Wikisource:Scriptorium/Announcements

Wikidata weekly summary #669

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-03-03. Missed the previous one? See issue #668

Discussions

• Other: Email Chain "Elephant in the room" - discussing the large number of Wikidata Items lacking Statements, Sitelinks or Labels/Descriptions.

Events

• Upcoming events:
  • All the information you need to start working on your Wikimania 2025 program submissions is now available on the Wiki. Deadline: March 31 st, Anywhere on Earth.
  • New Wikidata Event! The upcoming "Wikidata and Sister Projects" event (May 29–June 1) is looking for speakers to share how Wikidata connects with other Wikimedia projects - if you are interested, request more info or submit your session idea here.
  • New Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group project series! We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group project series session on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET Time Zone Converter Eric Willey will be facilitating a series of four sessions focused on starting a Wikidata project from the foundation up at your institution. The third session will focus on making the most of your time and work. Event page.
  • Wikidata and Wikibase - Curriculum Transformation in the Digital Humanities - Join for 4 free talks showcasing how linked open data can support teaching, research and collections. March 5, 1500 - 1700 GMT (UTC-0).
  • Wiki Workshop 2025 CfP - Call for Papers (Submission deadline: March 9)
  • Open Data Day Taiwan 2025 March 9 Time: 09:30-17:30 UTC+8 at Taipei Humanities Building (Q122750631)
  • Wiki Mentor Africa (WMA) Hackathon 2025 - Registration & Scholarship Now Open. Date: 28th - 30th March 2025. Who Can Participate? African developers, Wikimedia contributors, and anyone interested in Wikimedia projects.
• Ongoing:
  • Wiki Loves Ramadan 2025 - annual global contest aimed at documenting and sharing the diverse customs and traditions observed during the month of Ramadan. Date: 25 February 2025 – 16 April 2025. Register here!
  • Items with P31 (instance of) = human settlement without a country has dropped from 7600 to below 4600 Items. You can help to get it even lower.
  • Wikidata & OpenStreetMap Datathon & Mapathon as part of International Open Data Day 2025 from 1st - 15th March 2025 by WikiProject India (Q11037573).
• Past events: Data Reuse Days 2025: you can watch the sessions that you missed at your own pace.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs
  • UK universities educate the most national leaders globally, analysis (based on Wikidata) shows. By The Guardian
  • Two Wikimedians-in-Residence appointed to increase Maltese literature representation on Wikipedia and Wikidata Times of Malta
• Videos
  • (French) PasseGares: Bug fixes and data imports from Wikidata YouTube
  • Adding Wikidata label and descriptions, from the Wali Language Art+Feminism Editathon (Ghana 2025) YouTube
  • Workshop showcasing QuickStatements 3.0! Learn how this updated tool streamlines your workflow and discover new features. YouTube
  • Contributing to Wikidata 101, a series of demonstrations organised by WM Community UG Uganda Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
  • Optimize SPARQL queries to avoid timeouts: Efficiently count entities sharing values YouTube
  • Data Reuse Days playlist and live-editing session with User:Ainali and User:Abbe98 YouTube
  • LUDAP: Shared authority file for Luxembourg's Scientific and Cultural Heritage, with Wikibase YouTube

Tool of the week

• QuickStatements 3.0 - new version of the original QuickStatements with enhanced functionality, performance, and user experience.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• On March 17, Vector 2022 will become the default skin on Wikidata
• Jobs
  • Senior UX Designer for Wikidata - Apply online
  • Product Manager for Wikibase Suite - Apply online

