Circumstances in my life mean that I will have significantly less time to edit Wikipedia starting next month. This is not a retirement. This is me stepping back to engage in opportunities that have been presented to me. I will be back at some point, just not sure when that will be. Consider me semi-retired for now. NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts>02:05, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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. [1]
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. [2]
The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. [3][4][5]
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. [7]
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). [8][9]
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [10][11]
The table indicating tributaries oof the Arkansas includes “Bear Creek”. The mouth of Bear Creek must therefore be the Arkansas River, but the table indicates the mouth is in south Tx. I believe that is a different Bear Creek, as the Arkansas River flows nowhere within Texas. I have no idea how to correct this. --Spgmilkman (talk) 16:05, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #148 is out: On the way to internationalizing numbers
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we discuss our progresses with the implementation of renderers and parsers for natural numbers, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
2024 Women's Wiki Month Datathon (Indonesian) Between 24 - 26 March 2024, Wikimedia Indonesia is hosting a competitive Data-thon with Prizes available for editing and enriching Wikidata items on the topic of Women's Health. Full details on the project page.
Levelling Up Days 2024 is an online event designed to welcome new people to Wikidata, upgrade their editing skills and find out about useful tools and apps. Join us for a series of videos and discussions regarding Wikidata and its uses in and outside of the Wikimedia projects.
Program - the live portions of the event take place across the weekends 5-7 and 12-14 April
Ontology Explorer, also an Observable notebook, explore the subclasses in front or behind a Wikidata Item.
Tool of the week
Members of European Parliament by pac02. Explore visualisations of MEP's in the European Parliament. Country of origin, gender, political alignment and other properties from Wikidata can be explored.
Wikimedia Foundation Research Award of the Year 2023 - We encourage you to nominate and vote for research papers published in 2023 that focused on or benefited the Wikimedia projects (we're not biased but hope you vote for Wikidata-based Papers). Please submit your nominations by April 18, 2024.
In preparation for the Research Track of the 11th Wiki Workshop, there is now a Call for Contributions for the event scheduled virtually on June 20, 2024 (tentatively 12:00-19:00 UTC). The Wiki Workshop aims to bring together researchers who study all aspects of the Wikimedia Projects. We hope Wikidata and Wikibase are well represented! Submission deadline: April 22, 2024 (23:59 AoE)
Showcase Lexemes: अग्नि -the Sanskrit word for 'fire' and also the Hindu God of fire 'Agni'
Development
Wikibase REST API:
We worked on the ability to create Items via POST /entities/items (phab:T342990)
We worked on making it possible to modify the data of a Property via PATCH /entities/properties/{property_id} (phab:T347394)
EntitySchemas: We are getting back to making architecture improvements to enable the new datatype to link to EntitySchemas in statements.
IP masking: We wrapped up the work on adapting Wikibase for the upcoming IP masking changes.
Query Service: We added the ability to stop a query in the UI in order to not have to wait for a broken query to finish or run into a time-out. You can find the stop button below the run button in the query UI now.
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). [12][13]
Hi, why did you close it so early? Discussion was started only a week ago. Please restore it, I'm pretty sure we can wait a while for more people to join the discussion. Marcelus (talk) 14:51, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello NightWolf. I am just querying your rationale for the closure of the RM at Talk:Snowy Mountains Airport as not moved. Per the discussion, this RM proposed to move the article back to the stable title that existed for years prior to a bold edit. Rather than immediately revert this, I discussed with the editor who made the change and we agreed to take the article to an RM to gain Editcon. I note there is no consensus either way based on the responses - 2 in favour, 2 opposed, with detailed arguments only provided by myself and one other editor (who moved the page).
I also note the procedural comment from an uninvolved user who suggested that a lack of consensus would most likely result in the title reverting back to the stable title. I am now aware I should have reverted the title prior to raising the RM, but did not know this at the time as the user who made the bold edit suggested an RM to seek WP:EDITCON to determine if the title was to stay or not, otherwise move it back to the stable title if no consensus achieved.
Just wanted to add, the procedural comment of 16 February is from an Administrator user:Dekimasu who states The stable title for this page is Cooma–Snowy Mountains Airport, so a "no consensus" close here would result in reverting the article to the proposed title. I appreciate that the initial challenge would have been better handled by reverting per WP:RMUM which would have made the stable title more obvious. If you are indeed agreeing that this should be closed due to a lack of consensus, wouldnt that mean the result should be the name reverts back to Cooma–Snowy Mountains Airport per Dekimasu instead of remaining in the current namespace? Dfadden (talk) 12:39, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's quite ok! I understand life can be busy. Would much rather address with you directly. I also apologise for not being more articulate in my explanation, but was a learning experience for me reading the policies about page moves etc. Appreciate you following up! Dfadden (talk) 22:56, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@NightWolf1223 I don't think it is necessary, as you have reverted back to the original title per policy. I have no doubt you were acting in good faith when closing and likely just missed the full context of the original RM. I'm happy that its resolved, unless @Gibbsyspin feels strongly either way or believes that relisting it would generate further discussion (I doubt it given 6 weeks of listing only resulted in 2 submissions from the community). Dfadden (talk) 00:56, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mean I obviously still have a preference but I don't care enough to put it to another RM. Let's revisit in a few years when the case for WP:COMMONNAME could be made again. Cheers Gibbsyspin10:06, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)
Arbitration
An arbitration case has been opened to look into "the intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy".
Miscellaneous
Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles 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.
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. [14]
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). [15][16]
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.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-03-11. Translations are available.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot: MONA.artpublic.bot (Task: The bot's function is to add information about artists specializing in public artwork in Québec, Canada. The bot will initially only add that an artist's genre of work is public art for a set of known public artists in Québec compiled by MONA Montréal from open data sets.)
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call April 2, 2024: Come join us for fun data modeling discussions! We'll create breakout rooms in Zoom for people to discuss 4 examples of cultural heritage items to contribute to Wikidata. Each group will choose categories, brainstorm properties for basic and enhanced description, and discuss challenges. Then we'll have some quality time at the end to compare notes and discuss our processes! Agenda
Wikidata Leveling Up Days, everything you need to know about Wikidata: 5, 6, 7, 12, 13 and 14 April. The event is taking place online and the videos are already available on the program page.
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
Blogs: Galerij der Groten op Wikidata (Dutch) - Wikimedia NL hosted an Edit-A-Thon on the Baroeg project, the task was to document and archive on Wikidata all of the bands that have played at the live music venue, the idea born from a stack of band flyers and posters hung in the bathroom(!) Join the next one Sunday April 14th.
Papers: Understanding Wikidata - Wikidata is extremely valuable as a data source to supplement, validate and extend existing knowledge bases and applications. To effectively utilize Wikidata in a Semantic Web application, one must understand its design, terminology and correspondence with ontological concepts (especially RDF and OWL). This paper attempts to explain and position this information. (by AWesterinen)
Videos
Wikipedia Weekly: Ep. 255 (Swedish) - Hosted by Jan Ainali and Magnus. This week covers scarcely clicked sources, API uses and wave at beautiful images.
Mapping Linguistic territories using Wikidata and SPARQL - a topic presented by Camilo Fique, shows how to use Wikidata and the WDQS as tools for mapping linguistics. In this example, Camilo uses toponyms, specifically Human Settlements.
Wikidatalite : Search, browse, and navigate Wikidata items with a mobile-friendly, simplified user interface.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
MEPs: Sitelinks and Gender differences - this Notebook by PAC explores the completeness or lack of content differentiated by gender of MEP's in the Wikimedia Projects, helping highlight lack of representation and information.
Azerbaijan - aims to organize data related to Azerbaijan.
WikiProject Paralympics - The goal of WikiProject Paralympics is to improve items about Paralympic Games, Paralympians, and Paralympic events.
Lieder - This project aims to collect all Lieder, Lieder cycles and Poems as well as Composers and Poets related to them.
Cultural venues - The aim of the present project is to create the world’s most complete high-quality database of cultural venues, such as theatres, concert halls, etc.
Cal State University Building/San Bernardino - Aims to document and lists guidelines for the California State University San Bernardino's participation in the California State University Wikidata Building Project.
Epigraphy - Aims to create Items of epigraphs on Wikidata.
Newest database reports: This query shows that there are 8000 botanists with a standard botanical abbreviation, IPNI code, and little else. Help expand, merge, and otherwise help us know who these folks are! (source)
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-04-08. Translations are available.
Did you manage to see the first weekend and sessions of the Leveling Up Days 2024, well fret not as there is another weekend of Wikidata-related sessions to come. Day 4 begins Friday April 12, join via Jitsi - see you there!
Wikidata - collect and use open data (Italian) - April 19 at the University of Catania, Léa Lacroix and Luca Martinelli (WMIT) will give an overview of Wikidata's use for sharing data, querying data and some of its main applications.
Build Open Data through Wikidata: a database integration model (Taiwanese) - April 9 19:00 - 20:00. Wang Wenyue (WMTW) will lead this discussion on how Wikidata can re-connect and index a topic that may be documented in multiple various places online.
Wikidata editing #113 (English) at Wikidata Leveling Up Days. Ainali and Abbe98 do some live editing on biographies of climate scientists and glaciologists.
Anti-Pattern Analyzer is a static website capable of checking the existence of 'anti-pattern 1' (AP1) occurrences given an entity from Wikidata. It can also check if a new statement would introduce new violations.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Only 13 more days to go! The deadline to submit your project proposal to Wikimedia Deutschland's Open Call for Software Contributions is coming closer and closer. With this call, Wikimedia Deutschland aims to support projects that make Wikidata's data more accessible and usable for a wider audience.
API formatter URL (URI template from which "$1" can automatically be replaced with the effective property value on items; for API access and other machine-readable data)
Type of representation (Property to indicate the '''type of representation''' as a qualifier for Wikimedia Commons SDC Depicts statements of such Wikidata items, indicating the media type of the media file as can be derived from its registered property in Wikidata, being different from P18 (image).)
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. [19]
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). [20][21]
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. [22]
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.
Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #151 is out: New API for calling Wikifunctions and celebrating 1000 functions
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we discuss the new API for calling Wikifunctions, we celebrate our first 1,000 functions, and we take a look at the latest software developments. Also, there's a job opening for joining our team!
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive.
We are approaching the end of the 2024 WikiCup's second round, with a little over two weeks remaining. Currently, contestants must score at least 105 points to progress to the third round.
Competitors may submit work for the second round until the end of 28 April, and the third round starts 1 May. Remember that only competitors with the top 32 scores will make it through to the third round. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, and you hope to get it promoted before the end of the round, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Please remember to continue to offer reviews at GAN, FAC and all the other pages that require them to prevent any backlogs. As a reminder, competitors are strictly prohibited from gaming Wikipedia policies or processes to receive more points.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-04-15. Translations are available.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
AzBot - Task: adding a space in over 7k malformed Dutch descriptions per this request.
DifoolBot 3 - Task: fill in empty English/French/German labels and basic statements for persons with VIAF ID (P214) and a VIAF authority source GND ID (P227), IdRef ID (P269), Bibliothèque nationale de France ID (P268) or Library of Congress authority ID (P244)
The Leveling Up Days 2024 was concluded, you can watch the videos available on the program page and contribute to the captions on Wikimedia Commons.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call April 16, 2024: We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Call on Tuesday, 16 April, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET (Time zone converter). The LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group is, amazingly, 5 years old this month, and we are planning a very Zoomy celebration befitting our virtual community. We are hoping you can join and share some reflections. Feel free to sign our anniversary card and update your Zoom background to something festive!Agenda
Documenting Nigeria's Supreme Court Cases - this online event is a contest to enrich and connect the verdicts and sitting Judges of Nigerian Supreme Court cases. Points will be awarded for contributions. Event ends: 28 April 00:00 UTC.
Working towards a Brazilian History Knowledge Graph - Mike Young describes the progress towards building a KG on Brazilian history and how Wikidata supported this endeavour, especially for linking poiticians, movements, constitutions, laws and events that may not be notable for individual Wikipedia articles.
Reimagining cultural heritage data - this article by Jason Evans documents the efforts of the Llyfgrell Genedlaethol Cymru (National Library of Wales) to open their archives and datasets to Wikidata and the creation of their Wikibase-powered SNARC Tool (Semantic Name Authority Repository Cymru).
Wikidata: your friendly (University's) knowledge graph - Christian Erlinger on behalf of the University of Innsbruck has produced this slidedeck showing how Wikidata can be used for science and research communication.
Demonstration of the XML-TEI Wikidata Geocoder Tool (French) - This tool from PhilippGam will showcase how the Wikidata Geocoder tool can extract information such as PersName, PlaceName, geographic coordinates and images from XML-TEI files. Try it here.
Wikidata for open museum data sharing - Rhonda Yearwood explains how Wikidata can facilitate and provide a platform for the open sharing of Museum and Gallery datasets.
Join the Wikidata Open Online Course starting April 22, 2024! Whether you're a beginner taking your first steps, an individual in need of a refresher on Wikidata concepts, or a seasoned trainer looking to level up your skills - this course is right for you. Register here: Wikidata:Open Online Course
Only 6 more days to submit your project proposal to Wikimedia Deutschland's Open Call for Software Contributions. With this call, Wikimedia Deutschland aims to support projects that make Wikidata's data more accessible and usable for a wider audience.
RTE substation ID (identifier of electrical substations operated by RTE in France)
API formatter URL (URI template from which "$1" can automatically be replaced with the effective property value on items; for API access and other machine-readable data)
Type of representation (Property to indicate the '''representation type''' as a qualifier for Wikimedia Commons SDC Depicts statements of such Wikidata items, indicating the media type of the media file as can be derived from its registered property in Wikidata, being different from P18 (image).)
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. [23][24]
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). [25][26]
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). [27]
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. [28]
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. [29]
Hi! Just wanted to say hello! I didn’t know I’d be getting a mentor, so that’s pretty cool!
I probably won’t start editing right away, but will check back in when I do with any questions (I’m sure I’ll have some)! --Solara Aranel (talk) 16:09, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-04-22. Translations are available.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
OpeninfoBot - Task: Importing financial data (assets, equity, revenue, EBIT, net profit) from openinfo.uz to entries on public Uzbek companies in Wikidata.
IntegrationBot - Task: retrieve information from Wikidata and contribute data back
Mishramilan (মিশ্রমিলন), a tool listing words/phrases in different language catalogs and allowing users to match the entries in those catalogs to existing Wikidata lexemes or to create new lexemes based on those entries.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
It's not too late to join the Wikidata Open Online Course, open from April 22 to May 31! Whether you're a beginner taking your first steps, an individual in need of a refresher on Wikidata concepts, or a seasoned trainer looking to level up your skills - this course is right for you. Register here: Wikidata:Open Online Course
There is a new update relative to the experiment with splitting the Wikidata Query Service graph. A new proposal for the split has also been published, feedback will be open until May 15th 2024.
