Wikidata April 2015

wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org

68 participants
34 discussions

[Wikidata-l] Call for development openness
by Ricordisamoa 16 Jul '15

16 Jul '15

Hi. I recently started following mediawiki/extensions/Wikibase on Gerrit, and quite astonishingly found that nearly all of the 100 most recently updated changes appear to be owned by WMDE employees (exceptions being one change by Legoktm and some from L10n-bot). This is not the case, for example, with mediawiki/core. While this may be desired by the Wikidata team for corporate reasons, I feel that encouraging code review by volunteers would empower both Wikidata and third-party communities with new ways of contributing to the project and raise awareness of the development team's goals in the long term. The messy naming conventions play a role too, i.e. Extension:Wikibase <https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Extension:Wikibase&redirect=no> is supposed to host technical documentation but instead redirects to the Wikibase <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase> portal, with actual documentation split into Extension:Wikibase Repository <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Wikibase_Repository> and Extension:Wikibase Client <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Wikibase_Client>, apparently ignoring the fact that the code is actually developed in a single repository (correct me if I'm wrong). Just to add some more confusion, there's also Extension:Wikidata build <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Wikidata_build> with no documentation. And what about wmde on GitHub <https://github.com/wmde> with countless creatively-named repos? They make life even harder for potential contributors. Finally, the ever-changing client-side APIs make gadgets development a pain in the ass. Sorry if this sounds like a slap in the face, but it had to be said.

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[Wikidata-l] making otherProjectsLinksByDefault non-beta
by Amir E. Aharoni 19 Jun '15

19 Jun '15

Hi, The "Other projects sidebar" beta feature is already on by default in some projects, such as the Italian Wikipedia and the French Wikipedia. Search for otherProjectsLinksByDefault in http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php Is there any reason not to make it it on by default in all (or most) projects? -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com ‪“We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

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[Wikidata-l] wikidata tag on Openstreetmap
by Jo 07 Jun '15

07 Jun '15

Hi, I'm a longtime OSM contributor. I like the idea of Wikidata and what I'm really interested in is a sort of bridge between both projects. Would somebody be interested in writing a game like application, which would invoke JOSM Remote Control (JOSM RC) at the coordinates in the wikidata item and wikidata=Q.... in the clipboard? That would make it easier to add such tags to the OSM objects. Polyglot

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[Wikidata-l] Wikidata periodic table
by Ricordisamoa 23 May '15

23 May '15

I'd like to announce a new Labs tool to show a periodic table <https://tools.wmflabs.org/ptable/>. It is based on WikiPeriod's PHP code (in turn ported from JavaScript) and features several improvements: * 'tiles' are wider and taller; * most of them are now provided with a background color (the same as Wikipedia's <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table#Periodic_table_legend_for_cate…>) based on the elements' "subclass of" property <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P279> (the same that powers period/group detection); * for labels, Wikidata's built-in language fallback is used instead of just falling back to English; * a public JSON API <https://tools.wmflabs.org/ptable/api> is available for everyone! And some more under the hood: * rewritten in Python with Jinja2: o more object-oriented o presentation is split from actual logic o less vulnerable to XSS attacks * a LRU (least recently used) cache with a maximum TTL (per-item time-to-live) value of 6 hours is used to avoid hitting data sources on every request; * both the Wikidata API and Wikidata Query can be used interchangeably as sources. I had to create some items such as Q19753344 <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19753344> and Q19753345 <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19753345> to properly categorize elements. My knowledge of chemistry is limited, so please report/fix every mistake you can find ;-) Future plans include: * oxidation state * images * responsive design * alternative table structures

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[Wikidata-l] Using Special:Unconnected Pages? Please read.
by Lydia Pintscher 15 May '15

15 May '15

Hey folks :) We've been looking into performance issues of the special page Special:UnconnectedPages (like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:UnconnectedPages for example). There are a few improvements we can make to make it work better. However to evaluate if we can make those changes or not I need to know what you are currently using this page for exactly. So if you're using it it'd be great if you could tell me how you're using it currently to achieve what exactly. Cheers Lydia -- Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher Product Manager for Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 10963 Berlin www.wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.

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[Wikidata-l] Making queries on Wikibase
by Luca Martinelli 03 May '15

03 May '15

Dear all, I need to know about the possibility of making queries on a Wikibase instance. I think it is possible to make queries on data on a particular instance only with external tools at the moment, right? Thanks for the answer. :) -- Luca "Sannita" Martinelli http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Sannita

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[Wikidata-l] Auto-transliteration of names of humans
by Amir Ladsgroup 03 May '15

