Wikidata:Project chat/Archive/2023/12

Merge two items

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q110517249

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11694529

Thanks! Gor1995 (talk) 13:10, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

  Done
I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. RVA2869 (talk) 15:15, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Regarding the future of Structured Discussions

Hello everyone

As you might already know, the Wikimedia Foundation works on changes to how IP editing is handled: IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation. Temporary accounts for unregistered editors will be a new type of user account. This requires changing how the features we use to contribute to the wikis' work.

This work concerns all features, and it raises some challenges. The case of StructuredDiscussions (also known as “SD” or “Flow”) is one of them. This extension is used at a few wikis, including yours. Flow is a complex piece of software that was never quite finished, fits poorly into the MediaWiki architecture, and creates a significant number of technical errors.

We considered several options to adapt SD: a full adaptation; a partial adaptation where Temp accounts can respond but not create new conversations. All of them would take a lot of time and effort for a short-term benefit. Also, the Wikimedia Foundation's long-term plan is to remove SD from the wikis, mainly due to the maintenance cost. As a consequence, we prefer to avoid adapting SD to Temporary accounts.

We take the opportunity of the work around Temporary accounts to question your community regarding the future of SD.

Discussion tools are the replacement for SD. They are the default discussion system at all wikis. They allow anyone to start, reply or subscribe to a conversation. They provide a visual experience on wikitext-based conversations, and they cover the vast majority of features StructuredDiscusions offer.

The goal with this conversation is to respond to your questions regarding the archival of StructuredDiscussions.

The idea is to proceed in two stages:

  1. discussion pages using SD are archived as subpages. They are replaced by a classic discussion page. In this way, the most active pages will already be ready when we proceed to step 2.
  2. SD are removed from the wiki. Existing pages (including archived ones) will be converted to a format yet to be defined.

StructuredDiscussions are used on some community pages

Some community discussion pages choose to use StructuredDiscusions. The most active one is Wikidata:Bistro, I messaged them separately.

As we already mentioned, Discussion Tools cover the vast majority of features StructuredDiscusions offer, including an easy reply tool and topic subscription. Some new features, such as thanking comments or permalinking (even when the talk page has been archived) will be soon offered. Having one discussion system for all users and talk pages will unify the experience, in particular for newcomers.

It is up to your community to have a transition period: you can archive StructuredDiscusions pages, but keep them editable. Ongoing conversations will fade out, while new conversation will be using Discussion Tools. At a given date, all StructuredDiscusions boards would be converted. What do you think of this idea?

StructuredDiscussions are used by some users at their individual talk pages

At your wiki, any user can turn StructuredDiscusions on as a Beta feature. This option will be removed soon.

We would like to reach an agreement, covering your questions and remarks, where removing StructuredDiscusions will apply to all users. The goal is to archive StructuredDiscusions-based pages, prior to their removal from your wiki.

If you use StructuredDiscusions at your talk page, we encourage you to consider switching to the default format of talk pages. You can do it by unchecking the option in your Beta features.

For the case of users who turned StructuredDiscusions on but who don’t edit anymore, the conversion will be done later, along with all remaining pages, at a date yet to be defined.

What we expect from you

Answers by the end of this discussion, scheduled for mid-December:

  1. Are the reasons given for archiving structured discussions clear?
  2. Are the two steps outlined above for archiving and uninstalling structured discussions clear?
  3. If so, what is a reasonable timeframe for archiving pages for deinstallation? At present, deinstallation is not planned on our side (even if the second quarter of 2024 is mentioned), as we are waiting for the end of these conversations, which take place on multiple wikis.
  4. In your opinion, what format should pages currently using SDs be converted to when we proceed with the deinstallation of structured discussions?

If you need clarification, please ask! I've subscribed to this section, and I'll try to answer as soon as possible. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:22, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Well this is frustrating as I prefer SD in its unfinished condition over regular wiki pages for discussions.
However, the reasons given for this change are clear in my opinion. I don't think we need long transition times if this functionality is going to go away anyways. Make sure the content of all SD topics remains accessible in some form, then remove it from the wiki. —MisterSynergy (talk) 23:04, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
To my mind, the major advantage that StructuredDiscussions gives us, especially on community noticeboards, is permalinking. With a board like this one, I cannot provide a link to a discussion thread that both includes future discussion, and also won't break when it is archived. This would be useful when taking administrative action as a result of a discussion. Bovlb (talk) 02:42, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
The removal of StructuredDiscusions makes sense, given that Discussion Tools got developed. I agree with Bovlb that permalinking discussions is an important feature. Given that you said, that it will be soon offered, I'm looking forward to that.
It would be great if existing links to StructuredDiscusions still resolve after the feature gets archived (I'm unsure whether that's currently is the case). ChristianKl09:10, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Others have mostly said what I think.
Regarding timetable: When you have got all information you need, just go ahead.
Regarding the format of old discussions, I can think of multiple options:
  • Convert the whole board to a wiki page that uses the standard wikitext markup (::: and signatures). There are two problems:
    1. Indentation in Flow/SD worked differently from that on wikitext-based pages.
    2. Comments in Flow/SD are actual blocks and support multi-line content, such as source codes. These do not currently work well in indented comments on wikitext-based pages.
  • Convert the whole board to a wiki page that mimics the original look and feel of Flow/SD. Use <div>...</div> tags with classes and anchors, and CSS. No JavaScript.
ChristianKl had a good remark regarding existing "Topic:" links. It is important to keep them working because it's difficult to find all of them (external links are indexed nowhere). Instead of "Convert the whole board", you can do "Convert each topic page" and list all topic pages on the archive board (archive index). The discussion will be reachable using the same link as before. Or if you take the "convert the whole board" approach and the "Topic:" pages are going to be deleted, just give us the mapping under which anchor the discussion can be found after archivation. We can then have a bot re-create the pages with #REDIRECT [[User talk:...]]. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 12:56, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
For perspective, I made a comparison some time ago (slightly outdated now probably) of all reply tools (including Flow) known to me at w:en:User:Alexis Jazz/Factotum/Feature comparison matrix.
Admittedly, it's biased towards my own script which you probably wouldn't want to deploy, but the table might still provide some insight.Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 13:48, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Thank you all for your responses! I pinged you for detailed responses based on your answers, but you can of course react to any of the details below.
@MisterSynergy, in your opinion, what would be the most valuable things SD have over classic discussions? I'm asking in the case what you like is already available, but you do not even know about it.
@Bovlb, @ChristianKl permalinking will be provided for DiscussionTools (DT). The Editing team is finishing the work on it. A link will be provided for each message, and that link remains true even if the comment is moved to a subpage.
Regarding How SD links, mostly the Topic: based URLs, will work, it is to be defined.
@Matěj Suchánek the challenge of indentations is indeed a problem for the conversion. This is why we are asking communities separately on their preferences. One simple example of differences: for this conversation, you all responded to my message, indenting your comments by 1. At other wikis where I have the same discussion, people respond to the previous message, making the indentation increasing by 1 for each reply. Something we have to take into account as well!
The conversion could be done in HTML, or in wikitext, the latter being more popular as it would make it easier to change the contents when needed (a username change, for instance). Regarding the format, we can imagine many things: one page with everything on it, one page per Topic, transcluded to a parent page... Again, I'm looking for your preferred options, to compare them to the preferred options of other communities. The idea is to define a common maintenance script that will do the job.
@Alexis Jazz, thank you. It is quite detailed! We listed comparison points as well, for SD and DT. I hope it would help you update your page, if needed ("Check for new comments" is true for DT, and the comparison lacks a feature I really like: subscribe to a section). We hope to add a few more green checks for DT soon! ;) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:43, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Trizek, I hadn't forgotten that one, it's under "Topic subscription". It was absolute madness to do in a userscript, but I did it anyway. (and no, it's not a wrapper for DT - my script has 0 dependencies on DT)
I'll see what I can update in my table from your comparison, thanks for the link.
On the topic of SD conversion, I have an idea though I'm unsure if it's feasible or even a good idea at all. Would it technically be an option to export the Flow discussions as JSON (which presumably would retain the original data with minimal modifications) and render them using a Lua module? Substitution to get some editable wikitext would be possible as well. I guess wikitext would be preferable over HTML anyway, what benefit would HTML have?Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:32, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
@Trizek (WMF): Since you asked… I do like the visual appeal of SD boards much more than classical wiki pages for discussions. Individual comments are clearly separated from each other, metadata (such as timestamps and signatures) are separated from the text, line length is limited to a reasonable width, and the overall impression is much less dense than on classical wiki pages. —MisterSynergy (talk) 16:19, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
MisterSynergy, c:User:Jack who built the house/Convenient DiscussionsAlexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 16:50, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz, I picked HTML as an example. I could have said hand-written on parchment! :D You're the first one to suggest JSON, I take note of that.
@MisterSynergy, thank you. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 09:45, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Welcoming bot

Hi,

I often add manually the {{Welcome}} template on user pages (sometimes on user being quite active and/or active for a long time).

Should and could we have a bot for that? (and avoid forgetting to welcome new users) this exists on a lot of other Wikimedia projects so it shouldn't be hard.

Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 10:11, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we should have a bot wishing new users "welcome". A bot to give helpful instructions, yes, but a welcome should exclusively be made by humans in my opinion. Ainali (talk) 10:13, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Both positions have pros and cons, I have maybe a slight preference for welcomes added by humans. BTW, Wikidata:WikiProject Welcome exists but doesn't seem much active. --Epìdosis 10:17, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Orthogonally, I think we should ask to activate the growth features that provide the mentorship module. Ainali (talk) 10:19, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
@Ainali: yes, +10000! who should we ask for it? @Lucas Werkmeister:? Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 11:57, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm the person to ask for Growth features. :)
One caveat: Growth features are designed for Wikipedia. The Homepage, where the Mentorship module is, might look a little bit empty with only the Mentorship module and Help Links module. But it would work.
We would not provide any tasks for newcomers, as we have none designed for your wiki (but the code is open). We also have an impact module, but again based on Wikipedia's needs. I have no idea on how it would look like for Wikidata.
I'll confirm what I wrote with the development team. We will also need a consensual agreement on testing Growth Mentorship at Wikidata. And don't forget to find some mentors joining the project. :)
Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
I don't like broadcast messages being put on my user page. Vicarage (talk) 10:19, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
No worries, the bot would be configured so that you wouldn't't get one. Ainali (talk) 10:20, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Plus, welcome is only done once and to new users so you are not concerned  . Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 11:57, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
But you need to consider how many other users dislike such messages. AFAIK there is no system setting to opt out across the WP ecosystem Vicarage (talk) 12:03, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
this exists on a lot of other Wikimedia projects – Indeed, and I dislike it on all of them. If I happen to randomly visit an obscure Wikipedia language edition, I don’t need to be reminded of that fact days later via a welcome message in a language I don’t speak just because CentralAuth autocreated my account at that time. Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 10:36, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
@Lucas Werkmeister: true, I find that behavior strange too. It depends on how the bot is configured, some leave a message as soon as the account is created (which is too much), some only after a couple of edits and/or time (which is better and leave time for manual welcoming if needed). Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 11:57, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Activities of theologians

Protestant pastors in German regional churches are paid by the regional churches and carry out their work in a specific parish.

