbering issues in Visual Editor. If you notice any related problems on your wiki, please share details at the project talkpage.
Bugs status
Some logged-in editors were briefly unable to edit or load pages last week. These errors were mainly due to the addition of new linter rules which led to caching problems. Fixes have been applied and investigations are continuing.
Editors can use the IP Information tool to get information about IP addresses. This tool is available as a Beta Feature in your preferences. The tool was not available for a few days last week, but is now working again. Thank you to Shizhao for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Project updates
There are new features and improvements to Phabricator from the Release Engineering and Collaboration Services teams, and some volunteers, including: the search systems, the new task creation system, the login systems, the translation setup which has resulted in support for more languages (thanks to Pppery), and fixes for many edge-case errors. You can read details about these and other improvements in this summary.
There is an update on the Charts project. The team has decided which visualization library to use, which chart types to start focusing on, and where to store chart definitions.
One new wiki has been created: a Wikivoyage in Czech (voy:cs:) [570]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
Two new parser functions will be available this week: {{#dir}} and {{#bcp47}}. These will reduce the need for Template:Dir and Template:BCP47 on Commons and allow us to drop 100 million rows from the "what links here" database. Editors at any wiki that use these templates, can help by replacing the templates with these new functions. The templates at Commons will be updated during the Hackathon at Wikimania. [571][572]
Communities can request the activation of the visual editor on entire namespaces where discussions sometimes happen (for instance Wikipedia: or Wikisource: namespaces) if they understand the known limitations. For discussions, users can already use DiscussionTools in these namespaces.
The tracking category "Pages using Timeline" has been renamed to "Pages using the EasyTimeline extension" in TranslateWiki. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match.
Project updates
Editors who help to organize WikiProjects and similar on-wiki collaborations, are invited to share ideas and examples of successful collaborations with the Campaigns and Programs teams. You can fill out a brief survey or share your thoughts on the talkpage. The teams are particularly looking for details about successful collaborations on non-English wikis.
The new parser is being rolled out on Wikivoyage wikis over the next few months. The English Wikivoyage and Hebrew Wikivoyage were switched to Parsoid last week. For more information, see Parsoid/Parser Unification.
The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New design previews for Translatable pages; Updates about MinT for Wiki Readers; the release of Translation dumps; and more.
Germany report: The flight over the "Rosinenbomber" - drone deployment for Free Knowledge; Kicking off a German-language community of practice for building cultural heritage linked open data with the wikimedia projects
India report: GLAM partner ventures into 'Digitisation Plus' programs with Wikimedians
Kosovo report: Prompting what's most important - our community in Albania and Kosovo
New Zealand report: WikiProject International Botanical Congress 2024, a presentation to the Natural History Museum, London & Kew Gardens staff and a Research expeditions edit-a-thon
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Stewards can now specify if global blocks should prevent account creation. Before this change by the Trust and Safety Product Team, all global blocks would prevent account creation. This will allow stewards to reduce the unintended side-effects of global blocks on IP addresses.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
Editors who want to re-use references but with different details such as page numbers, will be able to do so by the end of 2024, using a new sub-referencing feature. You can read more about the project and how to test the prototype.
Editors using tracking categories to identify which pages use specific extensions may notice that six of the categories have been renamed to make them more easily understood and consistent. These categories are automatically added to pages that use specialized MediaWiki extensions. The affected names are for: DynamicPageList, Kartographer, Phonos, RSS, Score, WikiHiero. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match. Thanks to Pppery for these improvements. [575]
Technical volunteers who edit modules and want to get a list of the categories used on a page, can now do so using the categories property of mw.title objects. This enables wikis to configure workflows such as category-specific edit notices. Thanks to SD001 for these improvements. [576][577]
Bugs status
Your help is needed to check if any pages need to be moved or deleted. A maintenance script was run to clean up unreachable pages (due to Unicode issues or introduction of new namespaces/namespace aliases). The script tried to find appropriate names for the pages (e.g. by following the Unicode changes or by moving pages whose titles on Wikipedia start with Talk:WP: so that their titles start with Wikipedia talk:), but it may have failed for some pages, and moved them to Special:PrefixIndex/T195546/ instead. Your community should check if any pages are listed there, and move them to the correct titles, or delete them if they are no longer needed. A full log (including pages for which appropriate names could be found) is available in phab:P67388.