03 May '15

Hello, I started bot of auto-transliterating names of humans, initially with Persian and English (as a pair) since I know both and I can debug. After some modifications, In the last check, In more than several hundreds of edits I checked, I couldn't find any errors, I want to expand this bot for other languages but before, I need opinions of people who know rules of transliterating names in these languages, I tried to realize rules and this is my result but I need someone familiar to confirm *Chinese: Instead of space it uses "·" character (it's not dot) but order is the same. e.g Alan Turing is: "艾伦·图灵" <https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%89%BE%E4%BC%A6%C2%B7%E5%9B%BE%E7%81%B5> which "艾伦" means Alan and "图灵" means Turing *Japanese: it's the same but different separator: "・", e.g. "アラン・チューリング" <https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%81…> *Russian: The separator is space character but order is like "FamilyName, GivenName" e.g. "Тьюринг, Алан" <https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D1%8C%D1%8E%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B3,_%…> is "Turing, Alan". Handling names with more than two words would be pretty complicated (I skip them) *I checked Hebrew and Greek and both are simple languages like Persian, same order, space as separator. If you can help me, it would make a great difference in number of labels in your language. Things you can help are: 1- Confirm or correct rules of these languages and add other rules if needed. 2- Suggest more languages. I thought about Sanskrit, Hindi, and Telugu but I don't know anyone who can check the rules, if you do, please help me. 3- For any language I will do an initial run just to test, if you can check edits of the bot (which is pretty easy, e.g. see this <https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Dexbot&dir…>) it would be awesome. Thanks, Best

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[Wikidata-l] Number of planets in the solar system
by Thomas Douillard 02 May '15

02 May '15

Hi, a small question about qualifiers and ranks. It is well known that the number of planets changed in 2006. Or did it ? Of course, Pluto is still here, it's just its status that changed. The definition of planets changed in 2006. This imply that (imho), the statement "the number of planets in the solar system in 9" should be deprecated. But infovarius did not agree with me and changed the rank of the claim back to normal and put an end date. I still think it should be deprecated, but it raise me a question: How are we supposed (if we are) to express an information about a deprecation ? Should we include something about the deprecation in the sources ? Should we have a qualifier ''deprecation date'' ? https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17362350

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Re: [Wikidata-l] [Wikimedia-l] Google rankings and mobile phone support`
by Gerard Meijssen 27 Apr '15

27 Apr '15

Hoi Pine, Thanks for the link to the test tool. <grin> I find that the one project dearest to my heart is doing poorly </grin>. It seems that our projects themselves are fairing much better than what the news led me to believe.. The point of it all is that mobile phones need to be well supported. It is good that we are working strongly on improving our mobile presence and the software and the group of readers they represent are becoming main-stream as time progresses. Thanks, GerardM On 27 April 2015 at 08:41, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Gerard, > > Yes, I saw this news as well. > > Check out these results: > > > https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?url=www.wikipedia.… > > > https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?url=en.wikipedia.o… > > > https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?url=commons.wikime… > > > https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?url=www.wikimediaf… > > > https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?url=www.wikimedia.… > > > https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?url=blog.wikimedia… > > It looks like most but not all Wikimedia sites pass Google's test. > > Personally I hope we invest heavily in Mobile Web in the next annual plan. > I would like to see growth in mobile readership and growth in mobile > contributions, and year-over-year growth in combined desktop and mobile > readership and contributions. > > Thanks, > > Pine > > *This is an Encyclopedia* <https://www.wikipedia.org/> > > > > > > > *One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of > our past, in which we must delve The well of our future,The clear water we > must leave untainted for those who come after us,The fertile earth, in > which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,And the broad > fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not > know.* > > *—Catherine Munro* > > On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 11:24 PM, Gerard Meijssen < > gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com > > wrote: > > > Hoi, > > > > It is all over the news. Google will push mobile phone support by > changing > > its ranking algorithm. A website that does not support mobiles well will > > suffer the consequences. Several sources like /. indicate that Wikipedia > > has a problem. > > > > I am anxious to learn what we are going to do. > > > > From my perspective this is not a time of endless deliberations; we have > > done that, we have been there. Mobile is where we grow. It seems to me a > no > > brainer that we will move lock stock and barrel to a more mobile friendly > > environment. > > > > Thanks. > > GerardM > > > > > > > http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2015/04/google-thank-you-for-pushing-mob… > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > > Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

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[Wikidata-l] novalue in qualifiers or references
by Stas Malyshev 26 Apr '15

26 Apr '15

Hi! I was lately looking into the use of novalue in wikidata, specifically in qualifiers and references. While use of novalue in property values is pretty clear for me, not sure it is as useful in qualifiers and refs. Example: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62#P6 As we can see, Edwin Mah Lee is the mayor of San Francisco, with end date set to "novalue". I wonder how useful is this - most entries like this just omit end date, and if we query this in SPARQL, for example, we would do something like "FILTER NOT EXISTS (?statement q:P582 ?enddate)". Inconsistently having novalues there makes it harder to process both visually (instead of just looking for one having no end date we need to look for either no end date or end date with specific "novalue") and automatically. And in overwhelming majority of cases I feel "novalue" and absence of value model exactly the same fact - it is a current event, etc. Is there any useful case for using novalue there? Another example: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2866#P569 Here we have reference with "stated in":"no value". I don't think I understand what it means - not stated anywhere? How would we know to make such claim? Is a lie? Why would we keep confirmed lies in the data? Does not have confirmed source that we know of? Many things do, why would we have "stated in" in this particular case? Summarily, it is unclear for me that novalue in references is ever useful. To quantify this, we do not have a lot of such things: on the partial dump I'm working with for WDQS (which contains at least half of the DB) there are 14 novalue refs and 13 properties using novalue as qualifier, leader being P582 with 200+ uses, and overall 422 uses. So volume-wise it's not a big deal but I'd like to figure out what's the right thing to do here and establish some guidelines. Thanks, -- Stas Malyshev smalyshev(a)wikimedia.org

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Wikidata April 2015