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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).
Germany report: Exploring Wikidata & Building Community for Cultural Heritage Professionals
Indonesia report: Celebrating Public Domain Day 2025 in Indonesia
Italy report: New Wikimedia Italia Grant for GLAMs
Netherlands report: 3 Million Dutch Cultural Heritage Images in Commons & 400,000 RCE images now in higher resolution & Usage of DBNL in Dutch Wikipedia articles
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the week leading up to 2025-02-10. Missed the previous one? See issue #665
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
TiagoLubianaBot 5 - Task(s): Add image or reference illustration based on categories for botanical illustrations on Wikimedia Commons. Only add when only 1 or 2 files in category.
Closed request for permissions/Bot: MangadexBot - Task(s): add metadata from mangadex to manga with Mangadex manga ID - closed as relevant Property has been deprecated and marked for deletion.
Whose (Wiki)Data is it anyway? - Ethics & Consent when cataloguing people, places and things. An on-site Library workshop of the Toronto Metropolitan University, February 12, 1200 - 1600 EST (UTC-5).
Comics Edit-A-Thon for Black History month, hosted by the Center for Research Data and Digital Scholarship of the University of Colorado (onsite only & registration required). February 12, 1300 - 1500 MST (UTC-7).
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
Blogs
Making SPARQL more accessible: Daniel Motz's bachelor's thesis on visual query graphs, check out their project in Tool of the Week
Preserving Community History with Wikibase - Tan Li Qi of MyCommunity, a Singaporean nonprofit dedicated to preserving the stories of everyday people by documenting community narratives, social memories, and local heritage.
Query by Graph - build a SPARQL query using drag'n'drop visual elements. This is an interesting tool that provides another way to approach building SPARQL queries, especially for those that find the Query builder or raw SPARQL unintuitive or complex.
CivData - "Cividata makes the diverse world of non-profit organizations visible. As a volunteer project, Cividata provides a comprehensive overview of non-profit organizations worldwide, based on data from Wikipedia's sister project Wikidata."
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Creation of the interim Global Resource Distribution Committee - Call for candidates ends February 25, midnight (AOE). The interim GDRC is being established to oversee and adjust resource distribution for the Community Fund, aligning with the movement's evolving needs. Currently open to applications from candidates with experience in grantmaking, budgeting and knowledge of Wikimedia's grant types. Further information on the role and how to apply can be found on the GDRC Meta page
Curationist seeks Digital Archivist - Curationist, a free online resource for cultural heritage seeks a part-time archiver who can navigate Wikidata, SPARQL and create metadata and support writers.
romantic orientation (pattern of romantic attraction of this person or fictional character — use ONLY IF they have stated it themselves, unambiguously, or it has been widely agreed upon by historians after their death)
location code (the location code of the location (please use more specific property if available))
directs readers to (document or class of documents to which this item or class directs readers)
nomenclatural type of (taxon item of which this item is the taxonomic type (name-bearing type), e.g. the family for which this genus is the type, the genus for which this species is the type, the taxon for which this type specimen is the type, ect...)
Future Audiences: Watch the recording for lessons from the short video experiments. A new Discord bot experiment as a way to interact with Wikipedia, the Future Audiences Discord server and future plans for experiments around how to use gamification.
Tech News: Editors who use the “Special characters” editing-toolbar menu can now see the 32 special characters you have used most recently, across editing sessions on that wiki; The Data Platform Engineering team has added a couple of new fields to MediaWiki History dumps to support the Temporary Accounts initiative. More updates from tech news week 05 and 06.
Product & Tech Advisory Council: The council looked at data, needs and trends to make a recommendation for the Foundation's annual plan. They recommended that improving mobile contribution experiences has the greatest potential to bring in new and unheard voices onto Wikipedia and sister projects, and improve the experience of readers and contributors most widely. They are requesting feedback and discussion.
Structured Tasks: The "Add an Image" structured task is being tested on a representative sample of Wikipedias which allows users to add an image and an appropriate caption to a Wikipedia article.
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
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 Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) has published a draft of their recommendations for the Wikimedia Foundation's Product and Technology department. They have recommended focusing on mobile experiences, particularly contributions. They request community feedback at the talk page by 21 February.
Updates for editors
The "Special pages" portlet link will be moved from the "Toolbox" into the "Navigation" section of the main menu's sidebar by default. This change is because the Toolbox is intended for tools relating to the current page, not tools relating to the site, so the link will be more logically and consistently located. To modify this behavior and update CSS styling, administrators can follow the instructions at T385346. [1]
As part of this year's work around improving the ways readers discover content on the wikis, the Web team will be running an experiment with a small number of readers that displays some suggestions for related or interesting articles within the search bar. Please check out the project page for more information.
View all 22 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the global blocks log will now be shown directly on the Special:CentralAuth page, similarly to global locks, to simplify the workflows for stewards. [3]
Updates for technical contributors
Wikidata now supports a special language as a "default for all languages" for labels and aliases. This is to avoid excessive duplication of the same information across many languages. If your Wikidata queries use labels, you may need to update them as some existing labels are getting removed. [4]
The function getDescription was invoked on every Wiki page read and accounts for ~2.5% of a page's total load time. The calculated value will now be cached, reducing load on Wikimedia servers. [5]
As part of the RESTBase deprecation effort, the /page/related endpoint has been blocked as of February 6, 2025, and will be removed soon. This timeline was chosen to align with the deprecation schedules for older Android and iOS versions. The stable alternative is the "morelike" action API in MediaWiki, and a migration example is available. The MediaWiki Interfaces team can be contacted for any questions. [6]
In depth
The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: Updates about the "Contribute" menu; details on some of the newest language editions of Wikipedia; details on new languages supported by the MediaWiki interface; updates on the Community-defined lists feature; and more.
The latest Chart Project newsletter is available. It includes updates on the progress towards bringing better visibility into global charts usage and support for categorizing pages in the Data namespace on Commons.