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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.
Improvements and Maintenance
Editors interested in templates can help by reading the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and share your feedback on the talkpage. This input helps the Community Tech team to decide the right technical approach to build. Everyone is also encouraged to continue adding new wishes.
The new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page helps editors understand which namespaces exist on each wiki, and some details about how they are configured. Thanks to DannyS712 for these improvements. [1]
References Check is a feature that encourages editors to add a citation when they add a new paragraph to a Wikipedia article. For a short time, the corresponding tag "Edit Check (references) activated" was erroneously being applied to some edits outside of the main namespace. This has been fixed. [2]
It is now possible for a wiki community to change the order in which a page’s categories are displayed on their wiki. By default, categories are displayed in the order they appear in the wikitext. Now, wikis with a consensus to do so can request a configuration change to display them in alphabetical order. [3]
Tool authors can now access ToolsDB's public databases from both Quarry and Superset. Those databases have always been accessible to every Toolforge user, but they are now more broadly accessible, as Quarry can be accessed by anyone with a Wikimedia account. In addition, Quarry's internal database can now be queried from Quarry itself. This database contains information about all queries that are being run and starred by users in Quarry. This information was already public through the web interface, but you can now query it using SQL. You can read more about that, and 20 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Any pages or tools that still use the very old CSS classes mw-message-box need to be updated. These old classes will be removed next week or soon afterwards. Editors can use a global-search to determine what needs to be changed. It is possible to use the newer cdx-message group of classes as a replacement (see the relevant Codex documentation, and an example update), but using locally defined onwiki classes would be best. [4]
Technical project updates
Next week, all Wikimedia wikis will be read-only for a few minutes. This will start on September 25 at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. This maintenance process also targets other services. The previous switchover took 3 minutes, and the Site Reliability Engineering teams use many tools to make sure that this essential maintenance work happens as quickly as possible. [5]
Tech in depth
The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
Hackathon Showcase (45 mins) - 19 short presentations by some of the Hackathon participants, describing some of the projects they worked on, such as automated testing of maintenance scripts, a video-cutting command line tool, and interface improvements for various tools. There are more details and links available in the Phabricator task.
Co-Creating a Sustainable Future for the Toolforge Ecosystem (40 mins) - a roundtable discussion for tool-maintainers, users, and supporters of Toolforge about how to make the platform sustainable and how to evaluate the tools available there.
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
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday September 25 at 15:00 UTC. Reading the wikis will not be interrupted, but editing will be paused. These twice-yearly processes allow WMF's site reliability engineering teams to remain prepared to keep the wikis functioning even in the event of a major interruption to one of our data centers.
Updates for editors
A screenshot of the interface for the Alt Text suggested-edit feature
Editors who use the iOS Wikipedia app in Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Chinese, may see the Alt Text suggested-edit experiment after editing an article, or completing a suggested edit using "Add an image". Alt-text helps people with visual impairments to read Wikipedia articles. The team aims to learn if adding alt-text to images is a task that editors can be successful with. Please share any feedback on the discussion page.
The Codex color palette has been updated with new and revised colors for the MediaWiki user interfaces. The most noticeable changes for editors include updates for: dark mode colors for Links and for quiet Buttons (progressive and destructive), visited Link colors for both light and dark modes, and background colors for system-messages in both light and dark modes.
It is now possible to include clickable wikilinks and external links inside code blocks. This includes links that are used within <syntaxhighlight> tags and on code pages (JavaScript, CSS, Scribunto and Sanitized CSS). Uses of template syntax {{…}} are also linked to the template page. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [6]
Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [7][8]
The API now enables 5,000 on-demand API requests per month and twice-monthly HTML snapshots freely (gratis and libre). More information on the updates and also improvements to the software development kits (SDK) are explained on the project's blog post. While Wikimedia Enterprise APIs are designed for high-volume commercial reusers, this change enables many more community use-cases to be built on the service too.