Editors who volunteer as mentors to newcomers on their wiki are once again able to access lists of potential mentees who they can connect with to offer help and guidance. This functionality was restored thanks to a bug fix. Thank you to Mbch331 for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 18 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Project updates
The application deadline for the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) has been extended to September 16. Members will help by providing advice to Foundation Product and Technology leadership on short and long term plans, on complex strategic problems, and help to get feedback from more contributors and technical communities. Selected members should expect to spend roughly 5 hours per month for the Council, during the one year pilot. Please consider applying, and spread the word to volunteers you think would make a positive contribution to the committee.
Learn more
The 2024 Coolest Tool Awards were awarded at Wikimania, in seven categories. For example, one award went to the ISA Tool, used for adding structured data to files on Commons, which was recently improved during the Wiki Mentor Africa Hackathon. You can see video demonstrations of each tool at the awards page. Congratulations to this year's recipients, and thank you to all tool creators and maintainers.
The latest Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is available, and includes some highlights from Wikimania, an upcoming Language community meeting, and other news from the movement.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
Administrators can now test the temporary accounts feature on test2wiki. This was done to allow cross-wiki testing of temporary accounts, for when temporary accounts switch between projects. The feature was enabled on testwiki a few weeks ago. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Temporary Accounts is a project to create a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors which are no longer made public. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page.
Later this week, editors at wikis that use FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") may notice that the indicators at the top of articles have changed. This change makes the system more consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface. [578]
Bugs status
Editors who use the 2010 wikitext editor, and use the Character Insert buttons, will no longer experience problems with the buttons adding content into the edit-summary instead of the edit-window. You can read more about that, and 26 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Project updates
Please review and vote on Focus Areas, which are groups of wishes that share a problem. Focus Areas were created for the newly reopened Community Wishlist, which is now open year-round for submissions. The first batch of focus areas are specific to moderator workflows, around welcoming newcomers, minimizing repetitive tasks, and prioritizing tasks. Once volunteers have reviewed and voted on focus areas, the Foundation will then review and select focus areas for prioritization.
Do you have a project and are willing to provide a three (3) month mentorship for an intern? Outreachy is a twice a year program for people to participate in a paid internship that will start in December 2024 and end in early March 2025, and they need mentors and projects to work on. Projects can be focused on coding or non-coding (design, documentation, translation, research). See the Outreachy page for more details, and a list of past projects since 2013.
Learn more
If you're curious about the product and technology improvements made by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, read this recent highlights summary on Diff.
To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
Editors and volunteer developers interested in data visualisation can now test the new software for charts. Its early version is available on beta Commons and beta Wikipedia. This is an important milestone before making charts available on regular wikis. You can read more about this project update and help to test the charts.
Feature news
Editors who use the Special:UnusedTemplates page can now filter out pages which are expected to be there permanently, such as sandboxes, test-cases, and templates that are always substituted. Editors can add the new magic word __EXPECTUNUSEDTEMPLATE__ to a template page to hide it from the listing. Thanks to Sophivorus and DannyS712 for these improvements. [579]
Editors who use the New Topic tool on discussion pages, will now be reminded to add a section header, which should help reduce the quantity of newcomers who add sections without a header. You can read more about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Last week, some Toolforge tools had occasional connection problems. The cause is still being investigated, but the problems have been resolved for now. [580]
Translation administrators at multilingual wikis, when editing multiple translation units, can now easily mark which changes require updates to the translation. This is possible with the new dropdown menu.
Project updates
A new draft text of a policy discussing the use of Wikimedia's APIs has been published on Meta-Wiki. The draft text does not reflect a change in policy around the APIs; instead, it is an attempt to codify existing API rules. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome on the proposed update’s talk page until September 13 or until those discussions have concluded.
