Wikidata

Wikidata:Paper cuts

Development plan Usability and usefulness Status updates Development input Contact the development team

The developers have spent a lot of time getting the basics of the website up and running. We'd now like to also focus on eliminating small annoyances or bugs that make using Wikidata just a bit less fun. We're collecting so-called paper cuts. These are small annoyances or bugs that are easy to fix but have a large impact on making Wikidata more enjoyable to use for you.

unsorted edit

Copy in a Wikidata URL edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T112241

Quite often, there is a need to use the web-address of a Wikidata item. When you do, you have to remove the http etc part to be left with the Qid. It would be nice when this is automatically stripped. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 08:47, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a problem
  1. GerardM (talk) 08:47, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:32, 26 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. ChristianKl (talk) 15:29, 25 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion

Just copy the Qid part, not the whole address? --Stryn (talk) 14:33, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I get the URL from the sidebar, if it was a matter of copy and paste, I would not ask for it. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 15:36, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

#sitelinks-wikipedia suffix also should be removed. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:32, 26 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can you please describe where and when you need this? What are you copying where? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 16:27, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I want to copy URL from Data item or Edit links on client (Wikipedia, Wikisource, etc) and use item ID from this URL as property value in Wikidata. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 01:06, 2 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  Strong support. Often I'm working in Wikipedia and need to grab the Wikidata Q identifier for the article I'm looking at. I right-click on the "Wikidata item" link in the left navigation menu on Wikipedia, copy the link target value, then switch tabs to Wikidata to place that Q identifer in some statement. But every time, I have to remove all of the URL string except for the Q identifier. It seems I have the same workflow as @GerardM, EugeneZelenko: Runner1928 (talk) 19:16, 14 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Language choice at the addition of new items edit

When I go to the existing item and want to add smth I need to choose the language. If I start typing a dropout menu shows up. If the mouse is not positioned perfectly, than a language can be very odd. For instance, I want to choose French and get smth random starting with F. Moreover, when I repeat my choice I first need to remove the previous (incorrect) choice, and this can only be done by hitting backspace many times. One backspace would be enough. (The first problem does not yet exist for Wikivoyage, since the first letter either uniquely gives the choice or reduces it to at most two languages).

I think this is a problem
  1. --Ymblanter (talk) 21:02, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. --YMS (talk) 21:06, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. --Izno (talk) 23:04, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. --DixonD (talk) 13:11, 30 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. --Ricordisamoa 00:38, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. --Paperoastro (talk) 09:02, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Item / Property pages and deletion requests edit

Some way of being able to tag item and property pages for deletion—whether speedy or not.

I think we should rather create a template to put on the discussion page of the item then using a special code implementation for this. --Sk!d (talk) 00:52, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That creates multiple pages to delete needlessly. How many pages have you deleted of late? :) --Izno (talk) 02:07, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a problem
Comments

setlang and "wikitable sortable" edit

When I create tables with class="wikitable sortable", the sorting order is not according to the language I prefer. The sorting of Swedish is ZÅÄÖ, tables here are sorting ZÄÅÖ, no matter what setlang I choose. Observe that ÅÄÖ are not diacritics in Swedish, they are separate letters, like 'I' is separated from 'J' in English. Compare Wikidata:Country subdivision task force/Sweden/Municipalities with sv:Lista över Sveriges kommuner.

I think this is a problem
  1. Comparing lists on WP and WD becomes difficult. -- Lavallentalk(block) 10:05, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. --Stryn (talk) 10:18, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Ljubinka (discuter) 13:44, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment

GUI for edit summary edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T47224

Now that the API fully supports a custom edit summary (finally!), also the graphical interface should allow it:

I think this is a problem
  1. --Ricordisamoa 14:48, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Legoktm (talk) 07:57, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. --MGChecker (talk) 00:22, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  • How do you imagine this to work in the user interface exactly? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:21, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    See File:Wikidata sitelink edit summary.png. --Ricordisamoa 19:55, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    For Wikipedia's Article Feedback Tool v5 there's the option to provide a kind of a summary after the action itself has been done when moderating feedback. So you click the "Useful" button, and the action gets saved. A new button "Add note" appears in its place, and if you click it, a dialog pops up where you can enter the log message for this action. In the "Article feedback activity log" both the action and the comment appear as one event. I don't know how this is done and how easy it would be to adapt this to Wikibase edits, but I think this is a great solution for quite the same scenario - a simple action that's usually done in one click and usually doesn't need a custom summary at all is possible with a minimal GUI (not taking much space, and not giving the user the feeling he has to write a long essay why he is doing what he is going to do), but in case I want to add a comment, it's just as easy as the action itself - one click, enter some words, click again, finished. --YMS (talk) 20:12, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Given my understanding of the Wikibase API, your proposal would not work (without major changes); and my GUI proposal is the most minimal I can conceive. --Ricordisamoa 21:13, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Lydia Pintscher (WMDE): any updates on this? --Ricordisamoa 23:25, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, sorry. Please follow bugzilla:45224. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 15:56, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Sept" doesn't work as an abbreviation in the date field edit

When imputing dates (and language is set to English), users have the option of indicating the month of September using either "9", "Sep", or "September". Unlike all other month abbreviations, which use three letters, many people abbreviate September as "Sept" instead of "Sep". It would be nice if "Sept" (and "sept") were supported alongside "Sep" (and "sep").

I think this is a problem
  1. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:24, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion

"September" and "Sep" are MW messages, "Sept" is not. --Ricordisamoa 20:50, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what that means, but I don't know anyone that uses Sep over Sept. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:13, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Sven Manguard: our GUI uses MediaWiki interface messages to parse a date out of the user's input. MediaWiki has localized messages for full month-names ('September', 'October', etc.) and 3-letter-only shortened ones ('Sep', 'Oct', etc.). Your proposal would either require:
  • changing the widely used system message 'Sep' to 'Sept', or
  • creating a dozen of new messages for 4-letter month names - e.g. 'Sept' would be 'sett' in Italian - but what to use then for 'May'? --Ricordisamoa 15:25, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Link to [add source] is colapsed edit

The link to "add source" is colapsed as soon as a source is provided. It sounds like a good idea, but since many of our sources here is like this, it gives us false security. I think the sources and a link to "add source" always should be visible as long as that kind of "sources" are allowed here.

I think this is a problem
  1. Lavallen (talk) 09:38, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Superfluous space characters edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T47925

If I copy&paste something in a field like "GND identifier", mostly there is one or more spaces before or after the text when copying the ID from the source websites. The wikidata field doesn't allow that, which is of course o.k., but it always gives an error message, instead of just stripping the string off spaces before checking it and saving it, as any clever software should do (and indeed our authority data scripts on de.wikiepdia do perfectly well).

I think this is a problem
  1. --AndreasPraefcke (talk) 07:41, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Display precision of coordinates in "length" units edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T57817

The precision on coordinates should also be displayed in linear length, in the dialog where we select [angular] precision, so that it would be easier to identify the right precision for a house, a building, a village or a city. Example: for Earth, ±1' ≈ ±1.8km (±1 arcminute); ±1" ≈ ±31m (1 arcsecond)... What does a precision of ±0.01° represent in reality?

I think this is a problem
  1. LaddΩ chat ;) 21:54, 16 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

inter-language search edit

That is searching label or alias in other language besides the language which is displaying.

I think this is a problem
  1. --GZWDer (talk) 09:57, 25 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Pikolas (talk) 13:53, 31 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Change claims' property edit

such as change a claim from P540 (P540) to P766 (P766) without copying its value.

I think this is a problem
  1. --GZWDer (talk) 14:16, 30 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Anotther usecase,changing instance of (P31) to subclass of (P279) and the other way around. TomT0m (talk) 17:44, 15 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Being able to swap properties claimed would be amazing. --Izno (talk) 22:54, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. — Ayack (talk) 19:18, 7 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  5. This would be extremely helpful for fixing constraint violations Popcorndude (talk) 16:56, 18 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6. ChristianKl (talk) 12:59, 26 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment
I see how this would be useful but I have a really bad feeling about this. Starting with the fact that you would be restricted to properties of the same datatype. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 16:50, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The datatype consistency requirement doesn't seem a real issue: if a contributor wishes to edit the property, it means they founds the current value of the former property acceptable for the new property. Throwing sometimes an error when a datatype mismatch occurs will so be a rather rare occurrence, and so not annoying to the extent to make the property edit feature a time waster. --Dereckson (talk) 12:30, 7 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Long property labels are cut (sources) edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T59774

When a property that has a long title (i.e. section, verse, paragraph, or clause (P958)) is used in the statement source section, the full label is not displayed. See example Établissement public du musée d'Orsay et du musée de l'Orangerie (Q13380294), when clicking on the source of "has part", only "section, verse, or" is shown.

