Wikidata

Wikidata:Contact the development team/Archive/2013/02

< Wikidata:Contact the development team‎ | Archive‎ | 2013
This page is an archive. Please do not modify it. Use the current page, even to continue an old discussion.

Geography shapefiles

Are there any plans to include geography shapefiles such as shp or KML as a type of field? At the U.S. Roads project on the English Wikipedia, we have KML files that provide interactive maps for linear objects, which provide more detail than a one-dimensional coordinate. However, we have to store the files locally as a security bug prevents them from being uploaded to Commons. It would be a better fit to put them on Wikidata so that they can be available to all WMF sites. w:en:California State Route 78 has an example. --Rschen7754 18:24, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

We'll first have to get a few other things working before thinking about things like that :) --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:23, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
No problem - seems like there's a lot of things to be implemented. --Rschen7754 22:12, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Date dependent labels

Is there any plans to handle date dependent labels? For example, names of locations used in infoboxes may depend on date: place could be renamed (for example, many cities in USSR) or changed county after war (for example, German/Polish places). --EugeneZelenko (talk) 04:12, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I see no way of limiting this problem to a special type of item. People and companies change their name, and if New York City decide to be called tomorrow "New Big Apple" Wikidata needs the same update like the linked Wikipedia articles. BTW: It's even a bigger "problem" for the descriptions. --Kolja21 (talk) 04:25, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes this is what qualifiers will be there for. Check the data model primer for details :) --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:25, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Properties

Adding statements in phase 2 it would be helpful to mention the data type behind the property. Example:

  • Miguel Ángel Asturias
    • Statements:
      • Main type of item (item): Person
      • Image (media file): MiguelAngelAsturias.JPG
      • Date of birth (?): 19 October 1899
      • Place of birth (item): Guatemala City

It's the best way Wikidata will stay self explanatory. Also the order of the properties ("Ranks of Statements") should be set. Otherwise we need a handbook for editors ;) --Kolja21 (talk) 02:35, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

That seems like a bit of a waste. Essentially all "main types" could be deduced from more specific properties. --Yair rand (talk) 04:00, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, that's not what I meant: I think we should mention the data type (item, media file etc.) behind the name of the property. The examples above are easy, but having more than ten or twenty properties it's getting tricky, and no editor coming from Wikipedia will know what to do; especially if he is not good at English. (BTW: The six "main types of items" are part of authority control templates and can help for example not to mix the disambiguation page "Paris" with the city "প্যারিস" or the mythological figure of that name, called パリス. In a distant future we might can deduce a few dozen somewhat main types, but it's not sure for how many items this will work.) --Kolja21 (talk) 05:05, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
It is important to add descriptions to items. Let me repeat; it is important to add descriptions to items. Jeblad (talk) 23:54, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
No problem. We only have 3,489,109 items. If we start now, the work should be done in about a week ;) --Kolja21 (talk) 05:31, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
We fear this will clutter the user interface even more than it already is. And people can get to it by clicking on the link of the property. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 15:02, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Is this technically possible?

Please read my suggestions on Wikidata talk:Infoboxes task force/terms. I believe that this is a better approach. I would like to know whether or not this kind of recursion-like automation would be possible (and could be used in Wikipedia infoboxes).

Pros:

  1. Less redundancy in Wikidata items
  2. Saves space on server
  3. Can easily change every (sub)species or other sub-rank in some rank, if it was originally an error

Cons:

  1. All ranks can not be easily determine by looking at the data, unless some form of recursion/automation is planned
  2. Probably more cons that I'm overlooking right now
  3. Maybe even more

πr2 (t • c) 02:49, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Question about properties

+1. Both should be add to the wish list. --Kolja21 (talk) 20:05, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Properties should not be case sensitive.
I just found out, since there is no "Place of birth". So it's just a question of time till we have (beside "place of birth") the properties "Place of birth" and "birthplace". --Kolja21 (talk) 21:01, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Not without defining a new data type that holds a list as it is now, but it could be possible to add some kind of assisted page to give hint about typical values. It would anyhow be a non-trivial amount of work, but perhaps it is interessting for an volunteer?
  • Not now, but it could be added somehow. It depends on exactly what is a minimum requirement.
  • There are two things here, case insensitive lookup in Wikidata and case insensitive properties in the parser functions on Wikipedia. Some of the pages use case insensitive searches (Special:Search), some can use case insensitive search (Special:ItemDisambiguation) and some must be case sensitive (Special:ItemByTitle). Jeblad (talk) 23:44, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Edit summaries for properties

Are edit summaries for properties in developers plans? Is it possible to add them retrospectively? Otherwise it's hard to guess what and why was changed. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 04:37, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes. This is bugzilla:44663. We'll have to fix the edits that were already done as well. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 15:12, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

history comparison

Today history gets grouped entries by the edit of the statements. There should be some descriptions in the detail lines. Worse is, that I can not obsvere, what on the queries get edited [1]. Greetings, Conny (talk) 12:24, 5 February 2013 (UTC).

Yes this is bugzilla:44095 and bugzilla:44663. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 15:14, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

What's about qualifier ?

