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Wikidata weekly summary #713
[edit]
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2026-01-05. Missed the previous one? See issue #712.
week leading up to 2026-01-05. Missed the previous one? See issue #712.
Discussions
- Open request for adminship: Morne06 - RfP scheduled to end after 8 January 2026 20:35 (UTC)
- Closed request for adminship: Ppolar bear - general consensus is to reapply after gaining more experience.
- New request for comments: Notability policy reform: first drafted in 2013, Wikidata has grown vastly since the original Notability policy was created. This first-round discussion is intended to collect ideas, comments, and reflections on how to improve the Notability Policy for what Wikidata currently is and will become.
Events
- Upcoming events:
- OpenStreetMap X Wikidata Meetup #84 January 12 Time: 19:30-21:00 UTC+8 at Mozilla Community Space Taipei (Q61752245).
- Wikimedia Hackathon Northwestern Europe 2026: a two-day event that will take place from 13 to 14 March 2026 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Apply for a grant and join the event.
- The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 18:00 CEST, 14th January 2026 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.
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
- Blogs:
- Rescuing Scholia #2: getting closer
- African Literary Metadata (ALMEDA)
- Wikontic: Ontology-Aware KG Pipeline - this article introduces Wikontic, a pipeline that builds knowledge graphs from text by enforcing Wikidata's ontological rules and merging duplicate entities.
- Papers:
- Using Wikidata’s Ontology in Practice: A Neuro-Symbolic, Community-Centred Workflow for Integrating and Reusing Humanities Datasets - This article introduces an ontology-first, community-driven workflow that aligns humanities datasets with Wikidata to address data silos and gender inequities, offering reusable modelling patterns, SPARQL-based analysis, and a neuro-symbolic AI framework that reduces bias and supports reproducible, ontology-backed knowledge graph practices. By Velilla & Ferran-Ferrer (2025).
- A Semantic Wiki for Language Learning: The Case of the Baoulé Language - The BAOULE-WIKI project introduces a semantic wiki and homograph-detection model to preserve and teach the endangered Baoulé language, achieving high accuracy while paving the way for broader digital preservation of African languages through community collaboration and integration with knowledge bases like Wikidata and DBpedia. By Kra et al., (2026).
- Transforming the Digital Landscape: Towards a Medieval Knowledge Graph - Digitization has transformed medieval studies by expanding access and enabling new research methods, with future progress hinging on Linked Open Data, shareable identifiers, and collaborative knowledge graphs to truly democratize and enrich scholarship. By Burrows, (2026).
- Towards a Linked Open Index: Reconciling Museum Records to Wikidata for Index of American Design Constituents - The Index of American Design project’s reconciliation of thousands of records with Wikidata reveals both challenges and strategies for improving data alignment, while a linked Power BI tool supports ongoing monitoring of quality, access, and representation in humanities research. By Foster et al., (2026).
- The “Dizionario Degli Scrittori Italiani Contemporanei Pseudonimi” in Wikidata. Pseudonymous Authors in Wikidata: Dataset and Queries - The dataset from the MA thesis structures biographical data on 19th–20th century pseudonymous Italian authors in Wikidata, including corpus items, SPARQL queries, and analysis documents, and is reusable for further research or case studies. By De Monaco, (2025).
Tool of the week
- Broomstick is a tool by Wikicollabs it uncover Lexemes that can be improved on Wikidata.
- Explore your Wikimedia activity year in review with Wiki Year in Review
- Wikilokal (Android version): explore the world within a 3 km radius by Affandy Murad
Other Noteworthy Stuff
- New project: Dissemination of polymer science through Wikipedia and Wikidata (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (Q33438))
Newest properties and property proposals to review
- Newest General datatypes:
- crowdfunding target (target goal of this crowdfunding campaign)
- free height (vertical distance from the floor level to the lowest obstruction in the ceiling of an indoor or outdoor space)
- Newest External identifiers: PixelatedArcade genre ID, Game Boy Database game ID, RetroCollect games ID, MyWaifuList work ID, Nonbinary Wiki ID, Diccionari de la llengua catalana entry ID, DVIDS video ID, FIP.IT basketball player ID, Card Player ID, Télérama film ID, Boosty author ID, Before I Play game ID
- New General datatypes property proposals to review:
- Fungal Names taxon ID (ID number in the [[:w:Fungal Names]] database.)