The Snapshot API (html dumps) have added beta Structured Contents endpoints (blog post on that) as well as released two beta datasets (English and French Wikipedia) from that endpoint to Hugging Face for public use and feedback (blog post on that). These pre-parsed data sets enable new options for researchers, developers, and data scientists to use and study the content.
In depth
The Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is used to get answers to questions using the Wikidata data set. As Wikidata grows, we had to make a major architectural change so that WDQS could remain performant. As part of the WDQS Graph Split project, we have new SPARQL endpoints available for serving the "scholarly" and "main" subgraphs of Wikidata. The query.wikidata.org endpoint will continue to serve the full Wikidata graph until March 2025. After this date, it will only serve the main graph. For more information, please see the announcement on Wikidata.
<translate> Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the week leading up to 2024-09-30. Please help Translate. Missed the previous one? See issue #646</translate>
<translate>Discussions</translate>
<translate>* Closed request for adminship: Andrei Stroe - Success! Welcome User:Andrei Stroe as Wikidata's latest Admin.
New requests for permissions/Bot: QichwaBot - Task(s): Creating wikidata lexemes for the Quechua languages.
<translate>Events</translate>
<translate>* Wikidata's 12th birthday is coming up on October 29th. Have a look at the birthday parties and more planned around the world.
Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group session 1 October, 2024: We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Session on Tuesday, 1 October, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET (Time zone converter). Christa Strickler will be our first Project Series lead with her joint project with the Wikidata Religion & Theology Community of Practice to contribute biographical data to Wikidata from the IRFA database using the Mix’n’Match tool. We are excited to learn more about this project, provide a forum for discussion and shared learning, and lend a hand while building new skills. Event page.</translate>
<translate>Press, articles, blog posts, videos</translate>
<translate>* Papers
A Systematic Review of Wikidata in GLAM Institutions: a Labs Approach - Presents a systematic review of Wikidata use in GLAM institutions within the context of the work of the International GLAM Labs Community (glamlabs.io). The results summarise academic literature on Wikidata projects. By G. Candela et al.
Using Wikidata for Managing Cultural Heritage Information - The present study uses model wikidata elements as a basis and explores its dynamic formation into a cultural heritage information management tool within a museum. By D. Kyriaki-Manessi and S. Vazaiou.
<translate>Tool of the week</translate>
<translate>* Three new Userscripts for Wikidata - User:Lagewi has written 3 scripts to simplify reading references, explore property-value pairs in use for a statement or attaching a full bibliography to the end of the item page.</translate>
<translate>Other Noteworthy Stuff</translate>
<translate>* OpenSactions:Wikidata Persons in Relevant Categories - Using PETScan, generates a list of profiles of politically exposed persons by querying specific categories on Wikidata and extracting the entities.</translate>
objects of occurrence have role (role that objects of this occurrence take on in the context of this occurrence. (For selectional restrictions, use "object class of occurrence" (P12913) instead.))
agents of action have role (role that agents of this action take on in the context of this action. (For selectional restrictions, use "agent class of action" (P12994) instead. ))
agent class of action (class of items that may initiate this action or class of actions (For roles filled by agents of an action, use "agents of action have role" (P12993) instead))
agent of action (particular item that initiates this action or class of actions)
<translate>* New property proposals to review:</translate>
<translate>** General datatypes: </translate>
Larval host plant (Larval host plant - used only for insects - subclass of P1034)
has reading (phonetic reading or pronunciation of the kanji)
chemical formula (Description of chemical compound giving element symbols and counts)
mode of reproduction (ways for living organisms to propagate or produce their offsprings)
health points (health or armor points of this video game, board game or role-playing game character)
damage (damage value of this video game weapon, ability or character)
magazine capacity (In (real or fictional) devices like a firearm, weapon, or engineered thing, this is the default capacity or size of a devices' magazine, clip, or other container typically used to hold ammunition, bolts, cartridges, tools, etc. which pushes those items as needed usually through a spring-based mechanism into a receiver for further use by the device)
male mean age (male mean age in a given place; qualifier of {{P|4442}})
female mean age (female mean age in a given place; qualifier of {{P|4442}})
Western Australian Biographical Index (Card ID from the Western Australian Biographical Index, a set of handwritten index cards compiled in the 1970s.)