A small question about qualifier: is it still planned to developp qualifier for the different properties ? Because qualifiers can be the answer to properties like "office hold" or "former team member" by including the starting and the ending dates of the membership/position holding. Snipre (talk) 18:01, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes that's still planned. Tracking is at bugzilla:44683. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 18:08, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
Thank you Snipre (talk) 19:00, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Edit summary for edits to statements

Hello, it would be nice if there was an edit summary when we add, remove, and/or modify statements. IIRC, there is also no difference recognized via the "diff" link, so the only way no know what was actually done would be to compare both versions. — Hazard-SJ  ✈  23:48, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I was about to report this myself. I can't adequately review edits by newer contributors without reviewing two revisions and comparing them side to side to examine the statements without an edit summary. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 23:50, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
Please see #Edit summaries for properties. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 23:55, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Properties values preview

I think will be nice o have preview of properties values: items properties could display description: media - image or multimedia file. This could be hint or pop-up window. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 04:24, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Can you expand on how this would look? What would be shown? When? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 13:23, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Error message could be shown after adding. Or item should not appear in list of possible values. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:47, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Tooltip in drop down menu

Is it possible to have the description of an item appear if you hover over the Label in the values drop down menu? Filceolaire (talk) 08:18, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

When is this? When you add a new statement to an existing item? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 13:24, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
When hovering cursor over value. For media will be useful at adding time too. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:46, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Can't delete languages from an item

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 44717

I noticed that on the item Q853475 I can't delete some languages. Labels, descriptions and aliases are empty, but languages still appear there. There were more languages, but only some of these went away when I tried to remove all. (you can see the empty languages by choosing "labels list" gadget). Just note: This is not related to gadget what I used, because I saw this first time two days ago here: Q1827378, empty zh-language can be shown when using labels list. --Stryn (talk) 13:14, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I just deleted and restored the enwp link. That seems to have worked. Do you have any more hints to investigate? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 13:26, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Well, I'm not sure did you understood what I meant so here is a picture: File:Wikidata, unused languages in labels list.png. --Stryn (talk) 13:31, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Aha! Then I did indeed not understand correctly. http://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q853475&diff=5905207&oldid=5904398 <- better? This took quite a bit until it was saved but now it seems to be removed. Is that the issue you mean? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 13:43, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
There is still empty language rows: ca, fr, sv and ch. --Stryn (talk) 13:56, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Ohhh now I understand the issue. Thanks. And if you delete the label in other items it is no longer shown in the label lister? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:11, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, exactly like this. --Stryn (talk) 14:15, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
The probleme is in the API but mainly on the json format (the format that i use for my gadget). Here is the xml version of Q1827378 send by the API everythings is ok (0 aliases, 1 description, 5 labels, 3 sitelinks ) but on the json version] there is a probleme (6 empty aliases, 5 labels, 1 description and 3 sitelinks) and it's the same things for Q1827378 [json format]. By testing different format I can see that this problem is not on the following format: ( XML, RAW ) ; but is on the following format : ( JSON, PHP, WDDX, YAML, TXT, DBG, DUMP ). --Jitrixis (talk) 15:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
I think that I see where is the probleme. When I add an alias, a variable is created but when I throw the delete flag for an alias and if there is no more aliases for this language the variable is still alive but empty. bugzilla:44717 --Jitrixis (talk) 15:30, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for investigating! --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:54, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Slow ajax/search code?

From my Firebug: 

GET http://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?callback=jQuer...ities&format=json&language=nb&type=item&search=W	200 OK		2.35s	
GET http://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?callback=jQuer...ies&format=json&language=nb&type=item&search=Wik	Aborted
GET http://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?callback=jQuer...es&format=json&language=nb&type=item&search=Wiki	Aborted
GET http://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?callback=jQuer...s&format=json&language=nb&type=item&search=Wikip	Aborted
GET http://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?callback=jQuer...&format=json&language=nb&type=item&search=Wikipe	Aborted
GET http://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?callback=jQuer...language=nb&type=item&search=Wikipedia-pekerside	Aborted

The code seems to have no qualms about launching two (or more?) GET requests at the same time, in other words searching for "Wiki" and "Wikip" at the same time. This can't be good for performance. And most of the requests seem to time out, I suppose this is because the server is overloaded because the server-side code needs some optimizing? In any case, right now it's impossible for me to add "is a" + "Wikipedia disambuguation" to an item, because all the GET requests (beyond searching for the single letter "W") time out. I had the same problem yesterday, so it seems like a chronic problem. - Soulkeeper (talk) 10:52, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Can you give some context where this happens? You were adding a statement to an item I assume? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:54, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
To reproduce, go to Q1176386. Select interface "Norsk (bokmål)". Click "Legg til" (add) under "Utsagn" (Statements). Type "er" (is a). When the other (value?) field shows up, try to save it as "Wikipedia-pekerside". It's next to impossible, because the ajax calls tend to be aborted before they return anything. - Soulkeeper (talk) 11:09, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
Or is it just me? :S - Soulkeeper (talk) 11:50, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
I've submitted it as bugzilla:44746. Thanks for bringing it up. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 13:16, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Q131976 and Q2320005

I am not sure that this is the right place, but there is a problem with this 2 items - "Ptolemaic Kingdom" and "Ptolemaic dynasty". The article Ptolemaic dynasty in en:wiki is the same article as Ptolemaic Kingdom. There is another article "List of Ptolemaic rulers" that replace Ptolemaic dynasty. I tried to fix the problem, but there are too many problems and too many languages. I ask you to check it carefully and fix it. Thanks. Hanay (talk) 13:38, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Hey :) This is best addressed on Wikidata:Project Chat. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:04, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
Thank you' Iwas not sure. Hanay (talk) 14:09, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Duplicated property values

I think will be good idea to prevent adding duplicated property values. For example I found Moscow mentioned twice as capital of Russia. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 04:23, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Some countries have had more than one capital over the course of their history. Brazil had Sao paulo and then Brazillia; Imperial Russia had Moscow and then St Petersburg. The Capital of the USA was in New York and then Philadelphia before settling in DC. Filceolaire (talk) 07:42, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Moscow was mentioned twice as capital. Without date qualifier (not supported now), it's definitely mistake. Sorry, if I was not clear. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 04:49, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

cannot delete values from Q16

I have not been able to remove the (duplicate) values under property "Commons media file" on Q16 since I first tried days ago. Can't change them either. Get a "failed to save" error message. Espeso (talk) 17:43, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I couldn't remove any of the statements at all. — Hazard-SJ  ✈  21:26, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
It can't be removed indeed. Bad. We're collecting such cases at bugzilla:44762 so we can investigate what's going on. If you see more of those please add them. Thanks! --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:23, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
I cannot delete the extra statement on the Japan entity for the official language statements. http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17 --User talk:Napoleon.tan

