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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Editors are automatically added to some user groups. For example editors are added to autoconfirmed users when they have edited enough times and long enough. Abuse filters can hinder users from automatically getting user rights for a period of time. They can also remove rights user have. Wikis can now ask to change how long this period of time is for their wiki in Phabricator. It is currently five days. [2]
Problems
Last year some abuse filters stopped working because of a new change. If they tried to use variables that were unavailable for that action they would fail. This has now been fixed. [3]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 September. It will be on all wikis from 1 October (calendar).
Future changes
You can't see the language links to other language versions from the talk page or history page. They are also not shown when you edit an article. This could change. It is not decided if for example the history page should link to another history page or to the article. You can take part in the discussion in Phabricator.
The link colours could change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. You can read more in Phabricator.
In your preferences you can choose to get different notifications on the web or by email. You will see Apps as one of the alternatives later this week. This is because the Android and iOS Wikipedia apps will use push notifications for those who want them. You can see the preferences on the test wiki. The goal is to have push notifications on Android in October and on iOS in early 2021. [4]
You can soon put pages on your watchlist for a limited time. This could be useful if you want to watch something for a shorter time but don't want it on your watchlist forever. It now works on mediawiki.org and will come to more wikis later. You can read more and see when it will come to other wikis.
Upcoming: Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call: Professor Toby Hudson on Entity Explosion, a browser extension which allows you to get information about entities on the web page you’re visiting, 06 October. Agenda
Video: How to create and edit items on Wikidata (in Spanish) - YouTube
Video: Introduction to Wikidata and wikiprojects of interest to librarians (in Spanish) - YouTube
Tool of the week
IllWill.js is a userscript that searches Wikidata for foreign-language sitelinks, to populate Template:ill and replace plain red links on other Wikimedia projects.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
omeka-s-wikidata is a new module for the open source GLAM collection management software Omeka, that allows cataloguers to use Wikidata as a vocabulary for persons, places, subjects, etc.
Maps of arts and humanities research grants funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council in UK between 2013-2019. Sorted by year, Sorted by budget (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.
Recent changes
There is a new tool where you can see which home wiki users have in discussions on Meta. This can help show which communities are not part of the discussion on wikis where we make decisions that affect many other wikis.
You can now thank users for file uploads or for changing the language of a page. [5]
Problems
There were many errors with the new MediaWiki version last week. The new version was rolled back. Updates that should have happened last week are late. [6]
Everyone was logged out. This was because a user reported being logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [7]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 October. It will be on all wikis from 8 October (calendar).
Letters immediately after a link are shown as part of the link. For example the entire word in [[Child]]ren is linked. On Arabic wikis this works at both the start and end of a word. Previously on Arabic wikis numbers and other non-letter Unicode characters were shown as part of the link at the start of a word but not at the end. Now only Latin and Arabic letters will extend links on Arabic wikis. [8]
Future changes
You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [9]
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
Because of the problems with the MediaWiki version two weeks ago last week's updates are also late. [10][11][12]
Changes later this week
Live previews didn't show the templates used in the preview if you just edited a section. This has now been fixed. You can also test CSS and JavaScript pages even if you have the live preview enabled. Previously this didn't work well. [13][14]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 October. It will be on all wikis from 15 October (calendar).
Future changes
A new stable version of Pywikibot is coming soon. [15]
The new Wikibase/Consultants and Support Providers' directory on Meta lists people/companies that provide professional help with Wikibase -- be it technical support (installation and setup), custom development, or data modeling services.
The 2020 Coolest Tool Award is still accepting nominations until October 14th. Please use this form to recommend tools. You can nominate as many tools as you want by filling out the form multiple times.
Working on enabling JSON dumps for Lexemes (phab:T220883)
Finishing preventing blocked users from making us skip QIDs (phab:T232620)
Continuing work on the Wikibase Manifest extension that allows toolbuilders to easily access configurations of a specific Wikibase instance so it is easier for them to make their tools work with not just Wikidata but also other Wikibase instances
Started analyzing what we consider a mismatch for our work around checking Wikidata's data against other databases
Continued work on the Query Builder to get it to create the first very simple query. It can do that now but not yet visualize the result.