- Braille transcription (transcription in Braille)
- Braille represents (graphene or phone that the Braille cell represents)
- New External identifier property proposals to review: CNVD-ID, Trismegistos editor ID, woordenlijst lemma ID, European Vehicle Number, CourtListener person ID, Norwegian railway station code, Australian National Kennel Council ID, Museo del Marchio Italiano ID
You can comment on all open property proposals!
Did you know?
- Schema examples: (E498) district electoral division: Schema to describe an electoral division (small political division of Ireland).
- Newest WikiProjects:
- Project IrishForges: Describing forges and forge buildings of Ireland using Wikidata, Wikimedia and other sources.
- Project Ireland: A hub for all Ireland-related Wikidata activities including cross-Wikiproject tasks.
- Project Historic Irish Placenames: focusing on County Kilkenny, connect historic placenames with their modern counterparts or create new items for "lost places".
- Svenska psalmodikon: A sub-project for the psalmodikon (Q3354977), a stringed-instrument popular in Sweden.
- WikiProject Highlights: WikiPojects as decentralized governance - this sub-page of the Limits of Wikidata project proposes WikiProjects become caretakers of collections or subgraphs of relevant items.
- Showcase Items: Venezuela (Q717) - country in South America
- Showcase Lexemes: размах (L155644) - Russian noun (rɐzˈmax) meaning "amplitude (of a swing)", "physical span or width", or "scale/scope (of an activity)"
Development
- No development happened in the past week as the team are just returning from the holidays.
You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.
Weekly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
- Govdirectory weekly focus country:
- Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!
This Month in GLAM: December 2025
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About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 12:57, 12 January 2026 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #714
[edit] Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2026-01-12. Missed the previous one? See issue #713.
week leading up to 2026-01-12. Missed the previous one? See issue #713.
Discussions
- New requests for permissions/Bot: AmeisenBot 3 - Task/s: Adding descriptions (and possibly labels and aliases as well) to items based on their statements.
- New CheckUser requests: Saroj (RfP scheduled to end at 25 January 2026 09:31 UTC)
Events
- Upcoming events:
- The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 18:00 CEST, 14th January 2026 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.
- WMF Wikidata Platform team is launching a new office hours series starting January 27th, 2026 and continuing on the first Tuesday of each month. The scope of this series is be limited to Blazegraph migration support for the entirety of 2026. Participants are encouraged to register in advance for each session and may optionally add a brief description of their migration-related questions to the shared Etherpad to help guide preparation. See Blazegraph Migration office hour page for more details
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
- Blogs: Wikidata at 13: Fante Wikimedians Joins the Celebration
- Papers: Structuring the Sights and Stories of Pausanias with Wikidata - The Digital Periegesis project leverages Wikidata and linked open data tools to annotate, disambiguate, and connect Pausanias’s complex 2nd‑century text, enhancing accessibility, interoperability, and scholarly engagement with Greece’s historical and mythological landscape. By Kiesling et al., (2025)
- Videos: (Papiamento) Wikipedia on Aruba | Episode 8: How to add a new topic (item) to Wikidata
Tool of the week
- Knowledge Train A game to create a train of knowledge with the power of Wikidata - User:Athulvis
Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Mobile statement editing is now available as a beta feature on Wikidata. Enable the Beta feature in your preferences settings, head to Wikidata Sandbox (Q4115189) (in mobile view) to test it and share your feedback here: Mobile editing of statements.