Cannot delete Persian (fa) aliases

I've noticed that the description in the Persian language (fa) sometimes cannot be removed, neither via the usual method nor via LabelLister. For example on these pages: Q208748, Q21198. Sanyi4 (talk) 21:13, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Unless something really is wrong, I see no descriptions set for either of the examples you gave in فارسی. — Hazard-SJ  ✈  21:17, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant aliases. Sanyi4 (talk) 21:25, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
OK, I tried for the first example and it failed to store the version of the page without the deleted alias. There was no error message. — Hazard-SJ  ✈  21:30, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Has anyone got any idea what the problem is? It's probably a bug. Please, somebody make a report. Sanyi4 (talk) 16:50, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Referencing : a suggestion

I don't know that it is discussed before or not but I suggest making a Reference Tool like below or may get some idea or at least add properties on ref.side according to it to make adding references easy. I suggest that clicking ref. section should open drop-down menu like book, news, web etc. Please see this tool and do make adding ref. easy. It will help users and increase ref additions.
Tool of English Wikipedia : ProveIt

--Nizil Shah (talk) 21:01, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Very good tool to create a string and to paste it in a value field. But this tool needs a big improvement to manage references defined as item or we have to divide the addition process of a reference into two ways depending of the type of reference: item or something else. Then we have to think about a multilanguage interface even if the string will stay in English. Snipre (talk) 11:46, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Edit links on client

I think will be good idea to change text on client to something less specific, because now Wikidata handle more then links. May be "edit links and data"? Probably Wikidata mini-icon should be included. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 04:24, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

The data isn't currently used yet in the Wikipedias. So I'd not add this yet. I also think this isn't the right place for that to be honest. The link to editing the data should be closer to the actual data. So for example later editors could add a small icon to the infobox that uses data from Wikidata. I think that would be a lot more intuitive. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:13, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

problem to adding a querry on a Statements

For exemple, the main language is set in french and on Q3566 I want to add the property Property:P30 (continent) set it up with this item Q46 by typing "Europe" but he is not display. Is there an other way to add it like by typing the number of the query ? --Jitrixis (talk) 22:36, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

The same thing with France (country) --Jitrixis (talk) 22:40, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
We have bugzilla:44823 and bugzilla:44677 being worked on for this. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:18, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Rating items in search and suggestions

I think will be good idea to account number of interwikis and item usage in properties when sorting query results in search and suggestions as well as put disambiguation pages at bottom. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 01:44, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes improvements to search are being worked on right now. I can't find the corresponding bug at the moment unfortunately. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:19, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Need of technical advices to take decision

To take some decisions about properties we need to have information about system capacity: for example is it better to define a lot of specific properties without qualifier or to have a reduced number of properties with qualifiers ? It is better to create for each source or data the corresponding item even without any wikipedia article (for example a scientific article or an not famous author) or to find a solution by using strings ? What about the management of a large number of items, the speed of queries (in wikipedia client for example) ? We need information about good practice in order to keep the system simple, efficient and fast. Thank you Snipre (talk) 11:10, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

For many of these things the answer is: "we don't know yet". So the following is partly my personal opinion mixed with a bit deeper technical advise.

Regarding the number of qualifiers: an important consideration here should probably be how the infoboxes would use it, and how expected queries would work on this. To give a hard example: how to split a polity (like a country) into its subpolity (like states in the US or Länder in Germany)? How would this apply for the UK? Would it be applicable for the EU? etc. If this gets resolved with a single property, it would be possible to create a table listing all of them with the same query over and over again. On the other hand, a property "related with" and a qualifier "Relation type" stating "husband", "mother", etc. looks to me not like a good idea, as it would make it much harder to reuse that data in the infobox.

Regarding the sources: I am not sure setting up an item for every single source is a good idea, e.g. a single newspaper article would in almost all cases be better represented as Newspaper "New York Times", Date February 7, 2013, Page 34, Author Louis Lane, etc. On the other hand, a book is often a very valid item and a good source, and the reference can be further refined, e.g. Nirvana has band member Kurt Cobain, source: book "Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana", page 23, edition 17th.

A reasonable litmus test for whether a source should be an item or handled within one reference and with strings etc. could be whether the source is being used repeatedly. In that one could avoid entering the authors or publication dates again and again, and simply point to an item.

In general, what is important -- even though I understand that Snipre knows that, but not all readers do -- is to keep in mind that in the near future, references will be represented by more than just a single key-value pair, but by a set of such (as used in my examples), and also that we will have more datatypes, most notably strings, numbers, dates.

I would also think that later refactoring will happen from time to time based on experiences with the usage of the data in the Wikipedias. Trying to make it perfect from the beginning will be a formidable task, and iterative work on Wikidata might lead to a more efficient start. Refactoring in Wikidata is much easier than in Wikipedia due to the fine-grained API, and this should be considered as an opportunity.

Purely technically speaking, we currently assume that we can handle a dataset very well even when it further increases the size by an order of magnitude (we do not have much experience with that kind of data though, yet. We scale in a different direction than the Wikipedias, so there might unexpected things happen). Regarding queries we have not yet decided how expressive they will be, which means: the less expressive they are, the bigger we can scale. This is something we will figure out in the coming weeks. --Denny (talk) 11:59, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Does the system rely on MySQL as MediaWiki or is based on a NoSQL DB like Hadoop? Fale (talk) 09:07, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

What links here for items

I think will be good idea to list property from which items links to particular ones. I think layout:

  • Porperty
    • Item1
    • Item2

will be less clattered then

  • Item (from property)

EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:30, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

You have already seen that you can use "What links here" for this for now? Something more pretty could be done in the future I guess. If you want you can file a bug for it on bugs.wikimedia.org. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:15, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
I added bugzilla:44888. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 04:11, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Change for the worse :-(

Some fifteen minutes ago, the interwiki update page suddenly started to behave differently. Probably some update to the software? Now it works worse than before. Anyway, I liked the previous behaviour a lot better.

