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Wikidata For Wikimedia Projects/Clearer Wikidata Edit Summaries/Icons

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Wikidata Edit Icons in Watchlists and Recent Changes

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We welcome comments and questions about this project on the discussion page.

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T397256

Description

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Wikidata edits displayed on other Wiki Projects recent changes and watchlists pages will soon include four new icons.

These icons are intended to help viewers quickly identify a type of Wikidata-related activity happening behind the connected article or page on the local Wiki.

The goal is to improve readability of text-heavy pages and help identify what could be problematic edits, what require further investigation or what might change the content of the article.

This is relevant as:

  • Wikidata edits do not appear in the article/page's Revision History
  • No obvious visual cue in the edit summary
  • Edits happening on Wikidata can change the content of the current page
    • This makes it often confusing for editors to understand why, where or how the change took place, requiring further investigation and time spent.


How to see Wikidata edits in Watchlist and Recent Changes

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Wikidata edits displayed in Watchlists and Recent Changes of other Wikis are an opt-in feature. To see them (and the new icons), turn on the relevant setting in your local Wiki's Preferences.
A step-by-step guide is available here:
Guide to turn on Wikidata edits for your Recent Changes and Watchlist pages.


The 4 icons and the type of edit they represent can be grouped into 4 categories

Add Icon green + plus symbol

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Visually represents an addition to a Wikidata entity

  • Create a Wkidata claim (property + value pair), add a reference or qualifier
  • Adding a label, description, and/or alias(es)
  • A Wikidata item has been linked to a page

Remove icon Subtraction - symbol

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Visually represents a subtraction from a Wikidata entity

  • Removing a claim, reference or qualifier
  • Removing labels, descriptions and/or aliases.
  • Disconnecting the Wikidata entity from a Wikipedia page

Change or update icon ⇆

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Used when changes to parts of an entity have been made, usually when a value or entry has been changed for another value or input.

  • An existing label, description and/or alias has been replaced.
  • An existing claim, reference or qualifier has been edited or changed.

Merge icon Two lines merge into a single arrow symbol

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  • When two Wikidata entities are merged together.
  • Duplicate items or properties that describe the same concept

Visual icons as they appear

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Screenshot of cawiki recent changes page, showing icons in the Wikidata edit summary line
Screenshot of Catalan Wikipedia recent changes page, showing icons in the edit summary line of Wikidata edits

(Not shown: a 'merge' type of Wikidata edit, as they are quite rare)

Status

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  • Yes Research and interviews with editors
  • Yes UX to make design proposals of possible Icons to appear in Watchlist/Recent Changes
  • Yes Prototype icons are added to Codex
  • Yes Added to MediaWiki version: TBD
  • Yes Deploy to Pilot Wikipedias, Recent Changes and Watchlist pages: Catalan, Ukrainian, Hebrew
  • Observation period, stress-testing and collecting feedback
  • Inform all Wikis of change
  • Deploy to all Wikis / turn-off Feature-Flag

Contact

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For further information about these proposed changes, please leave a message on this page's Talk page, or User Talk: Danny Benjafield.

Feedback of a technical nature can be added to the Phabricator ticket: Phab:T397256

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