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WikidataIB

Hi, RexxS! I noticed that you've contributed significantly to the WikidataIB module. I was wondering if you'd be willing to help me adjust it a bit for another wiki? – Srdjan m (talk) 12:19, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi, Srdjan m, I'd be happy to help if I can. Please let me know what you want. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 20:12, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Awesome! I'd like to make it work on bs.wiki. The exact copy of the English module is in the sandbox. On bs.wiki, there's just one way of writing BCE / BC – "p. n. e." and there are two date formats – "D. month-name YYYY." (default) and "D. M. YYYY." (for example, "March 4, 2018" would be either "4. mart 2018." or "4. 3. 2018."). Also, all ordinal numbers are followed by a dot – "3rd" would be "3." for instance. Are those things doable? – Srdjan m (talk) 20:24, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
@Srdjan m: It should be, but it will probably need your ability to translate. If you could replace the list of names of English months in line 27 with the translated names (it's Bosnian, right?), we could try out a number of cases on the talk page of the module sandbox at bs:Razgovor o modulu:WikidataIB/igralište. Let me know if you have any problems. --RexxS (talk) 20:44, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Alright, I translated that and a few other things. – Srdjan m (talk) 20:56, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
@Srdjan m: Excellent. I'm just removing the switch for "mdy"-style dates. I'll now add the . after the day-of-the-month and we can see how the tests look. --RexxS (talk) 21:05, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Great, it's starting to look pretty good. :-) Now we just need the dot after the year and the option to use "D. M. YYYY." – Srdjan m (talk) 11:59, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
@Srdjan m: I've rewritten the date handling completely. Take a look at the tests on the talk page. I used |df=dMy for month names and |df=dmy for month numbers (and |df=y for just the year), but I can change that switch to whatever you would like. I've made an attempt to use translations into Bosnian on the talk page in case others want to see it. You will probably need to fix those . Cheers --RexxS (talk) 23:16, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
That looks great. I reckon there's no need to change the switch given that the functions are in English. Thanks a lot for taking the time to help out! :-) – Srdjan m (talk) 23:34, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Hm, I've just noticed something a bit odd while testing this out. I wanted to get Andre Agassi's height from Wikidata (Q7407), so on bs.wiki I tried putting {{#invoke:WikidataIB/igralište |getValue |P2048 |name=height |fetchwikidata=ALL |onlysourced=false}} in the appropriate parameter of that article's infobox, but the output wasn't the best. I got "180 centimetar", which isn't grammatically correct (it should be "180 cm"). However, I do get "180 cm" here when I do the same (without the "/igralište" bit, obviously). Any idea why that is? Also, when I try to get his weight, I get "74 ±0 kilogram" both here and on bs.wiki. I wonder if there's a way to round that up or to get rid of the suffix? – Srdjan m (talk) 00:33, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Also, is there a way to force the pen icon to show when list=ubl is used? – Srdjan m (talk) 16:36, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
@Srdjan m: Andre Agassi's weight on Wikidata had been set to literally "74 ±0", so I changed it to "74". However, I get "74 kilogram" / "180 centimetre" here (which are acceptable), and "180 centimetar" / "74 kilogram" on bs-wiki - I assume that the singular versions of the unit name are not idiomatically correct in Bosnian? I can see it would probably be preferable to use unit abbreviations, so I'll raise that point at Module talk:WikidataIB to see if there's consensus to change to abbreviated units here. Would you like me to write the code in bs:Modul:WikidataIB/igralište anyway so you can test it out?
I've now added the pen icon to list entries. --RexxS (talk) 18:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, feel free to write the code on bs.wiki. Since my last message I ran into other types of data that use ±, though. For example, the number of matches played / points / goals and stuff for footballers (see this). I don't know what the best way to handle those numbers would be. Perhaps {{#invoke:String|match|s=348±1|^%d*|ignore_errors=true}} (with the WikidataIB call replacing the content of s, of course)? That would get rid of the pen, though. Maybe if the module could get rid of these things? Or if it could get rid of suffixes that follow numbers in general and let you add your own? – Srdjan m (talk) 18:44, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
@Srdjan m: I've amended the code so that it doesn't display ±0 when the range is zero. It will still give "±1" or "+2 -1" when ranges are significant. Hopefully, that should solve the problem, but let me know if there are cases where it doesn't. --RexxS (talk) 20:26, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
@Srdjan m: About the unit abbreviations. On English Wiki, we always use the {{convert}} template when displaying lengths, weights, etc. because both SI and Imperial units are common throughout the English-speaking world, so in Template:Infobox telescope, Mike Peel has written the altitude value as:
  • {{{altitude|{{#if:{{#property:P2044|from={{{qid|}}}}}|{{If first display both|{{#ifeq:{{#invoke:Wikidata|getUnits|P2044|qid={{{qid|}}}|FETCH_WIKIDATA}}|foot|{{convert|input=P2044|qid={{{qid|}}}|m|abbr=on}}|{{convert|input=P2044|qid={{{qid|}}}|ft|abbr=on}} }}|{{#ifeq:{{{refs|no}}}|yes|{{wikidata|references|normal+|{{{qid|}}}|P2044}} }}{{EditAtWikidata|pid=P2044|qid={{{qid|}}} }} }} }} }}}
That is complex and relies on the older Module:Wikidata. I think I'll try something a bit simpler for bs:Modul:WikidataIB/igralište. Rather than rely on other templates or an expensive call to read the unit abbreviation, I'm going to simply create a list of common units that have easily recognisable abbreviations and do a substitution for those cases. Let's see how that works out. --RexxS (talk) 20:40, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I'd be happy to see that code swapped out with something simpler. ;-) Also, I added units to the infobox on Commons today, and that's a bit rough around the edges (convert is rather out-of-date there at the moment), so anything you can do to improve things would also be appreciated there. (BTW, @Johnuniq: might be interested here too.) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:54, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
A semi-related question… check out this testcase. I've set "Žanr" to use hlist because I can't figure out how to capitalize every item in an unbulleted list. Is that even possible? I've tried using String2 with sentence, but that obviously only capitalizes the first word, and I don't think if it handles non-ASCII characters well. – Srdjan m (talk) 21:20, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@Srdjan m and Mike Peel: - On bs-wiki, I've made the unit abbreviations default, so that the weight of Andre Agassi (Q7407) is 74 kg. On the en-wiki, I've added a boolean parameter (undocumented) |unitabbr= that defaults to false, but will enable the code to replace some unit names with km/m/cm/mm/kg/g/mg/ml (i.e. commonly recognised abbreviations). Please let me know if you want more – or just insert them in the module after line 53. Format is:

  • ["Q12345"] (the Wikidata Qid for the unit) = "rx" (the unit abbreviation)

So here we get:

  • {{#invoke:WikidataIB |getValue |qid=Q7407 |P2048 |name=height |fetchwikidata=ALL |onlysourced=false}} → 180 centimetre Edit this on Wikidata
  • {{#invoke:WikidataIB |getValue |qid=Q7407 |P2067 |name=height |fetchwikidata=ALL |onlysourced=false}} → 74 kilogram Edit this on Wikidata
  • {{#invoke:WikidataIB |getValue |qid=Q7407 |P2048 |name=height |fetchwikidata=ALL |onlysourced=false |unitabbr=true}} → 180 cm Edit this on Wikidata
  • {{#invoke:WikidataIB |getValue |qid=Q7407 |P2067 |name=height |fetchwikidata=ALL |onlysourced=false |unitabbr=true}} → 74 kg Edit this on Wikidata

As usual the code recognises common variants: the values are case-insensitive; "0", "", "no" and "false" are all false; anything else is true.

I'll look at the other issues later. --RexxS (talk) 22:09, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 2 – 13 July 2017

Facto Post – Issue 2 – 13 July 2017

Editorial: Core models and topics

Wikimedians interest themselves in everything under the sun — and then some. Discussion on "core topics" may, oddly, be a fringe activity, and was popular here a decade ago.

The situation on Wikidata today does resemble the halcyon days of 2006 of the English Wikipedia. The growth is there, and the reliability and stylistic issues are not yet pressing in on the project. Its Berlin conference at the end of October will have five years of achievement to celebrate. Think Wikimania Frankfurt 2005.