I would like to show that person x worked in city z and in parish a in period y.

Example: Diedrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor in the Zion Church parish in Berlin from 1931 to 1933.

Q76326 How do I get rid of (!) there? Jan Mathys (talk) 12:06, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@Jan Mathys: you can't use parish church (P8289), I think you are looking for applies to jurisdiction (P1001) (which actually expect a parish and not a church). Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 13:05, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Fair use on Wikidata

See WP:VPP#Spongebob Squarepants is now freely licensed! for more information and links to relevant discussions.

These images are all used on Wikidata items, resulting in automatic transclusion in various Wikipedia articles. They appeared in a video from an official Nickelodeon channel which was erroneously tagged as Creative Commons on YouTube. Either they only meant to release the (live action) interview with a free license, or more likely, the whole thing is a clerical error. Such a paradigm shift should be accompanied by at least a press release. Spongebob with a Creative Commons license, how is that not on the front page of https://creativecommons.org/ ?

There is no sign Commons will take these down. WMF Legal is also unlikely to take them down as there's a fair use argument for keeping them up. (Legal does not intervene unless legally required to do so, keep in mind that license templates are opinions, not legal statements. Commons is legally hosting these as fair use.)

I would kindly suggest adding these to MediaWiki:Bad image list. That doesn't prevent files from being added to items, maybe an AbuseFilter entry? Unsure if an RfC is required for this, but an RfC requires prior discussion anyway, so.. discuss.Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 12:58, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Commons does not host any images as "fair use". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:17, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Legal would beg to differ. If Legal is or becomes aware of these files, they'd just say "it's fair use, license templates are opinions, DMCA takedown request declined". Commons policy is none of their business.
I said Commons is legally hosting these as fair use. Whether their license template says "Public domain", "Creative Commons" or "we stole it" makes no difference as far as Legal is concerned.Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:37, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
The files in the discussion to which you link were deleted, because Commons does not host any images as "fair use". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Well, technically Wikidata does not host these images; it merely links to them (in the database), and re-uses them for convenience (in the web UI).
  • The property P18 is called "image", not "image with free license" or "image with CC license". Whatever is allowed on Commons can be linked to via P18.
  • Re-users need to verify that they are allowed to use the linked images anyways. This is supposed to be done via structured data at Commons which contains license information on a large scale, although all of that is kinda in a broken state unfortunately. Particularly Wikipedias have barely access to SDC as there is no proper interface available (via Lua or anything else).
  • For many language editions other than English Wikipedia this is a routine problem. Commons somewhat aligns with the English/American legal system, but the legal frame can be very different for other jurisdictions.
MisterSynergy (talk) 18:43, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
The general idea is that Wikidata doesn't host images but only links to images. As such it's up to WikiCommons to worry about what images are legal to host. When it comes to fair-use it's worth understanding that fair-use depends on the context in which an image is used.
There will be cases where using a image in WikiCommons is not fair use while at the same time using the image inside a Wikipedia or even Wikidata page would be fair use.
In the link to the discussion about BP, legal does not say anything about saying "DMCA takedown request declined".
As the Stanford libraries explain key tests for fair-use:
  • Has the material you have taken from the original work been transformed by adding new expression or meaning?
  • Was value added to the original by creating new information, new aesthetics, new insights, and understandings?
Pages on WikiCommons don't tend to add new expression, meaning, new information, new aesthetics, new insights, and understandings and thus it's harder to argue that they are fair use. ChristianKl08:35, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
ChristianKl, c:Commons talk:Office actions/DMCA notices#Notice of declined DMCA - NAIS logo.Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:06, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
As I said on the similar discussion on enwiki, this really has nothing to do with Wikidata (or English Wikipedia) and only to do with Commons. I don't understand what this, a copyright question about files on Commons, is really actually about Wikidata (or any particular Wikipedia or other non-Commons Wikimedia project), and why it should be discussed here and not on Commons.
Also, as I (and others) have said on enwiki, this all depends on your notion that the copyright indications on official Nickelodeon channels (as have been set for hundreds of video clips, for years now) are invalid is a huge presumption. To say that these are "erroneously tagged" on Nickelodeon's YouTube channel is (at best) speculation, not a statement of established fact.
When you say that these are "fair use" images, that is based on your assertion that the CC-BY labels on Nickelodeon's official YouTube channels cannot possibly be real or enforceable.
Based on this, you want other Wikimedia projects to (without precedent) unilaterally declare that Commons is incorrect to say that a CC-BY license is valid (just because it says so on Nick's YouTube pages), and thus that files from Commons should be blocked on the theory that their licenses were never really valid. A license is either valid on all Wikimedia sites (and all sites) or none. There is no such thing as a CC-BY that is valid on Commons and not on Wikidata. So we should certainly not create any sort of process of second layer of copyright assessment specific to Wikidata for files found on Commons. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 18:26, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
D. Benjamin Miller, and why it should be discussed here and not on Commons. Because Commons made the wrong decision. Commons is bad for my health, and apparently there aren't enough users/admins left to figure this one out. (Commons lost a number of good ones over the past few years and I guess they haven't quite been replaced)Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 20:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
So you think that this policy should be made on Wikidata because... you don't like Commons, and because Commons has not arrived at your pre-determined conclusion (which you have not even presented on Commons). D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 21:34, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
D. Benjamin Miller, raising this current issue on Commons is exactly the kind of thing that would contribute to me getting indeffed again. Last time that happened, two admins resigned over how that block was handled.Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 07:20, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Note: WMF Legal has reached out to Nickelodeon, so hopefully this will get resolved on Commons somehow now.Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 20:22, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
perhaps you should create a page as you did for c:Commons:Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, if not there then on meta. depthsofwikipedia and academics would be amused; but you should expect the response from wikimedians to be a big yawn. --Dunnegore (talk) 18:44, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

28th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (Q123566847)

Can someone help model it (Q123566847) better to get rid of the warnings. It will then be a template for the series. See also John Mortimer Fox (Q18912012) where Society of Jesus (S.J.) is the honorific suffix for Friars, but it gives and error warning. RAN (talk) 13:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

The former appears to be fixed, by a merger. The latter, I suspect, needs an item for (something named like) "Member of the Society of Jesus". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:33, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Human settlement now under water

How do we mark: Loyston, Tennessee (Q12061392) to show it is now defunct and under water from a dam project? I was confused by the gps map, showing it in the middle of a river. RAN (talk) 17:07, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I would add instance of submerged city (Q22674939) with a start time, and instance of the former type of municipalities with start and end times. -- William Graham (talk) 21:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Proposed treaty

In modeling Chester concession (Q5093784), I am trying to model that this treaty was proposed, but never ratified. I looked at quite a few similar situations (START III (Q12292821), Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (Q5156961), European Security Treaty (Q5413140), Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (Q5359809), Northeast Asia Treaty Organization (Q110555302) and others) and couldn't find a single one that modeled this decently (most don't even have instance of (P31)!). Can anyone indicate an example of modeling this correctly? (Please ping me if replying, I don't maintain a watchlist on Wikidata.) - Jmabel (talk) 05:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Just add proposed entity (Q64728694) to instance of (P31) in addition to treaty (Q131569). That, former entity (Q15893266), abandoned entity (Q30620203), and similar are very useful. While it's possible to create items for all similar descriptive variations of Treaty (etc, etc), that can be a little impractical. Huntster (t @ c) 07:24, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Probably then proposed + abandoned for treaties that clearly won't ever be adopted. Thanks! - Jmabel (talk) 19:12, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
We probably should come up with something consistent to distinguish modeling:
  1. Proposed, negotiations ongoing, might yet happen: proposed entity (Q64728694)
  2. Proposed but never any final version.: proposed entity (Q64728694) + abandoned entity (Q30620203)
  3. Proposed, negotiated, one or more parties ratified, but never in effect because some key party didn't sign: proposed entity (Q64728694) + abandoned entity (Q30620203) (the case for Chester concession (Q5093784)): maybe just add "significant date" for the party that did ratify?
  4. Formally adopted, but never went into effect because other circumstances intervened before it would have gone into effect (e.g. country A cedes land to country B, but country C invades before country B can occupy the land): abandoned entity (Q30620203), maybe also former entity (Q15893266)?
and possibly other cases. - Jmabel (talk) 19:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I would not combine entity items, normally. I'm not sure I see a reason to indicated it was both proposed and abandoned. Just abandoned entity (Q30620203) seems adequate. For number 4, I would still just use abandoned entity (Q30620203). To me, former entity (Q15893266) suggests destruction or termination (hard end); abandoned entity (Q30620203) suggests falling out of use, abandoned, left in place (soft end). Of course, this is just a personal view. The entity items do need some TLC to give them similar structure. Huntster (t @ c) 20:15, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
@Huntster: seems to me that abandoned entity (Q30620203) without proposed entity (Q64728694) would mean a treaty that went into effect but was later abandoned. - Jmabel (talk) 03:48, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
@Jmabel: As its description says, abandoned entity (Q30620203) is purely an indication that the subject was cancelled or unrealized at any point, without any bias toward planned or existing. Huntster (t @ c) 04:02, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
Right. Hence the difference between an abandoned treaty and an abandoned proposed treaty. Presumably, by default,
⟨ FOO ⟩ instance of (P31)   ⟨ treaty (Q131569)      ⟩
without
⟨ FOO ⟩ instance of (P31)   ⟨ proposed entity (Q64728694)      ⟩
means FOO is a treaty that went into effect. - Jmabel (talk) 04:18, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
I suggest you model it with significant event (P793) which allows you to record details of negotiation start, signing, ratification, and breaking etc, all with dates and which participant did what. Vicarage (talk) 08:24, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Rm

Should the 140953458946734976437 square kilometre on area (P2046) on Jeddah (Q374365) be removed 115.188.140.167 00:40, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

There is also a 60000000 square kilometer on Jelgava (Q179830) 115.188.140.167 00:48, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
Looks like an import error. I guess (Mitau): 60,507383 = 60,51 square kilometre / 60.000.000 = 60,00 square kilometre. --Kolja21 (talk) 01:06, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
That preposterously large number was the result of vandalism which has now been reverted. --14:36, 2 December 2023 (UTC) Quesotiotyo (talk) 14:36, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

how to model birthplaces?

