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

• The Wikimedia Commons mobile app has a new version. Images uploaded using Nearby are now automatically added to the associated Wikidata item. You can browse other images on Commons. You can see your achievements and your upload statistics. It has also fixed some bugs. [1]
• Advanced item MediaWiki web requests now have a time limit of 60 seconds for GET requests and 200 seconds for POST requests. [2]

Problems

• You could not see the menu on the notifications page on the mobile version. This has now been fixed. [3]

Changes later this week

• Special:AncientPages can hide disambiguation pages. [4]
• Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 September. It will be on all wikis from 20 September (calendar).

Meetings

• Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The developers are testing new mobile web navigation. You can use it and give feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

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 preferences form will change to use the standard look. If you see any problems please report them on Phabricator. [5]
• Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 September. It will be on all wikis from 27 September (calendar).

Meetings

• Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 26 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

• Discussions
  • Open request for adminship: Ayack
  • New request for comments: 2018 administrator policy update
  • Closed request for comments: Adding short code for cryptocurrencies

• Events
  • Past: 19-21 September 2018, New York City: Wikibase workshop at Rhizome
  • Upcoming: IRC office hour, on Tuesday September 25th, from 18:00 to 19:00 (UTC+2, Berlin time) on the channel wikimedia-office

• Press, articles, blog posts
  • Supporting Community Events: spotlight on ‘Social Media Exchange’ (SMEX) in Lebanon, by MySociety
  • Using OpenStack to run a custom Wikibase, by Andra Waagmeester
  • Creating linked open data for Victorian shipping registers on the National Library of Wales blog

• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • The OpenStreetMap wiki enabled Wikibase, to describe OSM tags and keys. Here's what an entry for moveable bridge looks like: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Item:Q104
  • TABernacle, a tool to edit Wikidata on a table view, was rewritten by Magnus Manske

• Did you know?
  • Newest properties:
    • General datatypes: Index Herbariorum code, model item, perfume note, place of devotion, Taxonomic Literature 2 number, video designer, projection designer, mode of derivation, work hardening strain, tuition fee, foreign transaction fee, trading fee, account charge / subscription fee, borrowing rate, interest rate, JMA Magnitude, official number of town quarter
    • External identifiers: Adelphi author ID, AnimeClick drama ID, Lepidoptera of Belgium ID, CharacTour character ID, Enciclovida ID, IGN film ID, LakeNet ID, Mathematical Reviews journal ID, MobyGames platform ID, Northern Ireland Assembly ID, Norwegian war refugees register ID, re3data repository ID, ResearchGate publication ID, SJPXVII ID, SPXVI ID, Qualité Tourisme ID, Muziekweb Performer ID, Tourisme & Handicap ID, Indonesian Basic Data of Primary and Secondary Education ID, Microsoft Store app ID, Arkivportalen agent ID, Archiveportal archive ID, Preferred Hotels & Resorts hotel ID, Bpk-ID, UOL Eleições ID, Uralonet ID, Álgu ID
  • New property proposals to review:
    • General datatypes: Spotify show ID, derived from sense, creates, Short Title Catalogus Vlaanderen (STCV) ID, acquisition date, Løøv classification, Non-free artwork image URL, Kompositionsfuge, abbrév., subject lexeme
    • External identifiers: HKCAN ID, Shazam artist ID, Sprockhoff-Nummer, Wikibase Registry ID, GTB database IDs, Depósito Legal ID, Moviepilot.de series ID, Australia and New Zealand Standard Research Classification 2008, IGN series ID, old-computers.com ID, Kunstenpunt productions, tweet ID, Open Food Facts ingredient ID, bazakolejowa.pl railway line ID, SUCA code, VicFlora ID
  • Query examples:
    • Maps and libraries in Boston and Cambridge (source)
    • Timeline of mobile phones (source)
    • Average height of figure skaters by gender and discipline (source)
  • New bot requests: Import and maintain nominal GDP for countries from the World Bank Data API, Create indiscriminately new items, Missing P31, Importing lexemes from en.Wiktionary in specific languages

• Development
  • Work on editing Form statements using the API (phab:T194732)
  • Show the Lemma(s) or Representation(s) when Lexemes or Forms are mentioned in constraint reports (phab:T195315)
  • Add hyphenation for long Lexeme lemmas and representations (phab:T195367)
  • Normalize SPARQL queries (phab:T204122, thanks to Abiàn)
  • Fix a bug on the Query Service about exported query results being different from the displayed result (phab:T195258)
  • Fix a bug on the Query Service about empty map results returning error (phab:T178786)

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.

