Wikidata:Edit groups

Edit groups are sets of changes on Wikidata items which follow a similar pattern and are performed around the same time by a given user. They are typically produced by bots or humans performing semi-automated changes across many items. MediaWiki (the software that powers Wikidata) does not have such a notion of edit groups, but external tools such as EditGroups can be used to track these changes. There is also an instance for Commons.

The purpose of this page is to provide a space where these edit batches can be discussed and reviewed.

How it works

When you perform automated edits with tools such as HarvestTemplates, QuickStatements or OpenRefine, each batch of edits gets a unique identifier and a page on the EditGroups tool.

For instance, this edit was made with OpenRefine and the summary includes a "(details)" link that leads you to the page of the batch on the EditGroups tool. This page has three functions:

• provide a high-level overview of the edit group;
• facilitate on-wiki discussion about the batch by pre-filling a discussion page for it (discussions are automatically categorized in Category:Edit group discussions);
• let users undo all edits in this batch. This action creates itself a new edit group that attempts to revert each edit in the group.

You can also reach the page of an edit group by searching for it in the list of recent edit groups. You can filter by tool, user and tag by clicking on them.

FAQ

Can I undo edit groups made by others?

Yes, you can, but it is going to generate one notification for each revert, so it is more polite to convince the author of the batch to undo the group themselves (which will not generate any notification). It is also good to discuss the revert before (reverts generate as many edits as the original batch, so this takes time and resources).

Items were created in my edit group, can I still undo it?

Undoing a group with new items requires deleting these items, so you need to be an administrator for that. You can easily request an administrator to do it for you from the page of the edit group: this will leave a message at Wikidata:Requests for deletion.

Can I redo an edit group that was undone?

Yes, either from the original tool, or by using EditGroups to undo the undo group. If the initial undo deleted some items, the new undo will restore them (which will preserve the original Qids), but only administrators can do that.

Can reverting fail?

Yes, if the data touched by the batch to undo has been modified by other edits, it is possible that undoing these edits will fail. This generally means that someone has already corrected the edit on a particular item. EditGroups will attempt to undo all edits in the batch even if some of them cannot be undone.

When manually fixing edits from a batch, you should ideally use the undo function of MediaWiki (instead of, for instance, deleting a claim or changing a label). This ensures that the author is notified and lets EditGroups detect that this particular edit was already undone.

Which tools are supported?

• QuickStatements v2, both when making the edits via your own account or with QuickStatementsBot. (v1 is not supported!)
• OpenRefine
• HarvestTemplates
• namescript
• Author Disambiguator
• wikibase-cli
• EditGroups itself
• Any custom bots following this manual

Currently not supported

• Pywikibot

See also the statistics for the supported tools.

How do I enable EditGroups for my tool or bot?

See the Adding a tool page.