Hi, as of (P642) is deprecated, modelling of birthplaces like Birthplace of Frédéric Chopin (Q4917089), Atatürk Museum (Q753756), Mozart's birthplace (Q3327039) does not conform. What is the scheme to model birthplaces correctly? --Herzi Pinki (talk) 09:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@Herzi Pinki Hello, I recently asked a similar question at Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2023/01#Birthhouses. Have a look if it helps. Using property P551 with a specific qualifier seemed like a good idea to me. See the resulting Czech birthouses with this query. Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 10:18, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
@Vojtěch Dostál IMHO this does not help. I want to add a property that links from the building to the human (and not vice versa). As a replacement of of (P642) in the object describing the building. best --Herzi Pinki (talk) 00:48, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
@Herzi Pinki It generally does not matter which way you join the two items, if from building to person or vice versa. One direction is generally enough. Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 09:20, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
@Vojtěch Dostál ok, thanks for the sparql. The problem as always is that sparql only works if modelling is uniform and consistent. A proposal to model birthplaces is too weak for that, it needs a rule. Until then I will follow your proposal. best --Herzi Pinki (talk) 12:47, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
@Herzi Pinki: I've found relative to (P2210) most useful for these types of relationships. It won't work in all cases, of course, but I think it would work fine here. Huntster (t @ c) 15:58, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
@Huntster Nice! That would work for the other direction. Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 16:14, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Gadgets are not working

None of my gadgets (such as merging items) seem to be working. Do other people have the same problem? What might cause this? What can be done to resolve this? - Andre Engels (talk) 08:39, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

@Andre Engels Do you have the gadget PrimarySources enabled? Try to disable it. Does this work for you? See MediaWiki talk:Gadgets-definition#PrimarySources for details. Raymond (talk) 09:26, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, that indeed resolved it. - Andre Engels (talk) 18:33, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
Had the same problem since yesterday, works now fine.Tobibln (talk) 23:12, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Please someone to delete page Q61149150 - Wikidata. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q61149150

Thank you. Dionysus (talk) 19:13, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I removed Κατηγορία:Μυθιστορήματα του Μανουέλ Βάθκεθ Μονταλμπάν to the right page: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9248595 Dionysus (talk) 19:16, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Please delete also pages https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q65684492, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q61149497, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q61149234, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q61148748.

Thank you very much! Dionysus (talk) 19:43, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

@Dionysus Deletions should be requested at WD:RFD. Duplicates should be merged not deleted. Bovlb (talk) 20:15, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
Bovlb, thank you for the explanation. I know almost nothing about Wikidata. I see that User:DeltaBot merged the pages. Always a bot merges the pages or i can do it myself? And how? (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:MergeItems?) Thank you again. Dionysus (talk) 09:29, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
Bovlb, I guess my question was stupid. Sorry. Dionysus (talk) 19:10, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
Never stop asking questions. You might like to read Merge and install the merge gadget. Bovlb (talk) 20:13, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
Bovlb, thank you for your answer. And thank you for your help. Dionysus (talk) 12:43, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 17:41, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Need help regarding a PUT request.

Hi, I am struggling with below PUT request. It should add a third reference to the date of death statement (Property:P570) of Robert Nixon (Q7348050). Instead I receive a 404 Not Found:

{
    "code": "statement-not-found",
    "message": "Could not find a statement with the ID: Q7348050$64DF96AF-CE8D-4905-8B34-B6F0084A28B0"
}

This is peculiar since the statement id in the request is the id belonging to property P570: https://www.wikidata.org/w/rest.php/wikibase/v0/entities/items/Q7348050/statements

OpenAPI definition:
https://doc.wikimedia.org/Wikibase/master/js/rest-api/#/statements/replaceItemStatement

The request:
Method: PUT
Content-type: application/json
URI: https://www.wikidata.org/w/rest.php/wikibase/v0/entities/items/Q7348050/statements/Q7348050$64DF96AF-CE8D-4905-8B34-B6F0084A28B0

Body:

{
    "statement": {
        "id": "Q7348050$64DF96AF-CE8D-4905-8B34-B6F0084A28B0",
        "rank": "normal",
        "references": [
            {
                "hash": "3fd58cb48138a405e8a1e34c1b51835581627962",
                "parts": [
                    {
                        "property": {
                            "id": "P248"
                        },
                        "value": {
                            "type": "value",
                            "content": "Q17299517"
                        }
                    },
                    {
                        "property": {
                            "id": "P813"
                        },
                        "value": {
                            "type": "value",
                            "content": {
                                "time": "+2017-08-23T00:00:00Z",
                                "precision": 11,
                                "calendarmodel": "http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1985727"
                            }
                        }
                    },
                    {
                        "property": {
                            "id": "P854"
                        },
                        "value": {
                            "type": "value",
                            "content": "https://rkd.nl/explore/artists/257719"
                        }
                    }
                ]
            },
            {
                "hash": "f357aeb56f66e7932c0a54f7469d939a11ef8a23",
                "parts": [
                    {
                        "property": {
                            "id": "P248"
                        },
                        "value": {
                            "type": "value",
                            "content": "Q51343652"
                        }
                    },
                    {
                        "property": {
                            "id": "P5035"
                        },
                        "value": {
                            "type": "value",
                            "content": "n/nixon_robert"
                        }
                    },
                    {
                        "property": {
                            "id": "P1810"
                        },
                        "value": {
                            "type": "value",
                            "content": "Robert Nixon"
                        }
                    },
                    {
                        "property": {
                            "id": "P813"
                        },
                        "value": {
                            "type": "value",
                            "content": {
                                "time": "+2017-10-09T00:00:00Z",
                                "precision": 11,
                                "calendarmodel": "http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1985727"
                            }
                        }
                    }
                ]
            },
            {
                "parts": [
                    {
                        "property": {
                            "id": "P813",
                            "datatype": "wikibase-item"
                        },
                        "value": {
                            "type": "value",
                            "content": {
                                "time": "+2023-12-03T00:00:00Z",
                                "precision": 11,
                                "calendarmodel": "http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1985727"
                            }
                        }
                    },
                    {
                        "property": {
                            "id": "P854",
                            "datatype": "wikibase-item"
                        },
                        "value": {
                            "type": "value",
                            "content": "https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/nov/07/guardianobituaries.arts"
                        }
                    },
                    {
                        "property": {
                            "id": "P248",
                            "datatype": "wikibase-item"
                        },
                        "value": {
                            "type": "value",
                            "content": "Q11148"
                        }
                    }
                ]
            }
        ],
        "property": {
            "id": "P570"
        },
        "value": {
            "type": "value",
            "content": {
                "time": "+2002-10-22T00:00:00Z",
                "precision": 11,
                "calendarmodel": "http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1985727"
            }
        }
    },
    "tags": [],
    "bot": false,
    "comment": "Added reference to date of death via [[User:Mill 1]]'s edit app using Wikibase REST API 0.1 OAS3"
}

Any help is greatly appreciated. Mill 1 (talk) 22:15, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

@Mill 1 It looks like you uncovered a bug. We have phab:T352644 for it now and will look into it more. Sorry for the issue. I'd also love to hear what you're building if you're willing to share. Since the REST API is new and still in development, feedback is very helpful. Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:39, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Hello Lydia,
Thank you for your feedback. I noticed that this particular type of request was not working (replacing a statement) but thought it was faulty at my end.
Context: I created a .NET Core web application that implements CRUD actions on some Wikidata entities. The source can be found here:
https://github.com/mill1/WikidataEditor
As you will see, I focus more on the back end than the front end :) Some POST and PUT requests are actually called via a GET request via index.html.
Anyway, I created the application to automate wikidata edits regarding my main private project which is aimed at improving and standardizing the Wikipedia deaths per month lists regarding 1990 – 2005 (Read me). Mill 1 (talk) 11:08, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

[Wikidata] Weekly Summary #605

Modelling NPO tax status

Hi everyone, I have some problems modelling Non-Profit-Organizations in Wikidata. In some countries, the non-profit status is separated from the legal form. For example, in the Netherlands you have stichting (Q19605764) or German foundation under civil law (Q56242138). Both have an ELF code (P10421) and are clear to use. But not all of them are tax exempted Public Benefit Organisation. Therefore, in the Netherlands algemeen nut beogende instelling (Q1977825) exists, in Germany charitable corporation (Q113805953)/Gemeinnützigkeit (Q66660868). Similar concepts exist in other countries. So my question is, how to model this in Wikidata to be able to select all algemeen nut beogende instelling (Q1977825) in the Netherlands or all stichting (Q19605764) that are algemeen nut beogende instelling (Q1977825)? Most of the time something like friendly society (Q1976354) is used as instance of (P31), but that's not very useful and very inconsistent. Newt713 (talk) 08:28, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

You're right. There really isn't a consistent approach to this on wikidata. There is a similar situation with 501(c)(3) organization (Q18325436), in general, legal forms work a bit different way in American law than in other jurisdictions. From my point of view using instance of (P31) is not a good idea, using (multiple) legal form (P1454) is better but still imperfect. What about has characteristic (P1552)? Jklamo (talk) 12:39, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
@Newt713, Jklamo: There's a start of some discussion about this on this project talk page - how should we model organization "types" of this sort? ArthurPSmith (talk) 15:49, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Luminaire data transcription

I am working on describing a historic type of street light (SRS201) that used to be common in the UK and the Low Countries. I wonder what property do I need to use to describe the lamp power in watts, and also how do I present variants that result in different lengths? Source: [1], page 327. --Minoa (talk) 23:09, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Modifying the reference model

 

At the Data Modelling Days event earlier today, I led a discussion on the Wikidata reference model - see the commons file at right for the slides. The concern centered on how we handle duplicated references on items - right now references attach to statements, so the same reference may be duplicated many (up to thousands) of times on the item. The etherpad notes records much of the discussion, and we conducted a poll at the end that was strongly in favor of solving this through some development work to change the storage format to a more compact form. There was also an interest in improving the UI mechanisms for handling duplicated references.

