This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
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
You can get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. You can choose to get these notifications in your preferences. Some wikis already had this option. It is now available on all wikis. [1]
The Newsletter extension is now on mediawiki.org. The newsletter extension is for newsletters where you can subscribe by getting a notification when a new issue has been published. It will come to more wikis later. [2]
The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. There is now a new high-priority category: tidy-whitespace-bug. This usually affects templates with horizontal lists. You can read more about using Linter and the Tidy whitespace bug. [3]
Problems
Tech News 2017/36 reported about new filters for edit review coming to watchlists. This was planned to happen last week. It will happen next week instead. [4]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (calendar).
OOjs UI will be updated. This could affect some icons. You can read more about the changes.
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can use Electron instead. Most PDFs are already created with Electron. Electron will get missing features before 1 October. You can create books but they will not have all planned features until November or December. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
New filters for edit review are available now on recent changes as a beta feature. Some of those filters and other features will be deployed as default features in the coming weeks. Users will be able to opt out in their preferences. [5]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:16, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: August 2017
This Month in GLAM – Volume VII, Issue VIII, August 2017
Headlines
Argentina report: New material on Wikimedia Commons
Brazil report: Edit-a-thons to spread mathematics and neuroscience; Women of Culture and other activities
Côte d'Ivoire report: Presenting about West African context at Wikimania 2017
Estonia report: First Art Exhibition in the Estonian Wikipedia is now opened
France report: Images from Jean-Auguste Brutails
Germany report: Collaboration with volunteers and how to "wikify" GLAM-institutions
Italy report: Edit-a-thons & goals
Macedonia report: WikiWine project; Two days of edit-a-thons
Serbia report: Public Domain Photos Donation
Sweden report: Connected Open Heritage; Tekniska museet template migration; Stockholm Pride week
USA report: WikiMania & Wikiconference North America, Beer, Hip Hop
Andy, if the notification I placed at WT:V and WT:CITE is neutral enough, I can place it at the CS1 talk page too. I think it would probably also be good to post to VPM to get more participation. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:43, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
The IUCN Red List update of 14 September led with a threat to North American ash trees. The International Union for Conservation of Nature produces authoritative species listings that are peer-reviewed. Examples used as metonyms for loss of species and biodiversity, and discussion of extinction rates, are the usual topics covered in the media to inform us about this area. But actual data matters.
Dorstenia elata, a critically endangered South American herb, contained in Moraceae, the family of figs and mulberries
Clearly, conservation work depends on decisions about what should be done, and where. While animals, particularly mammals, are photogenic, species numbers run into millions. Plant species lie at the base of typical land-based food chains, and vegetation is key to the habitats of most animals.
ContentMine dictionaries, for example as tabulated at d:Wikidata:WikiFactMine/Dictionary list, enable detailed control of queries about endangered species, in their taxonomic context. To target conservation measures properly, species listings running into the thousands are not what is needed: range maps showing current distribution are. Between the will to act, and effective steps taken, the services of data handling are required. There is now no reason at all why Wikidata should not take up the burden.
Links
What Makes a Good Collaborative Knowledge Graph: Group Composition and Quality in Wikidata (paywall)
Wikimedia and the free knowledge ecosystem by Maria Cruz
Another Year Again: 2017 this time (long), blog by Joe Wass of CrossRef
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
You can now see contributions from an IP range at Special:Contributions. Before you could only see contributions from single IP addresses. Some older contributions from IP ranges could be missing at first because it will take some time to add them. [6][7]
Flow has been re-scoped to become Structured Discussions and the development has restarted. Phabricator projects and repositories have been renamed. [8]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 September. It will be on all wikis from 21 September (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 September at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
We are replacing Tidy on Wikimedia wikis. Editors need to fix pages that could break. You can read the simplified instructions for editors. Some wikis have already switched. If your wiki would like to switch to the new format now, you can file a task.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:32, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #278
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Events/Press/Blogs
Upcoming: Wikidata Wahldaten Workshop 2017 – 30 September 2017 in Vienna, Austria
Upcoming: Wikimedia Research Showcase
Past: Wikidata workshop in Zurich (the slides of the speakers are linked on the page)
Past: GLAMhack Wikidata workshop in Lausanne (see the slides of the Query Service introduction)
Past: Wikidata workshop in Kolkata, India
Bridging real and fictional worlds in Wikidata, by Martin Poulter
Weekend at the Museum (of Brittany), by Envel Le Hir
Wiki Loves Monuments und Wikidata, by SW
The French Connection at the Wikimania 2017 Hackathon, by Envel Le Hir
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Wikidata ontology explorer: creates a tree of a class or property, shows common properties and statements
Join the mysterious group of Wikidata:Flashmob who improve labels, or summon them on an item
A breaking change to the wbcheckconstraints API output format was announced
Q40000000 was created
Improvements coming soon to Recent Changes
Several new catalogs in Mix'n'Match incl. Encyclopædia Britannica, National Gallery artists and ArtCyclopedia
Did you know?