Learn more
To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
Starting this week, the standard syntax highlighter will receive new colors that make them compatible in dark mode. This is the first of many changes to come as part of a major upgrade to syntax highlighting. You can learn more about what's to come on the help page. [582][583]
Editors of wikis using Wikidata will now be notified of only relevant Wikidata changes in their watchlist. This is because the Lua functions entity:getSitelink() and mw.wikibase.getSitelink(qid) will have their logic unified for tracking different aspects of sitelinks to reduce junk notifications from inconsistent sitelinks tracking. [584]
Project updates
Users of all Wikis will have access to Wikimedia sites as read-only for a few minutes on September 25, starting at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [585]
Contributors of 11 Wikipedias, including English will have a new MOS namespace added to their Wikipedias. This improvement ensures that links beginning with MOS: (usually shortcuts to the Manual of Style) are not broken by Mooré Wikipedia (language code mos). [586]
Hello and welcome to the September newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since June. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.
Election news: Project coordinators play an important role in our WikiProject. Following the mid-year Election of Coordinators, we welcomed Mox Eden to the coordinator team. Dhtwiki remains as Lead Coordinator, and Miniapolis and Wracking returned as assistant coordinators. If you'd like to help out behind the scenes, please consider taking part in our December election – watchlist our ombox for updates. Information about the role of coordinators can be found here.
Blitz: 13 of the 24 editors who signed up for the June 2024 Copy Editing Blitz copy edited at least one article. Between them, they copy edited 169,404 words comprising 41 articles. Barnstars awarded are here.
Drive: 38 of the 59 editors who signed up for the July 2024 Backlog Elimination Drive copy edited at least one article. Between them, they copy edited 482,133 words comprising 293 articles. Barnstars awarded are here.
Blitz: 10 of the 15 editors who signed up for the August 2024 Copy Editing Blitz copy edited at least one article. Between them, they copy edited 71,294 words comprising 31 articles. Barnstars awarded are here.
Drive:Sign up here to earn barnstars in our month-long, in-progress September Backlog Elimination Drive.
Progress report: As of 05:14, 11 September 2024 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 233 requests since 1 January, and the backlog of tagged articles stands at 2,824 articles.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we do without you! Cheers from Baffle gab1978 and your GOCE coordinators Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Mox Eden and Wracking.
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
Czech Republic report: Cooperation between National Library and Wikimedia CR was presented at Wikimania 2024
India report: Wikimedians-in-residence assigned to add lexicographical data of 5 endangered languages of West Bengal
Netherlands report: 10 reasons why the National Library of the Netherlands moved its Wikimedia-related publications from SlideShare to Zenodo, and keeps them on Wikimedia Commons
New Zealand report: Looking for Aotearoa's next roving Wikipedian, a Wikidata Te Papa research expeditions publication & the Wikidata WikiProject IBC follow-up workshop
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Improvements and Maintenance
Editors interested in templates can help by reading the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and share your feedback on the talkpage. This input helps the Community Tech team to decide the right technical approach to build. Everyone is also encouraged to continue adding new wishes.