Progress must be made, however, on referencing "core facts". This has two parts: replacing "imported from Wikipedia" in referencing by external authorities; and picking out statements, such as dates and family relationships, that must not only be reliable but be seen to be reliable.

In addition, there are many properties on Wikidata lacking a clear data model. An emerging consensus may push to the front key sourcing and biomedical properties as requiring urgent attention. Wikidata's "manual of style" is currently distributed over thousands of discussions. To make it coalesce, work on such a core is needed.


Editor Charles Matthews. Please leave feedback for him.
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Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

Hi RexxS! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission. I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.

-- 23:52, Wednesday, January 17, 2018 (UTC)

Mission 1 Mission 2 Mission 3 Mission 4 Mission 5 Mission 6 Mission 7
Say Hello to the World An Invitation to Earth Small Changes, Big Impact The Neutral Point of View The Veil of Verifiability The Civility Code Looking Good Together

Please help

Hi, I have noticed from looking at Module:WikidataIB that you are very knowledgeable about Wikidata. I raised a very serious editing issue involving it over at Template talk:Infobox medical condition (new)#Very confusing "edit on Wikidata", but nothing has been done about it. I have offered a solution on the page. I would be very grateful if you could implement it on the template, and also on Template:Infobox medical condition, which has the same problem. Thank you! 101.174.207.212 (talk) 09:24, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

It's not really a Lua/Wikidata problem; it's just the way the infobox has been constructed. I've made an amended version at Template:Infobox medical condition (new)/sandbox, which might provide a solution, and commented in the discussion thread. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 12:04, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Short descriptions on disambiguation pages

Hi RexxS, I have added the {{Short description}} to the main {{Disambiguation/sandbox}}, and it seems to display the short description in the disambiguation message text in the {{Disambiguation/testcases}} page, but I don't know if the short description displayed is accessible through the magic word. Could you check this? If it works we have a lot of pages that can be done this way. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 10:03, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

@Peter: I've tested it by using Template:Disambiguation/sandbox in two articles: Alien and Aberdeen (disambiguation). The first has no extra parameters and the second has three. The sandbox version appears to behave as expected in both cases. The API calls now show the local value for the short description:
Unless you can think of any more test cases, perhaps you would like to explain the proposed change at Template talk:Disambiguation (i.e. make an edit request). As soon as we have something that resembles consensus (or silence), I'll be happy to update the main template with the contents of the sandbox. But I'd give it a couple of days, anyway. P.S. making these kind of edit requests counts towards justifying asking for the template editor flag, which you would find useful. --RexxS (talk) 16:50, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks RexxS, I will do that. Since it was the disambiguation crew that suggested it in the first place, I am hopeful that it will be supported by enough to make it uncontroversial. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 19:41, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Parity