leased to (person or organisation that holds or was granted a lease on the subject)
WPBSA com player ID (Identifier for an athlete on the main website of WPBSA)
JLPT level (difficulty of word by the level of JLPT)
Search: The haswbstatement search magic word has been improved by the Search Platform Team. Previously it was limited in which Properties were indexed for it. Going forward haswbstatement:P123 will work for all Properties, regardless of their datatype. This will allow you to filter search results for Items that have a statement with a specific Property. (Searching for a specific complete statement with haswbstatement:P123=xxx will still only work for specific datatypes.) For this to work all Items have to be reindexed and this will take up to 1 month.
Design system migration: We have migrated the Special:NewLexeme page from Wikit to Codex and are working on finishing the migration for the Query Builder.
EntitySchemas: We finished the investigation about how to support search for EntitySchemas by label or alias when linking to an EntitySchema in a statement. (phab:T362005)
Wikibase REST API: We worked on integrating language fallbacks into the API (phab:T371605)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Readers of 42 more wikis can now use Dark Mode. If the option is not yet available for logged-out users of your wiki, this is likely because many templates do not yet display well in Dark Mode. Please use the night-mode-checker tool if you are interested in helping to reduce the number of issues. The recommendations page provides guidance on this. Dark Mode is enabled on additional wikis once per month.
Editors using the 2010 wikitext editor as their default can access features from the 2017 wikitext editor by adding ?veaction=editsource to the URL. If you would like to enable the 2017 wikitext editor as your default, it can be set in your preferences. [9]
For logged-out readers using the Vector 2022 skin, the "donate" link has been moved from a collapsible menu next to the content area into a more prominent top menu, next to "Create an account". This restores the link to the level of prominence it had in the Vector 2010 skin. Learn more about the changes related to donor experiences. [10]
The CampaignEvents extension provides tools for organizers to more easily manage events, communicate with participants, and promote their events on the wikis. The extension has been enabled on Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, and Meta-Wiki. Chinese Wikipedia has decided to enable the extension, and discussions on the extension are in progress on Spanish Wikipedia and on Wikidata. To learn how to enable the extension on your wiki, you can visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-Wiki.
Developers with an account on Wikitech-wiki should check if any action is required for their accounts. The wiki is being changed to use the single-user-login (SUL) system, and other configuration changes. This change will help reduce the overall complexity for the weekly software updates across all our wikis.
In depth
The server switch was completed successfully last week with a read-only time of only 2 minutes 46 seconds. This periodic process makes sure that engineers can switch data centers and keep all of the wikis available for readers, even if there are major technical issues. It also gives engineers a chance to do maintenance and upgrades on systems that normally run 24 hours a day, and often helps to reveal weaknesses in the infrastructure. The process involves dozens of software services and hundreds of hardware servers, and requires multiple teams working together. Work over the past few years has reduced the time from 17 minutes down to 2–3 minutes. [11]
Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
<translate> Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the week leading up to 2024-10-07. Please help Translate. Missed the previous one? See issue #647</translate>
Wikidata Day 2024 at the Pratt Institute Manhattan Campus, New York - To celebrate Wikidata's 12th Birthday, a mini-conference with beginner workshops, lightning talks and keynote speeches will be held. October 26, 11am - 5pm EDT (UTC-4). More info, registration and full address on this Wikipedia event page.
The Wikidata Days 2024 in Bologna, Italy will take place on November 8th and 9th. Its program revolves around Wikidata for libraries and academia, and features a wide range of Wikidata-enthusiastic librarians and researchers from Italy. Registration is open until October 31st.
