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Technology report

Tech present, past, and future

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By Evad37 and Legoktm

Data sets on Commons powering tables, maps, and interactive graphs

See or edit source data.


Data sets, consisting of either tabular or map data, can now be stored on Commons, and accessed from any wiki. The data can even be localised, with different labels for different languages. The interactive map above, showing GDP by US state, is generated from the data table at Data:Bea.gov/GDP_by_state.tab on Commons.

Raw data can be accessed using Lua, filtered, converted, mixed, and formatted. Lists, or other wikimarkup, can be generated from the data. For example, the same monthly climate data for New York can be shown as either a typical weather box...

Climate data for New York (Belvedere Castle, Central Park), 1981–2010 normals,[a] extremes 1869–present[b]
Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year
Record high °F (°C) 72.0
(22.2) 		78.1
(25.6) 		86
(30) 		96.1
(35.6) 		99.0
(37.2) 		100.9
(38.3) 		106.0
(41.1) 		104
(40) 		102.0
(38.9) 		93.9
(34.4) 		84.0
(28.9) 		75.0
(23.9) 		106.0
(41.1)
Mean maximum °F (°C) 57.0
(13.9) 		57.7
(14.3) 		68.0
(20.0) 		80.6
(27.0) 		87.6
(30.9) 		92.5
(33.6) 		95.4
(35.2) 		93.0
(33.9) 		89.2
(31.8) 		79.7
(26.5) 		69.4
(20.8) 		60.3
(15.7) 		95.4
(35.2)
Mean daily maximum °F (°C) 38.5
(3.6) 		39.7
(4.3) 		47.8
(8.8) 		59.5
(15.3) 		70.7
(21.5) 		79.5
(26.4) 		84.4
(29.1) 		82.4
(28.0) 		75.7
(24.3) 		64.6
(18.1) 		52.5
(11.4) 		42.1
(5.6) 		61.5
(16.4)
Mean daily minimum °F (°C) 25.9
(−3.4) 		26.2
(−3.2) 		33.3
(0.7) 		43.2
(6.2) 		53.4
(11.9) 		62.8
(17.1) 		68.4
(20.2) 		67.1
(19.5) 		60.4
(15.8) 		49.8
(9.9) 		39.9
(4.4) 		30.2
(−1.0) 		46.7
(8.2)
Mean minimum °F (°C) 8.2
(−13.2) 		9.0
(−12.8) 		17.6
(−8.0) 		30.7
(−0.7) 		42.3
(5.7) 		52.2
(11.2) 		59.7
(15.4) 		57.6
(14.2) 		47.5
(8.6) 		36.9
(2.7) 		25.3
(−3.7) 		13.3
(−10.4) 		8.2
(−13.2)
Record low °F (°C) −6.0
(−21.1) 		−15.0
(−26.1) 		3.0
(−16.1) 		12.0
(−11.1) 		32
(0) 		44.1
(6.7) 		52.0
(11.1) 		50
(10) 		39.0
(3.9) 		28.0
(−2.2) 		5
(−15) 		−13
(−25) 		−15.0
(−26.1)
Average precipitation inches (mm) 3.50
(88.9) 		3.32
(84.4) 		4.00
(101.6) 		3.74
(95.1) 		3.72
(94.6) 		3.63
(92.3) 		4.39
(111.6) 		4.45
(113.0) 		3.93
(99.7) 		3.72
(94.4) 		3.54
(89.8) 		3.69
(93.6) 		45.63
(1,159)
Average snowfall inches (mm) 7.74
(196.7) 		8.85
(224.8) 		4.82
(122.5) 		0.78
(19.8) 		0.0
(0.0) 		0.0
(0.0) 		0.0
(0.0) 		0.0
(0.0) 		0.0
(0.0) 		0.03
(0.8) 		0.72
(18.3) 		5.39
(137.0) 		28.33
(719.9)
Average precipitation days 11.0 9.7 11.3 10.8 11.1 10.3 10.5 9.8 8.4 8.5 9.2 10.5 121.1
Average snowy days 4.2 3.7 2.4 0.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.4 2.8 13.9
Source: edit data
NOAA (relative humidity and sun 1961–1990)[1][2][3]

See Geography of New York City for additional climate information from the outer boroughs.