"That means I believe we need to create another 1,000,000 biographies of women to reach parity (unless somebody can convince me that women are inherently less notable than men" - Seriously??? If "parity" were compatible with WP:NPV that would mean that "patriarchy" was just a myth. But it isn't, and a global, all history, encyclopedia should always have more men than women. I'm amazed to hear you expressing such views. None of the research attempts to work out what the appropriate ratio should be that I have seen can get above the low 20%s. The gender imbalance project does WP serious damage by perpetuating this myth. Johnbod (talk) 12:48, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, seriously!!!, John. I have a daughter and I don't want her to live in a world where women are regarded as inferior and less accomplished. The earliest Greek society was profoundly matriarchal, so what? It's not a question of myth or fact; it's just a question of what sources we can find. If you want to believe that a truly comprehensive encyclopedia ought to have 20% women's biographies and 80% men's, that's up to you. I simply disagree. --RexxS (talk) 15:59, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
So patriarchy has never had any effect. Well, that's good news! Johnbod (talk) 16:03, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Strawman, John. It's obvious male-centred history and politics had an effect on what we can now read. Most medieval history was written by monks and not many of them were female. But just because in earlier times women had fewer sources that describe them, doesn't meant that no sources exist. Virtually the only near-contemporary source that tells us much about Boudica is Tacitus' Annals, but that's provided enough for an article and many later works. Of course if you contrast that with the multiple contemporary sources that paint a picture of Nero, there's a massive disparity. But Nero only has one Wikipedia biography, the same as Boudica. --RexxS (talk) 16:26, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
"male-centred history and politics", and indeed society as a whole, didn't just have "an effect on what we can now read", it had a huge effect on what happened. For example considerable efforts have been made by academics to expand knowledge of female artists from before 1800, but numerically there just aren't that many who we can hope to have any record of (as opposed to women in manuscript or embroidery workshops etc). Then there's formerly all-male categories such as soldiers (ok a handful of exceptions), MPs, FRSs, doctors and academics generally, sportspeople until pretty recently, and so on. It might be true that the "earliest Greek society was profoundly matriarchal" (although I think that's more than we actually know), but we just don't have the names, let alone any other details. Meanwhile women's health articles with high views (ask User:WhatamIdoing) and other non-biographical women-related topics continue to be neglected, and new editors continue to be funnelled to write bios of borderline notability and minimal views. There's no strawman: parity or neutrality - pick one. Johnbod (talk) 16:44, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Talk page stalker feeling feisty
Neutrality does not refer to the encyclopedia but to articles themselves. Reliable sources on a topic are considered reliable per the content and context not per comparisons to any other topic. So if I, for example, have an interest in the judicial system in Ireland which included women and one in particular and I find one good source on that topic, and that woman, that is enough to be considered reliable for that particular topic. We can as a 21st century document choose to begin to correct the imbalances of the past or to continue them. Our guides on sourcing are just that, guides; we as editors have it within our remit to adjust those guides to make sure we enter the next years of the century with an enlightened encyclopedia. Editors edit as they like on topics that interest them. No need to channel anyone anywhere. Often the women that young girls could emulate are hidden both in history and by the men they either served or worked in the same time as as for example, Camille Claudel, Rodin's mistress and model who for many years was hidden by obscurity and overshadowed by Rodin. I won't prolong that kind off injustice.(Littleolive oil (talk) 17:33, 3 April 2018 (UTC))
Nobody's asking you to - but she has had an article since 2002 and gets over 330 views a day. You won't get anywhere near parity with people that notable, though I certainly agree they should be the priority, if people must do bios. If NPOV doesn't stop the parity plan, WP:N will. Johnbod (talk) 19:01, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
@Ealdgyth: It was a sort of throw-away comment I made at Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed article creation trial/Request for comment on permanent implementation:

If I'm running an event for the Theoretical Roman Archaeological Conference, chances are that most participants will be working on existing articles. On the other hand, if I'm running an event related to Women in Red, I know that Wikipedia has about 1,250,000 biographies of men and only 250,000 biographies of women. That means I believe we need to create another 1,000,000 biographies of women to reach parity (unless somebody can convince me that women are inherently less notable than men). So those events will have a greater proportion of new article creation.

John's right of course that sources on notable women are far fewer than for notable men; but I still want us to work on reducing the effect of that disparity on our encyclopedia. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 21:22, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
It was this edit, though I hadn't realized it was quite so old. Johnbod (talk) 21:25, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

need help with Lua

Dear "RexxS"

I wanna make a module or template for Arabic Wikipedia, that serves the Arabic language.

The script I made is in Python.

Is it possible to transfer it to Lua, and most importantly is it gonna work on the wiki?!!

Nice regards. -- سامر (talk) 21:40, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi, سامر, Lua and Python share a lot of similarities in their data and control structures, so anyone experienced in Python should be able to pick up Lua quite quickly. They are sufficiently different, however, to mean that you can't just drop Python code into a Lua module and expect it to work. Unfortunately I neither speak nor read Arabic, so I can't be much direct help to you on that Wikipedia. Nevertheless, there are several good tutorials available on the web. Also the entire Lua documentation itself is at https://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/manual.html and the Scribunto (Lua extension for Wikipedia) documentation is at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Scribunto/Lua_reference_manual - you'll need to study the sections on standard libraries as well as those on Scribunto libraries as much of the functionality of working in Lua on Wikipedia derives from those. Finally, you are always welcome to adapt code that you find in anything in Module: space as it's under a CC-BY-SA licence. Let me know how you get on. --RexxS (talk) 22:02, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Arbcom case