- The WMF Wikidata Platform team has published its January 2026 newsletter. It includes updates on the legacy full-graph endpoint decommissioning, the User-Agent policy change, the monthly Blazegraph migration office hours, and efforts to reduce regressions caused by the legacy endpoint shutdown. To have new issues of the WDP monthly newsletter delivered to your user talk page, Subscribe to WDP newsletter!
Newest properties and property proposals to review
- Newest General datatypes: common organism (organisms known by this common name)
- Newest External identifiers: Boosty author ID, Before I Play game ID, Korea Heritage Service Heritage Portal ID, KaraokeTexty.cz artist ID, KaraokeTexty.cz song ID, Showlabs ID, DEUMM Online ID, Slekt og Data cemetery ID, Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia ID, EZB library ID, topic of Dictionary of Canadian biography identifier, Cover Art Archive image, X broadcast ID, Theaterencyclopedie ID, Maitron biography ID (new version), Scilit organization ID, Fragrantica perfume ID, Fragrantica perfume brand ID, izoh.uz word ID, Place Names and Places of Nova Scotia ID, Fragrantica perfume notes ID, Fragrantica perfumer ID, Parfumo perfume brand ID, Parfumo perfumer ID, Parfumo perfume ID, Parfumo fragrance notes ID
- New General datatypes property proposals to review:
- Artistagraph ID (Identifies the Artistagraph for an artistIdentifier for creative works on Artistagraph, a platform for documenting and discovering artist information and creative work connections)
- number of tunnel tubes (Number of parallel tubes in a tunnel.)
- New External identifier property proposals to review:: Mapillary sequence ID, People's Graphic Design Archive creator ID, Uni24k indentifier, Brussels BeStAddress municipality ID, Brussels BeStAddress street name ID, Brussels BeStAddress address ID, Wikifunctions object, MAX username, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei ID, The Retro Web company ID, Schulnummer Berlin, KCI article ID
You can comment on all open property proposals!
Did you know?
- Query examples:
- Showcase Items: mojito - traditional Cuban highball cocktail
Development
- Mobile editing of statements: We have released the first version of mobile statement editing as a beta feature (see details above). In addition we are improving it further and are adding missing functionality to get it ready for a full release. This includes adding editing support for additional data types such as date and musical notation.
- Blazegraph replacement: The Wikidata platform team is continuing their evaluation of alternative backends for the Wikidata Query Service.
- Graph QL: We are continuing to work on the prototype to get it ready for wider testing and are waiting on a security review.
- Dumps: We fixed an issue where the "latest" symlinks to data dumps weren't working correctly.
- Wikidata integration in the Wikimedia projects: We are investigating how to further reduce the number of unnecessary changes showing up in watchlist and recent changes coming from Wikidata. The work on this is also helping reduce the size of the recent changes database table, which is especially important on larger Wikipedias. In addition we are continuing to improve the Databox module to make it easier for smaller Wikipedias to get Wikidata-powered infoboxes.
You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.
Weekly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
- Govdirectory weekly focus country: Kazakhstan
- Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!
Tech News: 2026-03
[edit]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 Wikimedia Foundation has shared some guiding questions for the July 2026–June 2027 Annual Plan on Meta and Diff. These focus on global trends, faster and healthier experimentation, better support for newcomers, strengthening editors and advanced users, improving collaboration across projects, and growing and retaining readership. Feedback and ideas are welcome on the talk page.
Updates for editors
- As part of the current work of Community Tech team on the Multiple watchlists project, the display of EditWatchlist will be updated as a first step towards multiple watchlists. Additionally, the pagination on Search will be updated too, as a part of the work on the Revamp pagination / page navigation wish. [1]
- The Global Watchlist is a MediaWiki extension that lets you see your watchlists from different wikis on the same page. It was recently updated to look more like the regular Watchlist, such as preparing it for temporary accounts in IP masking (including rerouting user links to contributions pages), making page titles bold, and opening links in edit summaries and tags in new browser tabs. [2][3][4][5]
View all 28 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where global blocks did not have the option to disable sending emails, has now been fixed, and will be available for use in the week of January 13. [6]
Updates for technical contributors
- The VisualEditor citation tool and Reference Previews now support "map" as a reference type. [7]
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki/MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 19:33, 12 January 2026 (UTC)
The Signpost: 15 January 2026
[edit]
- News and notes: Wikipedia's 25th anniversary is here!