Newest properties: United Nations Treaty Series Registration Number, Sefaria ID, ICD-10-CM, Encyclopedia of Australian Science ID, Indonesian Small Islands Directory ID, Cyworld ID, IPA Braille, category contains, Enciclopedia Italiana ID, United Nations Treaty Series Volume Number, National Criminal Justice ID, order of battle, Tyrolean Art Cadastre inventory ID, shelf life, UK Electoral Commission ID, LNB Pro A player ID, nLab ID, highest observed lifespan, Unicode hex codepoint, PACTOLS thesaurus ID, Bashkir encyclopedia (Russian version) ID, Bashkir encyclopedia (Bashkir version) ID
Query examples:
Algorithms and the problems they solve (source)
Swiss items with article in exactly one of German-, French-, Italian-, and Romansh-language Wikipedias (source)
Popular gender-neutral given names (source)
Computer network protocols and their ports (source)
Software developers by number of software titles (source)
Spacecraft and what they were named after (source)
Worked more on the constraints gadget in order to make it also qork for references and qualifiers
Made progress on persistently storing edits for the new Lexeme entity type (next to items and properties)
Worked on the RDF mapping for full URIs of external identifiers (phabricator:T121274)
You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here.
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!
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 15:36, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
New Page Reviewer Newsletter
Hello Pigsonthewing, thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!
Backlog update:
The new page backlog is currently at 14304 pages. We have worked hard to decrease from over 22,000, but more hard work is needed! Please consider reviewing even just a few pages a day.
Currently there are 532 pages in the backlog that were created by non-autoconfirmed users before WP:ACTRIAL. The NPP project is undertaking a drive to clear these pages from the backlog before they hit the 90 day Google index point. Please consider reviewing a few today!
Technology update:
The Wikimedia Foundation is currently working on creating a new filter for page curation that will allow new page patrollers to filter by extended confirmed status. For more information see: T175225
General project update:
On 14 September 2017 the English Wikipedia began the autoconfirmed article creation trial. For a six month period, creation of articles in the mainspace of the English Wikipedia will be restricted to users with autoconfirmed status. New users who attempt article creation will now be redirected to a newly designed landing page.
Before clicking on a reference or external link while reviewing a page, please be careful that the site looks trustworthy. If you have a question about the safety of clicking on a link, it is better not to click on it.
To keep up with the latest conversation on New Pages Patrol or to ask questions, you can go to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers and add it to your watchlist.
If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here.TonyBallioni (talk) 02:16, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
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
Wikitext syntax highlighting is a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. This beta feature is based on CodeMirror. You can now search through the entire article with CTRL+F or cmd+F when you edit. Before it just searched through a part of the article. The developers are also fixing a couple of other bugs. [9][10]
Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions as a beta feature or by default can now create and move Structured Discussions boards. Structured Discussions was previously called Flow. [11]
Changes later this week
You now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device or IP address that have logged in to your account before you will be notified after five failed attempts. For security reasons you will soon get an email by default when someone tries to log in to your account and when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address. This can be turned off in your preferences. [12]
Users with extremely old browsers (for example Netscape 2–4, released from 1995–1997) which do not support Unicode will no longer be able to edit. They should try to install a new browser. [13]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September. (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The Wikimedia Foundation Readers department has proposed changing the mobile website. You can read more on mediawiki.org. This would be a big change.
