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Wikidata weekly summary #447

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Tool of the week
    • Wikidata Live is a real-time visual dashboard for Wikidata edits; paper, interface (visualizes recent changes to Wikidata in quasi real time).
  • Development
    • Continuing to work on the query builder. It can now have more than one query conditions. One of the next steps is making it possible to query for Item values. You can follow along on the demo system.
    • Finished working on the problem of values of Statements that link to Forms and Senses not having language attributes associated with them in the HTML code (phab:T267023)
    • Fixed language selectors covering other input fields when using keyboard navigation for Special:NewItem and Special:NewLexeme (phab:T266638)
    • Fixed language fallback indicators sometimes still shown for variant fallbacks (phab:T267502)
    • Working on whitespace stripped while typing when editing lexemes (phab:T250550)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Tech News: 2020-52

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News

  • Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 11 January 2021.

Recent changes

  • The {{citation needed}} template shows when a statement in a Wikipedia article needs a source. If you click on it when you edit with the visual editor there is a popup that explains this. Now it can also show the reason and when it was added. [1]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes

  • You can propose and discuss what technical improvements should be done for geographic information. This could be coordinates, maps or other related things.
  • Some wikis use LanguageConverter to switch between writing systems or variants of a language. This can only be done for the entire page. There will be a <langconvert> tag that can convert a piece of text on a page. [2]
  • Oversighters and stewards can hide entries in Special:AbuseLog. They can soon hide multiple entries at once using checkboxes. This works like hiding normal edits. It will happen in early January. [3]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:52, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Discussion on Growth team "add an image" idea

Hello Pigsonthewing! I'm Marshall Miller; I'm the product manager for the WMF's Growth team, which works on features to help retain new editors. Lately, we have been working on this set of ideas called "structured tasks", which break down editing workflows into steps that make sense for newcomers and make sense on mobile devices. We're currently thinking about an idea for a workflow in which newcomers would be recommended images from Commons that might be a good fit for unillustrated Wikipedia articles. One of my colleagues recommended you as someone who has a particularly strong grasp on the usage of images in articles. Since this project is in its beginning phases, we really depend on community members to help us think through the feasibility, opportunities, and pitfalls. If you have time, it would be really helpful to us if you could check out the project page and weigh in on the discussion. Thank you! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:54, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Dog & Bull

Compliments of the season. I just dashed off a quick stub to satisfy an issue I noticed on my watchlist. But I'm puzzled about its map pin behaviour. When I preview the page, I see a blue map pin marking the spot in the infobox mapframe. But after it has been saved, I no longer see the pin. Can you explain or help, please? No rush, of course. Cheers! Andrew🐉(talk) 12:27, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: I remember pubs. The pin is visible for me; maybe a caching issue? Merry Christmas! Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:15, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 December 2020

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:25, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #448

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Events
    • Ongoing: rC3 (remote Chaos Communication Congress). Several Wikidata-related talks and meetups happening on December 27th, 28th and 29th: introduction to Wikidata, Wikidata for datajournalists, Wikidata meetups in German and English, and a Query Service workshop. (see Wikipaka schedule for more details)
  • Other Noteworthy Stuff
    • Project Grants open call for proposals in 2021. Changes in the review process for Project Grants in 2021; the open call for community organizing proposals will be from January 11 to February 10 and the open call for software and research proposals will be from February 15 to March 16.
  • Development

Due to the winter holidays, the development team is taking a break and no deployment is happening for Wikidata at the moment :)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

A New Year With Women in Red!

Women in Red | January 2021, Volume 7, Issue 1, Numbers 182, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188


Online events:


Other ways to participate:

Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 03:02, 29 December 2020 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Hope for 2021

take courage

Thank you for improving article quality in December, and good wishes for a time of transition. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:30, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Have a good new year 2021! Success seems to be under your wings looking at the opera templates ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:25, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Congratulations on the No. 1 hook of 2020!

The 2020 totals are now complete, and your hook for Captain Tom generated more total DYK views (179,256) and more DYK views per hour (14,938) than any other hook during the year. A list of the 25 most viewed hooks of 2020 can be viewed at "Top hooks of 2020". Congratulations on being at the top of the list, and keep up the good work! Cbl62 (talk) 08:49, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Notice of updates to Alex Chinneck page

Hi Andy, Happy New Year. I've resolved to start contributing more to Wikipedia this year and I'm thinking of updating one of the pages started by you (regarding the artist Alex Chinneck), so I thought I'd flag my intention. I'm planning to cover his work from 2016 - 2020 (currently absent) and expand the intro a bit. Cheers. Tim Culverdene (talk) 19:11, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Hello

Hello Andy, have a nice day. --Lyrasx (talk) 15:59, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Hello.

Hello Andy

This has been a very useful training session. --Mojo2021 (talk) 15:59, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #449

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Development
    • Due to the winter holidays, no deployment has happened for Wikidata in the last two weeks.

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Administrators' newsletter – January 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2020).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes). The effectiveness of the discretionary sanctions can be evaluated on the request by any editor after March 1, 2021 (or sooner if for a good reason).
  • Following the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, BDD, Bradv, CaptainEek, L235, Maxim, Primefac.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:08, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

U.S. Tank Corps WWI Insignia.

Dear Mr. Mabbett,

Thank you for observations on the above https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:First-Tank-Corps-Branch-Insignia.png

I note that you disagree with and have reversed my corrections of 2016 and 2018.

I have set out and explained at great length the sources pertaining to these corrections, but in order to obviate an edit war, I shall clarify them still further.