- Special report: Wikipedia at 25: A Wake-Up Call
- Serendipity: The WMF wants to buy you books!
- WikiProject report: Time for a health check: the Vital Signs 2026 campaign
- In the media: Fake Acting President Trump and a Wikipedia infobox
- Community view: The inbox behind Wikipedia
- Traffic report: Tonight I'm gonna rock you
- Comix: Oh come on man.
Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 15:19, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #715
[edit] Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2026-01-19. Missed the previous one? See issue #714.
week leading up to 2026-01-19. Missed the previous one? See issue #714.
Discussions
- Closed request for comments: Deprecate P642? - Consensus to deprecate was reached.
Events
- Upcoming events:
- Wikifying Te Tiriti 10-workshop series, attendees will learn how to contribute to Wikipedia and create Wikidata items, to increase the visibility of people and their projects working in Te Tiriti and anti-racism areas. Further information can be found on the WikiProject page / Workshop timetable. Register to attend.
- Wiki Loves Folklore 2026 in Uganda - contribute to the project by expanding or creating Wikidata Items connected to the project categories, such as Ugandan folklore, food, music, dances, traditional clothing, and more.
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
- Blogs:
- The London School of Economics and Political Science have employed a Wikimedian in Residence
- Wikimedia Indonesia held Data and Technology Week 2025 in last December 2025, organized introductory workshops on Wikidata and Wikifunctions. Read key takeaways and participants' discussion at Diff.
- Wikidata Days 2025 Journey in Africa: Building Knowledge, Languages and Communities
- Wikidata Botswana 2025: Celebrating 13 Years (And We Really Showed Up!)
- Papers:
- A new monographic number of JLIS.it has been published regarding the OPAC SBN (the biggest collective library catalogue in Italy, with more than 7 thousands of libraries participating; about its collaboration with Wikidata, see the Wikidata coordination page); it contains 3 papers focusing on the use of Wikidata for authority control (all in Italian, with abstract in English):
- Wikidata and SBN: An Assessment of Two Years of Work (2023–2025): an overview Wikidata-SBN of the collaboration in 2023-2025, focusing on the methods of reconciliation
- Wikidata-Enhanced Authority Records: A Project for Personal Names in SBN: a description of the procedure to extract data from Wikidata items matches with SBN authority records and adapt these data to be copied into non-individualised SBN authority records
- NaMo, utility for populating missing date fields in authority records: a description of an utility to keep an authority file up-to-date finding missing death dates through Wikidata
- Wikidata-Enhanced Authority Records: A Project for Personal Names in SBN - A collaboration between Wikimedia Italy and ICCU is enriching incomplete SBN authority records using Wikidata identifiers, enhancing catalogue accuracy and accessibility as entries continue to grow. By Ravelli, (2026).
- A new monographic number of JLIS.it has been published regarding the OPAC SBN (the biggest collective library catalogue in Italy, with more than 7 thousands of libraries participating; about its collaboration with Wikidata, see the Wikidata coordination page); it contains 3 papers focusing on the use of Wikidata for authority control (all in Italian, with abstract in English):
Tool of the week
- Puzzles By Nathan is a game that arrange words so each connects to the next
Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Mobile editing for RTL languages: The Wikimedia Deutschland team is seeking users of right-to-left (RTL) scripts, including Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Urdu, to help test and improve the mobile statement editing experience. If you edit in an RTL language and would like to join user interviews or deeper testing, sign up here.