You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can still create PDFs. Tech News 2017/37 said the function to create PDFs from books would still work. It is now clear it will not work for the next few months. The developers are working on fixing this. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:00, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #279
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Events/Press/Blogs
Past: Wikimedia Research Showcase - A Glimpse into Babel: An Analysis of Multilinguality in Wikidata
Upcoming: Wikidata Workshop about the Austrian election data, September 30th, Vienna
Upcoming: The next IRC office hour will take place on November 14th, 19:00 (Berlin time, UTC+2) on the channel #wikimedia-office
Weekend at the Museum (of Brittany)
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Wikidata's 5th birthday is about 1 month away. Time to think about birthday presents? ;-)
Siri shows more information based on Wikidata in iOS 11
2 funding proposals are looking for comments and support: soweego and CrossWikiFact
Quick graph of the relation of the number of labels in a given language on Wikidata and the number of first language speakers of that language
Did you know?
Newest properties: candidate number, maximal rate of climb, refine date, regular expression syntax, vocalized name, webcam page URL, Heritage Building in Finland ID, PatientLikeMe symptom ID, PatientLikeMe treatment ID, PatientLikeMe condition ID, Figshare author ID
Query examples: standards bodies by number of standards they are connected to (source)
Development
Rolled out more fine-grained usage tracking on Greek Wikipedia. This will lead to less irrelevant changes showing up in watchlist and recent changes on those projects. We're testing this on Greek Wikipedia to see if the solution we have scales before rolling it out further. (phabricator:T151717)
Adding an API module to copy a statement from one item to another (phabricator:T55619)
Working more on checking constraints also on qualifiers and references (phabricator:T168532)
Added support for the Creator namespace to the constraints check for Commons links (phabricator:T176062)
Fixed an error message on Special:GoToLinkedPage (phabricator:T176327)
Finishing touches on including full URIs for external IDs in the RDF export (phabricator:T121274)
You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here.
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!
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 20:52, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for properly creating that article. I translated it to French. Let's see if it is allowed to stay, or whether it gets nominated for deletion right away. They are a tough crowd too :-)--Polyglot (talk) 14:16, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
Indents
Andy, I saw you changed my indents at the TfD to bullets; I usually avoid bullets on indents. I've no particular objection to your edit, but I'm curious to know why you did it -- is there some guidance that indicates colons shouldn't be used under bullets? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:41, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
I know about LISTGAP, but I was under the impression what I was doing was acceptable according to LISTGAP. E.g. I followed ** with **:, which is "acceptable practice" according to LISTGAP, but you changed it to ***. Or am I missing something? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:58, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
This is the diff of your edit -- I was replying to RexxS's comment which had "**" as the prefix; I used "**:". Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:32, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
Following a successful proposal to create it, a new user right called "edit filter helper" is now assignable and revocable by administrators. The right allows non-administrators to view the details of private edit filters, but not to edit them.
Following a discussion about mass-application of ECP and how the need for logging and other details of an evolving consensus may have been missed by some administrators, a rough guide to extended confirmed protection has been written. This information page describes how the extended-confirmed aspects of the protection policy are currently being applied by administrators.
A request for comment is open regarding the structure, rules, and procedures of the December 2017 Arbitration Committee election, and how to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Events/Press/Blogs
Using Wikidata data, fixing wrong Wikipedia and Wikidata tags, by Mateusz Konieczny
One Knowledge Graph to Rule Them All? Analyzing the Differences Between DBpedia, YAGO, Wikidata & co
Modeling the Domain of Digital Preservation in Wikidata
Wikidata as a linking hub for knowledge organization systems? Integrating an authority mapping into Wikidata and learning lessons for KOS mappings (Paper and presentation), by Joachim Neubert, NKOS Workshop 2017 at TPDL
Knowledge exploration in public linked data ontologies
Other Noteworthy Stuff
The ArticlePlaceholder has been enabled on Bengali Wikipedia (example)
There is a new page with information around Wikidata:Wikidata in Wikimedia projects. You can help expand and improve it.
New Wikidata Game to help you evaluate merge candidates based on projectmerge.
A reading tip from Spinster (not mentioning Wikidata, but interesting general background knowledge): Indigenous peoples and responsible data: an introductory reading list from responsibledata.io
Where's Wally (aka Waldo)? Right here on Wikidata, of course!
Wikidata passed 8 average statements per item
Statement 300.000.000 was created
20 million edits were done in September 2017
Did you know?