Before we create Phabricator tasks for the developers, it seemed prudent to have a bit of a wider discussion with Wikidata users. I'll do a formal RFC on this shortly, but to get some initial feedback I'll ask here - have you run across issues with duplicated references, or other things related to the size of large items in Wikidata, and are you interested in seeing this improved?

I've created a draft RFC here: User:ArthurPSmith/DraftRfC References - comment on the talk page (or edit the draft directly) if you think changes may be needed right now. ArthurPSmith (talk) 18:58, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Now a real RFC - Wikidata:Requests for comment/Duplicate References Data Model and UI ArthurPSmith (talk) 20:42, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Entity Graph

Eh? has this died? Every item I look, it doesn't finish. EOT encountered. Jim.henderson (talk) 23:38, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

@Jim.henderson: « Entity Graph » is a wide concept (older than Wikidata), I'm guessing you're are talking about a specific tool but can't figure which one; you'll to be more specific if you hope for any help. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 20:45, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

adding the data of Great Immigrants (Q121359767)

I have an Excel spreadsheet of the all the Great Immigrants (Q121359767) "Award issued by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to celebrate immigrant contributions to American life." The list contains 719 names from the beginning, 2006, to present, 2023. The fields are Year Honored; First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, Occupation, Category and Subcategory. Ronald Sexton (talk) 01:54, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I think a good first step would be to figure out how to model the categories and subcategories of the award. Then for any recipients that already have a Wikidata item, add or update the award won property. Before you create items for recipients that don't already exist, I would spend the time establishing the person's Wikidata:Notability in addition to winning the award. Then once you're confident the person is indeed notable, create a fully developed out item for them including the award. -- William Graham (talk) 18:10, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Request for conversation / Talking: 2024

Hi folks,

Recently, Maryana Iskander, Foundation CEO, announced a virtual learning and sharing tour, Talking: 2024. This is two years after the initial listening tour that Maryana launched before assuming her role. The aim is to talk directly with Wikimedia contributors around the world about some of the big questions facing the future of our movement. I'm writing here to warmly invite those of you interested to participate – on-wiki or by signing up for a conversation. The priorities that contributors identify in these conversations will become the driving force in the Foundation’s annual planning process, especially as our senior leadership and Trustees develop multi-year goals in 2024. Thanks for your time and attention. Looking forward to talking together. -Udehb-WMF (talk) 18:34, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Problem with a list

In this SPARQL code, I managed to see that 705 identifiers in Wikidata have serious underlying issues. This leads us to a list in Wikipedia whose relevance is in doubt after activating the code. I don't know whether to fix them one by one or if there is another solution. The description in English is in Spanish, and the description in Spanish is poorly written because the list had issues from outside Wikidata, and I can't find where. Besides being a highly dangerous primary source, I wouldn't know how to correct grammatical errors or, on the other hand, verify the truth of whether there is a 'heritage house SN' on 'such street.' Best regards. Berposen (talk) 01:38, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

The items all have Guía Digital del Patrimonio Cultural de Andalucía ID (P3318) that link to, for example, https://guiadigital.iaph.es/bien/inmueble/15487/cordoba/cordoba/convento-de-santa-clara. I don’t know what you find so irritating about the data except it not being in your preferred language? Yes, it may have been better to leave English labels blank and come up with descriptions. Karl Oblique (talk) 06:11, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
I see. Many, many lists have been generated with those codes about "Patrimonio Andalucía". The problem lies in that, in a list like this, the red links now constitute more than 70% of the list. In addition to the description in English, the identifier redirects to non-existent articles. In short, apart from the errors, the identifiers for 'addresses or streets' do not identify any article on the list." Berposen (talk) 06:39, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
The items are relevant for Wikidata since I see no reason to doubt that they represent actual buildings. But if it’s about the list on eswiki, you could restrict the list to just the items that have articles by modifying the query like this. Karl Oblique (talk) 06:51, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Proposal: add qualifier to allow for fuzzy property values to help with real-life data ambiguity

Proposal: certain values of some properties can get a qualifier which will signal that they are "fuzzy" which means that certain property's value is possible for a somewhat less-strict definition of a property or in general because our knowledge is limited. So, some Wikidata values will be strict and some others fuzzy.

This is much closer to real life than just discarding legitimate information which is a recipe for censorship-like abuse where different strictness is arbitrarily applied in different cases.

For example, Peter C. G., a scientist, stops maintaining his old webpage and creates a webpage for two-member institution instead (with him as director and another person as deputy) which does no longer count as his webpage. Even though, it still actually is a kind of his webpage and contains information about all of his recent articles and books, just not in a strict enough sense to reach a consensus, so it gets deleted as his official webpage. But there is an Oprah Winfrey's oprah.com which is ran by Harper Productions and it is supposedly OK, and a scientist's site which is ran by him as a director of two person's team, is not OK. Fuzzy values are the saviors of data freedom. Fabius byle (talk) 15:44, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello Fabius byle, there are for example:
for unprecise, uncertain or outdated information.
Also see Wikidata:Events/Data_Modelling_Days_2023 M2k~dewiki (talk) 19:20, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, will look into it. Fabius byle (talk) 20:04, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
When it comes to qualifiers, sourcing circumstances (P1480) and nature of statement (P5102) is quite common. That said, for Wikidata you'd want the data to be as unambiguous as possible, since computers deals in absolutes and can't reason very well about vague statements. (limiting ourselves to classic computing and ignoring AI of course) Infrastruktur (talk) 20:00, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
@Infrastruktur, Sorry for being late to answer. Thank you. Sourcing circumstances (P1480) and nature of statement (P5102) seem like it! As I can see, there are two main reasons why our judgement on the values of certain properties can be imprecise: 1) because of the nature of reality itself, 2) because of the nature (or state) of our understanding of reality (which includes things on the fringe of the abstract definitions or defects of our abstract categories). But the reasons of the impreciseness are not as important as long as we try to stick with only providing data. Thanks again. @RudolfoMD, useful qualifiers! Fabius byle (talk) 11:07, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Didier of Cahors and other medieval people with toponymic surnames

See Didier of Cahors (Q999529) for instance. Is there a way we can mark all the names like this. For instance we have all the Icelandic and Scandinavian people marked that use a patronymic. Should I create a new property called or "toponym for this person=" or "toponymic surname for this person=" to match "patronym or matronym for this person" RAN (talk) 17:21, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Not perfect but named after (P138) may work.
Furthermore, that is not a surname. Surnames appear a lot later.--Pere prlpz (talk) 11:12, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Occupation and employer

During the Data Quality Days 2021, we had a good workshop on how to model occupation/employer. That is, we discussed which property should we have as a qualifier on the other. The result of the discussion was that neither seemed really wrong, so it was mostly up to which one we preferred. However, as far as I know, we didn't come to a strong consensus on it at the time. During this week's Data Modelling Days, I made a few queries to see which ones were most common. Those queries (employer as qualifier on occupation and occupation as qualifier on employer) shows that the community currently has a 20-to-1 (6,186 to 335) preference of using occupation (P106) as main statement and employer (P108) as qualifier. I also noticed that occupation is not an allowed qualifier on employer, which sort of settles the debate. My remaining question is: should we remove the property scope constraint (Q53869507) that allows employer to be used as main value (Q54828448) and thereby clearly prefer it as being only a qualifier on occupation? Ainali (talk) 21:11, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

No, because you might want to specify an employer without specifying an occupation. Or you might want to specify a series of employers, with start times and finish times, independent of the occupation. Jheald (talk) 21:26, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
Same opinion as Jheald. However, we need to reduce to 0 the 335 cases of occupation as qualifier of employer. Anyway, I think we also need to discuss the same issue you report for occupation/employer for the case position held/employer. Currently having position held (P39) qualified with employer (P108) (https://w.wiki/8MfQ) is much more common than the opposite (https://w.wiki/8MfT), although the disproportion is only 9-to-1 (46220 to 5104). I think this could be a good occasion to prohibit the less common option and possibly mass-move it to the other one. --Epìdosis 22:04, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
I was pondering that, but I can't come up with a plausible scenario when I really would want to do it. It seems more like a theoretical possibility that we still could decide to disallow in favor of getting a neater data model that is easier to query. I think that value severely outweighs the loss in flexibility. Ainali (talk) 23:11, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
I just checked how many items we have with an employer set, but no occupation through this query:
SELECT (COUNT(?item) AS ?count) WHERE {
?item wdt:P108 [] .
MINUS { ?item wdt:P106 [] . }
}
Try it!
However, it times out on WDQS, so use QLever to check it. It is almost 48,000. While that is a small proportion of the over 1,8 million times employer (P108) is used, it is still a quite high number. I still lean towards us unifying on one way to model this to make the data model consistent and predictable for querying/reuse, but admitting that we will struggle to retain all that data during the process. Ainali (talk) 08:22, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
I don't see how this makes sense - occupation (P106) and employer (P108) seem to me orthogonal and should both be main statements. Employer definitely needs start and end date qualifiers - certainly for academics staying in one place for an entire career is unusual. They would likely have the same "occupation" that entire time so it makes no sense to have start and end times on the occupation. position held (P39) is something that does have start and end dates and would be associated with an employer in most cases, so tying that with employer (P108) would be more justified, but I don't think it makes sense to do that with occupation (P106). ArthurPSmith (talk) 15:43, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
I agree with this. Occupations like “physician” and “writer” apply for a lifetime, whereas one might work for a single employer in a variety of roles (= position held) during one’s career. - PKM (talk) 20:32, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
All your questions were answered during the 2021 talk. In short, even though you are a physician for all your life, this can be modeled just as easily as for someone who is changing occupation every time they change employer. And of courseit makes sense to have a start and end time for occupation, no one is born a “physician” and “writer” and most people retire at some age (sure there will be a few exceptions to this, but those can get end date the same as death date. Ainali (talk) 16:31, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
So an unemployed or retired "physician" or "researcher" no longer has that occupation? What if the employer is a company that is not in Wikidata (very common)? I'm not sure I'm understanding the exact proposal here; maybe you can point to some specific examples that are modeled the way you think they should be and we can think about it a bit more clearly then? From looking at the notes on the talk I think the discussion may have been skewed by the "museum director" example - to me that's not an occupation, the occupation would be "archivist" or something like that; "museum director" is a position, just like "full professor" etc. ArthurPSmith (talk) 20:40, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I am suggesting that someone who is retired or unemployed (or dead for that matter) should have an end date on the occupation. For general examples, see Trevor Lovett (Q56180891) or Shūichi Mizuno (Q9336177), I would consider these well modeled. (If the employer is not an item yet, the employer qualifier could just be skipped. I don't suggest we need to require it to be added, only that if they are added, this is how.) Ainali (talk) 15:30, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

How to add website to official website (P856) with language of work or name (P407) if the website was bilingual under the same address, but the second language was removed later? Eurohunter (talk) 09:14, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Create two separate official website (P856) statements for the two languages, with an end date qualifier on the second. ArthurPSmith (talk) 18:05, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Interwikilinking of Wikimedia/ Wikipedia user pages (and personal categories on Commons)

I found that this had been discussed in 2013 here, here as well as in a request for comment of the same year.

