This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Wikidata weekly summary #70
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Wikimania continues! If you are around make sure you come and say Hi!
Wikidata meetup in the chapters village on Saturday at 1 PM at Wikimania.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Following numerous discussions we are happy to present the new version of the proposal that would lead to Wikidata supporting structured data for the Wiktionaries.
There are now only an estimated 1,000,000 articles remaining with inter language links, down from the previous 26,000,000!
Frequently used for cities and other places, P17 ("country") indicates the sovereign state an item relates to. There now at least 100 items for most present day sovereign states. Leading is China (Q148) with 607,817 items, followed by Iran (!794) with 105,875 items and the United States of America (Q30) with 99,243 items. China rose from just 5266 items a month ago.
Development
Changeops implemented for all Api modules
All Api modules now have better auto comments and custom summaries
To support the inclusion of geographical coordinates in Wikidata, just about two months a new data type came available and d:Property:P625 "coordinate location" was created. Already 565,000 pairs of coordinates are now available on WikiData. Compare this to 870,000 coordinates on English Wikipedia or 1,500,000 items with d:Property:P17 "country", likely to have coordinates. Have a look at them on a map.
Did you know?
Newest properties: approved by (P790), ISIL ID (P791), chapter (P792), Key event (P793), as (P794), distance along (P795), geo datum (P796), executing authority (P797), mission design series designation (P798), air ministry specification (P799), work (P800), notable work (P801), student (P802), professorship (P803), GNIS Antarctica ID (P804), subject of (P805). Italian cadastre code (P806) In Addition new properties to describe mushrooms were created: hymenium type (P783), mushroom cap shape (P784), hymenium attachment (P785), stipe character (P786), spore print color (P787), mushroom ecological type (P789), edibility (P789). These will allow to build the data for a mushroom infobox (as w:Template:Mycomorphbox).
Check if some of the items on this and this list can be merged. But be careful to only merge if they are really about the same topic! Help about merging is at d:Help:Merge.
Update, expand and translate d:Wikidata:Introduction to make it easier for newcomers to understand what Wikidata is all about.
Wikivoyage is still scheduled to get access to data on Wikidata (aka phase 2) on August 26.
Developers are working hard to also make the URL datatype available by August 26 but there are factors that are not in their hands so it might have to be delayed until the next deployment in 2 weeks. URL as a datatype will soon be available on test.wikidata.org. Please give it some thorough testing and report bugs.
Newest properties: separated from (P807), code Bien de Interés Cultural (P808), WPDA id (P809), academic minor (P811), academic major (P812), date retrieved (P813), IUCN protected areas category (P814), ITIS TSN (P815), decays to (P816), decay mode (P817)
Development
Prepared deployment of phase 2 on Wikivoyage
Worked on ability to sort qualifiers and references inside a statement
Started work on an api module to merge items
Worked on special page to query for items with one specific property and value
Cleaned up code for handling recent change entries from Wikidata in the clients (Wikipedia/Wikivoyage)
Worked on generic script for populating sites table and better integration with WMF process for creating new wikis
Setup new git repo for WikibaseMobile skin and extension
Fixed SetClaim api module to properly mark bot edits in recent changes and advised pywikipedia maintainers about adding support for the module. SetClaim can be used to create claims with references in a single edit.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
New features
The previous version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on August 15. It was enabled on non-Wikipedia sites on August 19, and on all Wikipedias on August 22. [1]
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on August 22. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia sites on August 26, and on all Wikipedias on August 29. [2]
You can now use the <wbr> HTML5 tag to say where a word can be cut. (52468) [5]
Gadget authors: you can now use the wikipage.content hook, so that your scripts are re-run when a page is changed after the document-ready event (for example using Ajax). (30713) [6]
Problems fixed
There was a bug where file redirects didn't work when a file was renamed; it is now fixed. There is still an issue with purging, but it should be fixed soon. (52200)
Maintenance reports provided by special pages will now all be updated on each wiki every six months. This will for example give you recent information on uncategorized pages, unused templates and most wanted pages (see details).
There was a bug that caused false positives for anti-blanking edit filters; it is now fixed. (52077) [7]
The "edit" and "edit source" tabs and section edit links can now be changed more easily; for example, some wikis are using "edit source" for wikitext editing, and "edit beta" for VisualEditor. You can ask for the same change in bugzilla.