I think this is a problem
  1. --Micru (talk) 02:02, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Izno (talk) 22:53, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Duplicate statements edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T134371

Most of the time, when a page already contains a certain amount of statements, I can accidentally submit duplicates. For example, I don't see the IMDb identifier, so I submit it again and find myself with double identical identifiers. It should be a great idea that a visual advertissement appears when we try to add a new statement that already exists.

I think this is a problem
  1. Okki (talk) 20:38, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. GerardM (talk) 14:25, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. I don't know that a warning is the correct "severity" to treat it with, as it is more than normal to add duplicate claims in some cases, but a notification would be nice. I shouldn't have to acknowledge the notification or perform any other action to complete the submission. --Izno (talk) 22:53, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Gbeckmann (talk) 21:12, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Pajn (talk) 00:38, 8 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Property name does not auto-complete using the property ID edit

Typing in a part of the property name in an item, a JavaScript popup appears with all of the available properties named that. If I hit the tab key, then the panel element takes whichever property in the popup is highlighted (if there are more than one), sets that to the property, and then generates the form associated with the claim that I want to make. It then autofocuses the cursor to the form, ready to be filled in.

This functionality does not occur when I autocomplete using the property ID instead of the property name. I would expect the functionality to be the same.

I think this is a problem
  1. Izno (talk) 22:51, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

remove all statements of one property in one item edit

For example, a bot created many statements of one property. It's hard to remove all of them. Of course, revert can help us, but we can hardly revert if many other bots edited this item after the malfunctioning bot.

I think this is a problem
  1. --GZWDer (talk) 15:12, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Searching keywords containing punctuation edit

For example, I want to search which item zh:.catholic (see [1]) can be linked to. All search results are irrelevant.

I think this is a problem
  1. --GZWDer (talk) 15:30, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Mini-wiki-atlas or OSM minimaps for coordinates edit

When checking coordinates you need a lot of clicks, pages an time to see in a map the coordinates of an item. Enabling osm minimaps, just as they are enabled in some wikipedias (e.g. german and catalan) would ease a lot this job. I expect it to be a real paper cut, since the gadget already exists in wikipedias and it should only need to be installed in Wikidata.--Pere prlpz (talk) 19:07, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorting of sitelinks edit

This is already handled by MediaWiki:Gadget-MainLangFirst.js, but it should be server-side instead, based on data from the Babel extension (just like labels) or from the user preferences.

I think this is a problem
  1. --Ricordisamoa 20:08, 15 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion

@Lydia Pintscher (WMDE): is there a Bugzilla ticket for this issue? --Ricordisamoa 10:58, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not yet. Could you create one please? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 13:28, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Translation/display of a calendar date in Wikidata edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T63958

Hi,
first I'm not sure if I'm in the right place here, but I'll try: The text string when displaying a calendar date in the German language is wrong on Wikidata. For example see https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41421?setlang=de, there "Geburtsdatum" (birth date) says "17 Februar 1963". There should be a dot after the day in German language, so it should be "17. Februar 1963". --Bthfan (talk) 20:31, 28 June 2014 (UTC) (copied from https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Translators%27_noticeboard#Translation.2Fdisplay_of_a_calendar_date_in_Wikidata)--Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 10:49, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep a count of statements edit

Wikidata should count the number of statements it has, and provide this as a magic word and on Special:Statistics, like it currently does for the number of edits or the number of articles.

I think this is a problem would be a nice feature
  1. Denny (talk) 19:07, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Enter from language selection of title/subtitle edit

We should be able to save the property with enter/return (key) directly from the language selection of title (P1476) or subtitle (P1680) instead of having to shift-tab back or use the mouse.