RTE substation ID (identifier of electrical substations operated by RTE in France)
API formatter URL (URI template from which "$1" can automatically be replaced with the effective property value on items; for API access and other machine-readable data)
leaf morphology (characterization of aspects of the shape of a plant’s leaves)
Type of representation (Property to indicate the '''representation type''' as a qualifier for Wikimedia Commons SDC Depicts statements of such Wikidata items, indicating the media type of the media file as can be derived from its registered property in Wikidata, being different from P18 (image).)
is fake of (the kind (class) of elements this item falsifies / is a fake for)
image decay (image decay suffered by an old photograph)
risk group (risk group of a biological agent guiding its initial handling in labs according to the risk group classification defined by the WHO laboratory biosafety manual)
tartan (item's tartan; Tartan is a Scottish cloth pattern symbolizing a clan, region, or group.)
hasFeldpostNumber (Property to link German military units to their respective Feldpost numbers, referencing the specific identifier used during the military communications in the world wars.)
total deposits (total value of deposits held by a bank or financial institution)
Total loans (total value of loans given out by a bank or financial institution)
source of transfer & destination of transfer (entity that a transferred item is initially associated with, before this process associates it with another entity (the destination of transfer) [aliases: source / sender])
type of deterioration (to indicate types of deterioration presented by an artwork, building, artifact, etc.)
rythme narratif (video game mechanic based on the rhythm of the player's actions)
event role (item that describes a role in an event class)
WikiProject NZThesisProject Wikidata library training Christchurch 2024 - The aim is to organize an event to show participants how adding New Zealand collections to Wikidata can be useful, and to train participants to improve Wikidata Items so that tools such as Scholia, which builds academic profiles, will be demonstrated.
WikiProject Algerian History - The goal of this project is to ensure the completeness of the history of Algeria (Q473761) during its historic period to modern time in 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.
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). [31][32]
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. [33]
The Growth team will now send quarterly reports to keep you in the loop. Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work.
If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.
Growth features are currently configurable at Special:EditGrowthConfig. This quarter we are working on making Community Configuration accessible for other MediaWiki developers while also moving Growth feature configuration to the new CommunityConfiguration extension.
An early version of Community Configuration can be tested at Spanish Beta Wikipedia. We plan to release the new Community Configuration extension to pilot wikis (Arabic and Spanish Wikipedia) in early May, 2024. The first non-Growth team feature to utilize Community Configuration will be Automoderator.
In parallel with the development, the Growth team will propose Community Configuration usage guidelines, Community Configuration design guidelines, and provide technical documentation.
The Growth team conducted an experiment to assess the impact of the “Add an Image” structured task on the Newcomer Homepage's "Suggested Edits" module. This analysis finds that the Add an Image structured task leads to an increase in newcomer participation on the mobile web platform, particularly by making constructive (non-reverted) article edits:
The likelihood that mobile web newcomers make their first article edit (+17.0% over baseline)
The likelihood that they are retained as newcomers (+24.3% over baseline)
The number of edits they make during their first two weeks on the wiki (+21.8% over baseline)
A lower probability of the newcomers' edits will be reverted (-3.3% over baseline).
This feature was developed for Mentors as part of the Growth team's Positive Reinforcement project. When A/B testing on Spanish Wikipedia, we found no significant impact on retention, but we found a significant positive impact on newcomer productivity. However, we concluded that the results weren’t positive enough to justify the time investment from Mentors. We plan to discuss this feature with our pilot wikis, and consider further improvements before scaling this feature further. Meanwhile, communities willing to test the feature can ask to have it deployed. (T361763)
As in previous years, donors were directed to a Thank you page after donation (example). However, this year we tested a new “Try editing Wikipedia,” call to action on the Thank You page. This call to action linked to a unique account creation page. From this account creation page we were able to track Registrations and Activation (editing for the first time). During the English banner campaign, the Donor Thank you page led to 4,398 new accounts, and 441 of those accounts went on to constructively edit within 24 hours. (T352900)
The Growth team and the Editing team will work on the WE1.2 Key Result in the coming fiscal year. We will start initial discussions with communities soon to help finalize our plans. (T361657)
We plan to A/B test adding a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We are early in the planning phase of this project that will take place first at our pilot wikis and wikis volunteering. We welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.
The second round of the 2024 WikiCup ended on 28 April. This round was particularly competitive: each of the 32 contestants who advanced to Round 3 scored at least 141 points. This is the highest number of points required to advance to Round 3 since 2014.
The following scorers in Round 2 all scored more than 500 points:
BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 548 points, mostly from a featured article about the snooker player John Pulman, two featured lists, and one good article;
The full scores for Round 2 can be seen here. So far this year, competitors have gotten 18 featured articles, 22 featured lists, and 186 good articles, 76 in the news credits and at least 200 did you know credits. They have conducted 165 featured article reviews, as well as 399 good article reviews and peer reviews, and have added 21 articles to featured topics and good topics.
Remember that any content promoted after 28 April but before the start of Round 3 can be claimed during Round 3, which starts on 1 May at 00:00 (UTC). Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed.
Nubuke Wikidata Workshop - Sat. 27 April 1100 - 1400 GMT at the Nubuke Foundation, Lome Close Accra, Ghana.
There's still time for nominating your favorite tool in the Coolest Tool Award! To nominate, follow this link. Deadline: 10 May 2024 - winners unveiled at Wikimania 2024
Coordinate Me 2024 - an international Wikidata competition around content with geodata. The competition starts on 1 May 2024 and ends on 31 May 2024.
Wikimedia Hackathon 2024 is just around the corner, taking place in Tallinn, Estonia from 02 - 06 May. We hope there will be lots of Wikidata hacking projects worked on.
Bringing PanglaoDB to 5-star Linked Open Data using Wikidata - This paper documents the experiences mapping PanglaoDB's free text cell types and genes i Wikidata to improve reusability and fairness. By Tiago Lubiana & João Vitor F. Cavalcante.
Exploring Wikidata for Social Science Research (Portugese) - Highlights the relevance of open resources such as Wikidata for the Social Sciences, providing access to information that facilitates research in the social, economic and cultural areas. By Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado.
MWCon Spring 2024 (Day 3) - This session of the MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference explores the different extensions you can use with Wikibase. See the rest of the program here
Getting Started with OpenRefine - Introducing OpenRefine, importing data, filtering and faceting and bulk editing, as well as how to connect to other data sources for reconciling your data. By Margaret Heller & Diana Rusch.
RTE substation ID (identifier of electrical substations operated by RTE in France)
API formatter URL (URI template from which "$1" can automatically be replaced with the effective property value on items; for API access and other machine-readable data)
leaf morphology (characterization of aspects of the shape of a plant’s leaves)
risk group (risk group of a biological agent guiding its initial handling in labs according to the risk group classification defined by the WHO laboratory biosafety manual)
timetable/schedule URL (link to the timetable or the schedule (in PDF, HTML, image format) for the given service or the event schedule. The current timetable/schedule should have preferred rank.)
deterioration (to indicate types of deterioration presented by an artwork, building, artifact, etc.)
Type of representation (Property to indicate the '''representation type''' as a qualifier for Wikimedia Commons SDC Depicts statements of such Wikidata items, indicating the media type of the media file as can be derived from its registered property in Wikidata, being different from P18 (image).)
is fake of (the kind (class) of elements this item falsifies / is a fake for)
tartan (item's tartan; Tartan is a Scottish cloth pattern symbolizing a clan, region, or group.)
hasFeldpostNumber (Property to link German military units to their respective Feldpost numbers, referencing the specific identifier used during the military communications in the world wars.)
total deposits (total value of deposits held by a bank or financial institution)
Total loans (total value of loans given out by a bank or financial institution)
source of transfer & destination of transfer (entity that a transferred item is initially associated with, before this process associates it with another entity (the destination of transfer) [aliases: source / sender])
rythme narratif (video game mechanic based on the rhythm of the player's actions)
event role (item that describes a role in an event class)
Explore data about Tabakalera participants - find biographical information of film director's that have participate din the San Sebastian Film Festival Tabalakera cultural centre.
Mothers on Wikidata - explore the mother and child relationships of Wikidata items.
Presidents of French Universities - curious about which individuals have presided at French Universities and Higher education institutions? This query explores that!
Showcase Items: Jerzy Spława-Neyman - A polish Statistician, the first to introduce a confidence interval to statistical hypothesis testing.
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. [34]
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. [43]
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). [44][45]
Partial action blocks are now in effect on the English Wikipedia. This means that administrators have the ability to restrict users from certain actions, including uploading files, moving pages and files, creating new pages, and sending thanks. T280531
You are receiving this message because you previously participated in the UCoC process.
This is a reminder that the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) ends on May 9, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.
The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.
Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we discuss the results of our team meeting held in San Francisco, USA, as well as presenting the objectives that we will pursue in the next months.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive.
Hi there! Phase I of the Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review has concluded, with several impactful changes gaining community consensus and proceeding to various stages of implementation. Some proposals will be implemented in full outright; others will be discussed at phase II before being implemented; and still others will proceed on a trial basis before being brought to phase II. The following proposals have gained consensus:
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. [46][47]
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. [48]
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. [49]
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). [50][51]
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". [52]
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-05-06. Translations are available.
The Wikimedia Hackathon 2024 took place in Tallinn, Estonia. Wikimedians from all over came together to hack on a huge variety of topics, including Wikidata and Wikibase topics. See the entire Program
Papers: MisgenderMender - A community-informed approach to interventions of misgendering.
Videos
Intro to Wikidata Query Service - hosted by User:Gnoeee, this comprehensive video will equip newcomers to Wikidata with the skills to effectively start querying Wikidata.
Siobhan Leachman, NZ Citizen Scientist and Wikipedian - CitSciOz23 Keynote Speaker, this prolific editor discusses her passions and workflows for contributing and enriching Wikidata on topics as diverse as women scientists, scientific illustrators, artworks and citation data, moths and more.
WikiSearch from Wikibase Data - Wout Geveart shows how the WikiSearch extension is using Wikibase data to explore and visualise the data in new ways.
WikimediaAPIs: a WM Technology Training Session - Mr. Neechalkaran of the WM Indic MediaWiki Developers Usergroup introduces the function and utility of WM projects APIs, including the REST AOI, the Wikidata API and more.
Wikidata periodic table - Tool by User:Ricordisamoa, to browse all chemical elements available on Wikidata, with atomic number, chemical symbol, and localized label. It also includes two charts of the nuclides, with links to every isotope in Wikidata, colored by half-life or decay mode.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
A new UI mode is available for the online validator for EntitySchemas. It represents validation reports as a table rather than a very long string, and replaces most links with hyperlinks with some of the text behind them; making them easier to read. Currently being tested at https://shex-validator.toolforge.org/packages/shex-webapp/doc/shex-simple-improved.html, we are looking for participants to evaluate this tool. Some experience with editing Wikidata is appreciated, but no experience working with Schemas is required. If you are interested, you can sign up here. We hope to begin interviews around May 13. For more details, visit User:M.alten.tue
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-05-13. Please help Translate.
using Open Data to Automatically Generate Localised Analogies - Sofia Spatharioti explains how information from Wikidata and Wikipedia can be used to provide more contextual comparisons when dealing with large numbers, dimensions or statistics.
Thesaurus INAPP in Wikidata (Italian) - Camillo Carlo Pellizzari shows INAPP thesaurus usage on Wikidata and how to normalise keywords assigned to publications.
Authors INAPP on Wikidata (Italian) - Camillo also presents how Wikidata can record biographical data and the presence of authors affiliated with INAPP.
Tool of the week
Wikidata:Projector - is a tool that shows maps and lists with Wikidata items for a specific topic, usually a location. As an example, see the Projector for Corfu
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. [54]
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. [55]
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. [56]
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. [57]
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). [58][59]
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. [60]
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. [61]
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. [64]
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. [65][66]
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). [67][68]
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.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-05-20. Please help Translate.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
Browse9ja Bot - Task: Automated data retrieval focusing on Nigerian / African-based information, integrating a chatbot, NLP API, knowledge graph, and machine learning model.
DhlizBot - Task: add Dhliz ID (P12696) for persons/films/TV series that exist in Dhliz (Q125594802) database.
Reconciling Shira: Wikibase Cloud and OpenRefine - as part of the Shira project to document and digitise Penn University's Jewish music collections, the author gives a step-by-step process on installing OpenRefine for Wikibase Cloud instances.
Papers
Camillo Carlo Pellizzari di San Girolamo, Storia della collaborazione tra Wikidata e le biblioteche della Rete URBE nel controllo di autorità. Abstract: "The contribution draws a history of the presence of the identifiers of the authority records of the URBE network libraries in Wikidata, and of the collaboration that has evolved since 2020 between the Wikidata community and the cataloguers of the URBE network libraries, relating to the harmonisation of these authority records with Wikidata and the improvement of the quality of the respective data. The first part of the contribution traces the main stages of collaboration in chronological order, while the second part of the contribution presents the main areas in which the collaboration materialises (or can materialise) in the daily authority work carried out by cataloguers in theme-based groupings".
Using Open Data to Automatically Generate Localized Analogies. Numerical analogies that translate unfamiliar measurements into familiar reference objects (e.g., “275k sq miles is roughly as large as Texas”). By "Sofia Eleni Spatharioti, Daniel G. Goldstein, Jake M. Hofman"
Patrimoine spolié : le projet ProvEnhance (French) - A seminae on the looted heritage project on the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium. At timestamp: 55:02 onwards, Wikibase is discussed as a platform to host the Looted Heritage and Provenance research project.
Tool of the week
Wikidata GenderStats measures gender bias at the user level by computing stats on created items.
Created items : a list of items created by a user with labels. This not new but this has been repaired.
taxon synonym of (taxon item (considered a preferred name according to a given reference) of which this taxon name is a synonym - the new property will be the inverse property of {{P|1420}})
Hello all. Another irregular edition of the newsletter. I was inspired to collect this after seeing several medicine-interested editors nominate their first good article. Please review a GA nomination if you have time, and help support our colleagues' efforts:
Wikipedia:Good article reassessment is back in business, with a new process and new coordinators. If you see medicine-related GAs that may no longer meet the GA criteria, feel free to nominate them for attention/reassessment (please, not too many at once, lest we get overwhelmed). I'll incorporate them into the listings above.
Note for the curious: 24,211 of the 57,554 articles (42%) tagged as part of WP:MED have some maintenance tag.
Newsletter ideas, comments, and criticisms welcome here.
You are receiving this because you added your name to the WikiProject Medicine mailing list. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-05-27. Please help Translate.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call May 28, 2024: We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Call on Tuesday, 28 May, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET (Time zone converter). Please join us for a community discussion on the LCCN Wikidata Bot with Mary Campany, Steven Folsom, and Matt Miller. 2024-05-28: Wikidata Affinity Group Call Agenda
Coordinate Me 2024 (Spanish): An international Wikidata competition around geolocation content, from towns, hospitals, public art and natural monuments to improve or create Wikidata elements with a coordinate location (P625) in focus countries. Contest ends 31 May 2024.
Libraries using Wikidata: 11 examples - following on from the previous post, this Diff blog highlights 11 projects where Libraries and Librarians are using Wikidata in their projects.
Enhancing KG's with LLM's: A novel approach to keyword extraction and synonym merging. This blog post shows an example of using a Wikidata subgraph with AI to discover new connections and relationships.
ParaNames 1.0: Creating an Entity Name Corpus for 400+ Languages Using Wikidata - ParaNames is a multilingual parallel name resource consisting of 140 million names spanning over 400 languages. Names are provided for 16.8 million entities, and each entity is mapped from a complex type hierarchy to a standard type (PER/LOC/ORG). Using Wikidata as a source, the authors created the largest resource of this type to date.
Wikipedia:WE-Framework: WE-Framework is a tool developed by Sergey Vladimirov that allows editing related Wikidata elements in an article without having to go to Wikidata. When you save your Wikidata edit, it will reference the utility in the edit summary.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Wikimedia Deutschland is looking for a machine learning project manager to make it easier to use Wikidata's data in machine learning settings.
taxon synonym of (taxon item (considered a preferred name according to a given reference) of which this taxon name is a synonym - the new property will be the inverse property of {{P|1420}})
protonym of (taxon item of which this taxon name is a protonym (original name, for zoological taxa) - inverse property of {{P|1403}})
replaced synonym of (taxon item which replaced this taxon name (now only a synonym) - inverse property of {{P|694}})
student count by gender (I think there should be a way to document the number of students at a university by their gender, as data for student counts (at least if they come from GENESIS Online - german universities) contain that data divided in male and female students. I think it would make more sense to implement that as a qualifier for {{P|2196}} than implementing it as a new property as that wouldn't make old data obsolete, but also it could interfere with tools that retrieve that data automated and are then confused by having multiple counts at the same time.)