You can now edit references that are added inside a <references> block. (51741)
You can now test on mediawiki.org new basic tools to add and edit struck text (with the button for the <s> tag), lower text ( for <sub>), upper text ( for <sup>), underlined text ( for <u>), computer code ( for <code> and <tt>), math text ( for <math>), Egyptian hieroglyphs ( for <hiero>), and to say that text is in another language ( for lang="ar" dir="rtl"). (51609, 51612, 51611, 51590, 51610, 52352)
You can now use VisualEditor with the Opera browser. [8]
Future
Starting on August 26, you will be able to use data from Wikidata on Wikivoyage sites. [9]
Starting on August 27, you will also get notifications on the mobile site if you're logged in to a wiki using notifications. [10]
Starting on August 28, all users with an account will be using HTTPS to access Wikimedia sites. HTTPS brings better security and improves your privacy. Some countries (like China) will not use HTTPS. If HTTPS causes problems for you, tell us on meta. [11]
Starting on August 29, you will get the code editor interface to edit JavaScript and CSS pages on all wikis. [12]
The plan to use Solr for search in MediaWiki was changed; instead, Elasticsearch is now planned. [13]
Deployment! Wikivoyage now has access to the wikidata dataset and various other bugs have also been fixed (including the copyright warning)!
Did you know?
Newest properties: interchange station (P833), public holiday (P832), parent club (P831), Encyclopedia of Life (P830), OEIS ID (P829), possible causes (P828), BBC programme identifier (P827), tonality (P826), dedicated to (P825), Meteoritical Bulletin Database ID (P824)
Newest properties: GSS code (2011) (P836), BioLib ID (P838), IMSLP ID (P839), narrative set in (P840), Paleobiology Database Identifier (P842), SIRUTA code (P843), UBIGEO code (P844). A set of properties to build calenders: public holiday (P832), day in year for periodic occurrence (P837) and feast day (P841). A proposal for "reoccurring date in machine readable format" is still under review.
Development
mlazowik has put in more work to getting support for batches (featured article and so on) to Wikidata
Sourcerer gadget by Magnus to help you add URLs from Wikipedia articles for claims
Wikimedia Commons is scheduled to get interwiki links via Wikidata on 23rd of September
Did you know?
Newest properties: Saskatchewan Register of Heritage Property identifier (P845), Global Biodiversity Information Facility ID (P846), United States Navy aircraft designation (P847), Japanese military aircraft designation (P849), World Register of Marine Species identifier (P850), ESRB rating (P852), CERO rating (P853), URL (P854), Sandbox-URL (P855), official website (P856), CNKI (P857), ESPN SCRUM ID (P858), sponsor (P859), e-archiv.li ID (P860), premiershiprugby.com ID (P861), Operational Requirement of the UK Air Ministry (P862), InPhO identifier (P863), ACM Digital Library author identifier (P864), BMLO (P865), Perlentaucher (P866), ROME Occupation Code (P867), foods traditionally associated (P868), instrumentation (P870), printed by (P872), phase point (P873), UN class (P874), UN code classification (P875), UN packaging group (P876), NFPA Other (P877), avionics (P878), pennant number (P879), CPU (P880), Variable type (P881), FIPS 6-4 (US counties) (P882), FIPS 5-2 (code for US states) (P883), State Water Register Code (Russia) (P884), origin of the watercourse (P885), LIR (P886), based on heuristic (P887), JSTOR (P888), Mathematical Reviews identifier (P889), Request for Comments number (IETF) (P892), Social Science Research Network (P893)
30 percent of all items are categorized in 6 large groups (main type (GND) (P107)). Most are items about geographic features (1.7 million items), some of these already have coordinates (0.5 million). Items about persons are fairly frequent too (1.3 million), many already with gender (0.9 million), a few with DOB (0.05 million) or DOD (0.04 million). Other groups include: creative works (305,000), terms, organizations, and events.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
New features
Special:Listfiles can now display old versions of files a user has uploaded. A new link was also added (Special:AllMyFiles) that gives a list of all files the current user has ever uploaded (that haven't been deleted).