I think this is a problem
  1. Hazmat2 (talk) 03:42, 2 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Tabbing from "typed" property doesn't release dropdown edit

When typing a property, if I make the "mistake" of typing the full name (ie. "author") the dropdown doesn't disappear when I tab from the property selection. This is a bit of an issue when having to click "More" as two "More"s come with the second dropdown. One goes back to the property selected already and the other is for the item. Very strange, but it's been happening for awhile now.

I think this is a problem
  1. Hazmat2 (talk) 03:48, 2 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Can't always add a value edit

Sometimes when creating a statement, after the selection on the property, the textfield to enter a statement just do not show up and the waiting animation stays in place. Maybe it's a problem with the entity suggester … but this even blocks to help him by entering a few letters ! This is blocking when editing. There should be a short timeout after which the textfield appears whatever happened.

I think this is a problem
  1. author  TomT0m / talk page 10:15, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist summary for labels/descritions/alias edit

Currently, the language often isn't spelled out in the watchlist. "Added [nl] label" would be a message that reads better as "Added Dutch label". Language names are more human readable than the ISO codes.

When reviewing changes in and labels/descritions

Summary of description and label changes should spell out language, previous label/description and new label/description Currently the edit summary for https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q44962654&curid=46144408&diff=605880768&oldid=605565037 reads as "Changed French description: cofondateur d'Everipedia". It would be better if it would read "Changed French description from 'cofondateur de Everipedia' to 'cofondateur d'Everipedia'. This change would make it a lot easier to see directly whether the change in label or description is an improvement.

I think this is a problem
  1. author  ChristianKl (✉) 16:04, 8 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

issues that are real paper cuts edit

'Description' text on mouseover edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T55025
Declined

It would be nice if the links to properties and items on item pages had ALT text from their descriptions so that you could see the description (in your language) if you 'moused over' the link.

I think this is a problem
  1. Filceolaire (talk) 22:51, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. LaddΩ chat ;) 00:57, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. --Stryn (talk) 07:36, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Lavallentalk(block) 09:27, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. TomT0m (talk) 17:59, 15 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment

That's quite exactly what the gadget "Descriptions" already does. However, I would like to see the descriptions printed by default just below every label. This way you could open a movie item page and directly see "Oh, that seems to be an incorrect claim - the director is a football player". Okay, many of those kinds of errors could be caught by queries, but what about, say, a Frenchman said to be born in Paris, Texas? It's always better to allow to do a plausibility check for the humans that are reviewing an item anyway. ---YMS (talk) 05:59, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Shortcuts edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T40968

TAB key to move from statement to statement, shortcut to modify/delete/save, another one to add qualifier/source. Shortcut to add a property to the item, shortcut to open the wikipedia page in the user language (or all languages that the user has configured in the babel templates), shortcut to add a language link.

I think this is a problem
  1. --Micru (talk) 17:13, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. --Izno (talk) 22:51, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Some of them are already covered by MediaWiki:Gadget-KeyShortcuts.js. --Ricordisamoa 05:54, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cannot select which "globe" when entering coordinate data edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T56097

I have several coordinates that I want to bring in from Wikipedia that are from Mars, but there's no way to change the globe without using the API. I think it could be part of the drop down options, along with precision.

I think this is a problem
  1. Sven Manguard Wha? 05:06, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. I miss all of the "hidden" parameters, also in the time-datatype. -- Lavallen (talk) 07:36, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. And the celestial globe...--Micru (talk) 23:37, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

issues that are not paper cuts or not related to the development of Wikidata edit

Synchronization between labels, descriptions and aliases between language variants (sr, sr-ec & sr-el; pt & pt-br; etc) edit

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 36430

sr, sr-ec & sr-el are one and the same language. When I insert label in sr, insertion should be performed also in sr-ec & sr-el, but of course, in sr-el in Latin script and in sr-ec in Cyrillic script. The same goes for alias and description.

I think this is a problem
  1. --Милан Јелисавчић (talk) 09:26, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. --GerardM (talk) 08:36, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Pikolas (talk) 03:13, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

pt & pt-br are one and the same language. Per above. Pikolas (talk) 03:13, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There are many things which are different between the two, and unifying them here would make it impossible to use data on Portuguese Wikipedia without throwing away the conventions about accepting any variant of Portuguese in the content and not changing it. On the other hand, it is a fact that we DO need a better fallback system, and more support for these variants, as reported e.g. on bugzilla:55998 and bugzilla:26121 (related to pt:WP:Esplanada/propostas/Conversor de idiomas para as variantes do português (30mai2010) and pt:WP:Esplanada/propostas/Uso do português de Portugal, pt-PT (4mar2012)).
See also User talk:Dexbot#pt-br labels. Helder 00:07, 26 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bad performance edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T56098

There are several performance issues.