Newest database reports: Items without Labels - explore Wikidata Items that are missing a Label. This list is handy for finding abandoned, incomplete or vandalised Items.
EntitySchemas: We continued work on the new datatype for linking to EntitySchemas in statements. We focused on the input so it shows the label of the EntitySchema when entering the ID. Search by label and aliases will follow. (phab:T362004)
Wikibase REST API:
We looked into how to improve error messages.
We wrapped up the route for modifying the data of a Property. (phab:T347394
We are nearing the finish line for the route for creating a new Item. (phab:T342990)
We are continuing work on the route for modifying an Item. (phab:T342993)
Developer advocacy: We are collecting content for a new landing page for developers who want to build applications with Wikidata's 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.
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). [69][70]
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. [71]
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we discuss the various implications of linguistic functions about singulars and plurals, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
<translate> Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-06-03. Please help Translate.</translate>
<translate>
Discussions
Open request for adminship: The Squirrel Conspiracy - RfP scheduled to end after 9 June 2024 06:47 (UTC).
New requests for permissions/Bot: TongcyBot - Task: Linking the Chinese and English Wiktionary, specifically in categories using Template:auto cat, and pages in the Template, Module, Appendix, Reconstruction, and Rhymes namespaces.
Open request for permissions/Bot: IliasChoumaniBot - Task: Automatic updating of data from JSON files on German scientists.
Closed request for comments: IP Masking Engagement - The RfC was closed due to inactivity. Discussions are still welcomed on Meta.
Lexicodays 2024, June 28-30, online event dedicated to Lexicographical Data on Wikidata with a focus on languages of Indonesia. Proposals for the program open until June 20th.
Taxonomies and Ontologies in Wikipedia and Wikidata: In-Depth Examination of Knowledge Organization Systems. This paper explores the Knowledge Organisation System (KOS) of Wikipedia, Wikidata and gender-related biases contained within. By M. Centelles & N.Ferran-Ferrer.
Wiquizz a quiz generator based on Wikidata and Query.wikidata.org
</translate>
<translate>
Tool of the week
WikiTwister - RoloWiki: Replace the interwiki links of a Wikipedia article with a pop-up card full of useful Wikidata, & Wikidata Quick Dip: Browse the Wikidata properties used by the pages in a category.
Wikidata:Tools/Potential gadgets is a new page where you can propose to turn CSS and JS scripts into gadgets, so that the can be activated from Preferences instead of through user common.css and common.js pages.
student count by gender (I think there should be a way to document the number of students at a university by their gender, as data for student counts (at least if they come from GENESIS Online - german universities) contain that data divided in male and female students. I think it would make more sense to implement that as a qualifier for {{P|2196}} than implementing it as a new property as that wouldn't make old data obsolete, but also it could interfere with tools that retrieve that data automated and are then confused by having multiple counts at the same time.)
model for (2) (what the subject is a conceptual or scientific model/theory for)
Dynasty (A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family, usually in the context of a monarchy or imperial system but sometimes also appearing in republics. A dynasty can be used to describe the time period in which a person lived, an event happened, a work was created, or a place existed.)
showrunner (person who is responsible for the day-to-day operation of a television show)
antonomasia (epithet or phrase that takes the place of a proper name)
screen size (Size of a display screen as measured along the diagonal)
Who has worked with this Celebrity? - this query looks for co-stars, colleagues and co-actors of Seth Rogen. Adjust this value for other celebrities or professionals.
Schema examples: Tamkang University location - building and location entities associated with Tamkang University, Taiwan.
Showcase Items: Ferdinand Magellan - 15th Century Portugese explorer who led the first expedition to circumnavigate the Globe (despite his death in the Philippines).
Showcase Lexemes: Be - The english copular verb that helps express all of existence.
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. [72]
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". [73]
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). [75][76]
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.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-06-10. Please help Translate.
Discussions
Open request for adminship: Kadı - RfP scheduled to end after 14 June 2024 17:51 (UTC)
Closed request for adminship: The Squirrel Conspiracy - Closed as successful. Welcome back Squirrel!
New requests for permissions/Bot:
MDanielsBot 2 Task(s) - Replace translations of descriptions and labels.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call June 11, 2024: We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Call on Tuesday, 11 June, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET (Time zone converter). Please join us for a community discussion on SMALL GLAM SLAM Pilot 1 with Ismael Olea. Link to agenda.
Celtic Knot Wikimedia Conference, September 25-27, 2024 in Waterford City, Ireland. This conference usually hosts Wikidata-related sessions. You can now propose your contributions to the program until July 14th, and apply for a scholarship until June 30th (full announcement and links)
WikiIndaba conference 2024, 4 - 6 October 2024 in Johannesburg, South Africa. This conference typically hosts Wikidata-related sessions. Program submissions 05 - 30 June 2024.
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
Blogs
100,000 video games on Wikidata - Wikidata’s WikiProject Video games has just passed a major milestone: 100,000 video game (Q7889) items on Wikidata.
Videos
(es) How to strengthen the public domain with Wikidata? - This is a Spanish-speaking Wikitools workshop exploring Paulina (see: Tool of the Week), a search interface powered by Wikidata for finding and exploring author's and whether their works are in the public domain.
Notebooks
Radio France meets Wikidata 😘: Extracting IDs from radio France and matching them with Wikidata using P10780 property
Paulina: Data for the Public Domain - Explore the cultural heritage of humanity. Search Paulina by author and discover if they have freely accessible works in the Public Domain.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Propose to transform an existing CSS or Javascript script (i.e. scripts that you can enable in your common.css and common.js pages) into a gadget: Wikidata:Tools/Potential gadgets
construction time ({{Construction time refers to the time which was needed to build a certain building, which sometimes took more than one year, especially in former times
| de = <!-- Die Bauzeit bezieht sich auf die Zeit, die benötigt wurde, um ein Gebäude zu errichten, was manchmal länger, gerade früher, als ein Jahr brauchte -->
<!-- | xx = Beschreibungen in anderen Sprachen -->
}})
Honoris Causa France - aims to coordinate the actions carried out in terms of reporting the attributions of honorary doctorate (Q11415564) by French universities.
HolyWells - aims to organize Items around Holy Wells.
OghamStones - aims to organise Items around Ogham Stones
Visibilizando el dominio público colombiano - to help the unique, permanent and visible identification, worldwide, of Colombian authors in the public domain, within the framework of Colombian legislation.
The UnpatrolledEdits gadget now shows a notice when there are older and multiple unpatrolled edits, previously it only showed the notice when the most recent edit was unpatrolled. Please help translate the messages here.
Query Service: We are fixing a bug where no examples are shown in the example dialog (phab:T366871)
EntitySchemas: We have enabled the new datatype for testing on test.wikidata.org and are preparing the rollout to Wikidata (phab:T365686)
Item UI: We fixed an issue where labels were not shown for badges or after making an edit (phab:T366236)
Wikibase REST API: We have continued the work on the route for modifying the data of an Item (phab:T342993)
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. [77]
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. [78]
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. [79]
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). [80][81]
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. [82]
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. [83]
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we introduce a new enumeration type, this time for the thirteen months of the Igbo calendar, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Lexico Days 2024 is coming up. June 28 - 30, there will be a packed programme of presentations, discussions and workshops on Lexicographical data. This is an online event.
Diff Blog: Why Wikimedia (and Wikidata) is an antidote to disinformation - Wiki Movimento Brasil discuss how Wikidata has equipped researchers, activists and the public the ability to safeguard truths about human rights abuses during the civic-military Brazilian dictatorship between 1964 - 1985.
(de) 20 Years of WMDE - scroll down the timeline and see what Wikimedia Deutschland has done in its 20 years of existence!
Papers
Linking Named Entities in Diderot's Encyclopédie to Wikidata - This paper describes the annotation of more than 10,300 of the Encyclopédie entries with Wikidata identifiers enabling them to be connect to the graph of structured data. By Piere Nugues.
Towards a linking between WordNet and Wikidata - The authors propose linking the 2 described reosurces through hapax legomenon and natural language processing techniques to create new connections and uses. By J. McCrae & D. Cillessen.
What is Wikidata? How to use Wikidata? - Asaf Bartov hosts this informative session on Wikidata at the Wikimania Singapore 2023. If you're attending Wikimania 2024, this session will prepare you for other Wikidata-related sessions.
Creating a Lexeme Database from Scratch - The runup to Wikimania Katowice has begun. Refresh yourself for upcoming sessions with this Wikidata basics workshop hosted by Leon Liesener.
Music mood (qualifier carrying an emotion (mood) relevant to an audio recording (musical or not))
ecosystem type (type of ecosystem that the item represents)
construction time (Construction time refers to the time which was needed to build a certain building, which sometimes took more than one year, especially in former times)
ARS3D - statements and properties for an African Red Slip ware 3D artifact data model.
WikiProject Highlights:
(de)Theorie und Praxis in Wikidata - User:Matthiasb uses examples of Highway intersection classification on Wikidata of locations in and around Berlin to highlight inconsistencies between the data model and legal classification. By highlighting a considerable number of differences in a relatively small geographic area, these comments provide further context on an earlier discussion within the German Wikipedia community on integrating Wikidata further into Wikipedia articles.
Newest database reports: Badge Stats - How are badges being applied in Wikidata, which items have the most Good or Featured Articles? Savvy editors can use this to enrich said articles in their own Wiki.
Showcase Items: Mordor - A desolate volcanic plain of nauseous gases and shadows. J.R.R Tolkien's blighted land is this week's showcase.
Showcase Lexemes: вода - A Russian word for a clear, vitality-giving liquid, of course it's Water.
Development
EntitySchemas: We are preparing for the rollout of the new datatype to link to EntitySchemas in statements.
Wikibase REST API:
We are continuing the work on the route for modifying an Item (phab:T342993)
We are working on improving errors and error messages in the API
Query Service UI: We fixed a bug. The example dialog was empty and not showing any examples (phab:T366871)
We changed the datatype of two Properties to external ID as requested (phab:T367174)
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. [84]
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. [87]
Problems
Cloud Services tools were not available for 25 minutes last week. This was caused by a faulty hardware cable in the data center. [88]
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. [89]
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). [90][91]
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. [92]
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. [93]
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we are happy to announce that we introduced another new type, integers, that will increase our coverage of mathematical functions. Moreover, we take a look at the (many!) software developments we introduced in the last week.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-06-24. Please help Translate.
Upcoming: Lexicodays, online event dedicated to Lexemes on Wikidata, will take place on June 28-30. It takes place across time zone and both in English and Indonesian. Check the program and find the access links on the event page.
Wikidata in Prometheus - Prometheus is a non-commercial image archive for art and cultural studies. It hosts images from a variety of image and media databases and now works can be connected with Wikidata.
New Mix'n'match feature: For lists of (full or auto) matches where both the MnM entry and the Wikidata Item have coordinates, it now shows the distance between them in the description. (source)
Other Noteworthy Stuff
The Wikidata development team at Wikimedia Deutschland is planning a brief survey to understand the various ways people contribute to the project and identify user contribution patterns. A request has been made for a CentralNotice banner to deploy the survey to a broad audience. Your feedback, comments, and questions on this request are welcome: m:CentralNotice/Request/Wikidata Community Survey 2024
The second iteration of the Wikidata:Open Online Course will begin from July 1 until August 11. Whether you're a beginner taking your first steps, an individual in need of a refresher on Wikidata concepts, or a seasoned trainer looking to level up your skills - this course is right for you.
Multilingualism - organizes work around achieving 100% Wikidata multilingualism for every language with MediaWiki internationalization support. It is initiated, developed & supported by Wikimedia Language Diversity community volunteers.
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. [94]
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. [95]
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. [96]
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). [97][98]
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. [99]
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we welcome a new member of the team, we ask for feedback about our "About" widget designs, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
The third round of the 2024 WikiCup ended on 28 June. As with Round 2, this round was competitive: each of the 16 contestants who advanced to Round 4 scored at least 256 points.
The following editors all scored more than 400 points in Round 3:
Sammi Brie (submissions) with 557 points, mostly from 1 featured article on KNXV-TV, 5 good articles, and 8 did you know nominations; and
AryKun (submissions) with 415 points, mostly from 1 featured article on Great cuckoo-dove, with a high number of bonus points from that article.
The full scores for round 3 can be seen here. So far this year, competitors have gotten 28 featured articles, 38 featured lists, 240 good articles, 92 in the news credits, and at least 285 did you know credits. They have conducted 279 featured article reviews, as well as 492 good article reviews and peer reviews, and have added 22 articles to featured topics and good topics.
Remember that any content promoted after 28 June but before the start of Round 4 can be claimed during Round 4, which starts on 1 July at 00:00 (UTC). Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether for a good article, featured content, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-07-01. Please help Translate.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
DifoolBot 4 Task(s) - Split single references containing multiple reference URLs into multiple references.
Bot Bozze Task(s) - Add sitelinks to itwiki draft articles after they've been moved to the main namespace.
New request for comments: Spelling convention for labels and descriptions in English - RfC started 2024-06-25. This RfC requests feedback and input for finding consistency in spelling convention as English has multiple regional variations.
Past: The Lexicodays 2024 was an online event designed to offer a discussion space for the Wikidata community about Lexicographical Data. An archive of some of the slides and session recordings are here c:Category:Lexicodays 2024. More will be added as they become available.
Upcoming:
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 16:00 UTC on Wednesday, 10th July 2024 (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.
Botany-focused Wikidata online workshop online as part of the #IBC2024. Date: Tuesday 9th July at 9pm NZST (GMT+12) / 11 am central Europe. Register here!
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
Blogs
Querying for audio on Wikidata - This blog post discusses using SPARQL queries on Wikidata to find audio recordings, focusing on musical compositions and their associated genres.
Diff Blog: Imagining a Wikidata future for librarians together - the sixth and final blog post from the LD42023 conference. Silvia Gutiérrez (WMF) and Giovanna Fontenelle (WMF) document the results of the collaborative session on building a bridge between the Library-Wikidata community and WMF.
Library Knowledge as Linked Data: A Wikidata Approach: Contributing to a shared data commons. David Erlandson describes the experiences of using Wikidata for the pilot Program for Cooperative Cataloging to "accelerate the movement towards ubiquitous identifier creation and identity management at the network level".
User:Zvpunry/CreateNewItem - This is a User script to easily add a new Item while editing a Statement and noticing that the desired Item is missing.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
The second iteration of the Wikidata:Open Online Course has begun. Class will continue until August 11. Whether you're a beginner taking your first steps, an individual in need of a refresher on Wikidata concepts, or a seasoned trainer looking to level up your skills - this course is right for you.
Newest WikiProjects: Inuktitut - This is the space to organize work to assure that the sum of all knowledge and the supporting infrastructure for necessary services are available in Inuktitut (ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ, Inuktitut).
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. [100]
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. [101]
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. [102][103]
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. [104]
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.
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we present our objectives and lines of work for this quarter, we remember to give your feedback about our "About" widget designs, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-07-08. Please help Translate.
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 16:00 UTC on Wednesday, 10th July 2024 (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.
Registration for Wikimania 2024 is open! In-person participants: please register until 26 July, 11:59 p.m., UTC. Virtual participants can register anytime. If you received a scholarship from the Wikimedia Foundation, you will receive an email with a registration code and instructions.