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • thesis submitted for degree (the academic degree for which a thesis or dissertation is submitted)
• Newest External identifiers: Korean National Species list ID, NES Directory game ID, Miraheze wiki ID, Global Energy Monitor Wiki ID, FU-Lexikon ID, MACM artwork ID, Hiking Note chalet identifier, domain name, ‎TechRaptor game ID, ‎TechRaptor company ID, ‎TechRaptor genre ID, Sanzhi Dargwa dictionary ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • copy present in institution (copy present in institution)
  • single extrait de l'album (indicates the album from which the item is taken)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: HelloAsso organization ID, europlayers.com club ID, eLIBRARY Document Number, LIBRIS Library ID, parlament.fyi person ID, Embryo Project Encyclopedia ID, factordb id, Yukon Register of Historic Places ID, Our Campaigns container ID, Encyclopaedia of Islam (glossary and index of terms) ID, badmintoncn.com star ID, Game Input Database ID, Historia Hispánica ID, Coasterpedia ID, Captain Coaster coaster ID, Captain Coaster park ID, Dark Ride Database IDs

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • Map of Birthplace of Polish Nationals, born after 1900 who have an article on Polish Wikipedia
  • Items with no Statement or Sitelinks - You can help by expanding these Items!
  • Showcase lexemes and their language/lexical category (source)
• Newest WikiProjects: Climate Change Policies - aims to model policies related to Climate change on Wikidata.
• Newest database reports: Most linked category Items
• Showcase Items: Basshunter (Q383541) - Swedish singer, record producer, and DJ
• Showcase Lexemes: baguette (L7347) - French noun that can mean "elongated type of bread loaf", "elongated type of bread loaf", "conductor's baton", "chopsticks", "drum sticks" or "magic wand".

Development

• Wikibase REST API: We are continuing the work on the simple Item search (phab:T383126)
• Dumps: We fixed an issue that prevented the dumps from being generated (phab:T386401)
• Search: We are continuing to work on the search UI that will let you search not just Items but also other entity types (phab:T321543)

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: Australia
• 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!

· Read the full report · Previous issue · Unsubscribe · Mohammed Abdulai (WMDE) talk · MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:26, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #33

A quarterly update from the Growth team on our work to improve the new editor experience.

Constructive Activation Experiments

This year, the Growth team is exploring ways to help more new account holders start editing—and do so constructively, meaning their edits are not reverted. Our latest experiments include:

• Gradual rollout of "Add a Link" at English Wikipedia – We are gradually introducing the "Add a Link" structured task to newcomers at English Wikipedia (T386029). This serves as a natural A/B test to measure its impact on activation, retention, and revert rates (T382603). Previous experiments on pilot wikis showed that "Add a Link" increases newcomer participation, particularly by helping them make constructive (non-reverted) edits.
• Testing in-article suggestions for first-time editors – Many new account holders want to contribute but don’t know where to start. To help, we’re piloting a feature that surfaces structured task suggestions directly in an article’s read view for brand-new editors (T385343). These suggestions will appear for logged-in users with no edits, providing a clear, simple way to begin contributing that is surfaced while they read.

Community Updates

Newcomers often struggle to find their place in Wikipedia’s collaborative environment. While experienced editors easily discover events like edit-a-thons and writing campaigns, newcomers often miss out.

• To bridge this gap, we launched the Community Updates module for the Newcomer Homepage. This module is disabled by default, allowing Community Admins to decide how (or if) to use it.
• If your community hosts events, consider setting up a Community Update to engage and welcome newcomers! Learn more on Diff. To configure, visit Special:CommunityConfiguration.

Community Configuration

Community Configuration is now available across all wikis, including non-Wikipedia projects (T383910). Community Configuration allows admins to customize various features like Growth features and Automoderator for their communities, and more recently the Babel extension now allows admins to modify configuration:

• Babel customization – Admins can now configure Babel settings (T374348), including category naming, automatic category creation, and more. See an example on Wikimedia Commons.
• Upcoming configurable features – Projects exploring community configuration options include: Incident Reporting System (T374113) and Cite backlinks (T378807).

Mentorship

Mentors play a key role in guiding new editors. If you’re interested in mentoring, or turning mentorship on at your wiki, check out the Mentorship FAQ

• Starting February 17, 100% of new accounts at English Wikipedia will be assigned a mentor (T384505).
• At Spanish Wikipedia, on 50% of newcomers get a mentor. Experienced contributors are encouraged to join mentorship so that Spanish Wikipedia can provide a mentor to all new users.