- (French) Gendered place names in the public space of French-speaking Switzerland
Newest properties and property proposals to review
- Newest External identifiers: Parfinity notes ID, Google Ads Transparency Center advertiser ID, Basenotes perfume brand ID, Basenotes perfume people ID, Basenotes perfume ID, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei ID, MAX username
- New General datatypes property proposals to review:
- location collected (geographic location where a specimen or sample was collected in the field)
- Category for music in this language (link to category item that contains music in this language)
- New External identifier property proposals to review: Thyssen-Bornemisza work ID, CriticDB IDs, MPA certificate number, WorldFootball.net person ID (new), The Session tune ID, Parfumo fragrance note ID
You can comment on all open property proposals!
Did you know?
- Query examples:
- Schema examples: film director (E24)
- WikiProject Highlights:
- Rijksmonumenten Unmerge list - list of items with more than one P359 (Rijksmonumenten ID).
- Stanford Libraries added an event: Love Data Week 2026
- Newest database reports: Entities without a Label - this list is dynamically created, search by language code and entity type: Item or Property.
- Showcase Items: FIFA (Q253414) - international governing body of association football
- Showcase Lexemes: charge (L3922) - English verb (tʃɑːrdʒ) meaning "to supply with energy", "to rush forward", or "to have responsibility for"
Development
- Mobile statement editing:
- We continued work on supporting more datatypes for editing, specifically date, musical notation and monolingual text.
- We worked on displaying constraint violation indicators.
- You can try out the current state by enabling it in the beta features section of your preferences.
- Wikidata integration in the other Wikimedia projects: We are continuing to investigate options for further reducing the amount of Wikidata changes in recent changes and watchlist on the other wikis to reduce the size of the database tables.
- Dumps: We finished our research on dumps, especially looking into different ways to define subsets. We will publish the report with results by end of February.
- Wikidata Query Service: The Wikidata Platform team is continuing the evaluation of potential replacements for Blazegraph.
You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.
Weekly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
- Govdirectory weekly focus country:
- Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!
Tech News: 2026-04
[edit]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
- The tray shown on Special:Diff in mobile view has been redesigned. It is now collapsed by default, and incorporates a link to undo the edit being viewed, making it easier for mobile editors and reviewers to take action while keeping the interface uncluttered. [8]
- The Global Watchlist lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on one page. The extension continues to improve — it now automatically determines the text direction (ensuring correct display of sites with unusual domain names) and shows detailed descriptions for log actions. Later this week, a new permanent link for page creations and CSS classes for each entry element will be added. [9][10][11][12]
- View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the previously observed issue in Vector 2022, where anchor link targets were obscured by the sticky header, has now been addressed. [13]
Updates for technical contributors
- As mentioned in the October 2025 deprecation announcement, MediaWiki Interfaces team will begin sunsetting all transform endpoints containing a trailing slash from the MediaWiki REST API the week of January 26. Changes are expected to roll out to all wikis on or before January 30th. All API users currently calling them are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. Both endpoint variations can be found, compared, and tested using the REST Sandbox. If you have questions or encounter any problems, please file a ticket in Phabricator to the #MW-Interfaces-Team board.
- Interactive reference documentation for the Wikimedia REST API has moved. Requests to API docs previously hosted through RESTBase (e.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/) are now redirected to the REST Sandbox. - The WMF Wikidata Platform team (WDP) has published its January 2026 newsletter. It includes updates on the legacy full-graph endpoint decommissioning, the User-Agent policy change, the monthly Blazegraph migration office hours, and efforts to reduce regressions caused by the legacy endpoint shutdown. As a reminder, you can subscribe to the WDP newsletter!
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- The Wikimedia Hackathon Northwestern Europe 2026 will take place on 13-14 March 2026 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Applications opened mid-December and will close soon or when capacity is reached. It's a two-day, technically oriented hackathon bringing together Wikimedians from the region. Hope to see you there!
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.