  • It is much slower now.
  • Label and description used to be updated in-place. Nice! Now we have a separate window (not comfortable).

Do users like me have any influence on that? Kind regards, Vinkje83 (talk) 16:11, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Ten minutes later: I noticed the change back. Therefore I withdraw my complaint.
Good luck with the rest of the development! I intend to keep contributing to Wikidata.
Kind regards, Vinkje83 (talk) 16:23, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for poking. What you saw was probably the non-JavaScript user interface. There were/are Wikimedia-wide issues with JavaScript. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 16:44, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Phase 2 API

I'm working on a library to interact with the Wikidata API and I've a question about edition of claims: Will it be possible to edit claims with action=wbeditentity or we will have to use the action wbeditclaim described in meta? And, when one of these two possible ways to edit claims without making a lot of edits will be implemented? Tpt (talk) 20:51, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

There will be at least a wbsetclaim to edit a complete claim with references and qualifiers, but it is not available for the moment. I'm not sure if the wbeditentity will be extended to claims, and if so when that will be. Both of those modules have serious problems with information hiding in the changes, that is the people patrolling the changes must take additional steps to inspect whats going on in each change and because of this their workload increases. Jeblad (talk) 12:47, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
I see the issue with patrolling but in the other side do only "micro" edition will increase the number of changes (and so the load of servers) and flood the history. As my question is related to a bot library in PHP, I believe that most of edits of bots using this lib won't be patrolled. The other issue I see with atomic changes is that some manipulations like moving the main snak of a statement from a property to another (in order to delete duplicates and, in the future for migrations to new snak types like InstanceOf), will require a lot of edits (deletion of references, of qualifiers, of the statement, creation of the modified statement, re-creation of qualifiers and re-creation of claims !). So, I believe that the wbsetclaim is really needed and should be introduce quickly. Tpt (talk) 20:07, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
In the advanced recent changes many small atomic changes are not a problem at all. If we merge several changes then it will be very difficult to make automatic edit summaries, but perhaps we can come up with a solution. The most likely solution in the short term is an edit summary that says "something changed in this statement" and that is not a good solution. There is already a wbsetclaim module, but it has no solution for edit summaries. Jeblad (talk) 12:04, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I think there are upsides and downsides with both approaches. In fact:
Option Upside Downside
WbSetClaim * More than one change per edit * More attention needed to not duplicate contents
No WbSetClaim * Easyer to patrol * More load on servers
I think that the WbSetClaim is not a vital option. I think that modify API for Stage2 should be available ASAP so we can start uploading data. The WbSetClaim would be a nice-to-have feature from a developer point of view, but maybe not as good from a patroller point of view Fale (talk) 22:16, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
It seems that wbsetclaim is going to be used and that makes it necessary to find some solution to the edit summaries. Only solution I can think of is to list all changed entries from the diff, that is their final version, and limit the listing somewhat. That will make text that is added or changed visible, but it will also make the summaries hard to read. Jeblad (talk) 12:19, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Deploy Wikidata on Wikidata ?

That may sound like a silly question, but will it be possible to use things like on Wikidata ? Not on the main namespace, but it may be help make nicer help pages or this sort of things. --Zolo (talk) 10:20, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I was thinking about something similar: a way to show the localized name of an item (if available), such as in the logs, where if you put [[Q1]] you'd get something like Universe (Q1) — that is, for English. — Hazard-SJ  ✈  00:13, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I've filed it as bugzilla:44946. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:21, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. --Zolo (talk) 12:44, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

wikibase-propertyedittool-counter message error

Hello, the counter displayed beside "List of pages linked to this item" displays (# {{PLURAL:#|entry|entries}}) (where "#" is the number of sitelinks. It isn't processing the number and giving either "entry" or "entries" anymore. — Hazard-SJ  ✈  00:23, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that this is same error as stated in translatewiki: i18n bug in the JavaScript. --Stryn (talk) 05:18, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
It seems that is bugzilla:44459. A fix will hopefully be deployed later today. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:05, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorting of statements

Hello, is there a particular order for the default sorting of added statements? It isn't sorted by number in the properties' titles, and isn't sorted in alphabetical order. My only guess would be either the order in which they're put on or the order in which they're loaded when the page is generated, which, personally, I consider bad ideas. I'd prefer it sorted in a logical order, so, especially in the case of a lot of statements, they can be found and perhaps updated more easily. — Hazard-SJ  ✈  00:28, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

It is sorted by when it was added. There is bugzilla:44678 to make this changeable. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:04, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

searchmenu-new message shown twice

Hello, when using the Special:Search interface, the searchmenu-new message is shown twice when no results for the specific query are found, for example, in this query. — Hazard-SJ  ✈  02:01, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I've filed bugzilla:44944 for this. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

When will available diff in Wiki?

Now if I modify an item on Wikidata, on wiki I can see only that something is changed, but is necessary to have a more detailed description (for ex, "add de sitelink on Wikidata" or something like this). It's expected? If yes, when? --ValterVB (talk) 21:13, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

This is being worked on. See bugzilla:44095. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:25, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Rolling out en interwiki without diffs is... очень courageous :) . Nevertheless it is a very great day for wikidata, I'm very happy - thank you dev team! Conny (talk) 10:20, 14 February 2013 (UTC).