  • Loading an item with a lot of content (sitelinks, properties, ...) takes a while even on fast computers with a fast connection.
  • Searching usually is fast, but often ends with a timeout anyway (in these cases, sometimes it's actually taking a while, sometimes the timeout error comes as fast as I would expect the result to come).
  • Requesting a deletion with one of the gadgets may take ages and is still likely to end up in an edit conflict, even if there isn't really that much traffic on the RfD page.
  • Loading the input fields for values based on properties may also take quite a while.
I think this is a problem
  1. --YMS (talk) 22:29, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Russia (Q159) is my favorite example of an item with a lot of content that consistently hangs Firefox for the past few versions and live for at least 10s. --Izno (talk) 22:59, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Yes to all of these --Filceolaire (talk) 09:36, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    1. Most pages with a lot of content have multiple values for one property. If the multiple values are hidden until a 'show' button is clicked then maybe this would speed up the page. This should happen if there are more than three (say) values for the same property. --Filceolaire (talk) 09:34, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    2. Yes. --Filceolaire (talk) 09:34, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    3. A redirect is being developed. Once we have that then all merges should end in a redirect instead of a deletion and so we shouldn't have edit conflicts on the deletions page. --Filceolaire (talk) 09:34, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    4. Yes --Filceolaire (talk) 09:34, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Ljubinka (discuter) 13:41, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. bad performance sounds like too strong word for me, but it is true for some situations (1,3). --Jklamo (talk) 14:00, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. --Rippitippi (talk) 02:27, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7. --Especially the first one. It takes 20s on my computer for Q183 to load. Littledogboy (talk) 18:47, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8. --Micru (talk) 23:51, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  9. --Ricordisamoa 20:12, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  10. --Pajn (talk) 00:44, 8 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Search suggestions don't work for pages outside the main namespace edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T48251

The search suggestions system does not work at all for non-mainspace pages. If you type in "Wikidata:Project ch" it won't suggest the rest of the title.

I think this is a problem
  1. Yair rand (talk) 10:13, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. --YMS (talk) 10:29, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. --Stryn (talk) 11:13, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. +, needs a way to find help & project page efficiently, there is way to much items to find them :) TomT0m (talk) 12:44, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. --Ricordisamoa 16:29, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. MichaelSchoenitzer (talk) 18:33, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Ljubinka (discuter) 07:13, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Pikolas (talk) 13:56, 31 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Really important. --MGChecker (talk) 00:23, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment

It's unfortunately complicated to fix this so it is not a paper cut. However we do need to fix this. I realize it's annoying. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:25, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Language support: Statements edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T55465
Declined

It would be good to have a list that shows the labels that do not exist in a language starting from the highest number of uses and going down. This would make the user experience improve fastest when people add translations in this way.

I think this is an opportunity
  1. GerardM (talk) 19:40, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. This might be neat. --Izno (talk) 23:04, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Great idea. --Qllach--Quico (talk) 05:09, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Sound good. --Jklamo (talk) 13:48, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. --Милан Јелисавчић (talk) 11:09, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment

This is unfortunately too resource-intensive to do it on the live system like this. It needs to be an external tool it seems. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:13, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is a dynamic and static part to it. We only need the ranking in as far as we know what label has many uses, the exact number is not relevant. It can be updated on a weekly basis for instance. The dynamic part; is this label translated NEEDS to be dynamic to be useful. Consequently, it does not NEED to be that resource intensive. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 08:40, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Navigation" header in the navigation bar edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T27510
Declined

If I load a page, sometimes (not always), the navigation bar on the left side shows a header for the top section - "Navigation" for a moment. It disappears quickly, moving all the links up one line. When clicking through the items via the "Random item" link (yes, I do this), this may lead to me accidentally clicking "Recent changes" instead from time to time.