I am sorry it's come to this, but Swarm forced my hand before even letting me post on the existing arbcom case so... [1] --Tarage (talk) 06:42, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

@Tarage: You probably need to copy your statement onto a subpage of your user space, then summarise it and link to it from the ArbCom request page. You could break it up into logical blocks using paragraphs and list-markup to make it more readable. HTH --RexxS (talk) 13:49, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
I'll work on it later. --Tarage (talk) 00:21, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

RfC notice at Project Medicine

If you don't want to participate, you don't have to. I think you should strike your aggressive, and irrelevant, remarks. Ping not necessary, I am watching this page. Geogene (talk) 22:00, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

And I think that if you don't want to hear aggressive, highly relevant comments, you should stop edit-warring your unwelcome notifications back onto other editors' WikiProject. --RexxS (talk) 22:38, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
You are in no position to unilaterally determine what is "welcome" on any board or not. Geogene (talk) 22:54, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
And yet I didn't remove your unwanted post; another member of WPMED did. I won't be taking advice from somebody who doesn't even understand the meaning of the word "unilateral". Now stop trolling here, and get back under your bridge. --RexxS (talk) 23:09, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Catalogue

Regarding this comment: what would be the most useful way of compiling such a catalogue of problems such that it would meet the standard of solid research to inform decision-making? Nikkimaria (talk) 23:58, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Documenting what has as well, as has not, worked - which is what RexxS suggested -would be a good start. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 00:08, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

AN/I notice

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Geogene (talk) 03:48, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Precious six years!

Precious
Six years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:39, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 11 – 9 April 2018

Facto Post – Issue 11 – 9 April 2018

The 100 Skins of the Onion

Open Citations Month, with its eminently guessable hashtag, is upon us. We should be utterly grateful that in the past 12 months, so much data on which papers cite which other papers has been made open, and that Wikidata is playing its part in hosting it as "cites" statements. At the time of writing, there are 15.3M Wikidata items that can do that.

Pulling back to look at open access papers in the large, though, there is is less reason for celebration. Access in theory does not yet equate to practical access. A recent LSE IMPACT blogpost puts that issue down to "heterogeneity". A useful euphemism to save us from thinking that the whole concept doesn't fall into the realm of the oxymoron.

Some home truths: aggregation is not content management, if it falls short on reusability. The PDF file format is wedded to how humans read documents, not how machines ingest them. The salami-slicer is our friend in the current downloading of open access papers, but for a better metaphor, think about skinning an onion, laboriously, 100 times with diminishing returns. There are of the order of 100 major publisher sites hosting open access papers, and the predominant offer there is still a PDF.

Red onion cross section

From the discoverability angle, Wikidata's bibliographic resources combined with the SPARQL query are superior in principle, by far, to existing keyword searches run over papers. Open access content should be managed into consistent HTML, something that is currently strenuous. The good news, such as it is, would be that much of it is already in XML. The organisational problem of removing further skins from the onion, with sensible prioritisation, is certainly not insuperable. The CORE group (the bloggers in the LSE posting) has some answers, but actually not all that is needed for the text and data mining purposes they highlight. The long tail, or in other words the onion heart when it has become fiddly beyond patience to skin, does call for a pis aller. But the real knack is to do more between the XML and the heart.

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New page reviewer granted

Hello RexxS. Your account has been added to the "New page reviewers" user group, allowing you to review new pages and mark them as patrolled, tag them for maintenance issues, or in some cases, tag them for deletion. The list of articles awaiting review is located at the New Pages Feed. New page reviewing is a vital function for policing the quality of the encylopedia; if you have not already done so, you must read the new tutorial at New Pages Review, the linked guides and essays, and fully understand the various deletion criteria. If you need more help or wish to discuss the process, please join or start a thread at page reviewer talk.

  • URGENT: Please consider helping get the huge backlog down to a manageable number of pages as soon as possible.
  • Be nice to new users - they are often not aware of doing anything wrong.
  • You will frequently be asked by users to explain why their page is being deleted - be formal and polite in your approach to them too, even if they are not.
  • Don't review a page if you are not sure what to do. Just leave it for another reviewer.
  • Remember that quality is quintessential to good patrolling. Take your time to patrol each article, there is no rush. Use the message feature and offer basic advice.