Looking Ahead

In the coming months, we will continue balancing maintenance work—such as deprecating EditGrowth Config (T367574) and migrating Statslib (T359352) — with user-facing improvements that support new editors and foster the next generation of contributors.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:00, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #192 is out: Recent Changes in the software, Recording of Volunteer’s Corner, and talks in London

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we present two talks that will feature Denny as a speaker and we take a look at the latest software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:12, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #670

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-03-10. Missed the previous one? See issue #669

Events

• Upcoming events: Tuscan Women & Wikidata - data entry lab for shared memory, 5 March.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs
  • WMDE Blog - Highlights of Data Reuse Days: The post showcases 3 excellent apps: WikiFlix (public domain full-length films), KDE Itinerary (travel assistant app) and Scribe Keyboard (easier writing in secondary languages). These are just some of the applications built using Wikidata; check out more at the Data Reuse Days pages.
  • (German) Digital Stumbling Blocks – How the Wiki Community Drives Remembrance Culture: User:Cookroach highlights the efforts of Wikimedians across projects (Wikidata, Wikipedia, Commons) to digitally document the Stolpersteine, brass-plaques laid to commemorate victims of the National Socialism.
  • (German) Digital History Berlin: Field research with LOD - a write-up of the methods, experiences data-model and SPARQl queries of the field research conducted as part of the WikiProject: Field Survey Digital Humanities.
  • (Italian) Wikipedia & Wikidata project for Cesare Alfieri - an introduction to the project to expand articles and data of the archives of Cesare Alfieri University of Florence.
  • Communicating Ontology: Technical approaches for facilitating use of our Wikibase data (Semantic Lab at Pratt Institute)

Tool of the week

• zelph: A new tool for detecting logical contradictions and making inferences in Wikidata, using a rule-based system to improve data quality and derive new facts. Check it out on GitHub or explore results on the project website.
• New Tool for Women’s Day: Scheherazade identifies women without articles in your Wikipedia but present in many others, helping editors prioritize creating missing biographies.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• Wikimedia Research Fund had launched. You're encourage to submit proposals around Wikidata. The deadline to submit your proposal is April 16, 2025.
• The 4th iteration of the Wikidata:Open Online Course will begin from March 17 until April 30. Whether you're a beginner taking your first steps, an individual in need of a refresher on Wikidata concepts, or a seasoned trainer looking to level up your skills - this course is right for you.

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • model number (identifier for a product model)
  • provides data for property (dataset associated with this external ID usually contains data applicable to this other Wikidata property)
  • items classified (class of items that this classification system classifies)
  • presented works (works of art or creative works performed, displayed or presented at a given event)
  • number of goals scored in penalty shootouts (total number of goals scored by a team in a penalty shootout)
• Newest External identifiers: ‎Thinky Games game ID, Lenape Talking Dictionary ID, Biographical Dictionary of Republican China (X-Boorman) ID, LEMAC ID, Bane NOR station ID, Sutian entry ID, Platform for Taiwan Religion and Folk Culture ID, Meine Abgeordneten ID, Hiking Note plant ID, VGC game ID, VGC company ID, VGC people ID, Archives in Bavaria ID, VGC theme ID, ‎Steam group ID, AllGame game ID (archived)
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • kigo of (the season the sense denotes in haiku in Japanese)
  • Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised score (score that the subject have received on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised psychological assessment tool as administered by a suitably qualified and experienced clinician under scientifically controlled and licensed conditions, standardized conditions)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: Archaeological site (Japan) ID, Hmong Studies Citations ID, GitLab topic, Christchurch City Council Park ID, Clio-online researcher ID, Clio-online web resource ID, Clio-online organization ID, Congress.gov committee ID, AGORHA ID, Crunchyroll artist ID, ZOOM Platform product ID, GCMD keyword ID, KnowWhereGraph entity ID, VejinBooks author ID, SteamDB tech ID, Identifiant Cartofaf d'une organisation, Saarland Biografien ID, Murderpedia ID, Big Fish Games game ID, Danskefilmstemmer.dk work ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • Obscure units of measurement and where to find them
  • Female scientists with most number of sitelinks (but not English Wikipedia)
• Newest WikiProjects: AncientCoinsAndModernMedals
• WikiProject Highlights:
  • WikiProject Biology: List of Mushrooms - revived by User:Prototyperspective, help catalogue all known fungal friends, and join the subreddit (for all Wikidata topics): r/WData
  • India/Police Stations
• Newest database reports: List of free software without an image set - This is a table of Wikidata items about a free software missing an image.
• Showcase Items: Doctor Strange (Q18406872) - 2016 film directed by Scott Derrickson
• Showcase Lexemes: felle (L476372) - Bokmål verb that can mean "to make something fall", "to kill", "to force a resignation", "to prove guilt", "to let lose", "to announce" or "to join."