• Monthly Tasks
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
  • Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
  • Suggested and open tasks!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item.
  • 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!

• Discussions
  • Closed request for comments: P171, When multiple sources are cited for a fact, should IMDB be deleted as one of them when used, Findagrave removed as a source for information, How would you state the number of (rooms, restaurants, suites) in a hotel?, Updating References for External Data

• Events
  • Past: IRC office hour, September 25th
  • Past: Working in a World of (linked, semantic) Open Data. Keynote by User:MartinPoulter at University of Stirling Life in Data Conference, September 28th
  • Wikidata and Wikimedia workshop (30 September) and session about data modeling (2 October) at the CIDOC 2018 Conference of the International Council of Museums, Heraklion, Crete
  • There were three Wikidata-related presentations at the 10th International Conference on Ecological Informatics that took place on 23-28 September in Jena.
  • Upcoming: German-speaking WikiCon, October 3-5 in St Gallen (Switzerland). Several Wikidata-related talks and workshops in the programme.

• Press, articles, blog posts
  • Property Path use in Wikidata Queries, by Gregory Todd Williams

• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • The templates Reasonator and Scholia are available, for linking from en.Wikisource pages to representations of Wikidata items.
  • Wikidata considered unable to support hierarchical search in Structured Data for Commons, see also thread.

• Did you know?
  • Newest properties:
    • General datatypes: ENI number, inflection class, has inflection class, root, creates lexeme type
    • External identifiers: ASCE Historical Civil Engineering Landmark ID, Comic Vine ID, DxOMark ID, Geheugen van de VU person ID, HKCAN ID, Oqaasileriffik online dictionary ID, IANA Root Zone Database ID, Shazam track ID, Spotify show ID, Shazam artist ID, Sprockhoff Number, Index of Historic Collectors and Dealers of Cubism ID, ANZSRC FoR ID
  • New property proposals to review:
    • General datatypes: applies to citizens of, Plot continued in, monument in the near, Sail emblem, São Paulo: os estrangeiros e a construção da cidade ID, reference template for this work, Wikipedia suggested article name, Personal title, stated in reference as, reference vocabulary, OSM zoom level
    • External identifiers: OpenStreetMap wiki ID, Wiki Loves ZEOs ID, Geschützte Objekte in Ostbelgien, ComiXology Creators, War Memorials Online ID, NT Flora ID, Film Indonesia person ID, Sekolah Kita ID, Museu Nacional ID, Annuaire de la magistrature ID
  • Query examples:
    • Bounding boxes for a set of maps
    • Where were UK ambassadors educated? (source)
  • People who received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and were also in the NSDAP (Nazi party) (source)

• Development
  • Fix a bug when the "language of Lemma" box doesn't appear after failed submit of Special:NewLexeme (phab:T194347)
  • Fix the order of elements in Lexeme edit diffs (phab:T185481)
  • Enable constraint checks for Lexemes and Forms (phab:T195828)
  • More work on editing Form Statements using API (phab:T194732)
  • More work on a beta feature for suggestions based on constraints (phab:T202712)

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.

• Monthly Tasks
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
  • Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
  • Suggested and open tasks!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item.
  • 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!

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

• Ordinary pages can no longer be loaded as javascript. You could do this using ?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript in the URL. Only fully protected pages in the MediaWiki: namespace or user javascript subpages can be loaded as javascript now. This is for better security. [6] [7]

Problems

• New and updated translations from translatewiki.net will not reach the wikis for a while. You can still translate messages on translatewiki.net. The Wikimedia wikis will be updated with the new translations later. This is because of work on the translation system. [8] [9]

Changes later this week

• Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 October. It will be on all wikis from 4 October (calendar).