France report: AAF training course; Workshops in Strasbourg; European Heritage Days: Rennes; Wiki Loves Monuments
Germany report: Ahoy! Wikipedians set sail to document the reality of modern seafaring
Indonesia report: New GLAM partnerships on data donation; Commons structured data edit-a-thon
Norway report: Students taking on GLAM Wiki women in red
Sweden report: Musikverket: more folk music and photos; Hack for Heritage 2020; Wiki Loves Monuments; Wikipedia in the libraries; Digital Book Fair on Wikipedia
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Discussions
Other: Proposal to spin-off non-Earth coordinates from property P625 (coordinates location), currently only 7000 of 8 million values: see Property proposal/planetary coordinates
Upcoming: live SPARQL queries on Twitch and in French by Vigneron, October 20 at 18:00 CEST
Upcoming: Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call: hands-on work with Wikidata on creating items for authors of COVID 19 papers and brainstorming for future hands-on work, 20 October. Agenda
Blocked users trying to create new Items no longer make us skip QIDs (phab:T232620)
So far we don't have JSON dumps for Lexemes. We're working on regularly generating them as well now (phab:T264883)
Continuing work on getting the Query Builder to generate the first query. Almost there.
Started the feedback round for the REST API. Please provide your input if you are currently using the action API or plan to develop against Wikidata's API in the future.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 October. It will be on all wikis from 22 October (calendar).
Future changes
You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [16]
In the AbuseFilter extension, the rmspecials() function will be updated soon so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of rmspecials() with rmwhitespace() wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [17]
Some gadgets and user-scripts use the HTML div with the ID #jump-to-nav. This div will be removed soon. Maintainers should replace these uses with either #siteSub or #mw-content-text. A list of affected scripts is at the top of phab:T265373.
Past: Providing sustainable data services through Wikibase and Wikidata, SEMIC Conference 2020 - (replay)
Past: Introduction to Wikidata by Frimelle, Software Freedom Kosova 2020 - (replay)
Past: What's new in Wikidata? by Lea Lacroix, Lydia Pintscher and Mattia Capozzi, ItWikiCon 2020 - (replay)
Ongoing: plenty of Wikidata birthday events, online and onsite! Here's an overview of the upcoming events, you can find the links and details in the main calendar.
WikiCite virtual conference on October 26-28, live-streamed on Youtube and Twitter, with sessions across many timezones and languages – English, French, German, Indonesian, and Portuguese.
24-hours online meetup, on October 28-29: an open discussion with plenty of community members facilitating exchange around the topic "what makes you enthusiastic about Wikidata"
Gene Wiki: how to synchronize and curate primary sources with and in Wikidata, online, on October 29th
Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata (in French) - (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5)
Tool of the week
WikibaseJS-cli allows to edit Wikidata from command line, including creating items from samples ("templates") and do complex transformations of statements
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Server switch: all wikis will be in read-only on Tuesday, October 27th at 14:00 UTC for up to an hour (more information). All services hosted by WMF (e.g. tools hosted on wmcloud.org) are also impacted. Non-essential code deployments will not happen this week.
Got the Query Builder to create the first simple queries. You can follow along the development from now on on the test system.
Preparing regular JSON dumps for Lexemes (phab:T264883)
Analyzed a number of queries to the query service together with the WMF search team to better understand what the queries are doing and what further optimizations we can make to the query service and which queries need different systems to answer them.
Working on creating and tracking implicit usages of Wikidata descriptions so description changes show up in the watchlist on Wikipedia and co (phab:T265897)
Looking into what would be considered a mismatch when comparing WIkidata's data against another database. This is groundwork for potentially automating this in the future to find potential issues in the data to flag to editors.
Working on deploying the new Item quality scoring model for ORES to production so we have improved quality scores
Finished investigating how to handle a restricted list of external Wikibase services. (phab:T265118)
Removed noratelimit on bots for wikidata.org (phab:T258354)
Published Easier Access for Programmers to Wikidata research report
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
You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on October 27 around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [18]
Last week, links to "diffs" from mobile watchlists and recentchanges were linking to page-revisions instead of diffs. This has now been fixed. [19]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
Since the introduction of the interface administrators user group in 2018, administrators couldn’t view the deleted history of CSS/JS pages. Now they can. [20]
There was a problem with the Change Tags. The software would apply the "Reverted" tag to any page actions such as page-protection changes if they came directly after a reverted edit. This has now been fixed for new edits. [21]
The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias in November. Another announcement will be made once the date is finalized. [22]
Sysops will once again be able to view the deleted history of JS/CSS pages; this was restricted to interface administrators when that group was introduced.
Twinkle's block module now includes the ability to note the specific case when applying a discretionary sanctions block and/or template.