The new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page helps editors understand which namespaces exist on each wiki, and some details about how they are configured. Thanks to DannyS712 for these improvements. [587]
References Check is a feature that encourages editors to add a citation when they add a new paragraph to a Wikipedia article. For a short time, the corresponding tag "Edit Check (references) activated" was erroneously being applied to some edits outside of the main namespace. This has been fixed. [588]
It is now possible for a wiki community to change the order in which a page’s categories are displayed on their wiki. By default, categories are displayed in the order they appear in the wikitext. Now, wikis with a consensus to do so can request a configuration change to display them in alphabetical order. [589]
Tool authors can now access ToolsDB's public databases from both Quarry and Superset. Those databases have always been accessible to every Toolforge user, but they are now more broadly accessible, as Quarry can be accessed by anyone with a Wikimedia account. In addition, Quarry's internal database can now be queried from Quarry itself. This database contains information about all queries that are being run and starred by users in Quarry. This information was already public through the web interface, but you can now query it using SQL. You can read more about that, and 20 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Any pages or tools that still use the very old CSS classes mw-message-box need to be updated. These old classes will be removed next week or soon afterwards. Editors can use a global-search to determine what needs to be changed. It is possible to use the newer cdx-message group of classes as a replacement (see the relevant Codex documentation, and an example update), but using locally defined onwiki classes would be best. [590]
Technical project updates
Next week, all Wikimedia wikis will be read-only for a few minutes. This will start on September 25 at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. This maintenance process also targets other services. The previous switchover took 3 minutes, and the Site Reliability Engineering teams use many tools to make sure that this essential maintenance work happens as quickly as possible. [591]
Tech in depth
The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
Hackathon Showcase (45 mins) - 19 short presentations by some of the Hackathon participants, describing some of the projects they worked on, such as automated testing of maintenance scripts, a video-cutting command line tool, and interface improvements for various tools. There are more details and links available in the Phabricator task.
Co-Creating a Sustainable Future for the Toolforge Ecosystem (40 mins) - a roundtable discussion for tool-maintainers, users, and supporters of Toolforge about how to make the platform sustainable and how to evaluate the tools available there.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday September 25 at 15:00 UTC. Reading the wikis will not be interrupted, but editing will be paused. These twice-yearly processes allow WMF's site reliability engineering teams to remain prepared to keep the wikis functioning even in the event of a major interruption to one of our data centers.
Updates for editors
A screenshot of the interface for the Alt Text suggested-edit feature
Editors who use the iOS Wikipedia app in Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Chinese, may see the Alt Text suggested-edit experiment after editing an article, or completing a suggested edit using "Add an image". Alt-text helps people with visual impairments to read Wikipedia articles. The team aims to learn if adding alt-text to images is a task that editors can be successful with. Please share any feedback on the discussion page.
The Codex color palette has been updated with new and revised colors for the MediaWiki user interfaces. The most noticeable changes for editors include updates for: dark mode colors for Links and for quiet Buttons (progressive and destructive), visited Link colors for both light and dark modes, and background colors for system-messages in both light and dark modes.
It is now possible to include clickable wikilinks and external links inside code blocks. This includes links that are used within <syntaxhighlight> tags and on code pages (JavaScript, CSS, Scribunto and Sanitized CSS). Uses of template syntax {{…}} are also linked to the template page. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [592]
Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [593][594]
The API now enables 5,000 on-demand API requests per month and twice-monthly HTML snapshots freely (gratis and libre). More information on the updates and also improvements to the software development kits (SDK) are explained on the project's blog post. While Wikimedia Enterprise APIs are designed for high-volume commercial reusers, this change enables many more community use-cases to be built on the service too.
The Snapshot API (html dumps) have added beta Structured Contents endpoints (blog post on that) as well as released two beta datasets (English and French Wikipedia) from that endpoint to Hugging Face for public use and feedback (blog post on that). These pre-parsed data sets enable new options for researchers, developers, and data scientists to use and study the content.
In depth
The Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is used to get answers to questions using the Wikidata data set. As Wikidata grows, we had to make a major architectural change so that WDQS could remain performant. As part of the WDQS Graph Split project, we have new SPARQL endpoints available for serving the "scholarly" and "main" subgraphs of Wikidata. The query.wikidata.org endpoint will continue to serve the full Wikidata graph until March 2025. After this date, it will only serve the main graph. For more information, please see the announcement on Wikidata.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Readers of 42 more wikis can now use Dark Mode. If the option is not yet available for logged-out users of your wiki, this is likely because many templates do not yet display well in Dark Mode. Please use the night-mode-checker tool if you are interested in helping to reduce the number of issues. The recommendations page provides guidance on this. Dark Mode is enabled on additional wikis once per month.