Development

• Search: The search team at the WMF has added a new search keyword for Lexemes. You can use the keyword "inlanguage:en" or "inlanguage:Q1860" to limit your search to Lexemes with Lexeme language English and so on. Here is an example search for "bank" within English Lexemes: https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?search=L%3Abank+inlanguage%3Aen (phab:T271776)

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.
• 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!

· Read the full report · Previous issue · Unsubscribe · Mohammed Abdulai (WMDE) talk · MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:02, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

This Month in Education: February 2025

This Month in Education

Volume 14 • Issue 2 • February 2025

Contents • Headlines • Subscribe

In This Issue

• Activities series at the Shefit Hekali school in Peqin, Albania
• Wikimedia Brazil has formed a partnership with a public policy research institute
• Preserving Heritage: Tuluvas Aati Month Educational Wikimedia Programs
• Reflecting on our Past: Farewell to the Auckland Museum Summer Students
• Successful Conclusion of the Second Phase of "Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom" in Yemen
• Wiki Workshop in Mitrovica
• Wikimedia MKD' Education: Lots of new trained users, lots of new articles
• Wikimedia Serbia receives accreditation from the National Library of Serbia for the Wiki Senior seminar

About This Month in Education · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · For the team: ZI Jony 09:04, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #193 is out: Upcoming NLG meeting, Recent Changes in the software

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we invite you to the next NLG SIG Meeting, that will take place on Tuesday March 18 at 16 UTC, and we take a look at the latest software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 16:39, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #671

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-03-17. Missed the previous one? See issue #670

Discussions

• New request for comments: Time to deprecate P642 - of (P642) has spent 3 years marked asdeprecated. Is it time to finally mark it as an obsolete Wikidata property(Q18644427)?

Events

• Upcoming events:
  • Call for Wikimania 2025 Programme reviewers. Apply until Monday 17 March 12:00 UTC
  • Wikidata Affinity Group Update: The fourth session of Starting a Wikidata Project, originally set for March 18, will now be an asynchronous Slack discussion in the #wikidata channel of the LD4 Slack Space. Join us at 9am PT / 16:00 UTC to discuss Reporting Your Outcomes and Results. Join Slack here. Note: April programming will pause as we prepare the next series.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs
  • Training for the staff of the Museum of Photography in Krakow on Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata - "The training aimed to enable the MuFo staff to effectively navigate and develop skills in editing and managing the museum's digital resources within the Wikimedia projects."
  • (German) Wikipedia Unterwegs - this time in Neu-Ulm: This travelling community meetup for German Wikimedians discusses the growing ecosystem of Wikipedia, Wikidata and Commons.
  • REST in Rust by Magnus: "A new Rust crate has been developed to simplify access to the Wikibase REST API, featuring industry-level coding standards, 248 unit tests, >97% code coverage, and high maintainability. Check out the GitHub repo and contribute via the issue tracker or pull requests!"
• Videos
  • Useful videos that explain how to set up/make use of Wikibases. Put together by Valerie
  • Wikidata and Wikibase - Curriculum Transformation in the Digital Humanities
  • (Chinese) Open Data Day Taiwan 2025: more details and program agenda on the Wikimedia Taiwan Meta Event page
  • Wikidata as an Open Data Resource: Ian Watt at Open Source SG
  • Bridging GLAM and Wiki: The Khalili Perspective: Dr. Martin Poulter, WiR at Khalili Foundation.