While I can see that user pages should maybe be handled separately from links between Wikipedia articles and other pages it is unfortunate that no other solution has been found yet. It would be extremely useful to be able to switch between them and also a user's commons category (if there is one) easily and consistently on all project pages.

Experimenting with this I managed to connect de:Benutzerin:Claudia.Garad und C:Category:Claudia Garad (apparently through a loophole in Special:AbuseFilter/39, see here) so that the Commons category page now carries an interwikilink on the bottom left (not the other way around, though). I also failed at connecting C:User:Claudia.Garad to establish a visible link on her Commons category page or her German user page through Wikidata.

This kind of interlinking seems to be especially useful for 'notable personnel' such as Claudia Garad who is a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Austria. Although I would appreciate if it could be implemented for the 'common user' as well.

Any ideas ?

KaiKemmann (talk) 15:36, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I would consider anyone connecting my user page and the Wikipedia articles / Commons category page about me just as outing. Ymblanter (talk) 19:36, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
Sure, but other people are very transparent about their real identity and their usernames and that's information of interest that could be on Wikidata and other projects.--Pere prlpz (talk) 17:49, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Black box warnings project, parts 1 & 2

Help sought. I'm trying to resolve some remaining issues with part 1 of this project. Also, I've posted some ideas about part 2 at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:Mismatch_Finder/Collaboration/Purdue_Summer_of_Data_2024#FDALabel%20database.

I thought I'd nearly completed the part 1 import from the FDALabel database, but some data didn't import, and as I mentioned on the Purdue page, I can't figure out why. Like, NIRMATRELVIR AND RITONAVIR (W:Nirmatrelvir/ritonavir is one of the drugs I/OpenRefine failed to mark in wikidata; not sure why. I'm asking for help to get the import/match to work better. I wonder how many pages the warning is displayed on.

Project purpose: I was disturbed to find that most drugs with FDA-mandated Black box warnings had articles that were missing any mention of the boxes or the risks. It is disturbing to me that many pages mentioned minor side effects but left this critical info out. Part 1 changed this, but there's more to do - adding the text of the warnings.

I've just created w:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Black_box_warnings_2nd_project to see if there's support for part 2.

-- RudolfoMD (talk) 02:22, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

"NIRMATRELVIR AND RITONAVIR" is a different string than Nirmatrelvir/ritonavir so that's likely why there was no automatic match. ChristianKl19:00, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #606

I can't get Facebook info published

See: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20858079

In the "social media followers" section I can't get the "publish" button to work for my Facebook entry.

The Facebook page is

16,000 followers. Facebook ID, I believe, is AnnekeLucas2. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:28, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Animalparty took care of it. In the "Identifiers" section. Thanks. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:56, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Should the foundation consider funding the QLever project?

For starters, I have no skin in the game, and no economic ties to any project or person I might refer to. And I'm sorry to say I can't very well prove that, so you will just have to take my word for it.

But as you are no doubt aware Wikidata suffers growing pains at the moment. From a pure CS perspective the Qlever engine is interesting because they seem to have realized that scaling horizontally isn't something that you could achieve very well. I mean Blazegraph does a damn good job, but in the end there is only so much you can do within the constraints you are given. And so the next logical step was, well let's make it as efficient as we possibly can on a single computer and they seem to have succeeded at that. Of course this can't scale into eternity but it would surely suffice for another 80 years or so.

What are the current concerns? They need a solution for SPARQL update that performs well. Once that is taken care of, the rest will work out I'm sure. I won't pretend to be knowledgeable in this area but I can at least honestly say I did read at least one paper on the design of this engine, so there is that. Of course I have to trust the people who wrote that paper but I'm fine with that.

Also you may heard of the Pareto principle, you can get 80 percent of the gain by spending 20 percent of the effort or something along those lines. In a nutshell, the design is not the problem, but taking things into production is going to require man-hours, and so this is where it makes sense to contribute money into development. What this will do is to drastically cut down the time it takes for QLever to go from a performant prototype into a good quality triple store/query engine.

What would funding give us? Ideally it should directly translate into developer time and that would benefit the Wikidata project as well assuming they adopt Qlever as their triplestore. I don't think it would be moral to expect the Freiburg team to be dictated by the WMF, but at the very least if they donate money they should be afforded some priority in terms of wish-list items.

What are your opinions on this? Infrastruktur (talk) 15:34, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I've come across their prototype and it has changed my opinion of what is even possible. For queries I wouldn't have dared to run before, I am getting results with tens of thousands of rows as fast as my connection can download the file. So, yes: I wouldn't hesitate to commit to this as a replacement for Blazegraph.
As to your actual question, I don't have a good sense of what the budget constraints are and what their project status is? It's a university, and they've gotten it this far without external motivation. Adding money can have counterintuitive consequences, and turning a research department into a vendor has a tendency to make everyone unhappy.
But, yes, it would obviously be worth some cash if that is what helps. Alternatively, I would be happy with this level of performance even if it means updates only every second day (I seem to remember it currently takes them about 30h to ingest the full data). Karl Oblique (talk) 16:32, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
Not directly related to OP's funding question, but you might be interested in the evaluation of QLever at Wikidata:SPARQL query service/WDQS backend update/WDQS backend alternatives. See also phab:T339347, which relates to using QLever in federated queries. Bovlb (talk) 17:46, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
I read it when they released it, but I went back to have a look at what they said about the only other serious contender which is Virtuoso. It has some quirks apparently but can scale to 100 billion triples. It uses a relational database with self-joins as a backing store, which is a technique that predates dedicated triplestores. Trying to do everything on their product makes it harder to focus on doing one thing well. But what makes me excited about QLever is the novel design ideas that went into it. Remember I said that monolinguals (labels etc.) was cache-hostile by design? This problem is solved in QLever. I don't think this would be realistically possible in a project as complex as Virtuoso. Infrastruktur (talk) 10:52, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
What is QLever and what does it do for us? A quick Google search is not illuminating. -- William Graham (talk) 22:22, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I don't think they have a marketing department. Its github page describes it as a "Very fast SPARQL Engine, which can handle very large knowledge graphs like the complete Wikidata". It does the same thing as the Wikidata Query Service. But since our current one is starting to struggle with the amount of data and traffic, they have been looking at replacing it with an alternative that can. Infrastruktur (talk) 10:27, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
Side note: a quick Wikidata search would maybe enlighten you:
--Matěj Suchánek (talk) 11:29, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
I watched the Qlever presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJHyjdoSN54 which is a bit muddled at the start, but it looks very powerful, both in terms of speed and auto-advice features, with excellent developers. It needs real-time updates, and more focus on the full FILTER functionality. They didn't sound excited at the prospect of WD funding, but I think they need other support from us. Vicarage (talk) 09:24, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

EnArgus Ontology

Hello Everyone,

I'm a project member of the EnArgus Project, which aims to bring more tranparency to energy politics and energy research funding in Germany. Part of the project is an OWL ontology which is being built by energy researchers and computer scientists collaboratively and is linked to a wiki also being built as part of EnArgus. We are considering publishing our ontology on Wikidata. Which steps should be taken?

Thanks in advance MickDe87 (talk) 13:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

@MickDe87: I'm assuming the logical step here would be for you to propose a property, presumably an external id that allows linking Wikidata items to your ontology id's? ArthurPSmith (talk) 15:51, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the answer. I'm new to Wikidata, but I'll make up my mind. MickDe87 (talk) 09:12, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. RVA2869 (talk) 18:40, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Conflict (?) between Harun and variants (Q66618227) and Haroun (Q16266235)

I realized while attempting to navigate between the associated wikipedia pages & I have no idea how to fix. Q66618227 is linked to English, German and Japanese pages; Q16266235 to the French and Italian ones. I'm assuming there should be Arabic pages somewhere too. —Tinm (d) 09:22, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

(New) Feature on Kartographer: Adding geopoints via QID

Since September 2022, it is possible to create geopoints using a QID. Many wiki contributors have asked for this feature, but it is not being used much. Therefore, we would like to remind you about it. More information can be found on the project page. If you have any comments, please let us know on the talk page. – Best regards, the team of Technical Wishes at Wikimedia Deutschland


Thereza Mengs (WMDE) 12:32, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

What is the difference between fictional human (Q15632617) and fictional person (Q97498056)?

In Swedish, they both have the same title ("fiktiv person").

/ abbedabbtalk 16:52, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

fictional human (Q15632617) is about fictional humans, while fictional person (Q97498056) also includes fictional persons of other soecies/races/etc. Like aliens, Hobbits, angels or Donald Duck. --2A02:810B:580:11D4:781F:BF70:D629:BF3 18:31, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks! Seems logical. I changed the Swedish label of Q15632617 from fiktiv person to fiktiv människa (fictional human). /abbedabbtalk 20:12, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. RVA2869 (talk) 18:37, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

How to add a spouse to an existing WD item

I am trying to add information to Seth Meyers (Q14536). His page on the English Wikipedia says he is married to Alexi Ashe (m. 2013). I have meticulously created a new statement spouse (wife), added start time, added imported from Wikimedia English under ref. All that but my publish is till grayed out.