Baso Minangkabau (min)

When will minwiki approved on wikidata?  Ę-oиė  >>>  ™ 13:32, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

If all goes well, all Wikipedias should be using interwiki links from Wikidata starting sometime on February 27. — Hazard-SJ  ✈  20:52, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
Oh, I see... Thank's for the information. Kind regards,  Ę-oиė  >>>  ™ 02:34, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
And when will be possible to add min links to wikidata? I wanted to update Q477248 by script, but there is "unknown site min". JAn Dudík (talk) 19:59, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
It should work now. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 20:19, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Great! Than'k for the information.  Ę-oиė  >>>  ™ 03:48, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Changes of an item can not be saved when on "wikidata.org" (without "www.")

This problem is described several times in the project chat, but I did not find a solution, so I post this here as well: [2] [3] [4] --Sixsi6ma (talk) 16:14, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

But the same thing is working for you when you try it with www? Can anyone confirm this? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 16:59, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Exactly, yona b (talk) announced it first, in the project chat here --Sixsi6ma (talk) 17:30, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
I can confirm this. I just got the error. I was not able to save without "www", but it worked after I wrote www. --Stryn (talk) 07:08, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Thank you! This is very useful. We'll investigate further. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:20, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, I have not been able to save in it.wikidata.org , but in "www" I haven't any problem. --β16 - (talk) 08:37, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

There really should be a warning about this in the sitenotice, especially since there are lots of links even in "official" places (like this WMDE blogpost) which link without the www. --Tgr (talk) 13:31, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Can't block users without "www"

Hello, I noticed that I can't block users without "www" in address. E.g. if I try to this address: "http://wikidata.org..." and I click "block" it goes to "http://www.wikidata.org..." and then blocking is possible. --Stryn (talk) 12:54, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. We have a call with ops at the Foundation again tonight and this whole www issue is on the agenda. I hope we can fix this soon. I know how annoying it is. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:12, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Deleted item as property

If an item is deleted (q574288) it's still shown as property (what is correct) but you can't get to the item page with the info: "This page has been deleted." Example: Les enfants du paradis (Q865580). --Kolja21 (talk) 11:40, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

A fix for this should be in the next deployment planned for early next week. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:47, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

multilingual texts

Two important properties: sex (Property:P21) and type of item (Property:P107) use the datatype "item". Sex because of translation issues, and item type because it would be cleaner to use a set of controlled terms, and they may not all have their exact match in any Wikidata item (see Property talk:P107). I have seen meta:Data_model#Multilingual_texts, but I am not very clear about how it will work. Could it help here ? Otherwise, would you suggest other solutions ? --Zolo (talk) 20:53, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I think it is very important that both these properties reference items as their value and do not use the multilingual text type. This is especially true in cases where some control over the terms is useful, and there are potential translation issues: referencing an item makes it possible to discuss these issues in one place, once, instead of having that discussion over and over again, every time the property is used.
Multilingual text should be used very rarely - the only valid use case I can see are foot notes explaining why a specific value is deprecated or some such. -- Duesentrieb (talk) 09:55, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Ok, I thought that maybe the translations would be stored somewhere outside of the item so that they would be reusable. --Zolo (talk) 12:58, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

en:Template:Link FA / en:Template:Link GA

Any plans to implement in Wikidata also those "starred links" to featured and good articles? That information is the most likely one, to be also stored with the interwiki links. -- 109.48.74.64 01:58, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Just plans. See: Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2012/12#Featured_articles_and_good_articles and bugzilla:36735, which importance is unfortunately lowest. --Stryn (talk) 07:37, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Database name vs. language code

Hello, while attempting to undelete a page I deleted earlier as a duplicate, I returned an error, listing the links which were duplicated. However, they were in the form [[Enwiki:Page]] rather than [[En:Page]], resulting in the links being proken. Could this be fixed please? Thanks. — Hazard-SJ  ✈  02:04, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I've reported it as bugzilla:44945. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:19, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Can you please add to the bug which page you undeleted? Thanks! --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 13:01, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
It works for (basically) any page with duplicated sitelinks, but I'll do that. — Hazard-SJ  ✈  19:32, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
Is this the same bug as this? --Stryn (talk) 13:03, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, seems so. — Hazard-SJ  ✈  19:32, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Limit length of description

The length of the description should be limited. If someone writes a 226 sign long description the software accept it, but blocks the properties (Talk:Q349#Error messages). --Kolja21 (talk) 03:27, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

The limit is 250 characters. More should not be accepted. If an overly long description (or label) does get into the database somehow, this should still not cause problems with editing other parts of the item. If you can reproduce this problem, please file it on bugzilla. Thanks!
PS: one possible cause would be confusion about characters vs. bytes. Cyrillic letters take 2 or even 3 bytes to encode in UTF-8. -- Duesentrieb (talk) 09:50, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
The given example is 423 bytes, but still 226 chars. It could be nice to see some arguments for various length limits. Jeblad (talk) 12:41, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Normalizing file names during save

I think will be good idea to replace underscores with spaces in file names when saving property value. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 04:08, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

related bugzilla:41534 was closed with wontfix. Merlissimo (talk) 07:31, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
References to pages on other wikis are (and should be) stored in their canonical form, with underscores. We could however replace the underscores with spaces for display. Fir a request on bugzilla of you want that. -- Duesentrieb (talk) 09:52, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
I added bugzilla:45046. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 04:36, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Category item search bug