Tool of the week

• Research Expeditions on Wikidata with itineraries - Visualization tool for research expeditions itineraries and natural history collections.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• An update regarding the WDQS backend has been published, about the adoption of the new endpoints and the next steps that will take place.
• Call for Projects – Wiki Mentor Africa Hackathon 2025. Do you have a technical project that needs contributions? Or a testing initiative that could use more hands? Submit a project BY 21st March 2025.
• The Wikidata Vector Database prototype is almost ready! Developers interested in integrating semantic search into their applications and editors looking to explore Wikidata items using natural language search are invited to reach out for more details: philippe.saadewikimedia.de
• Join the Wikimedia Deutschland software development team: Product Manager Wikibase Suite (all genders)

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • OAI formatter (formatter to generate ID compatible with Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting services)
  • AI-generation prompt (exact prompt that was used to generate this AI-generated media or work)
  • data analysis method (methods used in the main item for inspecting, cleansing, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of discovering useful information)
• Newest External identifiers: Wikishire article ID, HelloAsso organization ID, Dictionnaire de la déportation gardoise person ID, Graceful17 entity ID, ‎Game Input Database ID, DRTV ID, Calindex person ID, Historia Hispánica ID, ‎TERMDAT ID, Kulturdatenbank ID, DDLC entry ID, Chinese Basketball Association player ID, ‎Captain Coaster coaster ID, Memoria Chilena ID, Jamendo track ID, MikuWiki article ID, ‎ZOOM Platform product ID, Clio-online researcher ID, Clio-online organization ID, ‎SteamDB tech ID, ‎Big Fish Games game ID, Clio-online web resource ID, Iowa State University Library Vocabularies ID, Newsweek topic ID, booru tag
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • watercraft prefix (prefix applied to watercraft operated by different organisations)
  • accused (person or organization who has been accused of carrying out this harmful, illegal, or immoral act without having received a criminal conviction or where the accused have been acquitted in a court of law)
  • applies to volume (volume of the item (usually edition of a work) to which the claim applies)
  • oxygen endurance (The maximum time a submarine, spacecraft or enclosed vehicle can sustain life using its onboard oxygen supply.)
  • Coefficient of thermal expansion ()
  • fracture toughness ()
• New External identifier property proposals to review: Danskefilmstemmer.dk work ID, Danskefilmstemmer.dk character ID, Internet-Portal „Westfälische Geschichte“ person ID, Kosovo NGO registration number, Yale LUX ID, geraldika.ru symbol ID, Swimcloud swimmer ID, CACI company ID, VD 16 ID, World Higher Education Database ID, Qur'an Wiki article ID, JSIC code, Macrotransactions game ID, Landtag Tirol person ID, NexusMods mod ID, Thunderstore game ID, SideQuest app ID, IndExs Exsiccata ID, National Academy of Engineering member ID, DGO ID, The Rural Settlement of Roman Britain ID, Audiovisual Identity Database page, Encyclopaedia of Islam (Arabic edition) ID, Rodovid family ID, Cultural Heritage Azerbaijan ID, Zurich Kantonsrat and Regierungsrat member ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • Location of fire stations in Spain (source)
  • Oldest known individual per taxon (pre-20th century) (source)
• Newest WikiProjects: AncientMaths
• WikiProject Highlights: New country page for Poland in WikiProject Nonprofit Organizations, and on cividata.org. Help expanding it!
• Newest database reports: German lexemes without forms divided by lexical category (source)
• Showcase Items: Perm (Q915) - city in Russia
• Showcase Lexemes: Knoten (L298686) - German noun that can mean "knot", "fundamental unit of which graphs (in graph theory) are formed", "point where an orbit crosses a plane of reference to which it is inclined", or "hair wrapped in a circular coil around itself (bun)."