What am I doing wrong? Help please. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 18:12, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech I’m not sure what you did, it certainly doesn’t show on Wikidata – maybe on en.wp? Anyway, I created a new item (Alexi Ashe (Q123903881)), feel free to improve upon it. --Emu (talk) 18:36, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. RVA2869 (talk) 18:36, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Duplicate references

My website (runeberg.org) recently moved from http: to https: so I thought I should update the URLs spread here. In Wikipedia, it is straightforward, using Pywikibot. But how about Wikidata? When I manually fix Q491083, I need to update the URLs when used for reference to birth date, then update the same URLs when used as reference to birth place, death date, death place, etc. In Wikipedia, you would just specify each URL once with <ref name=X/> for the other places. But Wikidata doesn't work like that? Really? What if I update some URLs and forget some? Who designed this? It appears to be a big mess. LA2 (talk) 20:14, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

@LA2: you might be interested in Wikidata:Requests for comment/Duplicate References Data Model and UI. --Jahl de Vautban (talk) 20:36, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, okay, thanks. This means my observation was right and it really is a mess. --LA2 (talk) 20:41, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. RVA2869 (talk) 18:35, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

URL update

Can someone please edit the "formatter URL" for Property:P3154 and Property:P3155 so they use https: rather than http: Thank you. LA2 (talk) 14:19, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

  Done, pls let me know if smth does not work. Ymblanter (talk) 17:17, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. RVA2869 (talk) 18:36, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Query namespace?

What's the query namespace for? Seems that there are no pages in this namespace. 94rain talk 05:50, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

OK never mind. I just found it here: Query definition pages (currently unused, reserved for later use for automated list generation and related uses). 94rain talk 05:53, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. RVA2869 (talk) 18:35, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Passed tags are always invalid using the REST API

Hi,

None of the tags used in requests sent to the REST API are accepted. I always receive a 400 response (Bad Request):

{
    "code": "invalid-edit-tag",
    "message": "Invalid MediaWiki tag: \"mobile web edit\""
}

I pass the tag names stated in https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:Tags Methods tested: POST and PUT

Example request:
Method: PUT
Content-type: application/json
URI: https://www.wikidata.org/w/rest.php/wikibase/v0/entities/items/Q99589194/descriptions/nl

Body:

{
  "description": "Amerikaans journalist en schrijfster",
  "tags": ["mobile web edit"],
  "bot": false,
  "comment": "Edited description for Dutch language"
}

If it is not a bug please let me know where I can find a list of valid tags to add to an edit.

cc Lydia Pintscher (WMDE)

Regards, Mill 1 (talk) 16:29, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Not all tags can be applied by tools or manually. It looks like "mobile web edit" is one of them that can only be set by MediaWiki since it represents edits that are done via the mobile web UI and not other mobile apps etc. I hope that helps. Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 15:02, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
None of the tag names I tested worked. I tried five of them. This could be a coincedence of course. What would be an example of a valid tag to be used in my request? Mill 1 (talk) 09:37, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
If you look at the Source column of the table in Special:Tags, the tags that are Applied manually by users and bots can be set via the REST API, the tags that are Defined by the software can only be set by MediaWiki. Ollie Shotton (WMDE) (talk) 11:43, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
Thank you Ollie, I looked straight passed it. Where/how can I define custom tags? I do not have administrative rights. Mill 1 (talk) 19:37, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
@Mill 1: request a tag be created on the WD:AN BrokenSegue (talk) 05:24, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. Mill 1 (talk) 08:17, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Data Modelling Days: documentation and outcomes

Hello all,

The Data Modelling Days took place last week, with an estimation of 80 participants throughout the three days of online event. May discussions related to modelling and organizing data on Wikidata happened, together with presentations, raising issues, new ideas and suggestions on topics as diverse as living heritage, gender, EntitySchemas, conflations and duplications, Autofix, references, modelling data on a brand new Wikibase instance, and semantic web.

Most sessions are available as video recordings, you can find them in this playlist, as well as linked from the program. You will also find the collaborative notes, archived on wiki pages, and the slides if any. You can also find the slides directly in the related Commons category.

We hope that some discussions and issues raised during the event will be shared with the broad Wikidata community, for example through WikiProjects. Don't hesitate to start discussions here and there, using the presentations from the event as a support to start the discussions.

Many thanks to all of you who participated and contributed to the event!

If you have any questions or suggestions related to Wikidata data modelling or missing technical features, feel free to contact Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) and Arian Bozorg (WMDE). If you have any feedback about the event or suggestions for future events, feel free to reach out to me. Best, Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 07:21, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

@Lydia Pintscher (WMDE): I think the main problem is that solving data model problems needs discussions that come to a consensus about modeling decisions. Given that many people have very many items on their watchlist, the watchlist is often not as good as a tool as it is in a project like Wikipedia to get people aware of discussions.
Pinging Wikiprojects used to be a way to get that to happen. We had more policy discussions and modeling discussions back when it was working and today it doesn't really because of the 50 person limit. Simply configuring the ping-project to have no limit would be one technical solution but there are probably also other solutions for the problem. ChristianKl17:06, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
+1 for fixing ping project. - PKM (talk) 21:38, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

About Wikipedia Infoboxes

As I understand it, English Wikipedia has broadly chosen not to use Wikidata-driven infoboxes. I would like to know if the opposite is true. That is, does Wikidata use Wikipedia Infoboxes to add statements? I could not immediately find info about this after looking through various RfCs and special pages ect. In a related post I made on the Wikipedia Proposal page, One user said that

The relationship right now is mostly that Wikidata scrapes Infoboxes among other sources for information, so I think usually some automated or semi-automated editing will pick up Infobox updates to Wikidata

Are the details of this scarping documented anywhere? Specifically, I would like to know how often new data is scraped but also the details of this affair generally. Is this manual or automatic? Does Wikidata just parse the text of the Wikipedia page? Does Wikidata poll Wikipedia pages for updates to Infoboxes or does it get a notice from Wikipedia somehow? What happens in the case of a conflict between an existing Wikidata statement and a new Wikipedia Infobox entry? Any information regarding this issue is appreciated. I think it would be worthwhile to add this info to the FAQ. 65.242.132.98 02:15, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Hello, to get information from Infoboxes and other templates there are for example:
M2k~dewiki (talk) 12:06, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm running into issues with signing in to that tool. It may be because I just created an account a few minutes ago. Would you be able to please run this query for me? The purpose is to add all video game engine data to wikidata where it does not yet exist for a given game. 172.58.231.213 15:26, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
I have succeeded in logging in 172.58.229.176 17:28, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Regarding your other questions, I would say that the approach Wikidata has taken towards infoboxes is not documented anywhere. Generally, I think that infobox scraping produces unsourced data and as such its usefulness for Wikidata is limited. It is not done automatically, eg. in regular intervals, because the import jobs must be supervised by humans. Infoboxes can be used to add identifiers, Commons images and categories, etc., but using them for factographical data must only be done very carefully. In any case, sourced data is preferred to data present in Wikidata. Comparison between data in Wikipedia infoboxes and data in Wikidata is best done using technical categories. Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 13:15, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
There's no official automatic process that adds statements from Wikipedia infoboxes to Wikidata. On the other hand individual users do import data from Wikipedia. According to our rules all those imports have to have imported from Wikimedia project (P143) in their references. ChristianKl15:01, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for that explanation. Is this something that you think may be worth discussing to change, at least for template Infoboxes where the parameters are set statically? This should be better than no data, right? It just seems like a lot of duplication of efforts to do this type of work twice. Let's say for example if a new movie comes out, the new movie will have to be created in both Wikipedia and Wikidata. More annoyingly and therefore more importantly, new information that was not available at the creation date of the entry will have to be updated as well. For example box office results, or in the case of video games which video game engine was used. This to me is where I think it would make sense to formalize this process. Specifically, if an item (eg. a movie) exists on Wikidata, but a field is empty (eg. "director") but the field does exist on Wikipedia in the Infobox, then I think it is reasonable to add that statement automatically. 172.58.231.213 15:44, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
By now wikipedias should be using WB for their infoboxes, to avoid lots and lots of duplication. But we don't control their attitudes. I've tried to import stuff, but they just aren't consistent enough in their layout to make it very useful compared with a 3rd party site. Vicarage (talk) 15:58, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Articles and templates that use information from wikidata can be found at
Also see
M2k~dewiki (talk) 16:09, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Important data is complicated because we want to have well sourced data in Wikidata and plenty of the Wikipedia imports aren't.
The current WMDE idea, seems to be to have the mismatch finder. ChristianKl01:22, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
They seem to have templates that only let sourced values through, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_bridge. I hope they don't view a wikipedia reference as being acceptable, as they keep saying that wikipedia is not for original research... Vicarage (talk) 07:52, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Updating the property Sratim ID search formatter URL

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P3145

The new search formatter URL is: https://www.sratim.co.il/search.php?json=true&q=$1

I'm not sure who to talk to in order to get this done? Geverem (talk) 23:26, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Well you can just do it yourself. Seems strange, I know.
BUT: are you sure about the json=true? I have admittedly no idea how this property is used, but it seems values tend to link to human-readable search results? Edit: I’ve changed it, with file format (P2701) of

JSON (Q2063). I guess it’s the only format that’s available now. Karl Oblique (talk) 05:26, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Blanking talk pages

Hello there! I saw an IP adress blanking their talk page recently, and I was just wondering if this is allowed? I couldn't find any guideline about it, and I'm not completely sure, because on my home wiki blanking your talkpage is not allowed, but on some wikis such as enwiki it is allowed. So what is the case for Wikidata? EPIC (talk) 08:10, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

We don't appear to have any specific policy. Because Wikidata is primarily used by editors coming from other projects, we tend to have the fewest rules, only those that are common across most or all client projects.
I'd say generally that for a user to blank their talk page indicates that they have read the comments. I wouldn't normally fight to keep something on a user's talk page.
With IPs, all bets are off of course. The page may have been blanked by a different human editor than the one the messages were left for. Bovlb (talk) 17:08, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
Ah, thank you for the reply! In this case it was blanked shortly after a warning was left, so I'm assuming it was the same person. But yeah, it's what I was thinking as well, but I was unsure as I didn't find any guideline about it. EPIC (talk) 17:26, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
Blanking the talk page can be interpreted as evidence of someone being uncooperative. It's not a problem by itself, but if a user breaks other rules, such as edit-warring or making edits that are of really bad quality it could give grounds for a block. Infrastruktur (talk) 20:02, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Re: How to handle concepts of trans people?