Meetings

• Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the meeting with the Wikimedia Foundation Search Platform team. The meeting will be on 3 October at 15:00 UTC. See how to join if you want to know how the search function works or have questions.

Future changes

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

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

• The Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. You can use the Programs and Events Dashboard or the Fountain instead. [10]

Problems

• There was a problem when you copied and pasted from a table with the visual editor. It could add href where it shouldn't be. This has now been fixed. [11]

Changes later this week

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.
• Because of the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.

Meetings

• Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

• Discussions
  • Open request for adminship: Fuzheado, باسم

• Events
  • 5-7 October, St.Gallen (Switzerland): WikiCon 2018 of the German-speaking Wikimedia community, with keynote Wikidata as a Semantic Web game changer
  • 5-7 October, Grenoble (France): WikiConvention francophone 2018, with keynote:
    • Quarry et Query : introduction à SQL et SPARQL
    • GLAM & Wikimedia : bilan des projets en cours en Suisse et perspectives avec Wikidata
    • Quoi de neuf sur Wikidata ?
    • Éditer une œuvre d'art sur Wikidata, et plus si affinités
  • 16 October, online: Using Wikibase as a platform for library linked data management and discovery
  • 29 October, São Paulo: Wikidata Lab XI: Structuring wikiprojects

• Press, articles, blog posts
  • Wikidata: «Das spannendste Projekt, das ich je gesehen habe» (German) in the Swiss newspaper Tagblatt
  • SPNHC & TDWG Conference 2018 — blog post on a talk (slides, speaker notes) about using Wikimedia projects and materials from the Biodiversity Heritage Library and other sources to collect information regarding New Zealand's biodiversity
  • Wikidata Map October 2018 by Addshore
  • Our man in Havana (or, Q56761118) by Andrew Gray

• wikidata-cli new features:
  • wd data --format ttl: dump entities in rdf/ttl
  • wd convert: convert batches of external ids to Wikidata ids and vice versa
• Structured Data on Commons: a search prototype is available for testing. There is a page on Commons with information about testing and leaving feedback.
• Profiling Wikidata — a Class-Facet-Attribute Completeness Profiling System for Wikidata

• Did you know?
  • Newest properties:
    • General datatypes: limiting oxygen index, plot continued in, Vicat softening point, Unicode range
    • External identifiers: Lyrically artist ID, Moviepilot.de series ID, Spectral Database for Organic Compounds ID, Ultimate Guitar artist ID, Ġabra lexeme ID, Open Food Facts ingredient ID, bazakolejowa.pl railway line ID, IGN series ID, tweet ID, Short Title Catalogue Flanders (STCV), Flanders Arts Institute production ID, old-computers.com ID, Oudnederlands Woordenboek GTB ID, Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek GTB ID, Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek GTB ID, Film Indonesia person ID, Protected objects Ostbelgien ID, North America PlayStation Store ID, VicFlora ID, SUCA code, CMI person ID, São Paulo: os estrangeiros e a construção da cidade ID, ComiXology creator ID, Annuaire de la magistrature ID, NT Flora ID
  • New property proposals to review:
    • General datatypes: animacy, distributary, human position in artwork, does not have quality, (de)evolution method, happened to, depicted part, adjective, hyponym, nation-state tradition, requires form, Norwegian Nationaltheatret actor ID, location of sense usage, Medierådet rating, broad synonym, measured to, Type properties, shrinkage, Public presentation, carbon footprint
    • External identifiers: Inventory of the Archaeological and Paleontological Heritage of Catalonia, MIAR ID, V.League ID, Japan Professional Basketball League ID, Women's Japan Basketball League, SAGE journal ID, Elsevier journal ID, N° CPPAP, Deezer show ID, LUBW Schutzgebiets-Nr, Disney A to Z ID, RBF athlete ID, Europe PlayStation Store ID, Japan PlayStation Store ID, Encyclopedia Virginia ID, Armiarma ID
  • Query examples:
    • Characters from the Mario franchise by games in which they appear (source)
    • Nobel Prize winners who also has been TED speakers (source)