Development

• Wikibase REST API: We continued the work on adding search to the API (phab:T383126)
• Search: We are continuing the work on making it easier to search for entities other than Items in the search box (phab:T338483)
• Query Service: We set up the constraint checks to use the split graph instead of the full graph (phab:T374021)
• Integration in the other Wikimedia projects: We are looking into how changes from Wikidata are represented on the other Wikimedia projects and how that can be improved (phab:T386200)

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.
• 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!

· Read the full report · Previous issue · Unsubscribe · Mohammed Abdulai (WMDE) talk · MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:55, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #194 is out: Wikidata-based simple enumerations

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we introduce a discussion about a new kind of enumeration type, and we take a look at the latest software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 12:06, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 March 2025

News, reports and features from the English Wikipedia's newspaper

• From the editor: Hanami

• News and notes: Deeper look at takedowns targeting Wikipedia

• In the media: The good, the bad, and the unusual

• Recent research: Explaining the disappointing history of Flagged Revisions; and what's the impact of ChatGPT on Wikipedia so far?

• Traffic report: All the world's a stage, we are merely players...

• Gallery: WikiPortraits rule!

• Essay: Unusual biographical images

• Obituary: Rest in peace

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 03:11, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #672

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-03-17. Missed the previous one? See issue #670

Discussions

• New request for comments: Time to deprecate P642 - of (P642) has spent 3 years marked asdeprecated. Is it time to finally mark it as an obsolete Wikidata property(Q18644427)?

Events

• Upcoming events:
  • Call for Wikimania 2025 Programme reviewers. Apply until Monday 17 March 12:00 UTC
  • Wikidata Affinity Group Update: The fourth session of Starting a Wikidata Project, originally set for March 18, will now be an asynchronous Slack discussion in the #wikidata channel of the LD4 Slack Space. Join us at 9am PT / 16:00 UTC to discuss Reporting Your Outcomes and Results. Join Slack here. Note: April programming will pause as we prepare the next series.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs
  • Training for the staff of the Museum of Photography in Krakow on Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata - "The training aimed to enable the MuFo staff to effectively navigate and develop skills in editing and managing the museum's digital resources within the Wikimedia projects."
  • (German) Wikipedia Unterwegs - this time in Neu-Ulm: This travelling community meetup for German Wikimedians discusses the growing ecosystem of Wikipedia, Wikidata and Commons.
  • REST in Rust by Magnus: "A new Rust crate has been developed to simplify access to the Wikibase REST API, featuring industry-level coding standards, 248 unit tests, >97% code coverage, and high maintainability. Check out the GitHub repo and contribute via the issue tracker or pull requests!"
• Videos
  • Useful videos that explain how to set up/make use of Wikibases. Put together by Valerie
  • Wikidata and Wikibase - Curriculum Transformation in the Digital Humanities
  • (Chinese) Open Data Day Taiwan 2025: more details and program agenda on the Wikimedia Taiwan Meta Event page
  • Wikidata as an Open Data Resource: Ian Watt at Open Source SG
  • Bridging GLAM and Wiki: The Khalili Perspective: Dr. Martin Poulter, WiR at Khalili Foundation.