Sorry to revive an archived thread (Wikidata:Project chat/Archive/2023/11#How to handle concepts of trans people?; started by @Bencemac:), but I did want to reply from the perspective of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal team. I know @ChristianKl: had looked for a reply.

Redirect of email address

Regarding the redirection of privacy wikidata org to privacy wikimedia org, it is true that Foundation Legal asked for the redirect. The intention was to route privacy requests to Foundation attorneys to evaluate. We certainly did not want to sabotage anything, and we should make changes if that is the result.

In practice, individuals are treating privacy wikidata org as a living persons issues email queue more generally. The vast majority of requests sent to privacy wikidata org are not requests the Foundation can action, since we do not edit the projects, and we end up referring the requests to info wikidata org. I wrote a post on the talk page of the Living people policy a while ago about this issue.

So one point to address from this discussion is whether more sensitive requests regarding content about living persons can be directed to info wikidata org or a new VRT queue monitored by Wikidata volunteers.

Regarding gender on Wikidata items

Through the email address privacy wikidata org (which currently redirects to privacy wikimedia org), the Wikimedia Foundation recently received a request to remove gender statements for a Wikidata item about a living person (or to delete it entirely). After evaluating the request, we forwarded the request to info wikidata org.

As we understand it, the proof for the gender statement on this particular person’s Wikidata item was based on the fact that the person changed their name (see also: Wikidata:Living people#Statements that may violate privacy).

We therefore appreciate this issue being discussed here, in hopes that these sorts of issues can be discussed more broadly. BChoo (WMF) (talk) 18:09, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I moved the thread back from the archive as it will be included in the next status update. Bencemac (talk) 13:33, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Reuse of terms saved in Wikidata

Hi. I wonder if it is possible to download Wikidata labels available in a specific language to provide terminology in translation software (e.g. to export English and Slovene labels where available for reuse as a termbase in Trados). Or should I use API and how should I go about that (e.g. in Trados or MemoQ)? Has anyone experience with that? I have noticed that DeepL reuses the terms I have provided so this seems to have already been implemented by some. --TadejM (talk) 16:45, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Multiplex

Got in over my head. Would someone please delete Multiplex Manufacturing Company (Q123756797) and revert my changes to Multiplex (Q25209241). The latter conflates a car and its manufacturer, and there's also a mess around the fact that his company founded 1905 still exists under a slightly different name (but only made cars for one year). Unfortunately, I didn't know how much of a mess going in, and I made it worse, not better. - Jmabel (talk) 04:18, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

It actually seems like the former item is okay: even if an entity changes names, it's still the same thing. The de.wp article is about the company and the en.wp article is about the automobile itself, so I think it's okay. —Justin (koavf)TCM 08:12, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
@Koavf: It looks like with your changes it is OK; I was just trying to get back to the status quo ante and work more carefully from there. - Jmabel (talk) 17:07, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
So at Multiplex (Q25209241), how do we model that the car stopped being manufactured in 1913? (The company stayed in business, and in fact still exists as a valve manufacturer.) - Jmabel (talk) 17:30, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
Probably inception (P571) and discontinued date (P2669). —Justin (koavf)TCM 20:49, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Surely the French-language description here is not what is considered appropriate for Wikidata.- Jmabel (talk) 21:06, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Then why don't you change it? Aside, discussing French descriptions on the English Project Chat is likely not the best venue. The French Project Chat seems like the better place. ChristianKl12:29, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
@ChristianKl: "Then why don't you change it?" Because while I read French decently, I don't write it well. Would you rather I (1) write a description on the French-language page in English, (2) write a description on the French-language page in bad French, (3) ignore the problem entirely, or (4) raise the issue here? I have a pretty strong preference for (4) myself.
If what you are saying represents policy, then you should reword the statement at the top of this page that it is a place "to discuss any and all aspects of Wikidata." I am sure I am not alone in not liking to be chewed out for doing what I've been told to do. - Jmabel (talk) 03:32, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
The item now has an appropriate description that is not an advertisement. If you can only effectively communicate in English, then posting here is 100% the correct place to post.
I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. —Justin (koavf)TCM 08:18, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Proposal: Mass undeletion of talk pages of deleted properties

During Data Modelling Day discussion, we have been talking of the difficulty in understanding what a mention of PNNN in discussion means, when PNNN has been deleted.

We feel that the talk pages of properties should never be deldeted, and those that have been deleted should be undeleted (and maybe templated as "historic").

Can this be done? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:49, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Andy. This came up when we were analyzing this page Wikidata:Property_proposal/Maintained_by_Wikiproject. What's almost comical is that P4570 is being discussed and referenced over and over using the template {{P|4570}}. But because the property was deleted, the template fails, and people reading the page today have no idea what is being discussed. As a Wikidata admin, I went in and could see that P4570 was "Wikidata project." I have at least added that little note to help future readers (Special:Diff/2021533461). But we have a larger problem that understanding "deleted" stuff in Wikidata depends on its the existence of the metadata (labels, description, et al) that was just deleted. Therefore, a more holistic strategy/solution is also worth discussing as well. - Fuzheado (talk) 18:01, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
This sounds like a very good idea to me. Ideally the Template:P should be programmed so that it falls back to the discussion page when the property itself is deleted.Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 18:27, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
On a side note: there is Wikidata:Database reports/Deleted properties; not sure whether it is complete, and whether it will be updated again. —MisterSynergy (talk) 18:45, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, I didn't know that list was being maintained. It's hard to tell whether it is programmatically or hand generated. It also only has English labels, limiting its usefulness. - Fuzheado (talk) 19:09, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Maybe User:Bamyers99 can comment on the status of that report. It claims to receive updates monthly, but has not gotten one since August. It would also be great if the sources for this report script would be accessible :-) —MisterSynergy (talk) 19:13, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
I maintain the report. It has not been updated since August because no property deletions have been detected. There are links to the proposals and deletion nominations that were used where available. Other information is from searches for pages with links to the deleted properties. Bamyers99 (talk) 19:28, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Restored from archive, as this still needs a decision; and then action. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:23, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I'd be fine with undeleting these talk pages for historical purposes. We should probably find some convenient way to copy across the last contents of the property page. Bovlb (talk) 21:28, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
"copy across the last contents of the property page" - a possible way is phab:T5843. GZWDer (talk) 04:36, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Mass wrong merge to revert

Last year @Obender12 merged two series of elements. The first serie was composed of Wikimedia category (Q4167836) related to elections in Germany in the year N. The second serie was composed of Wikimedia category (Q4167836) related to parlementary elections in the year N (not related to Germany, possibly no equivalent existing). Example of merged item: Q65788404. Since then, the merged items have been enriched with new links and properties, all related to the first serie. All items (I don't know how many there are) need to be unmerged. Louperivois (talk) 04:53, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Questionable warning

Check out the warning on Sarmatian culture (Q18534333) for

. Given

I'd expect this to be valid. Conversely, some of the classes the warning says would be valid seem downright odd, e.g. cultural festival (Q64272108), mythical creature (Q2239243). Jmabel (talk) 01:27, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Looks like a valid point to me. Ymblanter (talk) 21:04, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
indigenous to (P2341) should be used here, I think (see also white American culture (Q109797066)) - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 08:12, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
@Valentina.Anitnelav: (1) Normally one speaks of being indigenous to a place, not an ethnicity, no? (2) so the error was about Sarmatian culture (Q18534333) being inappropriate there, not Sarmatians (Q162858)? Maybe the wording made that clear and I didn't read closely enough, or maybe it didn't, not sure which. - Jmabel (talk) 17:18, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
(1) The label may not be completely appropriate but according to the English description this property is also intended for use with ethnic groups. (2) Yes. Kind regards, - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 10:16, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Freiherr

Viktor Freiherr von Erlanger, the noble title "Freiherr" isn't a honorific-prefix since it comes after the first name in German. Do we have a word that describes honorifics that come after the first name in German? RAN (talk) 23:07, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, family name (P734). Karl Oblique (talk) 20:37, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
Okay, this is kind of interesting. According to enwiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Freiherr&oldid=1176327636#Since_abolition_of_nobility), German and Austrian law treat these differently: Germany considers them part of the family name, whereas Austria apparently considers them to remain actual noble titles (and accordingly officially prohibited). 73.223.72.200 01:21, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
  • @Karl Oblique: I don't follow your short answer, it has no rationale, you want to add "Freiherr" as a family name? or you want to create Freiherr von Erlanger as the family name different from "von Erlanger"? None of our entries are currently modeled that way. "Freiherr" is gender specific and "Freifrau" is the feminine, so it cannot be used as a family name for the whole family. If we create a new entry for titles like "Freiherr", Wikidata will know where to insert it. For instance we have "Bob Smith" who is a physician and a Ph.D., because we know his name and his honorifics, we can automate making an alternate name as "Dr. Bob Smith, M.D., Ph.D." Wikidata also knowns when it comes across someone named "Judge Smith" whether Judge is a given name of an honorific-prefix, because we have assigned "Judge" as a honorific-prefix. Wikidata does not know where "Freiherr" should appear in the name because we have not defined it. If there is no existing word for this type of honorific, we can define/model it ourselves as "Germanic honorific" until something better is found. --RAN (talk) 17:44, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
    @RAN, the word you’re looking for might be
    Adelstitel
    (noble title (Q355567)). Generally speaking (and speaking about the present-day situation), where those aren't abolished, they are legally considered part of the last name (usually before any other part(s) of the last name), but still (1) they get frequently omitted, especially in subsequent uses of someone's name after the first occurrence in a longer speech or text or possibly even depending on an author’s political convictions, and (2) they may exhibit gender-based agreement (e.g., Graf (L34189) vs. Gräfin (L34190)).
    The best approach to modeling all this might also depend your use-case. Can you elaborate on what historical period (or present) you’re thinking about, and on your phrases ‘Wikidata knowing where to insert’ and ‘… when it comes across’? ―BlaueBlüte (talk) 22:06, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
  • See for instance Wolfram von Richthofen (Q57177) and Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz (Q57760) versus Werner von Fritsch (Q57572) and Manfred von Richthofen (Q4701). We need to be consistent and be able to tell where Freiherr gets inserted in the name like we do for other honorifics that appear at the beginning like "Sir" (honorific prefix) and the end like "OBE" (honorific suffix), we need a new property that lets is know the honorific occurs prior to surname. We appear to have never created any family names as "Freiherr von Richthofen" they are all listed as "von Richthofen". --RAN (talk) 22:44, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

When proposing a new property - order of the proposed new property

Hello, I think the current "new property" form should also have a field to ask how Wikidata is supposed to rank the new property amongst other existing property (id est : at start /end or close to another similar property X, etc) ? Bouzinac💬✒️💛 19:17, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

  Support Sounds like a good idea! --Marsupium (talk) 14:00, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

10-year-old incorrect label

https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q657974&diff=prev&oldid=2032133719

i just undid this which was added by ip 10+ years ago to a language that has 24 million native speakers. i wonder whether anything could be done better to minimise these problems.🤔 RZuo (talk) 11:00, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, we could all watch more German pornography! Vicarage (talk) 11:16, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Not really. That sort of low impact vandalism can last for decades on Wikipedia too, which will typically have far more eyes on it than a low traffic Wikidata item. —Xezbeth (talk) 14:09, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #607

Merge (Q8467920) and (Q27067659)

Former rivers Q8467920 and former river Q27067659 seem to be the same thing. I don't remember how to merge them.