I think this is a problem
  1. --YMS (talk) 09:17, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
You're right. --YMS (talk) 10:31, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This does indeed need to be solved there. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:11, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reasonator edit

It would be really cool if functionality as provided in the "reasonator" would be available at the touch of a button. It would need to be multi-lingual what it is not at the moment. A visualisation stimulates to add that other "statement" as well and the other ...

I think this is an opportunity
  1. GerardM (talk) 19:15, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. We would need to decide on appropriate properties, and this is probably outside the scope of this work effort. But I'll sign anyway. --Izno (talk) 22:54, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. --Милан Јелисавчић (talk) 11:08, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
all properties are shown (for a person) anyway.. One thing that Reasonator does is group them together.

Info boxes edit

When an infobox is working for a specific category, it would be nice to have this info box available as a preview in Wikidata.

I think this is an opportunity
  1. GerardM (talk) 19:52, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    What do you mean? Every wiki uses different infoboxes. --Izno (talk) 22:54, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. then it would be nice to be able to see infoboxes in lots of different languages. We could show multilingual boxes too, maybe even develop these here on wikidata. I'm guessing this would need a page attached to each item which has an (invisible) sitelink from the item page. --Filceolaire (talk) 12:29, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Nice idea but it does not seem like a papercut and could be community managed on talk page, different wiki might have different infoboxs. Maybe a custom community wiki part displayed on the front page on a property, and not just on the discussion page would be a nice solution to put more informations directly when viewing a property. A good opportunity to put the documentation too. TomT0m (talk) 12:59, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    It can't be done on the talk page unless there is a sitelink to the talk page - the infobox works differently on sitelinked pages. Adding sitelinked pages on Wikidata sounds like a papercut that, if fixed, would let the community start doing other things. Filceolaire (talk) 01:11, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts edit

The Occitan Wikipedia makes use of Wikidata. Their scrips have a problem; there are too many script errors. It would be really good if there is a set of scripts that can be used on any Wikipedia that wants to use them.

I think this is an opportunity
  1. GerardM (talk) 19:49, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    This doesn't look in scope for the development team. It's something each wiki needs to work on—we can of course centralize that knowledge if we want. --Izno (talk) 23:04, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Developing scripts for infoboxes and other uses, complete with Internationalisation and Localisation, would seem a good thing to do on Wikidata - See Info Boxes above. Filceolaire (talk) 01:17, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Better documentation of WD usage in WP edit

There is "Use Wikidata on your wiki" section on mainpage, but there is no link to documentation about data transclusion. Existing meta:Wikidata/Notes/Inclusion syntax v0.4 is incomplete and unfinished. I think these information should be complete and located on WD (and there should be also place for exchange of experiences for "transcluders").

I think this is a problem
  1. --Jklamo (talk) 14:41, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. --GerardM (talk) 07:46, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. --Ricordisamoa 16:29, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. --Pere prlpz (talk) 22:47, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. The same could be said for Pywikipediabot scripts for Wikidata. We actually don't know if there are scripts and how they work. --Sannita - not just another it.wiki sysop 19:00, 30 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. --Vyom25 (talk) 12:19, 4 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Hell yeah! The wikidata team is not taping the volunteer resources fully without that documentation. --Dschwen (talk) 12:16, 13 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  • Yes please go ahead. By all means improve this documentation. But I or the rest of the development team are currently not able to take this on. We're also not the best to write this documentation since we're so in the details of it and it is hard to see what is difficult for users there for us. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:42, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reverse property access edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51165
Declined

It's currently easy to access the values of the properties of one item, but it's not possible to do the other way around, find all items which have <property, value> as statements, and would be very useful overall together with Lua while we do not have a query engine, for example to display the subclass tree of a class. It would be very useful for documentation purposes for example, and would be a good workaround while the query engine is not ready. TomT0m (talk) 13:07, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a problem
  1. TomT0m (talk) 13:07, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Absolutely. --Izno (talk) 14:48, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Ricordisamoa 15:12, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. --Filceolaire (talk) 01:29, 26 August 2013 (UTC). Could the 'What links here' tool give the whole statement that has the Property or the item , instead of just giving the label of the linked Property or Item?[reply]
  5. --YMS (talk) 06:23, 26 August 2013 (UTC) It's missing for sure, though I don't think it's a paper cut - the query engine and othr parts of Wikidata intelligence need to be implemented, I'm not sure if there are some "easy to fix" shortcuts.[reply]
  6. --Paperoastro (talk) 21:10, 30 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments

This already exists here, but only on the database dump (I think). Queries with many results seem to work only with the API output. --Sixsi6ma (talk) 01:53, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Launch item creation from the property value input box edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T107693

If the property takes an item as a value, and the search results are zero for the entered value, then an option should appear to launch the "Create a new item" page with the entered text as the Label for that new item. On creating that item, the property and the new item-value should be added to the item from where the item creation was launched.