Tool of the week

• Research Expeditions on Wikidata with itineraries - Visualization tool for research expeditions itineraries and natural history collections.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• An update regarding the WDQS backend has been published, about the adoption of the new endpoints and the next steps that will take place.
• Call for Projects – Wiki Mentor Africa Hackathon 2025. Do you have a technical project that needs contributions? Or a testing initiative that could use more hands? Submit a project BY 21st March 2025.
• The Wikidata Vector Database prototype is almost ready! Developers interested in integrating semantic search into their applications and editors looking to explore Wikidata items using natural language search are invited to reach out for more details: philippe.saadewikimedia.de
• Join the Wikimedia Deutschland software development team: Product Manager Wikibase Suite (all genders)

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • OAI formatter (formatter to generate ID compatible with Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting services)
  • AI-generation prompt (exact prompt that was used to generate this AI-generated media or work)
  • data analysis method (methods used in the main item for inspecting, cleansing, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of discovering useful information)
• Newest External identifiers: Wikishire article ID, HelloAsso organization ID, Dictionnaire de la déportation gardoise person ID, Graceful17 entity ID, ‎Game Input Database ID, DRTV ID, Calindex person ID, Historia Hispánica ID, ‎TERMDAT ID, Kulturdatenbank ID, DDLC entry ID, Chinese Basketball Association player ID, ‎Captain Coaster coaster ID, Memoria Chilena ID, Jamendo track ID, MikuWiki article ID, ‎ZOOM Platform product ID, Clio-online researcher ID, Clio-online organization ID, ‎SteamDB tech ID, ‎Big Fish Games game ID, Clio-online web resource ID, Iowa State University Library Vocabularies ID, Newsweek topic ID, booru tag
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • watercraft prefix (prefix applied to watercraft operated by different organisations)
  • accused (person or organization who has been accused of carrying out this harmful, illegal, or immoral act without having received a criminal conviction or where the accused have been acquitted in a court of law)
  • applies to volume (volume of the item (usually edition of a work) to which the claim applies)
  • oxygen endurance (The maximum time a submarine, spacecraft or enclosed vehicle can sustain life using its onboard oxygen supply.)
  • Coefficient of thermal expansion ()
  • fracture toughness ()
• New External identifier property proposals to review: Danskefilmstemmer.dk work ID, Danskefilmstemmer.dk character ID, Internet-Portal „Westfälische Geschichte“ person ID, Kosovo NGO registration number, Yale LUX ID, geraldika.ru symbol ID, Swimcloud swimmer ID, CACI company ID, VD 16 ID, World Higher Education Database ID, Qur'an Wiki article ID, JSIC code, Macrotransactions game ID, Landtag Tirol person ID, NexusMods mod ID, Thunderstore game ID, SideQuest app ID, IndExs Exsiccata ID, National Academy of Engineering member ID, DGO ID, The Rural Settlement of Roman Britain ID, Audiovisual Identity Database page, Encyclopaedia of Islam (Arabic edition) ID, Rodovid family ID, Cultural Heritage Azerbaijan ID, Zurich Kantonsrat and Regierungsrat member ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • Location of fire stations in Spain (source)
  • Oldest known individual per taxon (pre-20th century) (source)
• Newest WikiProjects: AncientMaths
• WikiProject Highlights: New country page for Poland in WikiProject Nonprofit Organizations, and on cividata.org. Help expanding it!
• Newest database reports: German lexemes without forms divided by lexical category (source)
• Showcase Items: Perm (Q915) - city in Russia
• Showcase Lexemes: Knoten (L298686) - German noun that can mean "knot", "fundamental unit of which graphs (in graph theory) are formed", "point where an orbit crosses a plane of reference to which it is inclined", or "hair wrapped in a circular coil around itself (bun)."

Development

• Wikibase REST API: We continued the work on adding search to the API (phab:T383126)
• Search: We are continuing the work on making it easier to search for entities other than Items in the search box (phab:T338483)
• Query Service: We set up the constraint checks to use the split graph instead of the full graph (phab:T374021)
• Integration in the other Wikimedia projects: We are looking into how changes from Wikidata are represented on the other Wikimedia projects and how that can be improved (phab:T386200)

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.
• 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!

· Previous issue · Danny Benjafield (WMDE) talk ·

Wikidata weekly summary #672 (correct version!)