Tool of the week
User:Teester/EntityShape.js - a userscript that adds an input box to a Wikidata page wherein you can enter an EntitySchema (such as E10). When you click "Check", checks whether each statement and property conforms to the schema. It then displays a summary at the top of the Item for each property indicating whether they conform or not. It also adds a badge to each statement and each property on the page indicating whether they conform or not.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Wikidata teams' development goals for the third quarter of 2024 have been updated: Wikidata:Development plan
indexer (entity responsible for compiling an index of a book, database, website or other forms of media publications in the form of a methodical arrangement of records designed to enable users to locate information quickly. Example: Hazel K. Bell (Q70226489))
WorldCyclingStats ID (identifier on the website WorldCyclingStats (www.worldcyclingstats.com))
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.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-07-15. Please help Translate.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot: SpinachBot - Task/s: AI agent-enabled question answering through the creation and execution of complex SPARQL queries on Wikidata. Users tag the bog with wikidata-related questions, and it tries to come up with an answer by iteratively creating SPARQL queries.
An Intelligent System: What I learned through taking an introductory Wikidata course - The author, Anne-Christine Hoff, dispels misconceptions about Wikidata. She highlights that it is a relational communication system, not solely bot-driven, and allows users worldwide to add localized data in multiple languages, creating a self-structuring repository of information
Merge and diff - blog post by Magnus about adding new properties (taxon data speficially, NCBI, GBIF, and iINaturalist) to the AC2WD tool. If you have the user script installed on Wikidata (see tool below), AC2WD will automatically show up on relevant taxon items.
Online workshop Upskilling in Wikidata for maximum impact IBC 2024 - Recording of the virtual Wikidata workshop given on the 9th of July 2024. An onboarding and introductory event in anticipation of a full in-person workshop to be held at the International Botanical Congress 2024 in Madrid on the 21st of July 2024
User:Magnus Manske/ac2wd.js - This script adds an "AC2WD" link in the tools sidebar. When you click on it, it uses the AC2WD tool to check the item for certain Authority Control IDs (eg VIAF). It then checks these AC datasets for statements (and more AC IDs). It will then add any new information it found as new statements, or add more references to existing statements where possible. A green checkmark will be appended to the link if data was added (reload the page to see), otherwise a "—" if no new data was available.
myfixguide.com (photos about how to disassemble hardware)
indexer (entity responsible for compiling an index of a book, database, website or other forms of media publications in the form of a methodical arrangement of records designed to enable users to locate information quickly)
Newest WikiProjects: Human Cells - dedicated to improve our coverage of information about these fundamental entities that compose organisms. The project focuses mainly on two kinds of cell classes: species-agnostic classes, such as neutrophil (Q188417), and human-specific classes, such as human neutrophil (Q101405102).
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. [107]
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.
Hello, NightWolf1223. This is a bot-delivered message letting you know that Draft:LifeVac, a page you created, has not been edited in at least 5 months. Drafts that have not been edited for six months may be deleted, so if you wish to retain the page, please edit it again or request that it be moved to your userspace.
If the page has already been deleted, you can request it be undeleted so you can continue working on it.
I'd like to request that you reopen the discussion about the move request at Special:PermanentLink/1234305500#Requested move 27 June 2024. The nominator has requested the reopening at WP:RM/TR. The nominator seems to have added that in the request you closed as This is the original poster. Actually I change my proposed target: "Sixtieth birthday in the Sinosphere". Idk if Vietnam explicitly shares the concept, but figure it doesn't hurt to hedge, and you don't seem to see it before the closure. Would you be willing to reconsider the closure in light of this new information? Thanks for your consideration. All the Best. Safari ScribeEdits!Talk!15:12, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@NightWolf1223, you closed everything perfectly, and there is no concern. The concern is that the IP nominator, wo may not know how to change target wrote it under as "This is the original poster. Actually I change my proposed target: "Sixtieth birthday in the Sinosphere". Idk if Vietnam explicitly shares the concept, but figure it doesn't hurt to hedge", meaning to change the target from Sixtieth birthday in East Asia to Sixtieth birthday in the Sinosphere. It seems you didn't see it before closing the discussion. Now the IP nominator is requesting at WP:RM/TR that it seems to be an error on your part. Would you mind you or me re opening the discussion while I retarget the destination, and then, close the technical move request as done. It is more of seeking your permission. Safari ScribeEdits!Talk!19:05, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's possible, however we recomend that you spend a few months editing before attempting to write an article. That few months editing will allow you to learn the ropes of editing. NightWolf1223 <Howl at me•My hunts>20:40, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #164 is out: Research report on integrating Wikifunctions from Wikipedia
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we present you the results of a research about how to integrate Wikifunctions and Wikipedia, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-07-22. Please help Translate.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
DannyS712 bot - Task/s: I want to get approval for a bot with translation admin rights that will automatically mark pages for translations if and only if the latest version is identical to the version that is already in the translation system, i.e. only pages with no "net" changes in the pending edits.
DerIchBot - Task/s: Adding data about schools provided by the German and Austrian governments to wikidata.
DifoolBot 5 - Task/s: Change reference URLs into the related ID property and merge references with the same ID property.
AroundTheBot - Task/s: Automated import of Albanian nouns with IPA from Wiktionary, with the long-term goal of using this data to do pronunciation-based comparison/word evolution between languages.
Past: Wikimedia Indonesia hosted the 2024 Data Visualization Competition from June 5 to 18. The event featured data visualizations (posters and graphics) and short essays using data from Wikidata. Visit the competition page (in Indonesian) to view the winning entries.
Upcoming: Wikidata's 12th birthday decentralized events will take place in October and November 2024. Feel free to browse the documentation pages to learn how to organize an event in your area, get funding, and get in touch with other organizers.
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
Papers:
Representación de datos abiertos con Wikidata Query Service (Q126917814). This paper details the Wikidata Query Service, for the creation of data visualizations. All visualization options available in the WQS are explored, accompanied by example queries that introduce the implementation of these visualizations. By Ángel Obregón-Sierra and Silvia Cecilia Anselmi.
Paulina, a new tool for exploring public domain works.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
WMF Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) invites interested volunteers to apply. As part of the movement strategy recommendation for "Coordinating Across Stakeholders," the PTAC will bring technical contributors and the Wikimedia Foundation together to co-define a more resilient, future-proof technological platform.
indexer (entity responsible for compiling an index of a book, database, website or other forms of media publications in the form of a methodical arrangement of records designed to enable users to locate information quickly)
Reference Verification - a research and development project aimed at helping Wikidata editors check the quality of external references based on various types of AI/ML models.
NZWomenPhotographers - aims to improve information about New Zealand women photographers, based on a dataset provided by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
Newest database reports: Items with P569=P570 - Items with instance of (P31) --> human (Q5) and the same year in date of birth (P569) and date of death (P570) (2024-07-22)
Showcase Lexemes: water (L3302) - (S1) common liquid substance (S2) chemical compound of hydrogen and oxygen (H₂O) (S3) a body of water, usually a river, a lake, or an ocean
Development
mul: We fixed the last blocker for the limited MUL rollout to Wikidata on July 29th (phab:T362917)
EntitySchemas:
We fixed a misplaced background color in EntitySchema (phab:T369283)
We’re investigating how to make EntitySchemas searchable by label (phab:T362005)
Query Service: preparation for the graph split is continuing by the Search Platform Team. We started looking into adapting the constraints checks for it (phab:T369079)
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. [108]
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. [109]
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. [110]
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.
hi nightwolf, i didn't follow up on this last thurs, and now i'm 15 minutes from the beginning of the next zoom session with kelly. can we start this later today? (or tomorrow?)
thanks HarryBarks --HarryBarks (talk) 17:49, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-07-29. Please help Translate.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
GergesBot 2 - Task/s: Edit label when order is added in ar:ويكيبيديا:طلبات نقل عبر البوت (Transfer requests by Bot).
UmisBot - Task/s: This bot will add string representations of units of measurement to units of measurement Wikidata pages.
Wikimania starts on August 7. Here is a list of sessions focused around Wikidata, or have *some* connection to Wikidata: 2024:Program/Wikidata. If something is missing, feel free to add to it, including any Wikidata meetups you may be hosting.
WikiEdu: What I learned taking an introductory Wikidata Course - Anne-Christine Hoff, associate professor of English at Jarvis Christian University, describes her experiences and learnings from taking an intro to Wikidata course, provided by the WikiEdu.org, a project of the Wiki Education Foundation.
A Wikidata-Based Framework for Integrating Heterogeneous Knowledge Sources - This paper presents KIF, a Wikidata-based framework for virtually integrating heterogeneous knowledge sources and discuss how it was used to solve a real integration problem in the domain of chemistry (involving Wikidata, PubChem, and IBM CIRCA). By G. Lima et al.
Intro to Wikidata - This intro to Wikidata was provided for participants of the International Linguistics Olympiad 2024, held in Brasília. Presented by Artur Corrêa Souza and Éder Porto, organised by Wiki Movimento Brasil.
Mining and Modeling Text using Wikibase - the University of Trier is building a knowledge graph on French Enlightenment novels 1751 - 1800 with the use of Wikibase.
The Wikibase REST API, introduced last year on Wikidata, is progressing towards version 1, aiming for a comprehensive release by the end of 2024. We're seeking community feedback to enhance the current API and plan future developments. Please share your thoughts on this page: Feedback on the Wikibase REST API (July/August 2024).
indexer (entity responsible for compiling an index of a book, database, website or other forms of media publications in the form of a methodical arrangement of records designed to enable users to locate information quickly)
object of action (specific object to which an action or class of actions occurs)
object class of action (class of objects (including substances) to which an action or class of actions may occur)
Military Equipment in Policing - Project to connect police equipment defined as military equipment to capabilities, uses, manufacturers, descriptions, etc.
Quran - to collaborate on Quran-related topics and organise Quran Wikidatans; help others and get help whenever needed to improve Quran-related items (and properties); create Quran-specific tools' libraries, queries, and resources;
IP masking: The feature was rolled out to test wikis and we fixed a few issues uncovered by this.
EntitySchemas: We are working to make it possible to search for the EntitySchema by its label and aliases when making a new statement linking to an EntitySchema (phab:T362005)
Integration in other Wikimedia projects: We are working on moving the Wikidata Item link from the tools section of the sidebar (phab:T66315)
REST API:
We changed the data-type field to data_type in JSON responses (phab:T368130)
We are continuing the work on improving error handling and messages
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:) [111]
The Growth team released Community Configuration at all Wikipedias. You can access it at Special:CommunityConfiguration.
This new special page replaces Special:EditGrowthConfig. For now, all Growth features can be configured using Community Configuration. Configuration for AutoModerator (T365046) and other features will be available in the future.
We will add a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version available to beta wikis. We will conduct an A/B test at our pilot wikis using the new Metrics Platform. We still welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.
As part of the Growth team 2024/2025 Annual Plan, the Growth team will explore various ways to increase the percentage of newcomers who successfully start editing.
Editing a Wikipedia page requires too much context and patience. It means many trial and error for newcomers to contribute, meaning a steeper learning curve and potential discouraging reverts. To support a new generation of volunteers, we will increase the number and availability of smaller, structured, and more task-specific editing workflows (E.g. Edit Check and Structured Tasks). The Growth team will primarily focus on Structured Tasks, while working closely with the Editing team to ensure our work integrates well with Edit Check.
Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work. If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.
Hey there, welcome to the 25th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter, covering all our favorite new and updated user scripts since 1 March 2024. We've got a ton of wonderful editors taking back their pitchforks today. Don't worry, for they come in peace, to forcibly fix and extend existing scripts you use with sheer passion. There's so many, them forks have got what's basically their own column now! gift us with some rows before it's too late Aaron Liu (talk) 04:01, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
To a lesser extent, the same goes for PrimeHunter/Search sort. I wish someone would integrate the sorts into the sort menu instead of adding 11 portlet links.
An easily configurable script to add a link to the #p-vector-user-menu-overflow portlet with a name, target, and icon. This one should be a relatively easier one. I would do it myself, but I'm too busy rotting away on Celeste (video game).
After the ＲＩＩＪ update, Aaron Liu: Watchlyst Greybar Unsin has a dismiss button that allows you to mark an item as read in one click and cycle to the next Watchlist item.
Lordseriouspig/StatusChangerImproved is just like Enterprisey's script, except you select your status from a dropdown instead of cycling through them with a button. The WMF operates out of car-centric infrastructure anyway. Shame!
Aaron Liu has created Duplinks from Evad37/duplinks-alt; his fork adds a config variable to automatically highlight duplicate links on the loading of any page where the portlet link would've appeared.
Tired of staring at a bunch of filtering text and waiting for darn filter logs to load? Msz2001/AbuseFilter analyzer can parse abuse filters into a visual syntax tree and evaluate locally on-demand!
Polygnotus/DuplicateReferences finds references with the same link and displays the number of them along with a button to add the {{duplicated citations}} tag under the references section. Being lazy has never been easier!
fastest gun on the net Ponor/really-quick-block really quick add to contribution lists three buttons awesome
I've been running across a few pages with incorrect title names, which is a reason I finally opened a user account. The corrected page title names would be Gonpo Namgyal (from 'Gombo Namgye'), and the 3rd Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje (from 'Rangjung Dorje, 3rd Karmapa Lama' - additionally, the Karmapa is just not entitled as the 'Karmapa Lama').
The first example is very simple since it's clear that only the page title is mistaken. There's also copious amounts of scholarly evidence available if necessary, but it doesn't appear to be necessary.
The second example is basically a naming convention error, that seems to be multiplying recently... The scholarly and historical convention for high Tibetan tulkus is : first, the number with the title [, comma] then the given name.
There are also plenty of historical and scholarly works which could be cited for these title naming conventions.
How do I achieve these basic corrections - for a single page (easy), and for what seem to be multiple pages with the exact same naming convention errors?
Hi again. I found the clear instructions for the changes, and they've been made. No worries, all's good. See you Nightwolf Mentor. Metokpema (talk) 04:07, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-08-05. Please help Translate.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
Numberguy6Bot - Task: Add links to Wiktionary categories in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Russian.
UmisBot - Task: This bot will add string representations of units of measurement to units of measurement Wikidata pages.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call 6 August, 2024: We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Call on Tuesday, 6 August, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET (Time zone converter). Please join us for a Busy Summer Fun Wikidata Editing Hour, an hour of uninterrupted Wikidata editing time to work on your own Wikidata projects. Agenda.
Wikimania is August 7-10. Here is a curated a list of Wikimania sessions focused around Wikidata, or have *some* connection to Wikidata: 2024:Program/Wikidata. Please add to the list if something is missing.
SPINACH: SPARQL-Based Information Navigation for Challenging Real-World Questions - The SPINACH dataset, derived from Wikidata's "Request a Query" forum, offers a more complex and challenging KBQA dataset with 320 question-SPARQL pairs, designed to test the capabilities of KBQA systems in navigating large and incomplete knowledge base schemas.
Forage - a user script that provides an additional editing interface that makes editing easier, by showing the expected properties for a page (based on its "instance of" values), and providing simple inputs to let users add values for any such property. To install Forage, just add the following line to the common.js subpage under your user page on Wikidata, i.e. wikidata.org/wiki/User:Your username here/common.js: importScript('User:Techwizzie/forage.js');
Other Noteworthy Stuff
The Wikibase REST API, introduced last year on Wikidata, is progressing towards version 1, aiming for a comprehensive release by the end of 2024. We're seeking community feedback to enhance the current API and plan future developments. Please share your thoughts on this page: Feedback on the Wikibase REST API (July/August 2024).