Editors using the 2010 wikitext editor as their default can access features from the 2017 wikitext editor by adding ?veaction=editsource to the URL. If you would like to enable the 2017 wikitext editor as your default, it can be set in your preferences. [595]
For logged-out readers using the Vector 2022 skin, the "donate" link has been moved from a collapsible menu next to the content area into a more prominent top menu, next to "Create an account". This restores the link to the level of prominence it had in the Vector 2010 skin. Learn more about the changes related to donor experiences. [596]
The CampaignEvents extension provides tools for organizers to more easily manage events, communicate with participants, and promote their events on the wikis. The extension has been enabled on Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, and Meta-Wiki. Chinese Wikipedia has decided to enable the extension, and discussions on the extension are in progress on Spanish Wikipedia and on Wikidata. To learn how to enable the extension on your wiki, you can visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-Wiki.
Developers with an account on Wikitech-wiki should check if any action is required for their accounts. The wiki is being changed to use the single-user-login (SUL) system, and other configuration changes. This change will help reduce the overall complexity for the weekly software updates across all our wikis.
In depth
The server switch was completed successfully last week with a read-only time of only 2 minutes 46 seconds. This periodic process makes sure that engineers can switch data centers and keep all of the wikis available for readers, even if there are major technical issues. It also gives engineers a chance to do maintenance and upgrades on systems that normally run 24 hours a day, and often helps to reveal weaknesses in the infrastructure. The process involves dozens of software services and hundreds of hardware servers, and requires multiple teams working together. Work over the past few years has reduced the time from 17 minutes down to 2–3 minutes. [597]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
Communities can now request installation of Automoderator on their wiki. Automoderator is an automated anti-vandalism tool that reverts bad edits based on scores from the new "Revert Risk" machine learning model. You can read details about the necessary steps for installation and configuration. [598]
Updates for editors
Translators in wikis where the mobile experience of Content Translation is available, can now customize their articles suggestion list from 41 filtering options when using the tool. This topic-based article suggestion feature makes it easy for translators to self-discover relevant articles based on their area of interest and translate them. You can try it with your mobile device. [599]
It is now possible for <syntaxhighlight> code blocks to offer readers a "Copy" button if the copy=1 attribute is set on the tag. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [600]
Customized copyright footer messages on all wikis will be updated. The new versions will use wikitext markup instead of requiring editing raw HTML. [601]
Later this month, temporary accounts will be rolled out on several pilot wikis. The final list of the wikis will be published in the second half of the month. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 11 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available.
Rate limiting has been enabled for the code review tools Gerrit and GitLab to address ongoing issues caused by malicious traffic and scraping. Clients that open too many concurrent connections will be restricted for a few minutes. This rate limiting is managed through nftables firewall rules. For more details, see Wikitech's pages on Firewall, GitLab limits and Gerrit operations.
Australia report: Artbank's edit-a-thon for gender equity in Australian visual arts
Belgium report: Project 'Belgian distilleries as Linked Open Data' completed
Brazil report: Photowalks for Wiki Loves Monuments 2024 at five corners of Brazil
France report: 4th edition of the Label Culture Libre
India report: Digitization at the Museum of Santal Culture, Federation Hall Society Library and Cultural Heritage and Literature in Meghalaya
New Zealand report: Report on the Wikidata WikiProject International Botanical 2024, Conference report for SPNHC-TDWG 2024 and the upcoming New Zealand species edit-a-thon
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
The Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow) is starting to be removed. This extension is unmaintained and causes issues. It will be replaced by DiscussionTools, which is used on any regular talk page. A first set of wikis are being contacted. These wikis are invited to stop using Flow, and to move all Flow boards to sub-pages, as archives. At these wikis, a script will move all Flow pages that aren't a sub-page to a sub-page automatically, starting on 22 October 2024. On 28 October 2024, all Flow boards at these wikis will be set in read-only mode. [607][608]
WMF's Search Platform team is working on making it easier for readers to perform text searches in their language. A change last week on over 30 languages makes it easier to find words with accents and other diacritics. This applies to both full-text search and to types of advanced search such as the hastemplate and incategory keywords. More technical details (including a few other minor search upgrades) are available. [609]
View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, EditCheck was installed at Russian Wikipedia, and fixes were made for some missing user interface styles.