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-03-24. Missed the previous one? See issue #671

Discussions

• New requests for permissions/Bot:Request for admin flag for MsynBot - From 2021 through 2024, this bot has implemented the 2019 RfC “semi-protection to prevent vandalism on most used Items” by maintaining page protections based on the outcome, d:Wikidata:Protection policy#Highly used items. The admin flag got lost due to bot inactivity but the bot operation could be resumed immediately if the admin flag is given back.

Events

• Upcoming events:
  • AAFRennes2025, 26-28 Mars 2025
  • 5-6 April & 12 April: Scholia Hackathon
  • Wikidata and Sister Projects to take place May 29 - June 1. Please send us your session ideas, we still have lots of space for proposals. This is a great chance to highlight the benefits of Wikidata use in other WM projects. See Talk page for proposals.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs
  • Enhance Your Wikibase With Extensions
  • Editing Lexemes with your little finger
  • Wikidata and the sum of all video games − 2024 edition by Jean-Fred
• Thread: Who wins in a Wikipedia race between GPT-4.5, o1, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and @OpenAI's new Computer-Using Agent?

Tool of the week

• Lexica - a mobile-friendly tool that simplifies micro contributions to lexicographical data on Wikidata, making various editing tasks accessible and intuitive for contributors of all experience levels.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• Mobile Editing of Statements - You have been asking for the ability to edit statements from mobile devices for years, this project will make editing statements on Wikidata Items more accessible and user-friendly for mobile users. Sign up to participate in prototype testing and interviews with our UX team
• Join the Wikimedia Deutschland software development team: Product Manager Wikibase Suite (all genders)

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest properties:
  • General datatypes:
    • data analysis method (methods used in the main item for inspecting, cleansing, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of discovering useful information)
  • External identifiers: booru tag, Steam Group numeric ID, Kompass company ID, ‎Macrotransactions game ID, Thunderstore game ID, ‎JSR package ID, ‎GitLab topic ID, Amazon Music track ID, Crunchyroll artist ID, SideQuest app ID
• New property proposals to review:
  • General datatypes:
    • levels (levels, maps, episodes, chapters or stages of this video game)
    • Scilit scholar ID (author identifier on {{Q|77125337}})
    • وزن صرفي عربي (A feature to adjust the pattern of Arabic words in lexemes)
    • باب صرفي للأفعال العربية الثلاثية المجردة (Morphology of the Arabic triliteral verbs)
    • land degradation (The amount of land that is degraded by an object. Mainly for infrastructure projects)
    • Research projects that contributed to this data set (This property allows to identify research projects that they have contributed to or created an item)
    • Platform height (platform height above the top of the rail (or above the road for buses))
    • extended by (addons for this item) (Class of software this software is extended by)
  • External identifiers: Congressional Medal of Honor Society recipient ID, Delfi.ee theme ID, identifiant Dezède d'un individu, SeqCode Registry ID, Openalfa street ID, The Oxford Dictionary of Music entry ID, A Dictionary of Education entry ID, TDKIV wikibase ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • 2024 Population Census in Uganda (source)
• WikiProject Highlights:
  • Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal/Liste des artistes de la collection
• Showcase Items: Cinderella (Q15046091) - 2015 film directed by Kenneth Branagh
• Showcase Lexemes: страсть (L166968) - Russian noun that can mean "love", "passion", "desire", or "suffering."

Development

• Wikibase REST API: We finished work on the simple Item search (phab:T383126) and started on the one for Properties (phab:T386377)
• Vector 2022 skin: We fixed a number of the remaining issues with dark mode (phab:T385039) and sitelink positioning (phab:T316797)
• Search: We continued the work on making it easier to search in other entity types (Properties, Lexemes, EntitySchemas) besides Items (phab:T321543)

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!

Anything to add? Please share! :)

· Previous issue · Danny Benjafield (WMDE) talk ·

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #195 is out: It’s about time

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we introduce a discussion about how to support the creation of a type for time that is compatible with Wikidata, and we take a look at the latest software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 17:25, 28 March 2025 (UTC)