I think this is a problem
  1. --Micru (talk) 17:13, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I wouldn't agree that this is something we want. What are the use cases where this is proving painful? --Izno (talk) 22:46, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I think this would only lead to false items. E.g. if the search is a little bit incorrect the item could exist and there would be two items. Creating a new item from the left menu bar isn't a big work. --Sk!d (talk) 00:43, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree that this might lead to more duplicates but having a proper language fallback implemented in the item suggester and also a search which does not only recognize the start of a label might fix this. -- Bene* talk 13:40, 25 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. --Jane023 (talk) 09:54, 25 August 2013 (UTC) Use case: Artist A has four sons who became artists, of which two are on WikiData. The user adds the property to the item for Artist A and when the two sons are added, it would be nice to be able to add the other two sons with item-creation.[reply]
  3. useful and nice, the little details that really improves the user experience. Together with an improved way to find items to avoid duplicates, but it's harder to implement TomT0m (talk) 12:52, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Especially useful for sources. It's a pain having to create items for the book, it's author and it's publisher before you can create a source. This would make it easier. Filceolaire (talk) 01:00, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Pikolas (talk) 13:47, 31 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. completely agree with Filceolaire --Hsarrazin (talk) 09:39, 25 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7. ChristianKl (talk) 15:37, 25 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia moves and deletions don't get reflected on Wikidata edit

Every now and then I stumble upon a sitelink to a long-deleted Wikipedia article, or a sitelink that now is a redirect due to a move of that article (which often results in re-creation of an item for the new lemma, so the articles will lose their connection). Yeah, I know there's some bots doing that stuff, and now a user moving a page should automatically do so here with his SUL account, but still, the problem persists, and so there's still one paper-cutting question to me: Why aren't the sitelinks on page IDs instead of article titles?

I think this is a problem
  1. --YMS (talk) 09:17, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment

Copy/Paste a statement edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T55619

It would be useful if you could copy an entire statement, including property, values, qualifiers and sources, from one Item and then paste it on a different page. Even if you have to edit it after it is pasted it is still going to be much quicker that adding it by hand. Sometimes I even want to paste it on the same page then edit a value.

I think this is a problem
  1. --Filceolaire (talk) 01:36, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. --YMS (talk) 06:18, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. --Micru (talk) 01:42, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Ljubinka (discuter) 07:04, 29 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Legoktm (talk) 00:06, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. AVRS (talk) 14:46, 30 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7. — Ayack (talk) 16:28, 16 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8. EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:35, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  9. This would make editing a lot faster. Pikolas (talk) 13:51, 31 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Izno (talk) 22:56, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  11. much needed for adding properties to multiple articles from the same periodical or poems from an anthology - the published in (P1433) can be quite long to complete with qualifiers… and sometimes for 50 items with identical values :/ --Hsarrazin (talk) 09:34, 25 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comments

You don't use the machine side of wikidata: use bot instead of manual import. Snipre (talk) 09:42, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sure it might be a great bot task if we want to apply certain statements on all articles of a category or something, but there will always be single occasions where a user discovers that item B should have the same statements or some of the same statements as item A. It would be much more effort to instruct a bot than to just click "copy statement" four times (or so).
Maybe this would be best done by a gadget? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:20, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A "copy" gadget, to add to "move" and "merge". :D --Izno (talk) 23:16, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So bugzilla:53619? :D Legoktm (talk) 00:06, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

issues that are already fixed edit

Archived to Wikidata:Paper cuts/Archive/2013, Wikidata:Paper cuts/Archive/2014, Wikidata:Paper cuts/Archive/2015 and Wikidata:Paper cuts/Archive/2016.

Retrieved from "https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata:Paper_cuts&oldid=605884415"