Updates for technical contributors
Editors who use the Toolforge tool Earwig's Copyright Violation Detector will now be required to log in with their Wikimedia account before running checks using the "search engine" option. This change is needed to help prevent external bots from misusing the system. Thanks to Chlod for these improvements. [610]
Some HTML elements in the interface are now wrapped with a <bdi> element, to make our HTML output more aligned with Web standards. More changes like this will be coming in future weeks. This change might break some tools that rely on the previous HTML structure of the interface. Note that relying on the HTML structure of the interface is not recommended and might break at any time. [612]
In depth
The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes: updates on Wikimedia's authentication system, research to simplify feature development in the MediaWiki platform, updates on Parser Unification and MathML rollout, and more.
The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition include: research about improving topic suggestions related to countries, improvements to PHPUnit tests, and more.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
The Mobile Apps team has released an update to the iOS app's navigation, and it is now available in the latest App store version. The team added a new Profile menu that allows for easy access to editor features like Notifications and Watchlist from the Article view, and brings the "Donate" button into a more accessible place for users who are reading an article. This is the first phase of a larger planned navigation refresh to help the iOS app transition from a primarily reader-focused app, to an app that fully supports reading and editing. The Wikimedia Foundation has added more editing features and support for on-wiki communication based on volunteer requests in recent years.
iOS Wikipedia App's profile menu and contents
Updates for editors
Wikipedia readers can now download a browser extension to experiment with some early ideas on potential features that recommend articles for further reading, automatically summarize articles, and improve search functionality. For more details and to stay updated, check out the Web team's Content Discovery Experiments page and subscribe to their newsletter.
Later this month, logged-out editors of these 12 wikis will start to have temporary accounts created. The list may slightly change - some wikis may be removed but none will be added. Temporary account is a new type of user account. It enhances the logged-out editors' privacy and makes it easier for community members to communicate with them. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 12 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available. Read more about the deployment plan across all wikis.
It is now possible to create functions on Wikifunctions using Wikidata lexemes, through the new Wikidata lexeme type launched last week. When you go to one of these functions, the user interface provides a lexeme selector that helps you pick a lexeme from Wikidata that matches the word you type. After hitting run, your selected lexeme is retrieved from Wikidata, transformed into a Wikidata lexeme type, and passed into the selected function. Read more about this in the latest Wikifunctions newsletter.
Updates for technical contributors
Users of the Wikimedia sites can now format dates more easily in different languages with the new {{#timef:…}} parser function. For example, {{#timef:now|date|en}} will show as "12 November 2024". Previously, {{#time:…}} could be used to format dates, but this required knowledge of the order of the time and date components and their intervening punctuation. #timef (or #timefl for local time) provides access to the standard date formats that MediaWiki uses in its user interface. This may help to simplify some templates on multi-lingual wikis like Commons and Meta. [618][619]
The Product and Tech Advisory Council (PTAC) now has its pilot members with representation across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America. They will work to address the Movement Strategy's Technology Council initiative of having a co-defined and more resilient technological platform. [621]
In depth
The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: an upcoming Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module, new Community Configuration options, and details on new projects.
The Wikimedia Foundation is now an official partner of the CVE program, which is an international effort to catalog publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This partnership will allow the Security Team to instantly publish common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) records that are affecting MediaWiki core, extensions, and skins, along with any other code the Foundation is a steward of.
The Community Wishlist is now testing machine translations for Wishlist content. Volunteers can now read machine-translated versions of wishes and dive into discussions even before translators arrive to translate content.
20–22 December 2024 - Indic Wikimedia Hackathon Bhubaneswar 2024 in Odisha, India. A hackathon for community members, including developers, designers and content editors, to build technical solutions that improve contributors' experiences.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Later in November, the Charts extension will be deployed to the test wikis in order to help identify and fix any issue. A security review is underway to then enable deployment to pilot wikis for broader testing. You can read the October project update and see the latest documentation and examples on Beta Wikipedia.