Notes and references
  1. ^ Mean monthly maxima and minima (i.e. the expected highest and lowest temperature readings at any point during the year or given month) calculated based on data at said location from 1981 to 2010.
  2. ^ Official weather observations for Central Park were conducted at the Arsenal at Fifth Avenue and 64th Street from 1869 to 1919, and at Belvedere Castle since 1919.[4]
  1. ^ "NowData – NOAA Online Weather Data". National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved 2016-04-18.
  2. ^ "Station Name: NY NEW YORK CNTRL PK TWR". National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved 2014-03-13.
  3. ^ "New York Central Park, NY Climate Normals 1961–1990". NOAA.
  4. ^ Belvedere Castle at NYC Parks

...or as an interactive graph:

See or edit raw graph data.


Map data, stored as GeoJSON, can be displayed over a map based on OpenStreetMap (OSM) data. This map of the endangered Jemez Mountains salamander habitat comes from the data at Data:ecos.fws.gov/Endangered habitat 58938/Plethodon neomexicanus.map on Commons. However, such data pages aren't needed for roads and other shapes already defined in OSM – for example, here's Interstate 696. And this is Alaska.

Data is stored as pages with a *.tab or *.map extension, in the Data: namespace on Commons. Pages are generally prefixed by their origin, such as commons:Data:Naturalearthdata.com/US states.map; sandboxes or test pages can be created with titles like Data:Sandbox/<user>.tab. The only licence currently allowed is the CC0 Public Domain Dedication. A thread on the Commons Village Pump, now archived, discussed whether more licences should be supported, and if database rights (which exits in some countries, but not the United States) should be respected.

Future plans include a spreadsheet-like editor for tabular data, tracking cross-wiki data usage through "What links here", data redirects, and supporting external data feeds. The original announcement was on the Wikitech-l mailing list. Documentation is available on MediaWiki.org for tabular data and map data. E

2017 Wikimedia Developer Summit

MediaWiki developers met in San Francisco earlier this week for the fourth annual Wikimedia Developer Summit. The first two days were filled with pre-planned sessions, and the third was a unconference-style “Get stuff done day” for hacking.

Ward Cunningham's keynote at the 2017 Wikimedia Developer Summit

Ward Cunningham, inventor of the first wiki, delivered the first day’s keynote, titled “Has our success made it hard to see your own contribution”. He used one slide for the entire keynote, aiming for 10 minutes of speaking and 50 minutes of questions, though he was ultimately unsuccessful in that timing. The second day featured a Q&A with newly hired CTO, Victoria Coleman, and the VP of Product, Wes Moran, with questions coming from an All Our Ideas survey as well as those asked in person. Notes from other sessions are available on mediawiki.org, and videos should be posted shortly. L

This is what we wished for

The Community Tech team's 2016 Community Wishlist Survey was held last month, and the results are in! There were 265 proposals for tools, bots, and the other features to help the Wikimedia projects and their core contributors. The proposals were discussed and voted on by 1132 contributors, and 5037 support votes were cast in total. The top ten proposals, which the Community Tech team will investigate and address, are:

#10 – User rights expiration
Currently, Stewards may grant temporary user rights, but these have to be manually removed when the approved time period has expired. The proposed solution is to add a new option to set a time how long rights will last when they are granted. (Phabricator task T12493)
#9 – Fix Mr.Z-bot's popular pages report
Mr.Z-bot used to automatically compile a list of the most popular pages for each WikiProject on a monthly basis – for example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Spiders/Popular pages. The bot, which stopped working in April 2016, was limited to desktop pageviews and the English Wikipedia. (Phabricator task T141154)
#8 – Automatic archive for new external links
External webpages may disappear, leaving behind dead links. Preventing link rot by using a web archiving service is additional work for editors, that could instead be completed by a bot. Whilst similar to a 2015 wish to migrate dead external links to archives, this proposal includes preemptive archiving of new external links, before they become dead. (Phabricator task T153354)
#7 – Warning on unsuccessful login attempts
Hackers may attack user accounts by testing popular passwords. This proposal is to alert users of unsuccessful login attempts through the Notifications system. (Phabricator task T11838)
#6 – Wikitext editor syntax highlighting
Syntax highlighting would make wikitext easier to edit. There are common use-cases for articles and templates, such as distinguising <ref></ref> tags and contents from surrounding text in a paragraph, or making sure the correct number of braces are present for code such as {{{a|{{{b|{{{c}}}}}}}}}. While syntax highlighting can be implemented through user scripts, this proposal is for integration into MediaWiki for faster loading and theme-friendly colours. (Phabricator task T101246)
#5 – Rewrite Xtools
Xtools (tools developed by User:X!) provide detailed information on users and articles. These include the Edit Counter (with detailed breakdowns of edits), Article Blamer (which shows who inserted specific text into an article), and several others. The Xtools are being completely written to provide stability and maintainability, which the current tools lack; this proposal is for assistance with rewriting and testing. (Phabricator task T153112)
#4 – Global settings
For users active on multiple wikis, the settings in Special:Preferences must be set on each wiki individually. This must be repeated each time new options are added, such as for compact interlanguage links, editor selection, and MediaViewer. (Phabricator task T16950)
#3 – Section heading URLs for non-Latin languages
Non-Latin section headings are handled poorly, in the display of the anchor portion of the url. For example, on the Russian Wikipedia, the section "Биология" on the article "Кошка" will display the url https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кошка#.D0.91.D0.B8.D0.BE.D0.BB.D0.BE.D0.B3.D0.B8.D1.8F , and cannot be reached from the url https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кошка#Биология . (Phabricator task T75092)
#2 – Edit summary length for non-Latin languages
Edit summaries in non-Latin-based language have fewer characters available than compared to English or other languages with a Latin alphabet – about half or even a third as many characters. This is because edit summaries are measured in bytes. While Latin characters take up one byte, non-latin characters require two or three. It is proposed that the edit summary length be measured in terms of characters rather than bytes. (Phabricator task T6715)
#1 – Global gadgets
Popular gadgets such as HotCat, wikEd, navigation popups, and WikiMiniAtlas, have to be maintained as separate forked scripts on each wiki they are available on. The proposed global gadgets would, from a single centralised copy, be available as gadgets on each WMF wiki. (Phabricator task T22153)

Some wishes that didn't make it into the top ten will also be worked on by the Community Tech team, to support smaller user groups without large voter numbers. Other wishes may be worked on by volunteer developers, the WMDE Technical Wishes team, or other Wikimedia Foundation product teams. E

In brief

New user scripts to customise your Wikipedia experience

Newly approved bot tasks

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community: 2016 #51 & 2017 #2. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available on Meta.

  • Recent changes
  • Problems
    • Some abuse filters for uploaded files have not worked as they should. We don't know exactly which filters didn't work yet. This means some files that filters should have prevented from being uploaded were uploaded to the wikis. MediaWiki.org and Testwiki have been affected since 13 October. Commons and Meta have been affected since 17 October. Other wikis have been affected since 17 November. (Phabricator task T153217)
    • Editors who use Firefox 50 might get logged out or fail to save their edits. This is because of a browser bug. Until this is fixed you can enter about:config in the address bar and set network.cookie.maxPerHost to 5000. Firefox 50 is the current version of the Firefox. (Phabricator task T151770)

Installation code

Further information: Wikipedia:User scripts § How to install user scripts
  1. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:Lourdes/AfDclosing.js' ); // Backlink: User:Lourdes/AfDclosing.js
  2. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js' ); // Backlink: User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js
  3. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:Lourdes/SpecialNewPages.js' ); // Backlink: User:Lourdes/SpecialNewPages.js
  4. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:Lourdes/TFAhistorylink.js' ); // Backlink: User:Lourdes/TFAhistorylink.js
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These comments are automatically transcluded from this article's talk page. To follow comments, add the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try purging the cache.

An interesting question came in via Twitter: Yurik or Evad37, doesn't it make more sense for complex data to be stored at Wikidata, and referenced by media files? How does a new initiative to store data on Commons square with the emergence of Wikidata? Will it make sense to migrate the data files there in the future? -Pete Forsyth (talk) 01:50, 24 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Pete Forsyth, this is probably the most asked question :) The most relevant is this discussion. Basically - "data blobs" and "data facts" are very different, both from technology and from legal perspectives. There has been a lot of requests to allow for non-CC0 licensed data, where as Wikidata is purely CC0 only. --Yurik (talk) 01:54, 24 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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