Abdulai Yorli Iddrisu (WMDE) has joined the Software Communication team (SCoT) at Wikimedia Deutschland as an intern until the end of September 2024. Welcome Yorli!
indexer (entity responsible for compiling an index of a book, database, website or other forms of media publications in the form of a methodical arrangement of records designed to enable users to locate information quickly)
object of action (specific object to which an action or class of actions occurs)
object class of action (class of objects (including substances) to which an action or class of actions may occur)
public funding (amount of public funding an organisation receives)
mul language code: The new language code has been rolled out in a limited way. We are looking through feedback now.
mul release: The full release of the "mul" language code feature to Wikidata, originally scheduled for August 12, may be delayed as we have uncovered a few issues during testing that could potentially block the scheduled release.
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. [112][113]
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.
Users wishing to permanently leave may now request "vanishing" via Special:GlobalVanishRequest. Processed requests will result in the user being renamed, their recovery email being removed, and their account being globally locked.
Hi thanks for being my mentor. My page on Wiki is very out of date and much briefer than my academic peers. I have a suggested rewrite but can’t do this myself due to conflict of interest. The two people who originally wrote my page aren’t doing edits anymore so how can I get my page updated. Thanks for your help --Maggie Humm (talk) 19:10, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
very helpful! Thank you! how do I find my sandbox? the link in your message takes me to a general page about sandboxes. The where will I post an edit request? Maggie Humm (talk) 14:52, 8 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks again! I've managed to find my sandbox and cut and pasted my suggested changes and clicked onto review. Hopefully someone can now review my suggested changes and upload these for me (since I would be unable to do so due to conflict of interest). I'm hoping this will work! Many thanks again. Maggie Humm (talk) 15:24, 8 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. Thank you for mentoring. I made a change to a page that was undone. I'm hoping you can help me understand what I did wrong. This was to James Bjorken's page. He passed away yesterday and someone made this edit to his page. But the format was wrong and I changed it to mirror that for Henry Way Kendall. Then my change was reverted back. Can you help me understand what I did wrong? --OneOver137 (talk) 20:47, 7 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, the person who undid my edits reverted them. All is well.
I have another question - I wrote my first article (scientific bio) about 2-3 months ago. Is there a way to check on its status? --OneOver137 (talk) 19:10, 8 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-08-12. Please help Translate.
Wikimania 2024 took place in Katowice, Poland. You can watch replays of the sessions on YouTube. Additionally, recordings of individual sessions are linked to each item on the Eventyay schedule.
FOSS4GE 2024 | Bridging Worlds: Integration of Wikidata and OpenStreetMap - Discover the synergy between Wikidata and OpenStreetMap, two monumental open data repositories. This talk unveils innovative web-based tools facilitating the linking of these platforms, enhancing the richness and accuracy of geospatial data.
New Q5 - is a form that quickly sets up a Wikidata Item for an individual by generating a QuickStatement with the basic parameters such as name and age.
indexer (entity responsible for compiling an index of a book, database, website or other forms of media publications in the form of a methodical arrangement of records designed to enable users to locate information quickly)
object of action (specific object to which an action or class of actions occurs)
object class of action (class of objects (including substances) to which an action or class of actions may occur)
public funding (amount of public funding an organisation receives)
lifespan (duration of a person's known or recorded lifespan)
APPF registration status (status of registration of this entity with the Authority for European political parties and European political foundation)
exponent of base unit (a qualifier of {{Q|P12571}} used to describe the exponent of the unit)
Javanese registers (suggest the relationship between similar Javanese lexemes, between its various registers (social variants), mainly {{Q|12500634}} register (plain Javanese), {{Q|12492493}} register (high/polite Javanese), and {{Q|13091955}} register (middle Javanese))
Newest WikiProjects: Redundancy - The primary aim of WikiProject Redundancy is to reduce the amount of Wikidata's data—without reducing the amount of information in Wikidata!—for the well-being of Wikidata, its community, and its downstream users.
Showcase Lexemes: kpanjɔɣu (L651052) - A Dagbani noun described in English as hampers, baskets, or similar containers made from woven materials like reeds, grasses, or wicker, traditionally used for carrying or storing clothing.
Development
Not much happened this past week because the team was attending Wikimania.
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.
Wikidata Days Bologna - November 8 - 9, 2024. Dario Nobili Library (CNR). A conference dedicated to the Italian-speaking Wikidata community, with a focus on libraries and research.
Ongoing
Like Soccer? Did you know the Uganda Wiki Soccerthon 2024 is still running and aims to create over 300 Wikidata items on Ugandan clubs, players, coaches, leagues, associations and leagues related to Ugandan soccer.
In case you missed it...
Catch up on all the Wikimania 2024 sessions with these YouTube replays. Or check the Eventyay schedule for recordings of individual sessions linked to each item.
Discovering Relationships Among Properties in Wikidata Knowledge Graph - Authors Emetis Niazmand and Maria-Esther Vidal use class-based relationship discovery to study and explore distribution and frequency of predicates across six domains. Pp 388–394 of Big Data Analytics and Knowledge Discovery.
Videos
(pt) Wikidata Lab XLII: OpenRefine Éder Porto and Luca Belo host a workshop covering the newest features for loading media and Structured Data (SDC) on Commons, as well as metadata on Wikidata through OpenRefine.
Medals count by continent Combining data from the International Olympic Committee and Wikidata, this notebook computes medals count by continent.
Winners of the Tour de France Femmes The Tour de France Femmes 2024 just ended on Sunday 18th of August. The cycling stage race explorer notebook shows all stage winners of the Tour de France Femmes.
(fr) WikidataESR: Tenter d’y voir clair dans l’ESR : exploring French higher education and research institutional landscape with the help of Wikidata. French higher education and research landscape is highly complex. Wikidata can help to better understand the landscape.
Tool of the week
Anvesha is a drill-down browser for any Wikibase installation (incl. Wikidata). A prominent example of it in use is the Wikidata Walkabout.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Wikidata: For Developers - We have a shiny new portal for developers wanting to build applications using Wikidata's data. Visit it for inspiration with showcase examples, resources, information and support.
APPF registration status (status of registration of this entity with the Authority for European political parties and European political foundation)
exponent of base unit (a qualifier of {{Q|P12571}} used to describe the exponent of the unit)
Javanese registers (suggest the relationship between similar Javanese lexemes, between its various registers (social variants), mainly {{Q|12500634}} register (plain Javanese), {{Q|12492493}} register (high/polite Javanese), and {{Q|13091955}} register (middle Javanese))
objects of action have role (role that objects of this action take on in the context of this action. (For selectional restrictions, use {{P|12913}} instead.))
ConLang Code Registry code (3-letter identifier for language defined in the ConLang Code Registry, using codes reserved for private use in ISO 639-3)
dénomination (value of a currency or type of currency)
Wikibase REST API: We are continuing to improve error messages and handling.
Wikipedia and co: We are working on moving the Wikidata Item link out of the sidebar (phab:T66315)
Wikidata Query Service graph split: The WMF Search Platform team is setting up the servers for the split graphs. We hope to have them ready for use soon. We also prepared the constraints checks for this.
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. [116]
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. [117][118]
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.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-08-26. Please help Translate.
Discussions
Open request for adminship:
Gwanki - RfP scheduled to end after 26 August 2024 05:54 (UTC)
Putnik 2 - RfP scheduled to end after 27 August 2024 23:17 (UTC)
Audio Transcription (P9533) from Author: Yug. P9533 is described as transcription of the word/text being spoken in this file. Does this exclude other communications modalities?
Wikidata's 12th Birthday is fast approaching. Do you need financial support to organize a birthday event? Here is some useful information about how to get funding: Wikidata:Twelfth Birthday/Run an event/Funding. The deadline to apply is September 1st.
WikiLibCon25 The Wikimedia+Libraries International Convention 2025 takes place in Mexico City, Mexico between 15 - 17 January 2025 - Call for Scholarships (ends 31 August0 and Proposals (ends 15 September) are open. WikiLibCon25 brings together Wikimedians, Wikibrarians, information professionals, library workers and mission-aligned partners from around the globe to create a vivid community and promote cooperative projects in the Library & Wikimedia sphere.
Slides: Giving metabolites (and lipids) a chemical and biological context with open science. This talk discusses the role of open science in providing chemical and biological context for metabolites and lipids, highlighting open-source cheminformatics, open standards, and open data to facilitate linking knowledge across databases and publications, as well as describing chemical interactions in biological pathway databases. By Egon Willighagen.
Wikidata distributed/#game=94 - Help adding missing information related to artists on BNU's catalog (Select the option that fits best).
Other Noteworthy Stuff
New AI Project Manager to join Wikimedia Deutschland: We’re pleased to announce that a new AI project manager will be joining our team next week. Lydia and Jonathan (Director of Engineering) have been prototyping in this area and recently presented their work at the AI_dev summit (YouTube link). Our goal is to bring knowledge graphs and generative AI closer together, making AI more equitable, truthful, participatory, and open. More updates to come soon!
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. [119]
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:
The fourth round of the 2024 WikiCup ended on 29 August. Each of the 8 contestants who advanced to Round 4 scored at least 472 points, and the following contestants scored more than 700 points:
Congratulations to our eight finalists and all who participated. Contestants put in extraordinary amounts of effort during this round, and their scores can be seen here. So far this year, competitors have gotten 36 featured articles, 55 featured lists, 15 good articles, 93 in the news credits, and at least 333 did you know credits. They have conducted 357 featured content reviews, as well as 553 good article reviews and peer reviews, and have added 30 articles to featured topics and good topics.
Any content promoted after 29 August but before the start of Round 5 can be claimed during Round 5, which starts on 1 September at 00:00 (UTC). Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. If two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether for a good article, featured content, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Remember to claim your points within 14 days of earning them, and importantly, before the deadline on 31 October.
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we discuss the introduction of more stringent limits on the length of object names, input names, and descriptions, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2024-09-02.
Discussions
Project chat: Wikidata:Project chat#Mass-import policy - A new mass-import policy has been proposed, focusing on improving the quality of existing items rather than importing new ones, with a suggested limit of 100 new items before requiring community approval.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group session 3 September, 2024: We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Session on Tuesday, 3 September, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET (Time zone converter). Christa Strickler will be our first Project Series lead with her joint project with the Wikidata Religion & Theology Community of Practice to contribute biographical data to Wikidata from the IRFA database using the Mix’n’Match tool. We are excited to learn more about this project, provide a forum for discussion and shared learning, and lend a hand while building new skills. Event page: Wikidata:WikiProject LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group/Affinity Group Calls/First Project Series
(id) Registration is open for the Wikimedia Indonesia Research Grant 2024 program. Open until 30 September 2024. This program opens funding opportunities for research on topics related to Wikidata, Wikipedia, or other Wiki projects, and Linked Open Data.
Blogs: (de) Wikibase4Research - Easily manage, share and visualize knowledge data, tailored for academic purposes, WB4R simplifies the installation and use of MedaWiki software. By Kolja Bailly.
Display Wikidata Info on sister projects by User:Yair rand. This user-script will add the articles corresponding Wikidata item Label, Q-ID, Description and Short Desc. neatly under the article title. If no Wikidata item is linked, option to CreateNewItem page on Wikidata is provided.
Showcase Items: Wikimedia disambiguation page (Q4167410): type of wiki page usually in main namespace (article namespace, ns=0) containing links to articles with similar names, and very little details only, use with P31 "instance of" (2024-09-02)
The WMF Search Platform team is putting the finishing touches on the new Query Service servers that contain the two parts of the split graph.
We are analyzing which percentage of current queries are better served by other systems like the REST API or search.
Wikimedia projects integration:
We have worked on moving the Wikidata Item link out of the toolbox section of the sidebar of an article. It has been rolled out to the first wikis: ukwiki, hewiki, fawiki (phab:T66315)
We are working on decreasing the amount of irrelevant changes from Wikidata in the watchlist and recent changes on Wikipedia and co by correcting the tracking behaviour of the Lua function mw.wikibase.entity:getSitelink() (phab:T295356)
Wikibase REST API: We continued improving errors and error messages.
Following an RfC, there is a new criterion for speedy deletion: C4, which applies to unused maintenance categories, such as empty dated maintenance categories for dates in the past.
The arbitration case Historical Elections is currently open. Proposed decision is expected by 3 September 2024 for this case.
Miscellaneous
Editors can now enter into good article review circles, an alternative for informal quid pro quo arrangements, to have a GAN reviewed in return for reviewing a different editor's nomination.
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. [120]
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. [121]
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:
I am an expert on cryptoart and artists, and am distressed at the lack of biographical information on NFT artists published on Wikipedia. I can find biographies for only five of them. I am currently researching and writing new articles on 10-15 other pre-eminent NFT artists who have been sold through major auction houses, have a considerable media presence, and are generally regarded within the field as major figures. Many have also crossed over from the NFT subculture into more mainstream acceptance.
Obviously I am new to editing. What is the easiest way to go about this project? Can a new subcategory of art be introduced? If I prepare well-written and well-researched articles with good documentation, will they automatically be rejected because I have no history of doing this? --Eddie Waitkus (talk) 04:02, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Eddie Waitkus: Appologies for taking a while to get back to you. I got busy with other things. 1. I do not recomend newcomers start by writing articles. It is really hard to find a topic that is notable. Spend a few months working on existing articles (our tasklist is a good starting place for that). I have concerns that your topics may not meet our article criteria, though they may meet our criteria for creative professionals. 2. I am unsure what you mean by "a new subcategory of art". Would you mind explaining that?3. No, we dont require a track record to write new articles. Like I said, you would be better off improving an existing article.Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any more concerns. NightWolf1223 <Howl at me•My hunts>02:58, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the week leading up to 2024-09-02. Please help Translate. Missed the previous one? See issue #643
Discussions
Open request for adminship: أمين - RfP scheduled to end 9 September 2024 11:18 (UTC).
Upcoming: The program for the Celtic Knot Conference 2024 is now available to view! Whether you're interested in language preservation, digital tools for minority languages, or simply connecting with like-minded individuals, there's something for everyone. The conference will take place in Waterford City from September 25-27, 2024
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
Blogs
(de) TIB Blog:The TIB project WikiRemembrance - The aim of the project was to develop a handout on digital culture of remembrance in a collaborative and participatory process. The project will be ending soon and you can register for the closing event (9 Oct 2024).
Correcting outdated facts in Wikidata - Anj Simmons takes us through an example of finding an outdated or inaccurate fact and correcting it with supporting references.
Wikidata Quality Toolkit: Empowering Wikidata editors and content. Albert Meroño introduces a suite of tools to assist editors by recommending items to edit, detect poorly-supported item references and generating EntitySchemas to find items missing information.
User:Teester/CheckShex.js - a Userscript that adds an input box to a Wikidata page wherein you can enter an EntitySchema (such as E10). When you click "Check", it uses pyshexy to validate the entity against the schema and displays whether the entity passes or fails.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
🔥 Big changes are coming to the #WikidataQueryService. If you query for scholarly articles, please take a look at this announcement!
Is Shakespeare in German something for you? A digital version of the Schlegel/Tieck edition (Aufbau-Verlag 1975) was released with Wikidata connections. (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.
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. [123][124]
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. [125]
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. [126]
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). [127]
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.
There is a new update for Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we introduce Dagbani Wikipedia as our first wiki for Wikifunctions integration, discuss the recent stability challenges we've had in the past few days, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the week leading up to 2024-09-16. Please help Translate. Missed the previous one? See issue #644
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot: Framabot 5 - Task: update a typography error in the French description of homonym pages, seen on 1.
New request for comments: Additional rights for bureaucrats - The proposal suggests allowing Wikidata bureaucrats to remove admin rights, which they currently cannot do, to streamline processes, reduce reliance on stewards, and align with practices of other wikis.