View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pediapress.com, an external service that creates books from Wikipedia, can now use Wikimedia Maps to include existing pre-rendered infobox map images in their printed books on Wikipedia. [622]
Updates for technical contributors
Wikis can use the Guided Tour extension to help newcomers understand how to edit. The Guided Tours extension now works with dark mode. Guided Tour maintainers can check their tours to see that nothing looks odd. They can also set emitTransitionOnStep to true to fix an old bug. They can use the new flag allowAutomaticBack to avoid back-buttons they don't want. [623]
Administrators in the Wikimedia projects who use the Nuke Extension will notice that mass deletions done with this tool have the "Nuke" tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. [624]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Stewards can now make global account blocks cause global autoblocks. This will assist stewards in preventing abuse from users who have been globally blocked. This includes preventing globally blocked temporary accounts from exiting their session or switching browsers to make subsequent edits for 24 hours. Previously, temporary accounts could exit their current session or switch browsers to continue editing. This is an anti-abuse tool improvement for the Temporary Accounts project. You can read more about the progress on key features for temporary accounts. [625]
Wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled can now use the Collaboration List feature. This list provides a new, easy way for contributors to learn about WikiProjects on their wikis. Thanks to the Campaign team for this work that is part of the 2024/25 annual plan. If you are interested in bringing the CampaignEvents extension to your wiki, you can follow these steps or you can reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for help.
The text color for red links will be slightly changed later this week to improve their contrast in light mode. [626]
View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, on multilingual wikis, users can now hide translations from the WhatLinksHere special page.
Updates for technical contributors
XML data dumps have been temporarily paused whilst a bug is investigated. [627]
In depth
Temporary Accounts have been deployed to six wikis; thanks to the Trust and Safety Product team for this work, you can read about the deployment plans. Beginning next week, Temporary Accounts will also be enabled on seven other projects. If you are active on these wikis and need help migrating your tools, please reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for assistance.
The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New languages supported in translatewiki or in MediaWiki; New keyboard input methods for some languages; details about recent and upcoming meetings, and more.
Meetings and events
MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 is happening in Vienna, Austria and online from 4 to 6 November 2024. The conference will feature discussions around the usage of MediaWiki software by and within companies in different industries and will inspire and onboard new users.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
On wikis with the Translate extension enabled, users will notice that the FuzzyBot will now automatically create translated versions of categories used on translated pages. [628]
In 1.44.0-wmf-2, the logic of Wikibase function getAllStatements changed to behave like getBestStatements. Invoking the function now returns a copy of values which are immutable. [630]
Wikimedia REST API users, such as bot operators and tool maintainers, may be affected by ongoing upgrades. The API will be rerouting some page content endpoints from RESTbase to the newer MediaWiki REST API endpoints. The impacted endpoints include getting page/revision metadata and rendered HTML content. These changes will be available on testwiki later this week, with other projects to follow. This change should not affect existing functionality, but active users of the impacted endpoints should verify behavior on testwiki, and raise any concerns on the related Phabricator ticket.
In depth
Admins and users of the Wikimedia projects where Automoderator is enabled can now monitor and evaluate important metrics related to Automoderator's actions. This Superset dashboard calculates and aggregates metrics about Automoderator's behaviour on the projects in which it is deployed. Thanks to the Moderator Tools team for this Dashboard; you can visit the documentation page for more information about this work. [631]
Meetings and events
21 November 2024 (8:00 UTC & 16:00 UTC) - Community call with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year. The theme of this call is how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 September. It will be on all wikis from 16 September (calendar).
The meta=proofreadpage API has changed. The 
The Wikipedia Library
wikimedia.org
wikimedia.org before the application deadline.
). [111]
. See the list and the discussion in the project chat Should billionaire (Q1062083) be used as a value of instance of (P31)?
A link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will appear on Special:Contributions — some user scripts which previously added this link may cause conflicts. This feature request was voted #17 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
The deprecated 
![[298]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Visual_editor_toolbar_search_feature.png){kind=link}
.jpg)