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 16th October 2024 at 18:00 CEST 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.
Scholia hackathon on Oct 18-20, aimed at addressing changes related to the Wikidata graph split
Intangible Cultural Heritage on Wikidata - Hosted by Wikimedia Community Malta (WCM), November 8, 2024 18:00 - 19:00 CEST, Malta Fairs and Conference Centre (MFCC) in Ta’ Qali, Malta
<translate>Press, articles, blog posts, videos</translate>
<translate>* Blogs
Wikidata is a giant crosswalk file dbreunig.com describes how with a little DuckDB and Ruby and data from Wikidata, you can produce a cross-walk file of geographic entities.
(fr) wikidata MultiSearch - search for a list of elements in Wikidata. A GPLv3 licenced tool built by Philippe Gambette allows you to search for a list of words in Wikidata and retrieve some associated Wikidata properties.
<translate>Other Noteworthy Stuff</translate>
Are you building applications or services with Wikidata's data? We'd love to hear from you to help us figure out the future of accessing Wikidata's data.
Wikidata: Event Organizers - If you are organizing or thinking about planning a Wikidata event, this new page listing the additional User rights the user-role 'event organizer' has will be a valuable resource. Including the process for applying for permission rights.
objects of occurrence have role (role that objects of this occurrence take on in the context of this occurrence. (For selectional restrictions, use "object class of occurrence" (P12913) instead.))
agents of action have role (role that agents of this action take on in the context of this action. (For selectional restrictions, use "agent class of action" (P12994) instead. ))
agent class of action (class of items that may initiate this action or class of actions (For roles filled by agents of an action, use "agents of action have role" (P12993) instead))
agent of action (particular item that initiates this action or class of actions)
characteristic of ((qualifier only) statement value is a characteristic, quality, property, or state of this qualifier value)
Lingnan University Library: Wikidata Pilot Project - Creating and improving entries for Lingnan University academic staff, as well as generating entries for the Library's digital collections and Lingnan theses and dissertations.
French Literary Prizes - Aims to coordinate the development of a database on French literary prizes (list of prizes, jury members, list of winners)
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
Communities can now request installation of Automoderator on their wiki. Automoderator is an automated anti-vandalism tool that reverts bad edits based on scores from the new "Revert Risk" machine learning model. You can read details about the necessary steps for installation and configuration. [12]
Updates for editors
Translators in wikis where the mobile experience of Content Translation is available, can now customize their articles suggestion list from 41 filtering options when using the tool. This topic-based article suggestion feature makes it easy for translators to self-discover relevant articles based on their area of interest and translate them. You can try it with your mobile device. [13]
It is now possible for <syntaxhighlight> code blocks to offer readers a "Copy" button if the copy=1 attribute is set on the tag. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [14]
Customized copyright footer messages on all wikis will be updated. The new versions will use wikitext markup instead of requiring editing raw HTML. [15]
Later this month, temporary accounts will be rolled out on several pilot wikis. The final list of the wikis will be published in the second half of the month. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 11 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available.
Rate limiting has been enabled for the code review tools Gerrit and GitLab to address ongoing issues caused by malicious traffic and scraping. Clients that open too many concurrent connections will be restricted for a few minutes. This rate limiting is managed through nftables firewall rules. For more details, see Wikitech's pages on Firewall, GitLab limits and Gerrit operations.
Australia report: Artbank's edit-a-thon for gender equity in Australian visual arts
Belgium report: Project 'Belgian distilleries as Linked Open Data' completed
Brazil report: Photowalks for Wiki Loves Monuments 2024 at five corners of Brazil
France report: 4th edition of the Label Culture Libre
India report: Digitization at the Museum of Santal Culture, Federation Hall Society Library and Cultural Heritage and Literature in Meghalaya
New Zealand report: Report on the Wikidata WikiProject International Botanical 2024, Conference report for SPNHC-TDWG 2024 and the upcoming New Zealand species edit-a-thon