Proposal: Mul labels - proposal of massive addition - The proposal suggests massively adding "mul" labels to Wikidata items for given and family names, using a bot to streamline the process and reduce redundant labels.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group session 17 September, 2024: We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Session on Tuesday, 17 September, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET (Time zone converter). Christa Strickler will be our first Project Series lead with her joint project with the Wikidata Religion & Theology Community of Practice to contribute biographical data to Wikidata from the IRFA database using the Mix’n’Match tool. We are excited to learn more about this project, provide a forum for discussion and shared learning, and lend a hand while building new skills. Event page: Session 2 (September 17) - Working session using Mix‘n’Match to add Wikidata items
Wikidata Day 2024 (Seattle) - Agenda: Wikidata Twelfth Birthday, Training and Edit-a-thon. When: Saturday, October 26, from 12:30–4:30pm PDT
Cooperation between National Library and Wikimedia CR was presented at Wikimania 2024 - Wikimedia Czech Republic presented their long-standing collaboration with the National Library at Wikimania 2024, highlighting joint educational and community initiatives, along with additional sessions on media education and successful campaigns during the event.
User:Lagewi/references.js - "Sometimes, the data on Wikidata does not answer all your questions. Some types of information are difficult to encode in statements, or simply has not been encoded on Wikidata yet. In such cases, it might be useful to go through the references attached to claims of the entity, for additional information. To simplify this process, this user script lists all unique references based on stated in (P248) and reference URL (P854). The references are listed in a collapsible list below the table of labels and descriptions, collapsed by default to not be obtrusive." To enable it, include the following line in your common.js: mw.loader.load('//www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lagewi/references.js&oldid=2039248554&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');
objects of occurrence have role (role that objects of this occurrence take on in the context of this occurrence. (For selectional restrictions, use "object class of occurrence" (P12913) instead.))
agents of action have role (role that agents of this action take on in the context of this action. (For selectional restrictions, use "agent class of action" (P12994) instead. ))
agent class of action (class of items that may initiate this action or class of actions (For roles filled by agents of an action, use "agents of action have role" (P12993) instead))
agent of action (particular item that initiates this action or class of actions)
characteristic of ((qualifier only) statement value is a characteristic, quality, property, or state of this item)
Political foundation (The property allows a link between a political party (usually) and its related political foundation, as is common in Germany, in the Netherlands or at the European level. The reverse property ("political party" or "political party affiliation", still different from P102 which is for individual membership) would be useful too.)
WikiProject Highlights: Ontology/Cleaning Task Force/Changes - Significant actual and proposed changes to the Wikidata ontology that have come out of the cleaning task force efforts.
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. [128]
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. [129]
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. [130]
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. [131]
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. [132]
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.
Per WP:RMEC, an RM may not be withdrawn if any editor "has suggested any outcome besides not moving" (emphasis in original). Several editors supported a move in this discussion. Closing the RM and starting a new one to guide consensus is improper. I suggest reverting the close and closing the new discussion.
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. [133]
Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [134][135]
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.
There is a new update for Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we give you an overview of what we will focus on in the next three months, we discuss our presentation at Celtic Knot conference 2024, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Hello, NightWolf1223. This is a bot-delivered message letting you know that Draft:Motto aria, a page you created, has not been edited in at least 5 months. Drafts that have not been edited for six months may be deleted, so if you wish to retain the page, please edit it again or request that it be moved to your userspace.
If the page has already been deleted, you can request it be undeleted so you can continue working on it.
<translate> Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the week leading up to 2024-09-30. Please help Translate. Missed the previous one? See issue #646</translate>
<translate>Discussions</translate>
<translate>* Closed request for adminship: Andrei Stroe - Success! Welcome User:Andrei Stroe as Wikidata's latest Admin.
New requests for permissions/Bot: QichwaBot - Task(s): Creating wikidata lexemes for the Quechua languages.
<translate>Events</translate>
<translate>* Wikidata's 12th birthday is coming up on October 29th. Have a look at the birthday parties and more planned around the world.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group session 1 October, 2024: We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Session on Tuesday, 1 October, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET (Time zone converter). Christa Strickler will be our first Project Series lead with her joint project with the Wikidata Religion & Theology Community of Practice to contribute biographical data to Wikidata from the IRFA database using the Mix’n’Match tool. We are excited to learn more about this project, provide a forum for discussion and shared learning, and lend a hand while building new skills. Event page.</translate>
<translate>Press, articles, blog posts, videos</translate>
<translate>* Papers
A Systematic Review of Wikidata in GLAM Institutions: a Labs Approach - Presents a systematic review of Wikidata use in GLAM institutions within the context of the work of the International GLAM Labs Community (glamlabs.io). The results summarise academic literature on Wikidata projects. By G. Candela et al.
Using Wikidata for Managing Cultural Heritage Information - The present study uses model wikidata elements as a basis and explores its dynamic formation into a cultural heritage information management tool within a museum. By D. Kyriaki-Manessi and S. Vazaiou.
<translate>Tool of the week</translate>
<translate>* Three new Userscripts for Wikidata - User:Lagewi has written 3 scripts to simplify reading references, explore property-value pairs in use for a statement or attaching a full bibliography to the end of the item page.</translate>
<translate>Other Noteworthy Stuff</translate>
<translate>* OpenSactions:Wikidata Persons in Relevant Categories - Using PETScan, generates a list of profiles of politically exposed persons by querying specific categories on Wikidata and extracting the entities.</translate>
objects of occurrence have role (role that objects of this occurrence take on in the context of this occurrence. (For selectional restrictions, use "object class of occurrence" (P12913) instead.))
agents of action have role (role that agents of this action take on in the context of this action. (For selectional restrictions, use "agent class of action" (P12994) instead. ))
agent class of action (class of items that may initiate this action or class of actions (For roles filled by agents of an action, use "agents of action have role" (P12993) instead))
agent of action (particular item that initiates this action or class of actions)
<translate>* New property proposals to review:</translate>
<translate>** General datatypes: </translate>
Larval host plant (Larval host plant - used only for insects - subclass of P1034)
has reading (phonetic reading or pronunciation of the kanji)
chemical formula (Description of chemical compound giving element symbols and counts)
mode of reproduction (ways for living organisms to propagate or produce their offsprings)
health points (health or armor points of this video game, board game or role-playing game character)
damage (damage value of this video game weapon, ability or character)
magazine capacity (In (real or fictional) devices like a firearm, weapon, or engineered thing, this is the default capacity or size of a devices' magazine, clip, or other container typically used to hold ammunition, bolts, cartridges, tools, etc. which pushes those items as needed usually through a spring-based mechanism into a receiver for further use by the device)
male mean age (male mean age in a given place; qualifier of {{P|4442}})
female mean age (female mean age in a given place; qualifier of {{P|4442}})
Western Australian Biographical Index (Card ID from the Western Australian Biographical Index, a set of handwritten index cards compiled in the 1970s.)
leased to (person or organisation that holds or was granted a lease on the subject)
WPBSA com player ID (Identifier for an athlete on the main website of WPBSA)
JLPT level (difficulty of word by the level of JLPT)
Search: The haswbstatement search magic word has been improved by the Search Platform Team. Previously it was limited in which Properties were indexed for it. Going forward haswbstatement:P123 will work for all Properties, regardless of their datatype. This will allow you to filter search results for Items that have a statement with a specific Property. (Searching for a specific complete statement with haswbstatement:P123=xxx will still only work for specific datatypes.) For this to work all Items have to be reindexed and this will take up to 1 month.
Design system migration: We have migrated the Special:NewLexeme page from Wikit to Codex and are working on finishing the migration for the Query Builder.
EntitySchemas: We finished the investigation about how to support search for EntitySchemas by label or alias when linking to an EntitySchema in a statement. (phab:T362005)
Wikibase REST API: We worked on integrating language fallbacks into the API (phab:T371605)
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. [136]
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. [137]
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. [138]
Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
<translate> Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the week leading up to 2024-10-07. Please help Translate. Missed the previous one? See issue #647</translate>
Wikidata Day 2024 at the Pratt Institute Manhattan Campus, New York - To celebrate Wikidata's 12th Birthday, a mini-conference with beginner workshops, lightning talks and keynote speeches will be held. October 26, 11am - 5pm EDT (UTC-4). More info, registration and full address on this Wikipedia event page.
The Wikidata Days 2024 in Bologna, Italy will take place on November 8th and 9th. Its program revolves around Wikidata for libraries and academia, and features a wide range of Wikidata-enthusiastic librarians and researchers from Italy. Registration is open until October 31st.
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 16th October 2024 at 18:00 CEST 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.
Scholia hackathon on Oct 18-20, aimed at addressing changes related to the Wikidata graph split
Intangible Cultural Heritage on Wikidata - Hosted by Wikimedia Community Malta (WCM), November 8, 2024 18:00 - 19:00 CEST, Malta Fairs and Conference Centre (MFCC) in Ta’ Qali, Malta
<translate>Press, articles, blog posts, videos</translate>
<translate>* Blogs
Wikidata is a giant crosswalk file dbreunig.com describes how with a little DuckDB and Ruby and data from Wikidata, you can produce a cross-walk file of geographic entities.
(fr) wikidata MultiSearch - search for a list of elements in Wikidata. A GPLv3 licenced tool built by Philippe Gambette allows you to search for a list of words in Wikidata and retrieve some associated Wikidata properties.
<translate>Other Noteworthy Stuff</translate>
Are you building applications or services with Wikidata's data? We'd love to hear from you to help us figure out the future of accessing Wikidata's data.
Wikidata: Event Organizers - If you are organizing or thinking about planning a Wikidata event, this new page listing the additional User rights the user-role 'event organizer' has will be a valuable resource. Including the process for applying for permission rights.
objects of occurrence have role (role that objects of this occurrence take on in the context of this occurrence. (For selectional restrictions, use "object class of occurrence" (P12913) instead.))
agents of action have role (role that agents of this action take on in the context of this action. (For selectional restrictions, use "agent class of action" (P12994) instead. ))
agent class of action (class of items that may initiate this action or class of actions (For roles filled by agents of an action, use "agents of action have role" (P12993) instead))
agent of action (particular item that initiates this action or class of actions)
characteristic of ((qualifier only) statement value is a characteristic, quality, property, or state of this qualifier value)
Lingnan University Library: Wikidata Pilot Project - Creating and improving entries for Lingnan University academic staff, as well as generating entries for the Library's digital collections and Lingnan theses and dissertations.
French Literary Prizes - Aims to coordinate the development of a database on French literary prizes (list of prizes, jury members, list of winners)
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. [139]
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. [140]
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. [141]
Customized copyright footer messages on all wikis will be updated. The new versions will use wikitext markup instead of requiring editing raw HTML. [142]
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.
The process will have a one week call for candidates phase, a one week pause to set up SecurePoll, a three-day period of public discussion, followed by 7 days of no public discussion and a private vote using SecurePoll.
The outcomes of this process are identical to making requests for adminship. There is no official difference between an administrator appointed through RFA or administrator elections.
Ask any questions about the process at the talk page. A separate user talk message will be sent to official candidates with additional information about the process.
To avoid sending too many messages, this will be the last mass message sent about administrator elections. If you are interested in the process, please make sure to watchlist the appropriate pages. A watchlist notice will be added when the discussion phase opens, and again when the voting phase opens.
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There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we present a preview of our planned support for Wikidata lexemes in Wikifunctions, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group session 15 October, 2024: We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Session on Tuesday, 15 October, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 16:00 UTC / 6pm CEST (Time zone converter). https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1729008000 Christa Strickler will be our first Project Series lead with her joint project with the Wikidata Religion & Theology Community of Practice to contribute biographical data to Wikidata from the IRFA database https://irfa.paris/en/en-learn-about-a-missionary/ using the Mix’n’Match tool. We are excited to learn more about this project, provide a forum for discussion and shared learning, and lend a hand while building new skills. Event page: [148]
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 16th October 2024 at 18:00 CEST 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.
Wikidata:Twelfth Birthday: We already have 30 events scheduled on the list 😍. As a reminder, when your event is ready, don't forget to:
create a wikipage with more information about the event, participants list, etc.
Small data, slow data − a SNAIL approach to Wikidata: discusses the value of small, carefully curated datasets in the era of big data. It emphasizes the importance of taking a methodical, "snail-paced" approach to data collection and analysis, which can lead to more meaningful and accurate insights. The blogpost also highlights how this approach can complement the broader trends of big data, ensuring that detailed, high-quality data is not overlooked.
Papers
"WoolNet: Finding and Visualising Paths in Knowledge Graphs" given two or more entities requested by a user, the system finds and visualises paths that connect these entities, forming a topical subgraph of Wikidata (Torres Gutiérrez and Hogan)
Dynamic Mapping using Collaborative Knowledge Graphs: Real-Time SKOS Mapping from Wikidata: This presentation introduces a workflow using SPARQL queries to dynamically map live Wikidata data to SKOS concepts, featuring a Python tool that converts CSV outputs into RDF triples for integration into linked data environments and knowledge graphs, emphasizing real-time data retrieval and interoperability.
Could making Wikidata 'human' readable lead to better AI?: Lydia Pintscher (WMDE), Portfolio Lead Product Manager at Wikidata Deutschland, discussed a new project aimed at making Wikidata more 'human' readable for Large Language Models (LLMs), which could improve AI reliability by giving these models access to high-quality, human-curated data from Wikidata.
Elemwala (এলেমওয়ালা) (https://elemwala.toolforge.org): is a proof-of-concept interface that allows you to input abstract content and get natural language text in a given output language. There may well be errors with particular inputs, and the text may not be quite as natural as you might expect, but that's where your improvements to your language's lexemes, other Wikidata items, and the tool's sourcecode come in!
mlscores: Tool for calculating multilinguality score of Wikidata items (including properties). E.g. for Wikidata (Q2013), the scores are - en: 99.66%, fr: 89.49%, es: 84.07%, pt: 68.47%. For instance of (P31), the scores are - en: 99.86%, fr: 87.12%, es: 80.83%, pt: 61.37%.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Launch of WikiProject Deprecate P642: The goal of this project is to prepare for deprecation, and eventual removal, of the property of (P642). Currently, of (P642) is labeled as "being deprecated", meaning its use is still allowed, but discouraged. From a peak of around 900,000 uses, the property now has around 700,000 uses (see status here). Our goal is to reduce that as much as possible in a systematic way, while ensuring that appropriate properties exist to replace all valid uses of of (P642). The latter is key to officially deprecating the property. Before removing the property, we want to get as close to zero uses as possible.
bais (Indicates a specific form of bias present in a media source, organization, or document, such as false balance, slant, or omission, affecting the representation of information.)
TDK lexeme ID (Dictionary created by the [[Q1569712|Turkish Language Association]])
Atatürk Ansiklopedisi ID (Online Turkish encyclopedia created by [[Q6062914]] and [[Q19610584]])
Eurotopics ID (A database containing data on European media.)
Stated in unreliable source (used in the references field to refer to the database that is considered a unreliable source in which the claim is made)
PatternsKilkenny - Patterns were devotional days on the day of the patron saint of a parish or area or at least an annually occurring day when the people of the locality held their personal devotions in a certain pattern (hence the name), i.e. "doing the rounds" around trees or other landmarks at the sacred site. This project tries to collate the records and memories of these patterns for County Kilkenny.
Deprecate P642 - The goal of this project is to prepare for deprecation, and eventual removal, of the property of (P642).
AIDS Walks - This project aims to collaborate with Wiki editors across the globe to highlight AIDS Walks anywhere in the world.
Temples in Roman Britain - The aim of the Wikiproject Temples in Roman Britain is to record and catalog sacred spaces in the Roman province Britannia between 43 to 409 CE. By sacred spaces, we include (for the moment) only built structures such as temples, sanctuaries and shrines.