  Resolved

Could someone file this low-priority bug as necessary. There is consensus for Wikidata to hold interwiki links for Wikipedia categories and most other Wikipedia namespaces. When you search for "Category:Foo" (e.g. "Category:Berlin" which exists as an Item) the search results actually put the category name in red at the bottom of the Wikidata search page.[5] Also, the type-ahead find in the search box returns actual Wikidata site categories, not "Category:Foo" items, although this may be unavoidable. Finally, I don't actually get a result for the "Category:Berlin" search (numerous attempts), even though it exists. But I find this happens in many cases for everything, at least upon the first search attempt, and I have also experienced this on Commons, so different issue? thanks, Espeso (talk) 16:43, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, I just tried Special:ItemByTitle for enwiki:"Category:Berlin", and it takes me to the regular "Berlin" item! Almost impossible to navigate to the "Category:Berlin" item in other words. Espeso (talk) 16:46, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I found this search very useful. --Sixsi6ma (talk) 20:35, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Should be available no later than next rollout, possibly backported. [6] Jeblad (talk) 12:35, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Bulk edit

Currently it's not possible to edit items by using the primitive editor, in cases which a user wants to copy-paste a list taken from an article. It makes it harder to transfer the list if I had to do it by adding one-by-one. Galzigler (talk) 16:54, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

You can try slurpInterwiki gadget: Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. --Stryn (talk) 17:10, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
Pressing it does nothing. It works as a simple link to "#". Galzigler (talk) 17:29, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
Ok, in FireFox I can enter this list, I ticked this option but it doesn't do anything. Galzigler (talk) 17:41, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
You ticked it and saved your preferences? If it does not work, you can also copy this code to your common.js: importScript('MediaWiki:Gadget-slurpInterwiki.js') --Stryn (talk) 19:07, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
For some reason there are problems (at least for me) to move between tabs in the Preferences page in Chrome. I saw that now I have a link in the "Toolbox" called "Import interwiki". Thanks for the help. Anyway, there should be a way to edit the raw list. Galzigler (talk) 19:55, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Could be that some of the gadgets does not behave and collides with each other or ceashes or something. Can you check if you have some errors in your console? Jeblad (talk) 21:04, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Hungarian letter not linked

Please have a look at MediaWiki:Gadget-rightsfilter/hu, where ú is part of the word next to linked "regex" and is not linked. I remember I met some setting for that when installing my own wiki... This is a multilingual project, so all letters should be included into links, or at least all Hungarian letters. :-) Bináris (talk) 22:06, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Can you please file a bug for that on bugs.wikimedia.org? Thank you! --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:47, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
  Done, #45126. Bináris (talk) 17:47, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Multitype datatype (e.g. Item or Strings)

I am having trouble placing values to person entities relationship because the values are restricted to "Item" only. For example for a national hero. His parent may not be prominent to also have a wiki item so I cannot place father or mother claims. The solution I see is either

1 create a datatype that allows multi type like a variant
2 create stub item for the missing values.
I don't like the second option cause it will make wiki data into a directory. Was this discussed before? --Napoleon.tan
Could you please use ~~~~ for signing? Thank you! Bináris (talk) 00:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Any documentation on what the four tilde means. By the way, is there a shortcut to adding signature and UTC timestamp on comment? Any documentation on this?
Hi Napo, for 2. see Wikidata talk:Notability. --Kolja21 (talk) 00:52, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the response for number two. From what I understand some are suggesting that wikidata should not necessarily follow the notability rule on other Wikipedia. Hence I can add item with no Wikipedia page. But this would make a lot of empty entity. I think there was no final concensus on this yet. But there are no plans to create multi type datatype?--Napoleon.tan

new Wikipedia-Articles

Is it possible to place a link in new Wikipedia-Articles (en), to create an item in Wikidata? Conny (talk) 18:53, 17 February 2013 (UTC).

Creating is not the best possibility - maybe exist same item with another languages... Muste be any tool to find that item.JAn Dudík (talk) 19:13, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
We're going to improve this. We hope to have it ready for the next deployment (planned for March 6) but it might not be ready by then. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 16:13, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Watchlist not working

In the preferences I have "Add pages and files I edit to my watchlist" enabled, yet after editing over 100 pages, none has been added to my watchlist. --Elekhh (talk) 01:31, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes it is a bug. The ticket for it is bugzilla:41573. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:49, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
You could add this little hack to your vector.js or monobook.js to trigger watching when editing through the interface in the mean time. /Ch1902 (talk) 12:08, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
$(function () {
   // trigger watch on edit through js interface
   if (mw.user.options.get('watchdefault') === "1" && $('li#ca-watch a').length > 0) {
      $(document).on('click', 'a.wb-ui-toolbar-button:contains("save"):not(.wb-ui-toolbar-button-disabled), a.wb-ui-toolbar-button:contains("remove"):not(.wb-ui-toolbar-button-disabled)', function (e) {
         $('li#ca-watch a').trigger('click');
      });
   }
});
Thanks, works nicely! --Elekhh (talk) 23:08, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
It worked for me when adding a property, but not when adding an alias. Otherwise, I think this is a candidate to be made a gadget until the bug is fixed. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 09:13, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Was it after clicking unwatch on a page that was already loaded? It only binds the event if the page is unwatched when it loads, I didn't imagine anyone would unwatch a page then edit something to re-watch it ;-) But if that's expected behaviour you can use this instead. /Ch1902 (talk) 11:29, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
$(function () {
   // trigger watch on edit through js interface
   if (mw.user.options.get('watchdefault') === "1") {
      $(document).on('click', 'a.wb-ui-toolbar-button:contains("save"):not(.wb-ui-toolbar-button-disabled), a.wb-ui-toolbar-button:contains("remove"):not(.wb-ui-toolbar-button-disabled)', function (e) {
         $('li#ca-watch a').trigger('click');
      });
   }
});
Haha how else was I supposed to check if it works? Yeah, yeah, that seems like a perfectly reasonable call though, so people don't have to repeatedly unwatch a page they don't want watchlisted. Anyone else think this would make a good gadget? — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 12:16, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

pt-brwiki in "Item by title" search box

I'm not sure if this has already been reported, but searching for something in the "Item by title" search box with the language set for Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR) puts "pt-brwiki" in the "Site:" box in the Special:ItemByTitle page. But that never works because there's no pt-brwiki; it should be ptwiki. I don't know if this has to be fixed in Bugzilla or locally in MediaWiki:Gadget-Search.js. Opraco (talk) 19:11, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I believe this has to be fixed in the gadget. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:54, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Special:ItemByTitle