The reviewer right does not change your status or how you can edit articles. If you no longer want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. In case of abuse or persistent inaccuracy of reviewing, the right can be revoked at any time by an administrator. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:08, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia, Infoboxes, and Wikidata

Hi RexxS. I've had a thorough re-read of everything at 2018 Infobox RfC, and think most of the objections to using Wikidata stem from:

  • not being able to easily see what has been changed
  • the data displayed not being in the article, or not referenced in the article
  • an (understandable) unwillingness to get involved with Wikidata
  • a concern for the standard of references in Wikidata

I think I have a possible solution that may address some, or even all, of these concerns. I know you are good at creating templates. What are you like with bots? Within Wikipedia, I've only done a bit on templates, and nothing with bots, but have a general idea of what can be done (but not how to do it). So, this suggestion uses two bots (one working on Wikidata, and the other on Wikipedia) although the two might possibly be combined into one:

  1. The Wikidata bot (WD BOT) regularly monitors wikidata items used in the Wikipedia {{Infobox person/Wikidata}} template. A list of wikidata items could be generated from the What Links Here page, and a list of the interesting properties from the template definition.
  2. If any of the interesting properties of the item have changed since the time of the previous check, WD BOT generates a report detailing the changes in a log file somewhere on Wikidata.
  3. The Wikipedia bot (WP BOT) regularly checks the log file on Wikidata.
  4. If the log file has been updated with changes since the last check, WP BOT writes a report of the changes on the talk page of the appropriate Wikipedia page. The report will also include details of the reference information on Wikidata in a cite template such as {{Cite Book}}.
  5. Any Wikipedia editor who has the page on their watchlist will see that the talk page has been updated (provided they haven't hidden bot edits).
  6. The Wikipedia editor can then check whether the changes to the infobox are appropriate and referenced and if the information is from a reliable source. They can then make any appropriate changes to the article, including suppressing the infobox parameter, adding text to the article to show the new/changed data in the article, adding a citation to the text using an existing source, or creating a new reference using the information in the WP BOT report.

I'd be interested if you, or any of your stalkers, think this idea has legs. If so, I'll post something on it at the RFC. If it is possible, then it may also be useful to expand the process. For example, if the article gets improved, and some facts are added that could go in the infobox, then the editor could just add a local value, but it would be much better if they used a yet to be created template, something like:

| death_date = {{ForWikidata|Value=1972|ref name="Maggs"}}

which would just display "1972", but would provide a bot with the ability to find the details of the ref and pass at least some of it to Wikidata.