Nihongo - The goal of this project is to capture the Japanese Language Japanese (Q5287) in its entirety on Wikidata. We aim to give advice and establish standards for representing Japanese words as lexemes.
EntitySchemas: We are continuing the work on making it possible to find an EntitySchema by its label or aliases when linking to an EntitySchema in a statement (phab:T375641)
Design system: We are continuing the work on migrating the Query Builder from Wikit to Codex
REST API: We finished the work on language fallback support in the REST API (phab:T371605)
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. [149][150]
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. [151]
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. [152]
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. [154]
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.
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we present some thoughts by User:Mahir256 about how abstract content could look like in the future, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
There is a substantial backlog of unsourced articles on Wikipedia, and we need your help! The purpose of this drive is to add sources to these unsourced articles and make a meaningful impact.
Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles cited.
Remember to tag your edit summary with #NOV24, both to advertise the event and tally the points later using Hashtag Summary Search.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the week leading up to 2024-10-21. Missed the previous one? See issue #649
Discussions
Open request for adminship: Addshore (RfP scheduled to end after 23 October 2024 18:03 UTC)
New requests for permissions/Bot:
CarbonBot - (1) Add default mul labels to given and family names when the item has an existing default label with a mul language (2) Remove duplicated aliases matching the items mul label, when the item has a native label in with a mul language. As mul has not been fully adopted, a limited of aliases would be modified each day to ensure existing workflows are not disrupted. It is expected that these tasks will apply to roughly 800,000 given and family names.
So9qBot 10 - Add first line (P1922) with the first line of the paper to all scientific papers which has a full text link or where the abstract is available.
Upcoming: We are getting ready for Wikidata:Twelfth Birthday on the 29th October. We already have 30 events scheduled on the list 😍. As a reminder, when your event is ready, don't forget to (1) create a wikipage with more information about the event, participants list, etc. (2) add your event to the global calendar and the map, following the instructions here: Wikidata:Twelfth Birthday/Run an event/Schedule
Why is Wikidata important for Wikipedia in Spanish (in Spanish) - "In this workshop we will learn about the value that Wikidata can bring us when working on eswiki articles. We will learn how knowledge is shared between platforms, and how it can save a lot of work for both the Spanish Wikipedia community and other people working on an article on another Wikipedia."
Empowering Lexicographical Data Contributions on Wikidata with Lexica - "In this session, participants will explore the fascinating world of lexicographical data on Wikidata and learn how to contribute meaningfully using Lexica, a tool designed for easy micro-edits to Lexemes from mobile devices. We will start with a brief introduction to lexicographical data and importance of linking Lexemes to Items. Next, we’ll dive into Lexica, showcasing its key features and providing a step-by-step guide on linking Lexemes to Items on Wikidata. This hands-on workshop is open to both experienced contributors and newcomers, empowering everyone with the knowledge and skills to make impactful contributions to Wikidata’s lexicographical data. By the end of the session, participants will be ready to use Lexica to enrich language data on Wikidata."
Hidden Histories: Illuminating LGBTQ+ archives at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada using Wikidata - "The University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives has been strategically working to increase the discoverability, visibility, and access to collections related to marginalized communities in Southern Nevada. In the first stage of this grant-funded Wiki project, over 60 archival collections and 80 oral histories, including related people, businesses, and events associated with the Las Vegas LGBTQ+ community, have been contributed to Wikidata. In this presentation, the author continues this work by introducing UNLV's Special Collections Wiki project, "LGBTQ Hidden Histories." The presentation will discuss ongoing efforts to create, expand, and enrich linked data about the Nevada LGBTQ+ community, address challenges faced during entity extraction using archival materials, and conclude with a linked data visualization exercise using Wikiframe-VG (Wikiframe Visual Graph)."
User:Ainali/PreViewStats.js - is a Userscript that gives a quick glance at the pageviews in the header (and links to the full views). If you install it on your global.js on meta, it works on all projects).
Wikidata:ProVe - (Automated PROvenance VErification of Knowledge Graphs against Textual Sources) - is a tool for helping editors improve the references of Wikidata Items.
Wikibase Suite: Patch releases as the first round of patch releases for all Wikibase Suite products, including all WBS Images as well as WBS Deploy
The CampaignEvents extension is now live on Wikidata! This means that if you are an event organizer, you can use several new tools to help manage your events more easily. By getting the Event Organizer right, you can:
Use simple on-wiki registration for your events.
Integrate Outreach Dashboard with your event registration page. (see demo)
Communicate more easily with your registered participants. (see demo)
Find potential participants for your next events. (see demo), and much more!
With this extension, you can also see all global events (past, present, and future) on the Special:AllEvents page, but only events using the event registration feature will appear there. If you are an organizer and want to use these new tools, follow the instructions on the Wikidata:Event_Organizers page to request the Event Organizer right.
bais (Indicates a specific form of bias present in a media source, organization, or document, such as false balance, slant, or omission, affecting the representation of information.)
TDK lexeme ID (Dictionary created by the [[Q1569712|Turkish Language Association]])
Atatürk Ansiklopedisi ID (Online Turkish encyclopedia created by [[Q6062914]] and [[Q19610584]])
Eurotopics ID (A database containing data on European media.)
Stated in unreliable source (used in the references field to refer to the database that is considered a unreliable source in which the claim is made)
Google Plus code (Identifier for a location as seen on Google Maps)
Newest WikiProjects: Dominio Público en América Latina - The Public Domain in Latin America Wikiproject aims to improve the data available in Wikidata on authors and works of authorship in Latin America, with emphasis on copyright status to identify whether or not authors and their works are in the public domain.
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 "21 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. [160][161]
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. [163]
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.
On October 25, we will start the voting phase. The candidate subpages will close again to public questions and discussion, and everyone will have a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote tallies cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's tally during the election. The suffrage requirements are different from those at RFA.
Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which will last for an indeterminate amount of time, perhaps a week or two. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a candidate must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose). As this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
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We will add a new module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version on beta wikis and we will soon start an A/B test on our pilot wikis. This module will only display on the Newcomer Homepage if communities decide to utilize it, so learn how to configure the Community Updates module, or share your thoughts on the project's talk page.
One design concept aimed to increase constructive activation
After showcasing early design ideas at Wikimania, we conducted user testing of design prototypes. We now aim to engage communities in further discussions and plan to run a targeted experiment, presenting a structured task within the reading view to logged-in new account holders with zero edits.
This Community Configuration extension was developed to help communities customize wiki features to meet their unique needs. The Growth team is now helping other Wikimedia Foundation teams make their products configurable:
The Moderation Tools team now provides Community Configuration for Automoderator. (T365046)
Certain Babel extension settings will be configurable soon. (T328171)
As part of the Growth team annual plan, we will continue to investigate ways to increase constructive activation on mobile, while also working with Data Products to move forward A/B testing functionality via the Metrics Platform.
Growth team members presented Community Configuration: Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together at Wikimania (slides). The session recording is available to watch on YouTube. This session provided an update on the Community Configuration project and introduced details about the upcoming features that communities will soon be able to configure. Representatives from the Moderator Tools, Editing, Web, and Campaigns teams shared their plans for utilizing Community Configuration in the future. Following these presentations, the WMF Growth team's Benoît Evellin and Martin Urbanec answered audience questions.
Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work.
If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.
I wrote my first biography about three months ago and it is still stuck someplace. Can you help me figure out what's happening with it so I can move it along?
In the voting phase, the candidate subpages will close to public questions and discussion, and everyone who qualifies for a vote will have a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote tallies cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's tally during the election. The suffrage requirements are different from those at RFA.
Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which will last for an indeterminate amount of time, perhaps a week or two. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a candidate must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose). As this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we discuss our goal of building up phrases from Lexemes using linguistic agreement, i.e. accordance to number and gender when constructing a phrase.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Wikidata's 12th Birthday is almost here! Let’s celebrate together and make it unforgettable! 🎂 Join in for events happening across the globe in October & November -- there's something for everyone! Here’s how you can be part of the fun.
Find a local event and connect with fellow Wikidata enthusiasts!
Give a birthday gift to the community -- whether it's a cool new tool or something fun!
Join the special Wikidata Query-party tomorrow and win some branded Wikidata socks! 🎉
The LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group is taking a break from our new project series format this coming Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 16:00 UTC / 6pm CEST (Time zone converter) to celebrate Hallowe'en! We'll be celebrating Spooky Season with a WitchyData Working Hour! Following on Christa Strickler's recent project series, we will continue building proficiency with the Mix'n'match tool, but with a ghoulish twist. Join the fall fun by updating your Zoom background or even coming in costume. BYOC (bring your own candy). Event page: Wikidata:WikiProject LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group/Wikidata Working Hours/2024-October-29 Wikidata Working Hour
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
Blogs: Wikidata celebrates 12. Birthday – These are the coolest queries from 112 million entries (in German) - "Wikidata, the world's largest free knowledge base, celebrates the 12th of October. Birthday. The open data graph for structured knowledge collects facts about numerous terms (items). Meanwhile, Wikidata includes an impressive 112 million items – and many more facts! On the occasion of Wikidata's birthday, we put the collected knowledge to the test and present the most exciting 12 queries that were created from it."
Lexica – A mobile-friendly tool that simplifies micro contributions to lexicographical data on Wikidata, making various editing tasks accessible and intuitive for contributors of all experience levels. This tool is developed by the WMDE Wikidata Software Collaboration team in Indonesia. Try Lexica through this link: https://lexica-tool.toolforge.org/
Other Noteworthy Stuff
The Global Open Initiative Foundation is building an open-source web app for Supreme Court cases in Ghana. We are looking for volunteers in the following roles: Frontend Developers, Backend Developers, Wikidata/SPARQL Experts, UI/UX Designers, Quality Assurance (QA) Testers, and Legal Professionals. Join us by sendind your resume and a brief description of your expertise to globalopeninitiativegmail.com
most populous settlement (city, town, or other settlement with the largest population in this area (country, state, county, continent, etc.))
Eurotopics ID (A database containing data on European media.)
rubrique d'une installation classée pour la protection de l'environnement (Industrial or agricultural operations generating risks to health and the environment are regulated in France. The various risks are organized into headings in the nomenclature of installations classified for environmental protection. The dangers, pollution and nuisances of each operation are listed by public authorities.)
prototypical syntactic role of argument (qualifier for {{P|9971}} indicating the most basic/fundamental syntactic position of that argument for that verb sense (that is, when the argument structure is not subject to any alternations))
operating cost (ongoing recurring cost for operating or using an object)
effective life of asset (duration of time which an object/asset is expected to be used before needing to be disposed of or replaced)
Toki Pona headnoun (Toki Pona common noun for which the name serves as a proper modifier)
Vector 2022: We are continuing to make Wikidata Items pages work in dark-mode (phab:T369385)
EntitySchemas: We are continuing to work on making it possible to search for an EntitySchema by its label or alias when making a statement linking to an EntitySchema
Wikibase REST API:
We discussed what will constitute breaking changes for the API (phab:T357775)
We are working on the endpoint for creating Properties (phab:T342992)
Hello, NightWolf1223. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or draft page you started, "Motto aria".
In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material, the draft has been deleted. When you plan on working on it further and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on 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.
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. [164]
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. [165]
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. [166]
Welcome, welcome, welcome NightWolf1223! I'm glad that you are joining the November 2024 drive! Please, have a cup of WikiTea, and go cite some articles.
The 2024 WikiCup has come to an end, with the final round being a very tight race. Our new champion is AirshipJungleman29 (submissions), who scored 2,283 points mainly through 3 high-multiplier FAs and 3 GAs on military history topics. By a 1% margin, Airship beat out last year's champion, BeanieFan11 (submissions), who scored second with 2,264 points, mainly from an impressive 58 GAs about athletes. In third place, Generalissima (submissions) scored 1,528 points, primarily from two FAs on U.S. Librarians of Congress and 20 GAs about various historical topics. Our other finalists are: Sammi Brie (submissions) with 879 points, Hey man im josh (submissions) with 533 points, BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 432 points, Arconning (submissions) with 244 points, and AryKun (submissions) with 15 points. Congratulations to our finalists and all who participated!
The final round was very productive, and contestants had 7 FAs, 9 FLs, 94 GAs, 73 FAC reviews, and 79 GAN reviews and peer reviews. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!
All those who reached the final will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or in the event of a tie, to the overall leader in this field.
Generalissima (submissions) wins the featured article prize for 3 FAs in round 4, and 7 FAs overall.
Muboshgu (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 15 In the news articles in round 1, and 36 overall.
Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2025 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement!
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we discuss how the team is working hard to rewrite Wikifunctions' backend, to overcome some of the limits we encountered with the current language.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Mass deletions done with the Nuke tool now have the 'Nuke' tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. T366068
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the week leading up to 2024-11-04. Missed the previous one? See issue #651
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot: Andrebot 2 - Task(s): Will check Romanian local election information on MongoDB against current relevant Items, where differences occur, will create new Items, link them and update associated information.
Closed request for permissions/Bot: CarbonBot - Withdrawn by proposer.
Rename Peakfinder ID (P3770) - The Peakfinder website content moved to cdnrockiesdatabases.ca, the associated Property (P3770) has been relabeled to crdb peak ID.
Mois de l'histoire LGBTQ+ (LGBTQ+ History month): A month-long edit-a-thon from November 1 to 30 for documenting, improving and translating articles on LGBTQ+ topics on Wikidata and French Wikimedia projects.
Check out the call for papers for the "Wikidata and Research" Conference! It will be held at the University of Florence in Italy on June 5-6, 2025. You can submit your papers by December 9, 2024: Wikidata and research/Call
Using AI to add to Wikidata - Magnus Manske discusses the challenge of integrating Wikimedia Commons artworks into Wikidata.
Papers
Disjointness Violations in Wikidata Finds 51 pairs of classes on Wikidata that should be disjoint (e.g. "natural object" vs. "artificial object") but aren't, with over 10 million violations, caused by a small number of "culprits" (source)
Refining Wikidata Taxonomy using Large Language Models (source)
Women Do News at Wikidata Day - This lightning talk from journalist Molly Stark Dean introduces the Women Do News project to increase visibility of women journalists and expand and enrich Wikipedia articles about them. The project could greatly benefit from Wikidata items being created and/or expanded.
Wikidata One Click Info is a multilingual extension that enables you to search for any item or word that you come across while reading or browsing online. It's an extension that makes Wikidata's data easy to retrieve and access. Install on Chrome browser or Firefox browser. A short video about the usage of the extension.
Are you able to learn languages with Wikidata content? In Ordia there is the "Guess Image from Pronunciation" game you can use to learn a few words from various languages.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
A small project on benchmarking query engine performance on useful Wikidata queries is asking for queries from the Wikidata user community to potentially be part of the benchmark. If you are a user of any Wikidata SPARQL service please send queries that you find useful to Peter F. Patel-Schneider. Say what you used the query for and whether you would like to be noted as the source of the query. Queries that take considerable time or time out are especially welcome, particularly if the query caused you to switch from the official Wikidata Query Service to some other service. More information about the project is available in Wikidata:Scaling_Wikidata/Benchmarking.
WPBSA com player ID (Identifier for an athlete on the main website of WPBSA)
JLPT level (difficulty of word by the level of JLPT)
beer style (classification of a beer based on its style)
has forks (Notable software forks of this software)
most populous settlement (city, town, or other settlement with the largest population in this area (country, state, county, continent, etc.))