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 45223

If I link (edit interlanguage link) from en:Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to Wikidata, Wikidata can´t find the item. As you can see, the question mark in the title is disappeared. (Deutsch: Das Fragezeichen im Lemma wird verschluckt und so kann das Item nicht gefunden werden) --Goldzahn (talk) 07:15, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Filed as bugzilla:45223 --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:53, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Link removals

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 45224

One of the most frequent types of unconstructive IP edit I'm seeing is link removals. And since link removals should only ever happen when an article has been deleted or when a link is being moved elsewhere, it's rather inconvenient that you can't specify a reason to remove them. So could we perhaps make it so when you click "remove", you get a bubble asking you to specify a reason? You could have a dropdown with options link "article deleted", "interwiki conflict with <item>", and "merging item with <item>". That way, it'd be easier to tell which edits are correct, which are incorrect but good-faith, and which are potential vandalism. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 09:06, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. Now it takes lot of time to check every time why links have been deleted. --Stryn (talk) 09:20, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Can one of you please file a feature request on bugs.wikimedia.org? I'll see if we can do this. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:56, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
  Done — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 11:23, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

The Wikidata Sandbox

As some of you may have noticed, I've taken an interest in promoting Q4115189, our mainspace sandbox, as part of an effort to reduce the frequency of test edits. I've even created a page on en to link to from it (as a subpage of the Wikidata information page), and plan on asking other editors to do so on their native 'pedias. However, there's not a whole lot editors can do with the links, since the software prevents users from changing links to nonexistent titles and pages that are already linked to. (As well it should.) So, what I'm wondering is... would it be at all possible to turn off those safeguards on Q4115189 only? Or at least to allow nonexistent titles, since I see how allowing duplicates could screw things up on the Wikipedia side. I know it seems like a pretty big exception to make, and I'm pretty clueless about the dev side of things, so I have no idea how big of a task this would be, but I know that the software, for instance, makes it so nobody can delete a wiki's main page, so that means it's at least possible to exempt specific pages from aspects of MediaWiki. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 13:58, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

It's a good idea. Unfortunately it's not possible without a number of really ugly hacks :/ --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 16:46, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Oh ok. :( I'll add a note saying to try linking to userpages or something. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 18:27, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Adding interwikis

isn't possible right now. NNW (talk) 08:37, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

It should work if you have "www." prefix on your address bar. See also Changes of an item can not be saved when on "wikidata.org" (without "www."). --Stryn (talk) 08:41, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
It is https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3578791 and it doesn't work. NNW (talk) 08:47, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
It works with Firefox but not with Safari (MacOS 10.4.11). NNW (talk)
It still doesn't work with Safari. Anybody with Safari who doesn't have this problem? NNW (talk) 08:53, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

ZWNJ Problem

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 45111

Hi, I think there is a bug, with words containing ZWNJ in them. I have described it in project chat , so please take a look here. --Pouyana (talk) 08:34, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Unable to add link to existing page

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 44228

Hello,

I am not able to add links to existing pages, each time I clic Ajouter (my interface is in French, this is the Add button at the end on the list of pages in the different wiki) I am directed to wikidata main page in French.

I tried with several pages, with the same result.

Note that I have no issue to set the labels and descriptions.

--Cqui (talk) 09:05, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Cqui (talk) Also note that the error happen with or without the www. in the address of the page. --09:11, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
Cqui (talk) And I use Internet Explorer 8 on windows 7 x64.--09:14, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
Found the issue: bugzilla:44228. It seems this should have been in the latest deployment but unfortunately slipped through. I'll see what I can do to get this live here soon. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:30, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

An idea about when reference structure will be available ?

The question of the reference becomes important as possible massive importations by bots is discussed or when property object is used as reference tool. Is it possible to have an estimation of when the reference structure will be available ? And perhaps the general description of the structure itself ? Thanks. Snipre (talk) 17:00, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I'll ask but this might take a bit, sorry. (People on vacation.) --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:51, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
The structure holds Snaks, which is the same used in Claims (and Statements). There will be API modules to set and remove them, but it will also be possible to set and remove them as part of more high-level actions. John Erling Blad (WMDE) (talk) 13:46, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

translation tool for RTL languages

Hi, would you please design an option for RTL languages in translation tool? now Template:Welcome/text/fa should be RTL (in talk pages). I added change direction magic word but it doesn't work! also the logo should go to left (for RTL languages)Reza1615 (talk) 23:08, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

This seems to be something you need to take up with the Translate extension developers. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:57, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Search system ignors Polish diacritical marks

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 42234

The names with Polish diacritical marks like ą ć ę ł ń ó ś ź ż are not shown in search result, for example: Łódź. Leinad (talk) 00:25, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

See bugzilla:42234. --Nemo 07:25, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Questions on TimeValue datatype usage

Goldzahn asked devs' opinion at Wikidata:Property_proposal#Italian_Wikipedia_person_data. --Nemo 07:25, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Answered there. Thanks for the pointer. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:09, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Property edit not allowed

		$.ajax( {
			type: 'POST',
			url: mw.util.wikiScript( 'api' ),
			data: {
				format: 'json',
				action: 'wbeditentity',
				id: 'p10',
				type: 'item',
				token: mw.user.tokens.get( 'editToken' ),
				data: {{everything}},
				summary: '[[MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-labelLister.js|labelLister]] ',
				exclude: 'pageid|ns|title|lastrevid|touched|sitelinks'
			}
		} );

I have a problem. When I want to post by the API an edit of a property like p10, it say to me that I'm not allowed to do that. Why? (For exemple on Property:P10 with labelLister. I edit the script to display the error when it doesn't work. To display the error just click on save ).