There is now an Android application to contribute to translatewiki.net from mobile devices. [14]
Finished initial version of the build tool (= tool that creates one tarball/git repository from all our extensions and their dependencies for deployment)
Continued work on numbers data type
Continued work on Formatters (for autosummaries, diffs, etc)
Fixed RDF serialization issue
Merged merge API module
Finished up database schema updating code
Added validation for precision in globe coordinate value
Note from Lydia about the future of the weekly summaries
I've been compiling the weekly summaries for Wikidata for the past 1.5 years. It is time to give this into the hands of a few capable community members now that I have moved on to product management. Starting next week I will not be compiling the weekly summaries anymore. I am happy to help anyone who wants to take over get up to speed of course. Please contact me if you'd like to take this over.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
You can now create and edit references inside media captions. [22]
You now need to press the "delete" key twice to delete a template, reference or image; the first time, they only become selected, to avoid accidental deletion of infoboxes and similar content. [23]
When you resize images, you will now still see them, and their size will also be seen in the center. [24][25]
MediaWiki 1.22wmf22 was added to test wikis on October 17. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on October 21 and all Wikipedia wikis on October 24 (calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
New features
The "Toolbox" section in the site sidebar is now called "Tools" in English. You can do the same in your language by editing the interface text on translatewiki.net. Someone else may have already done it. [28]
On wikis with VisualEditor, you can now use it on pages in the File, Help and Category spaces. [29]
Problems
On October 22 (UTC), an error in the site settings caused *.wikimedia.org sites (like Meta-Wiki and Commons) to redirect to wikimediafoundation.org for a few hours. [30]
Future
MediaWiki 1.23wmf1 was added to test wikis on October 24. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on October 28 and all Wikipedia wikis on October 31 (calendar).
In the next days, servers in San Francisco will start providing (cached) content to users located in Oceania. If you are in that area and notice problems, please tell us. [31]
You will soon be able to test new features easily using the "Beta Features" view. VisualEditor will be in the list on sites where it works and isn't automatically enabled. Another example is a set of changes in the article text style.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
New features
The style and colors for warning boxes, error messages, and success messages in all skins of MediaWiki has been changed. [32]
You will soon be able to switch from editing in VisualEditor to editing wikitext directly without having to save the page. You can't yet switch from wikitext to VisualEditor but developers hope to make it possible in the future. [33]
Problems
There was a problem on October 31 during the activation of MediaWiki 1.22wmf2 on test wikis. mediawiki.org was also broken, and if you had problems logging in, it was probably because of this as well.
Future
Because of the problem with MediaWiki 1.22wmf2, the calendar has changed. It will be added to mediawiki.org and non-Wikipedia sites on November 4, and all Wikipedia sites on November 7.
JavaScript / Gadget developers
Due to a recent change, gadgets and user scripts that use jQuery UI should explicitly load the appropriate modules, as they may not be loaded by default. [34]
Developers have started to remove long-deprecated methods. You should check the JavaScript console (in debug=true mode) and look for deprecation warnings and their stack trace. [35]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
New features
You can now use the "Autonym" font of the Universal Language Selector (ULS) to display the name of languages (for example in navigation templates) in their correct script. To do this, add the CSS class "autonym" to the elements that include language names. Note that this font only works for the name of languages, not for any other text. [36]
Problems
There was a problem with Parsoid (the program used by VisualEditor to convert wikitext to annotated HTML) on November 4, between 19:40 and 20:40 (UTC). Encoding issues caused non-ASCII characters (including those with diacritics, like "é") to be broken when converted to wikitext and saved to the page. [37]
Future
The Beta Features tool is now available on Commons and Meta-Wiki. With it, you can test new features before they're added for everyone. The plan is to add this tool to all wikis on November 21. [38]
MediaWiki 1.23wmf3 was added to test wikis on November 7. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on November 12 and all Wikipedia wikis on November 14 (calendar). [39]
The MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis. [40]
The button of the Search page will soon be changed to be blue and bigger (see the difference). [41]
You will soon be able to add a page name as parameter for {{REVISIONID}}, {{REVISIONUSER}} and {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} and similar functions, by writing for example {{REVISIONID:Apple}}. [42]
In the future, when you hide a CentralNotice banner on a wiki, it will also be hidden on other Wikimedia sites. [43]
button for the 
for 
for 
for 
for 
for 
for 
for 