Eurotopics ID (A database containing data on European media.)
rubrique d'une installation classée pour la protection de l'environnement (Industrial or agricultural operations generating risks to health and the environment are regulated in France. The various risks are organized into headings in the nomenclature of installations classified for environmental protection. The dangers, pollution and nuisances of each operation are listed by public authorities.)
prototypical syntactic role of argument (qualifier for {{P|9971}} indicating the most basic/fundamental syntactic position of that argument for that verb sense (that is, when the argument structure is not subject to any alternations))
operating cost (ongoing recurring cost for operating or using an object)
effective life of asset (duration of time which an object/asset is expected to be used before needing to be disposed of or replaced)
Toki Pona headnoun (Toki Pona common noun for which the name serves as a proper modifier)
Provides data for property (the dataset associated with this external id usually contains data applicable to this other wikidata property)
TOPO id (unique code, defined by the {{Q|3029562}}, to identify topographical features of France (regions, departments, citys, hamlet, thoroughfares ...) and elsewhere (Countries, Foreign Cities, ...))
ISCC (International Standard Content Code. Hash code that identifies a media object based on fuzzy hashing.)
romantic orientation (pattern of romantic attraction of this person or fictional character)
Newest WikiProjects: AveburyPapers - The Avebury Papers is a collaborative UKRI-funded research project between University of York; University of Bristol; the National Trust; English Heritage; and Historic England. As part of this project, the team are doing several tasks which are generating data, some of which will be shared via Wikidata, in an effort to link parts of the Avebury collection with other collections.
Mobile statement editing: We are making progress on the technical investigation for how to make it easier to edit statements on mobile. A lot more work to be done after that though.
We fixed the sidebar link to the main page in many languages (phab:T184386)
Codex: We are continuing with the migration of the Query Builder to Codex, the new design system. The migration of Special:NewLexeme is almost finished.
Query Service: We have updated the list of languages for the language selector in the UI (phab:T358572)
Vector 2022: We are continuing to adress issues of the Item UI in dark mode (phab:T369385)
Wikibase REST API:
We are moving from v0 to v1.
We have finished the work on the new endpoint for creating Properties.
Action API: We’re improving the way the wbformatvalue API handles invalid options (phab:T323778)
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. [167]
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. [168]
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. [169]
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.
hello nightwolf! this is HarryBarks, but somehow the wikiuser tab shows Harry Barls. Was that my typo? or is the mistake elsewhere, and in any case, how can i fix it. this is my first query to you. --HarryBarks (talk) 19:35, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we talk about several presentation in and around the topics of languages and our work, we discuss the current refactoring of our functions catalogue and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Hello all. A short edition to get the newsletter going again. As it says at the bottom, if you have thoughts on how the newsletter could be useful/interesting to you, please post at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Newsletter:
Reminder that you can follow medicine-related deletion discussions, GA nominations, merge requests and more by watchlisting Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Article_alerts. Many of these discussions would benefit from more attention.
Newsletter ideas, comments, and criticisms welcome here.
You are receiving this because you added your name to the WikiProject Medicine mailing list. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.
Black Teacher Archive Wikidata Edit-a-thon - 19 November 2024, 9am - 12pm, Address: Gutman Library, 6 Appian Way, Cambridge, MA. Improve information about individual educators and their relationships with Colored Teachers Associations, HBCUs, the Divine Nine, religious institutions, and political organizations like the NAACP and Urban League.
Wikidata in dance workshop - 3 December 2024, 1pm EST (UTC+5). A step-by-step workshop for members of the Canadian Dance Assembly. A free, expert-led series on how open data can benefit dance companies and artists.
Swiss server helps optimise Wikidata in the field of medicine - Wikimedia CH supporting Houcemeddine Turki in leveraging AI to transform Wikidata into a comprehensive, reliable biomedical resource, to bridge healthcare information gaps, especially in the Global South.
(es) OpenRefine - Wikidata Days 2024 - Conducted by Omar Vega from Wikimedia Peru, learn how to create a project with a list, clean and collate data, create a Wikidata schema and upload using QuickStatements.
Wikidata Edits Heatmap: Real-time map that visualizes recent changes in Wikidata with geospatial markers showing the location of updated Items.
Western world versus the rest of the world: a tool computing the distribution of mentioned entities in Wikipedia articles between Western world and the rest of the world.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Starting ca. today (11 November 2024), tools or bots which use the wiki replicas (such as Quarry) will observe outdated data for up to 8-10 days, as a result of necessary database maintenance (T367856). Tools or bots which use the APIs will not be affected.
Job vacancy Product Manager: Wikibase Suite: Wikibase Suite allows institutions to create and host their own linked knowledge base with maximum customizability, this role will be responsible for the vision and strategy of this exciting product!
WPBSA com player ID (Identifier for an athlete on the main website of WPBSA)
JLPT level (difficulty of word by the level of JLPT)
beer style (classification of a beer based on its style)
has forks (Notable software forks of this software)
most populous settlement (city, town, or other settlement with the largest population in this area (country, state, county, continent, etc.))
rubrique d'une installation classée pour la protection de l'environnement (Industrial or agricultural operations generating risks to health and the environment are regulated in France. The various risks are organized into headings in the nomenclature of installations classified for environmental protection. The dangers, pollution and nuisances of each operation are listed by public authorities.)
prototypical syntactic role of argument (qualifier for {{P|9971}} indicating the most basic/fundamental syntactic position of that argument for that verb sense (that is, when the argument structure is not subject to any alternations))
operating cost (ongoing recurring cost for operating or using an object)
effective life of asset (duration of time which an object/asset is expected to be used before needing to be disposed of or replaced)
Toki Pona headnoun (Toki Pona common noun for which the name serves as a proper modifier)
Provides data for property (the dataset associated with this external id usually contains data applicable to this other wikidata property)
TOPO id (unique code, defined by the {{Q|3029562}}, to identify topographical features of France (regions, departments, citys, hamlet, thoroughfares ...) and elsewhere (Countries, Foreign Cities, ...))
ISCC (International Standard Content Code. Hash code that identifies a media object based on fuzzy hashing.)
romantic orientation (pattern of romantic attraction of this person or fictional character)
Railway station linear reference (line & milestone) (Stations are located on one or more railway routes, each at a given milestone. This makes it possible to situate them in the topology of a railway infrastructure.
A linear reference system can be used to position any object on this topology. In this case, we would add one or more route (or line) number + milestone data pairs.)
Data analysis method (methods used in the main item for inspecting, cleansing, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of discovering useful information)
Use data collection instrument (Tool used by/in the subject to facilitate the collection of qualitative or quantitative data)
French Literary Prizes - Aims to coordinate the development of a database on French literary prizes (prize list, jury members, list of winners). In 2008, Bertrand Labes listed more than 1,500 French-speaking literary prizes. To date, Wikidata has 709, including 24 including the list of winners and awarded works.
Lua: We changed the Wikibase function getAllStatements logic to behave as getBestStatements. When invoked, it was returning mutable direct-values, now it will return a copy of those values (which are immutable). (phab:T270851)
We've finished the work on the create Property endpoint so it is now possible to create Properties via the REST API.
Configuration: We removed 'mainpage' from $wgForceUIMsgAsContentMsg for Wikidata as requested so translations of the main page are available (phab:T184386)
mul language code: We moved it to the top of the termbox so labels and aliases in mul are visible first (phab:T371802)
Revision table size: We are investigating the current state of the revision table of Wikidata's database and what the next steps should be to address its issues.
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. [170]
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. [172]
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. [173]
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.
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we present you our newest Type, rational numbers, as well as the new renderer and parser for natural numbers, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Hello! Voting in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 2 December 2024. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
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
Users of Wikimedia sites will now be warned when they create a redirect to a page that doesn't exist. This will reduce the number of broken redirects to red links in our projects. [174]
View all 42 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pywikibot, which automates work on MediaWiki sites, was upgraded to 9.5.0 on Toolforge. [175]
Updates for technical contributors
On wikis that use the FlaggedRevs extension, pages created or moved by users with the appropriate permissions are marked as flagged automatically. This feature has not been working recently, and changes fixing it should be deployed this week. Thanks to Daniel and Wargo for working on this. [176][177]
In depth
There is a new Diff post about Temporary Accounts, available in more than 15 languages. Read it to learn about what Temporary Accounts are, their impact on different groups of users, and the plan to introduce the change on all wikis.
Meetings and events
Technical volunteers can now register for the 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. Application for travel and accommodation scholarships is open from November 12 to December 10 2024. The registration for the event will close in mid-April 2025. The Wikimedia Hackathon is an annual gathering that unites the global technical community to collaborate on existing projects and explore new ideas.
Join the Wikimedia Commons community calls this week to help prioritize support for Commons which will be planned for 2025–2026. The theme will be how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons. This is an opportunity for volunteers who work on different things to come together and talk about what matters for the future of the project. The calls will take place November 21, 2024, 8:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC.
A Language community meeting will take place November 29, 16:00 UTC to discuss updates and technical problem-solving.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group session (Attn: Please fill out Pre-Participation Survey!) 19 November, 2024: We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Session on Tuesday, 19 November, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET (Time zone converter) Wikimedian Mahir Morshed is leading a series of four sessions focused on lexicographical data in Wikidata. We are looking forward to learning more about these Wikibase entities! If you anticipate attending the workshop sessions, please fill out a brief survey linked from our LD4-WDAG Lexicographical Data Series Etherpad to help us prepare relevant materials for you. You only need to fill it out once, no matter how many sessions you plan to attend. Sessions will be held on November 5, November 19, December 3, and December 17, 2024 at our regular time of 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET. Visit the event LD4 Affinity Group WikiPoject page
Wikimedia Hackathon 2025 Registration is open until mid-April 2025 (unless event reahes capacity earlier). Hackathon takes place in Istanbul May 2 - 5, 2025.
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
Blogs
GLAM October Newsletter
(Spanish + En) Colombia Report - exploring uses of Wikidata in the Colombian context.
Population and Exploration of Conference Data in Wikidata using LLMs - to automate addition of scholarly data. By extracting metadata from unstructured sources and adding over 6,000 entities, it demonstrates a scalable method to enhance Wikidata as a scholarly resource. By Mihindukulasooriya et al., 2024.
DBLP to Wikidata: Populating Scholarly Articles in Wikidata Presents a tool and method for adding scholarly articles and related entities, like co-authors and conference proceedings, to Wikidata using DBLP data, promoting the enhancement of Wikidata’s scholarly coverage. By Nandana Mihindukulasooriya.
DBLP to Wikidata - This tool is for adding scholarly articles to Wikidata utilizing data from DBLP. It also provides article authors with a tool to enhance Wikidata with associated entities, such as missing co-authors or conference proceeding entities. Demo video & Github repo
WPBSA com player ID (Identifier for an athlete on the main website of WPBSA)
JLPT level (difficulty of word by the level of JLPT)
beer style (classification of a beer based on its style)
has forks (Notable software forks of this software)
most populous settlement (city, town, or other settlement with the largest population in this area (country, state, county, continent, etc.))
rubrique d'une installation classée pour la protection de l'environnement (Industrial or agricultural operations generating risks to health and the environment are regulated in France. The various risks are organized into headings in the nomenclature of installations classified for environmental protection. The dangers, pollution and nuisances of each operation are listed by public authorities.)
prototypical syntactic role of argument (qualifier for {{P|9971}} indicating the most basic/fundamental syntactic position of that argument for that verb sense (that is, when the argument structure is not subject to any alternations))
operating cost (ongoing recurring cost for operating or using an object)
effective life of asset (duration of time which an object/asset is expected to be used before needing to be disposed of or replaced)
Toki Pona headnoun (Toki Pona common noun for which the name serves as a proper modifier)
Provides data for property (the dataset associated with this external id usually contains data applicable to this other wikidata property)
ISCC (International Standard Content Code. Hash code that identifies a media object based on fuzzy hashing.)
romantic orientation (pattern of romantic attraction of this person or fictional character)
Railway station linear reference (line & milestone) (Stations are located on one or more railway routes, each at a given milestone. This makes it possible to situate them in the topology of a railway infrastructure.
A linear reference system can be used to position any object on this topology. In this case, we would add one or more route (or line) number + milestone data pairs.)
Data analysis method (methods used in the main item for inspecting, cleansing, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of discovering useful information)
Use data collection instrument (Tool used by/in the subject to facilitate the collection of qualitative or quantitative data)
OAI formatter (formatter to generate ID compatible with {{Q|2430433}} services)
Open Library Collection (Link to Open Library Collection which contain manually and automaticallly collections of editions and works on certain topics)
Wikibase REST API: We are looking into how to do search in the REST API.
Special:NewLexeme: We merged the full migration from the Wikit to the Codex design system.
EntitySchemas: We are polishing the patches to make it possible to search for EntitySchemas by label when linking to an EntitySchema in a new statement.
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. [2]
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). [8][9]
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
Technical news
Arbitration
Miscellaneous
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.
Sammi Brie (submissions) with 642 points, mostly from 11 GAs about radio and television;
voorts (submissions) with 530 points, mostly from two FAs (Well he would, wouldn't he? and Cora Agnes Benneson) and three GAs;
Generalissima (submissions) with 523 points, mostly from 11 GAs about coinage and history;
SounderBruce (submissions) with 497 points, mostly from a FA about the 2020 season of the soccer club Seattle Sounders FC and two GAs;
Tamzin (submissions) with 410 points, mostly from a FA about the drink Capri-Sun and three GAs;
Kusma (submissions) with 330 points, mostly from a FA about the English botanist Anna Blackburne and a GA.
BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 548 points, mostly from a featured article about the snooker player John Pulman, two featured lists, and one good article;.jpg)
Newsletter ideas, comments, and criticisms welcome here.
Bureaucrat changes
Skyshifter (submissions) with 673 points, mostly from 2 featured articles on Worlds (Porter Robinson album) and I'm God, 5 good articles, and 2 did you know nominations;
AryKun (submissions) with 415 points, mostly from 1 featured article on Great cuckoo-dove, with a high number of bonus points from that article.
Hello, NightWolf1223. This is a bot-delivered message letting you know that Draft:LifeVac, a page you created, has not been edited in at least 5 months. Drafts that have not been edited for six months may be deleted, so if you wish to retain the page, please edit it again or request that it be moved to your userspace.
Done: Cheers! Safari ScribeEdits! Talk! 20:00, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
Featured script
Improve a script
Requested scripts
Updated scripts
Newly maintained scripts
New scripts
.svg)
of TV series, seasons, and episodes from vertically adjacent levels.
Arconning (submissions) with 791 points, mostly from 2 featured lists, 8 good articles, 4 did you know nominations, and plenty of reviews;
AirshipJungleman29 (submissions) with 718 points, mostly from a high-multiplier featured article on Genghis Khan and 2 good articles; and
CheckUser changes
gmail.com
AirshipJungleman29 (submissions), who scored 2,283 points mainly through 3 high-multiplier FAs and 3 GAs on military history topics. By a 1% margin, Airship beat out last year's champion, 
BeanieFan11 (submissions), who scored second with 2,264 points, mainly from an impressive 58 GAs about athletes. In third place, 
Generalissima (submissions) scored 1,528 points, primarily from two FAs on U.S. Librarians of Congress and 20 GAs about various historical topics. Our other finalists are: 
Sammi Brie (submissions) with 879 points, 
Hey man im josh (submissions) with 533 points, 
BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 432 points, 
Arconning (submissions) with 244 points, and 
AryKun (submissions) with 15 points. Congratulations to our finalists and all who participated!
Hey man im josh (submissions) wins the featured list prize for 23 FLs overall.
MaranoFan (submissions) wins the featured topic prize for 9 articles in featured topics in round 1.
BeanieFan11 (submissions) wins the good article prize for 58 GAs in round 5, and 70 GAs overall.
Fritzmann (submissions) wins the good topic prize for 6 articles in good topics in round 2.
Muboshgu (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 15 In the news articles in round 1, and 36 overall.
Oversighter changes