API Error{"servedby":"mw1122","error":{"code":"cant-edit","info":"Edit not allowed:\nYou are not allowed to execute the action you have requested."}}

The same problem with the API SendBOX : [[:Special:ApiSandbox#action=wbeditentity&format=json&id=p10&data={%22labels%22%3A{%22en%22%3A{%22language%22%3A%22en%22%2C%22value%22%3A%22en-value%22}}}|link to the apisendbox with default id "p10" and default data {"labels":{"en":{"language":"en","value":"en-value"}}}]]

Regards --Jitrixis (talk) 12:47, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

You should use valid data, set a base revision id, use token, and post your request. Also verify that you are logged in. John Erling Blad (WMDE) (talk) 12:22, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Properties by genre

Would it be possible to make property names vary depending on gender (or on another property)? e. g. in czech language Property:P119 is now translated as pohřben, but it is correct only for men. For women should be pohřbena. Similar for Property:P54 and Property:P102. Yes, we should find another formulation of name of property, but this would help.

More complicated is problem when name of property depends on gender of linked item - Properties P50, 57, 58, 84, 86, 87...

JAn Dudík (talk) 19:18, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Why not pohřben/pohřbena or pohřbenA or pohřben(a) ? I know this is not so nice as a technical solution but I think this avoid a time consuming work with very small added value. Snipre (talk) 01:12, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Snipre here. This would mean Wikidata needs to know about the gender of a lot of things. This varies between languages though. For example: la luna/der Mond. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:52, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
I don't think we should make this an issue in the repo, but it could be necessary at some point in the client. If we want to handle this in the client (ie. by reuse of the label), then we need to handle this somehow in the repo too. This could be very important if we want to use data outside the infobox on the client, but then things will be a lot more complex than just gender, for example we need to handle plural and genetive forms. Still we should not do anything with it before we know more about the problem, and how (and if) we can get information from Wiktionary. Jeblad (talk) 12:04, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

MSIE 8 and lower

I just tried wikidata in work (rigid IT management here) and found that wikidata interface works limited with MSIE 8.0. For interwiki it is not possible to add or edit interwiki links. Seems that same problem is with any lower version of MSIE. I have no idea if it is stable or temporary situation. --Jklamo (talk) 08:23, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes we're aware of a few problems there and hope to have fixes for them in the next roll-out on Wednesday next week. Can you please let me know if you're still seeing problems after that? Thank you. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:50, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
Note that on the "lower" part, nobody supports IE6 and lower and IE7 only work by accident. Jeblad (talk) 11:54, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Would like to contribute

I would like to contribute but donot know what to do? I am an Arabic Egyptian Physician, my contributions are mainly on English & Arabic Wikipedia plus many on commons Wikimedia. my user name is ashashyou.--Ashashyou (talk) 15:11, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Have you already had a look at Wikidata:Contribute? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 15:22, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Editing Wikidata links on Wikipedia

Is there any plans to get some widget to edit Wikidata links directly on Wikipedia as stated on Office hours at 2012-11-06? Because one problem could be that editors are too lazy to come to Wikidata, and they want to stay just on Wikipedia. However, this draft looks good: meta:Wikidata/Development/Storyboard for linking Wikipedia articles v0.2. --Stryn (talk) 11:14, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes this draft has been implemented but needs polishing still. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:20, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Change language if logged off

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 42186

Why is it not possible to change the language settings if you are logged off? I see increasing false edits of labels and descriptions. Many ips edit the en-descriptions in their own language. --Sk!d (talk) 11:15, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

It's an issue with the Universal Language Switcher and it having caching problems. You can track the progress of it at bugzilla:42186. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:23, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Language fallbacks do not work well

Moved from Wikidata:Project chat#Language fallbacks do not work well

We should not need to duplicate effort translating things, but while there was "pt" description for a property, another user needed to add "pt-br" as well, because before that the existing pt translation was not shown to anyone which set "pt-br" in its preferences (it shows an empty field, which asks for a unnecessary description!). Here is what I would expect:

  • If there is a "pt" description (but no "pt-br" description) and I'm using "pt-br", the "pt" translation should be displayed (most of the time they coincide), with the possibility to edit (but this edit would actually create the "pt-br" version).
  • If there is a "pt-br" description (but no "pt" description) and I'm using "pt", the "pt-br" translation should be displayed, with the possibility to edit (but this edit would actually create the "pt-br" version)
  • If there is both a "pt" and a "pt-br" description (which should only be necessary if it differs from one country to another), I'll see/edit the description in the language I have set in my preferences.
  • If there is no Portuguese descriptions at all (i.e., "pt" and a "pt-br" doesn't exists), I'll see the empty fields, and be able to add a translation in the variant I set in my preferences.

In any case, I should still see at least the English descriptions to know what the page is about. Helder 19:47, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes this is simply not implemented yet. It's bugzilla:36430. You can already get a lot of what you want by adding a babel box to your user page. See my user page for how. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:25, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Actually much of it exists already but we don't use it. We use the global fallbacs which can be set up as a chain of languages, but it is only set up as a single fallback to English. It is possible to set up a fallback from pt-br to pt, but right now that imply acceptance from the community not only on Wikidata but all the different communities on Wikimedia Foundations projects. Right now the fallbacks are hardcoded in core, and that should be changed. We need some mechanism to add other languages to the fallback chain without interfering with other projects. Nothing about making the fallbacks visible is implemented. Jeblad (talk) 14:49, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Isn't this what is defined at languages/messages/MessagesPt_br.php and MessagesPt.php? Helder 21:15, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
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