The original problem seems to lie with William K. Emerson in his Encyclopedia of United States Army Insignia and Uniforms (University of Oklahoma Press, 1996, pp 367-8). At the beginning of Chapter 39 he writes:

In December 1917 army regulations described the first insignia for the army's newest combatant arm, the Tank Corps, as "a conventionalized tank, one inch high, with the number of the regiment attached to the bottom." Figure 39-1 is an example of this insignia without the number. No example of the insignia with a number below has ever been seen.

Most people did not readily understand this artistically attractive 1917 design. It showed the front view of a French tank with armor plate and large rivets, with an enclosure for three cannons and two additional cannons sticking out of the sides, all topped by a small turret. This first pattern did not last long. On the last day of February 1918, Colonel Rockenback (sic) requested General Pershing to formally approve the insignia armywide. Pershing approved this new collar device on 19 April 1918 and published the orders in May 1918. For officers it was to be a "wreath surmounted by two dragons supporting a tank, guns pointed to the front. The device is to be one inch in height."

Unfortunately, the problem is that this is not a view of any known French tank.

It seems that "editor" Corneliusseon used this passage as a source when creating the page back in 2009 and thus perpetuated the misapprehension. As is often the case with Wikipedia, the error remained uncorrected for many years.

Why Emerson made this mistake isn't clear. We don't know if he has/had ever seen a French tank. There is a French WWI tank, the Saint-Chamond, that might at first glance, from the front, be mistaken for the Land Cruiser/Alligator http://www.chars-francais.net/2015/index.php/engins-blindes/chars?task=view&id=61 but any serious examination would reveal the difference. Perhaps Mr. Emerson did not have that opportunity. I await a reply from his publisher to see if a) he is still alive and, if so, b) he can throw any light on the subject. I also await a reply from Corneliusseon, but he does't seem to have been active on this file since 2009 and would appear to be permanently banned from Wikipedia. I do not hold much hope of a reply. In late 2017 I asked the Institute of Heraldry, Corneliusseon's source, if they could help, and they replied that they were overworked and underfunded and didn't have the time to do research, but kindly sent me some scans of pages from Emerson's book, which was obviously no help.

In the meantime, we have a familiar Wikipedia conundrum: a reliable reference that is demonstrably wrong. The "French" tank is in fact a tank of which two might or might not have been built, in America, and which certainly never saw combat. It went by a variety of names, but was not French. I suggest that that makes this source flawed and unreliable. Wikipedia isn't here to defend the indefensible, although some "editors" appear to be. The very least we can do is remove the allegation that the tank is French.

I do hope common sense will prevail here. I enclose a source that should suffice: https://landships.activeboard.com/t60775897/us-tank-corps-badgepinbutton-solved/

I should be happy to read your views.

Hengistmate (talk) 22:37, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Please use the file's talk page, on Commons. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:15, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Why don't you just read it? It's FYI. Hengistmate (talk) 17:22, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Category:Heroes of Kosovo has been nominated for listification

Category:Heroes of Kosovo has been nominated for listification. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 17:46, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Template:Infobox member of the Knesset

Template:Infobox member of the Knesset has been nominated for merging with Template:Infobox officeholder. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. --Triggerhippie4 (talk) 15:15, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-02

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • You can choose to be reminded when you have not added an edit summary. This can be done in your preferences. This could conflict with the CAPTCHA. This has now been fixed. [4]
  • You can link to specific log entries. You can get these links for example by clicking the timestamps in the log. Until now, such links to private log entries showed no entry even if you had permission to view private log entries. The links now show the entry. [5]
  • Admins can use the abuse filter tool to automatically prevent bad edits. Three changes happened last week:
    • The filter editing interface now shows syntax errors while you type. This is similar to JavaScript pages. It also shows a warning for regular expressions that match the empty string. New warnings will be added later. [6]
    • Oversighters can now hide multiple filter log entries at once using checkboxes on Special:AbuseLog. This is how the usual revision deletion works. [7]
    • When a filter matches too many actions after it has been changed it is "throttled". The most powerful actions are disabled. This is to avoid many editors getting blocked when an administrator made a mistake. The administrator will now get a notification about this "throttle".
  • Advanced item There is a new tool to build new skins. You can also see existing skins. You can give feedback. [8]
  • Advanced item Bots using the API no longer watch pages automatically based on account preferences. Setting the watchlist to watch will still work. This is to reduce the size of the watchlist data in the database. [9]
  • Advanced item Scribunto's file metadata now includes length. [10]
  • Advanced item CSS and JavaScript code pages now have link anchors to line numbers. You can use wikilinks like w:en:MediaWiki:Common.js#L-50. [11]
  • Recurrent item There was a new version of MediaWiki last week. You can read a detailed log of all 763 changes. Most of them are very small and will not affect you.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 January. It will be on all wikis from 14 January (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:41, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #450

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Tool of the week
    • QueryGraph is a web tool for creating queries in SPARQL from graphs.
  • Development
    • Continued working on the Query Builder. We focused on making it possible to query for Item values and being able to limit the number of Items in the result. We also looked into how to query for quantity values.
    • Changed P920’s data type from string to external identifier (phab:T269205)
    • Finished working on the problem of Items that have the page prop wikibase:statements set to 0 but actually do have statements (phab:T145712)
    • Continued work on the “Publishing” step of the Wikibase release pipeline by building and testing three components of the software suite: Wikibase (phab: T267893), Query Service frontend (phab:T268025), and Query Service backend (phab:T268022)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.


This Month in GLAM: December 2020



Headlines
Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

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