Newest properties: TSE number, defined daily dose, Vincoli in Rete ID, The Black Book ID, Tagesschau election ID, LfD-HB object ID, cultural heritage monument in Serbia ID, Bavarian monument authority ID
Query examples: What exists in the "... as a service" genre? (source)
Development
Added a css class to values that link to redirects so they can more easily be identified by editors who want that for maintenance work (phabricator:T70567) Thanks Matej!
Continued work on persistent editing of forms as part of the work to support lexicographical data (phabricator:T173742, phabricator:T173744)
Finishing touches on adding full URIs for external identifiers to our RDF export so we're good citizens of the semantic web (phabricator:T121274)
Added a new mw.wikibase.getAllStatements Lua function in addition to the existing getBestStatements, that returns all statements regardless of their rank (phabricator:T176124)
Looking into an issue where unwanted email notifications are being sent (phabricator:T174794)
Released version 2.1.1 of the base DataValues component
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!
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 17:53, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-40
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
You can now use preload features in the visual editor. This means you can create links to create new pages and some text will already be in the edit window when someone clicks on it. [14]
Changes later this week
If you have turned on "Automatically enable most beta features" you will now get the 2017 wikitext editor. Before this you had to turn it on manually even though it is a beta feature. [15]
The jQuery library will be upgraded to version 3 on all Wiktionary wikis from 2 October. It will be on all non-Wikipedia wikis from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October. [17]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
A new feature called Reading Lists are coming to the Wikipedia mobile apps. First it will be in the Android version. Reading Lists are a private user preference where you can see lists of articles on multiple devices. You can give feedback on this feature. [18]
The search function has used fallback languages for language analysis. This means a language could be analysed with the grammar of a completely unrelated language to find related words. This will be removed from most wikis the week starting with 9 October. You can read more and give feedback.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:25, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
Fry link at Winterval
That's a copyvio link - that's not an official channel. Doug Wellertalk 16:14, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Winterval, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page The Telegraph (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:09, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: September 2017
This Month in GLAM – Volume VII, Issue IX, September 2017
Headlines
Argentina report: Edit-a-thon in the Parque de la Memoria and new materials in Commons
Czech Republic report: 2017 Edit-a-thon in the Research Library in Olomouc
France report: Heritage Wiki Days
Germany report: Prepare Your data
Ireland report: New Irish partnership
Italy report: WikiDonne and Wikidata
Macedonia report: Three months WiR at the City Library in Skopje accomplished successfully
Netherlands report: UNESCO WiR in Middelburg and Amsterdam
Spain report: Culture and Citizenship
Switzerland report: Third Edition of the Swiss Open Cultural Data Hackathon
Tunisia report: Wikipedian in Residence
UK report: Wikidata in Parliament
USA report: September Song
Wikidata report: Number crunching
WMF GLAM report: Running Edit-a-thons, Studying GLAM Uploads to Commons, Project Grants and more!
Calendar: October's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.
About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 03:55, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-41
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 number of active users listed by {{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}} and on Special:Statistics will now only include Wikidata edits as activity on Wikidata and not on other wikis too. [19]
Previously you could create wiki links starting with two colons. Now you need to use one colon. [[::File:X.jpg]] now has to be [[:File:X.jpg]]. There is now a new Linter category. You can see a list on Special:Linterrors/multi-colon-escape. The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. You can read more about using Linter. [20]
Problems
You will not be able to edit or upload files to Commons for around 30 minutes on 11 October. This will start at 06:00 UTC. This is because of work to let Commons show 3D models. [21]
Changes later this week
The font in the edit window is monospace by default. Today you can change preferences to another font family or use "the browser default" instead of monospace. Switching to the browser default has only changed the font on Macs. The option to use browser default will be removed this week. [22]
If you want to print a page or make a PDF of a page you can do so in the side menu. The way the pages look when you do this will change. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 October. It will be on all wikis from 12 October (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 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.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (calendar).
OOjs UI will be updated. This could affect some icons. You can read more about the changes.
Template:Cite Q has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Jytdog (talk) 08:24, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
Administrator changes
Boing! said Zebedee • Ansh666 • Ad Orientem
Tonywalton • AmiDaniel • Silence • BanyanTree • Magioladitis • Vanamonde93 • Mr.Z-man • Jdavidb • Jakec • Ram-Man • Yelyos • Kurt Shaped Box
Guideline and policy news
Technical news
Arbitration