I understand you're off to the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin. Hope have a fun and fruitful trip. Cheeers Robevans123 (talk) 12:18, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Rob, I can see the value in trying to do what you suggest, but I foresee two issue arising:
  1. The first is a philosophical one: that of real-time vs scheduled updates. This is a general issue in systems analysis concerning transactions. Using a bot to trawl though a lot of data to look for changes every so often ("pulling" the change report) has a time-granularity of whatever the update interval is: if you make it too long, the change doesn't get reported quickly enough; if you make it too short, then you have a lot of searching with no result and you run the risk of reporting a change even when it has subsequently been rolled-back. I much prefer event-driven logging where the edit that makes a change triggers a report of that change in real-time ("pushing" the change report). The latter is effectively how our watchlists function. The Wikidata team are working on filtering out irrelevant changes from what is reported when we enable seeing Wikidata changes in our watchlist, but personally I'd prefer to have a separate Wikidata watchlist where I could pick a shorter set of articles whose Wikidata changes I wanted to monitor.
  2. The second is a practical one: there would likely be, in my opinion, a problem with maintaining a list of the properties for each article that would need to be monitored by the WD BOT. If someone updates the fields in a Wikidata-enabled infobox, what would be the mechanism to ensure that that field is then included in WD BOT's list? (The articles themselves are no problem, because using a Wikidata-enabled infobox can automatically place the article in a category that a bot can read.) Additionally, we would need to look at the scale of the job we want WD BOT to do. There are around 2,000 infobox templates on enwiki, of which 105 are presently wikidata-enabled, meaning that any solution has to be capable of scaling up considerably. Template:Infobox person has one of the largest uses with about 270,000 transclusions in articles. Template:Infobox person/Wikidata currently has 23 fields enabled, so if {Infobox person} were to become fully Wikidata-enabled, that would require over 6 million properties to be examined for changes by WD BOT each time it was run. Other infoboxes have fewer transclusions, but the potential to require tens or even hundreds of millions of properties to be checked would have to be considered.
I don't mean to be dampening your enthusiasm, which I appreciate, but it is important to keep in mind the potential limitations, and to consider any alternatives that may be come to fruition before this one might be implemented. Nevertheless, I do think your idea is interesting and I'll have time in a couple of weeks to have a play with it, perhaps on test-wiki where I can try stuff without breaking anything. You might have to remind me, as I tend to be forgetful these days. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 13:21, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Hey RexxS. Thanks for your comments. Good to know that it could work, but there are limitations to consider. Yes - I'd much prefer a real-time event driven logging process - but to begin to suggest how to do that is way above my technical grade(!).., and I suspect would take a long time to implement. Hence my cheap and cheerful approach where a proof of concept trial with some sample results could be knocked together quite quickly. I do think the idea of seeing the changes and have some ready-to-use wikitext available (all on Wikipedia) would go a long way to meet the concerns of many experienced Wikipedia editors. Some specific points:
  • good point on using automatically placed articles in a category.
  • as to a list of the properties to monitored - I think that is ultimately down to the person creating or updating the template. Anyone working on a template should take responsibility for updating the documentation and the list of properties to monitor (or ask for help with the tasks if they find them difficult - I'm always willing to knock up some documentation if I get some hints on what the changes are meant to achieve, so I can start digging in the code and trying it out). But doing a quick grep for "#invoke:WikidataIB | getPreferredValue" should do most of the work on the list of properties to monitor...
  • It would be great to have improved watchlisting from Wikidata (from within Wikipedia) - it really isn't very good. Of course it would useful to only watch certain properties within an item.
  • 6 million checks could be a little time-consuming... But it could be trimmed by checking if anything at all had been changed on an item first, and only do the deeper testing if yes. But it would be useful to get some performance figures.
  • Alternatively if the wikidata item also stores the name of the infobox being used on each 'pedia (or possibly the names of bots that should run when changes are made to the item) would it be possible to kick off the bot(s) whenever a change is made?
  • It might be useful to throw the idea at any Wikidata/Bot creators you meet in Berlin?
Cheers Robevans123 (talk) 16:59, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Italic title

Hi, you tend to be good at spotting this type of thing so can you work out why the title at Shiamak Davar is italicised? It would usually be due to {{italictitle}} but I cannot see it in the article. Ta. - Sitush (talk) 10:22, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

It's because {{Dance India Dance}} has {{italic title}} in its first line, for whatever reason. Eric Corbett 11:22, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Fixed - no good reason why a nav box should set an italic title. Some infobox templates can call {{italic title}} but it is always an opt-in choice. Robevans123 (talk) 11:47, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Correction on background detail - a few infoboxes (for works of art etc) do use {{italic title}} by default, but still no good reason to use it on a nav box. Robevans123 (talk) 11:52, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, Rob & Eric. I'm guessing the reason is that the composer of the navbox wanted the title in the navbox top bar in italics and though that was how to do it. If we know that an infobox is only going to be used on works that always italicise their title, then it's probably reasonable to include {{italic title}} in the infobox definition. Navboxes just aren't suitable for that because someone will eventually add it to articles that don't italicise the title. --RexxS (talk) 13:49, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes. Useful exercise though - in my earlier days of editing I can remember being confused by the title of a film that had some (non-italic) disambiguation text, and no mention of italic formatting in the text of the article, little knowing that the infobox was setting it and that {{italic title}} is clever enough to not italicise the dab text. Learn something new every day. Robevans123 (talk) 14:41, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, all! - Sitush (talk) 06:17, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

WMCON18

It was great meeting you in person and to be part of your workshop. Cheers, RexxS! Rehman 19:59, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Roy! I'm finally catching up on all my messages and emails – I really enjoyed meeting and working with you, as well as all the others in our workshop. You'll always be welcome on my talk page, and I'm here to help if you ever need assistance with anything. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 14:53, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
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