• Development
  • Fix bugs on editing statements on new Forms using the API (phab:T194732)
  • Check constraint violations on statements on Forms and Senses when saving a statement (phab:T195829)
  • Fix an issue with Wikibase and deployments (phab:T206161)
  • Improve the gloss language error message (phab:T205528)
  • Make the ArticlePlaceholder use our API instead of wb_terms (phab:T195752)
  • Improve sorting of forms, senses and glosses (phab:T176405, phab:T203002, phab:T203459)
  • Work on making Sense statement group Ids unique (phab:T204936)

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.

• Monthly Tasks
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
  • Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
  • Suggested and open tasks!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item.
  • 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!

• Events
  • 8-12 October, Monterey: International Semantic Web Conference 2018, with lots of praise for Wikidata
  • 11-12 October, Montreal: FORCE 2018 Conference, with sessions on Wikidata and Wikibase and Wikidata and WikiCite

• Press, articles, blog posts
  • Ontological Modelling in Wikidata, talk and slides by Markus Krötzsch
  • Wikidata x ConedaKOR: A use case for digital art history (in German), on integrating Wikidata with an art history database
  • From Spreadsheet to Wikidata with QuickStatements, by Charles Matthews on WMUK's blog

• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • A new Wikidata game has been created to suggest corrections for some constraints violations. These corrections are learned from the Wikidata edit history.
  • A new OpenRefine tutorial was published, showing how to use third-party reconciliable data sources to import data in Wikidata.
  • A prototype for Mix'n'Match Version 2 is available for testing; it uses Wikibase.
  • We have a new admin onboard, welcome Fuzheado!

• Did you know?
  • Newest properties:
    • General datatypes: depicted part, sail emblem, reference vocabulary
    • External identifiers: Museu Nacional ID, Sekolah Kita ID, War Memorials Online ID, ID of Inventory of the Archaeological and Paleontological Heritage of Catalonia, Women's Japan Basketball League ID, V.League ID, Japan Professional Basketball League ID, Elsevier journal ID, Norwegian Nationaltheatret actor ID, LUBW Protected Area No, SAGE journal ID
  • New property proposals to review:
    • General datatypes: tribus, embodied energy, water footprint, storage capacity (ROM), Pixel resolution, Category for films in this language, annual number of weddings, biobased content weight percentage, topic's main Wikimedia WikiProject, recycled content weight percentage, taxa found, recycling code, attenuation coefficient, Kit manifacturer
    • External identifiers: Getty Iconography Authority ID, Springer journal ID, Espace prépas author ID, Australian Plant name Index identifier, Indiancine.ma film ID, Indiancine.ma person ID
  • Query examples:
    • Age of receivers of Nobel Prize winners in Literature (source)
    • Places of birth of Nobel prizes winners per decade ([ source])
    • Things named after Ada Lovelace (source)

• Development
  • Help fixing the issues after data center switch (phab:T206743)
  • Look at a regression in Lexeme code (not passing lemma language via URL) (phab:T205864)
  • Make the ArticlePlaceholder use our API instead of wb_terms (phab:T195752)
  • Improve sorting of forms, senses and glosses (phab:T176405, phab:T203002, phab:T203459)

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.

• Monthly Tasks
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
  • Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
  • Suggested and open tasks!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item.
  • 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!

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

• Some pages, edits and users disappeared for a short while after the server switch. Missing content and users was fixed within a day. Some preferences and other things might take a few more days to fix. [12]
• Wikis are updated with new and updated translations from translatewiki.net again. This will happen once a week. The developers are working on fixing the problem so we can have translation updates more often again. [13]

Changes later this week

• When you create an abuse filter that prevents edits you can now write a specific error message for it. Before this all abuse filters that prevented edits had the same error message. [14]
• Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 October. It will be on all wikis from 18 October (calendar).

Meetings

• There will be no more meetings with the Editing team. This is because not enough Wikimedians were interested. To tell developers which bugs you think are the most important you can use Phabricator as normal. [15]
• Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.