- Io Herodotus (talk) 21:29, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

No: one is a concept, the other is a category about that concept. --Jahl de Vautban (talk) 21:38, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Category:Former rivers (Q8467920) is instance of (P31) of Wikimedia category (Q4167836), and former river (Q27067659) is a subclass of (P279) of river (Q4022) Pmt (talk) 21:43, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Request to update P451 of locked page (Taylor Swift)

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q26876#P451 needs to be updated, but it is locked.

The should-be symmetric update has been applied to https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7836292#P451

Please let me know if there's a better way to request updates to locked pages. EasyAsCake (talk) 06:16, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

  Done. The best way to edit the semi-protected pages is doing it with the status of autoconfirmed (you need to contribute 50+ edits for Wikidata, in particular). Or keep on contacting us here. --Wolverène (talk) 06:42, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete my recent item

Please delete Indic Wikimedia Hackathon 2023 (Q123997304). Nothing useful added here. It turns out there was already Indic Wikimedia Hackathon 2023 (Q123923988), but no one thought to do an interwiki link to the relevant meta page. - Jmabel (talk) 01:30, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

  Merged
I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. RVA2869 (talk) 12:55, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Using (date) in label to distinguish battles

(I asked this in https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:WikiProject_Military_History#Using_%28date%29_in_label_to_distinguish_battles, but I think I'm the only person active there, and I guess the issue crops up elsewhere as where disambiguation occurs. For ships I've removed disambiguation parentheses from nearly every entry, and no-one seems to object to official name (P1448).)

Battle of Ctesiphon (Q1582511) and Battle of Ctesiphon (Q2671354) are distinguished by the (year) in the label, but Siege of Thionville (Q3486028) and Siege of Thionville (Q3486033) are distinguished by mentioning the year in the description. The former comes from WP uniqueness requirements which don't apply here, make visual selection easier but use harder, and is easily replicated with a SPARQL query, uniq and sed. Adopting the latter could require manual editing of descriptions but avoids label parsing

Its a WD principle that WD labels and descriptions should not have strong formatting, so perhaps official name (P1448) should be adopted in combination with the first approach, with the advantage that different protagonists names for the same event could be handled Vicarage (talk) 17:22, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your question is here, but we do not put disambiguators in the label. That's what the description is for, Bovlb (talk) 16:24, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Heads up that I changed the English descriptions. They were formerly "Battle of Ctesiphon (1915)" and "Battle of Ctesiphon (198)". —Justin (koavf)TCM 16:27, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
I've undone that. While I might agree with you, its confusing to change the examples of a particular format before a decision is made. Vicarage (talk) 16:32, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. I'm ensuring that the description of battles have a year, and the labels do not use (YEAR) as disambiguation. Vicarage (talk) 09:39, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Disambiguation are to be specified inside descriptions. Bouzinac💬✒️💛 17:20, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Is it reasonable to add identifiers to seasons and episodes of TV series by inference?

Hey folks. I have edited on other WM projects for a while, but relatively new on Wikidata, so pardon my cluelessness.

I have a plan to add identifiers to season and episode of TV series, because some television series (Q5398426) have television series season (Q3464665) and television series episode (Q21191270) that don't have specific properties that are easily infered due to it having similar formats. These properties are as follows, but not limited to:

These inference are based on the properties that are defined on the series, like the name of the episode, and the series ordinal (P1545), if needed. These additions will be done if the television series (Q5398426) has these properties, and the properties haven't been defined before on each television series season (Q3464665) and television series episode (Q21191270).

Are these additions reasonable on Wikidata? Is these kind of contributions valid (and notable) to be done in Wikidata? Ideally I would create a bot for this, but if these sort of additions can't be made, it would result in a waste of manpower. That's why I ask here first, rather than doing it on WD:BR or something.

Thank you. Hans5958 (talk) 09:17, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I saw that, for a bot, these kinds of addition would require a reference. I guess I would add based on heuristic (P887), but I seem can't figure out what would be the value (or values, as I don't know if you can add more than one). Hans5958 (talk) 16:04, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Generally, the method of inference (reconciliation) does not matter here. What matters is the error rate - it is important to verify that your method of choice will not lead to many erroneous additions. Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 18:47, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
From experience I can say, that it's not always that easy, at least not for episodes. I'd avoid using only the episode numbers to match external IDs to episode items. Unfortunately, the exact order of episodes can vary between databases and websites, even for very popular and newer shows. Especially two-part episodes can cause problems, since some databases might have entries for both episodes, only the two-parter as a whole, or for all three. Or sometimes even only one entry that mixes title, air date, length, etc. of all three. And specials might be listed as episodes or separate entries.
If you use episode titles, there can also be some differences between sources, including hyphenation, articles being left out, abbreviations, cut off words, alternative titles, etc. And some shows might even have two episodes with the same title (e.g. Glorious Purpose (Q107162385) and Glorious Purpose (Q123385061)). When I added IDs semi-manually in the past, I used the series order and title and still needed to manually check and fix stuff quite often due to those differences and variations. --2A02:810B:580:11D4:7D97:7066:38A0:7572 21:54, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
@Vojtěch Dostál @2A02:810B:580:11D4:7D97:7066:38A0:7572, you folks have a good point.
Regarding the matching process/reconciliation, the scope are television series season (Q3464665) and television series episode (Q21191270) whose television series (Q5398426) that already have the mentioned properties. The potential seasons have a scope of the series, and the potential episodes have a scope of the season. This should reduce the search further, but I understand that edge cases exists. I'm also thinking on using the API (or general "fetching the page and see if the title is correct") to validate these matches, mainly matching the episode name (and the episode number). The bot would only make small assumptions (regarding case difference, character difference, etc), and will skip adding if it is unsure.
What concerns me more is to how to add these references, because bots need them in regards of this process. I'm thinking on putting the endpoint URL of the season (for episodes) and the series (for seasons), since there is a chance that using these API would also give the list of season/episode. I still need help on adding these references, though. Hans5958 (talk) 10:20, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Merging

Hi folks. Could someone help with merging two items on the same subject (event): Q123944533 and Q24948451. I am wikidata newbie, so I may have trouble with that. Thanks in advance!Dreamcatcher25 (talk) 09:08, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

@Dreamcatcher25   Merged to the older item. Please check if there are any issues. You can do it by yourself next time (Help:Merge). 94rain talk 09:41, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks a lot!Dreamcatcher25 (talk) 10:29, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

I accidentally made a second page for Hippotomonstrosesquipdaliaphobia

I didn't know there already was one. I don't know how to delete it can someone please help? 100.16.96.30 18:01, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

  Fixed. --Wolverène (talk) 18:16, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Incorrect merge of a semi-protected item

 
Core classes for performing arts places in Wikidata

The class item "event venue (Q18674739)" was merged into a newer item – entertainment centre (Q5380480) – that is a sitelink to an en.wiki article describing a home entertainment centre. This is a bad reconciliation of a name string (and also a blatant disregard to the fact that Q18674739 was a protected item). Q18674739 is a core higher-level class within the data structure of the WikiProject Cultural venues, and it needs to be restored.

I would like to unmerge it, but I'm afraid I might make things worse if I don't do it properly.

According to the Help:Merge page, the first step is to "Go to the history page of the item onto which the merge has been done and restore the revision just before the merge". In the case at hand, if I interpreted the guidance properly, I should be restoring the revision made on 3 August 2023‎, right? (and not restoring the merge itself, dated 13 November 2023) Thanks in advance for lifting my doubt (and boosting my confidence).

Beat Estermann (talk) 22:21, 31 March 2017 (UTC) Beireke1 (talk) Beireke1 (talk) 12:07, 2 May 2017 (UTC) - collaborating with Romaine on Belgian data on performing arts venues. Affom (talk) 15:26, 12 May 2017 (UTC) Anvilaquarius (talk) 11:41, 15 September 2017 (UTC) PEAk99(talk) PEAK99 (talk) 20:32, 29 January 2019 (UTC) Boxomi (talk) 22:21, 24 September 2019 (UTC) Antoine2711 (talk) 00:19, 5 December 2019 (UTC) Fjjulien (talk) 21:15, 13 February 2020 (UTC) Vero Marino (talk) 21:15, 13 February 2020 (UTC) Bello Na'im (talk) 08:34, 24 September 2021 (UTC) Titanboo (talk) 17:23, 8 July 2022 (UTC) dlh28 (talk)18:21, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

  Notified participants of WikiProject Cultural venues

  Notified participants of WikiProject Performing arts Fjjulien (talk) 03:19, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes Fjjulien, I would unmerge it, maybe first discuss with the person who did the merge so that he doesn't do such foolish things again. And yes, the sitelink to an en.wiki article about home entertainment centre was bad. Maybe create an item to link it so nobody does that again! ;-) Good luck. Unmerging is tricky when there are modifications after, because in a perfect world, you should keep to new modifications, if good… Antoine2711 (talk) 05:19, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

About multiple edits of my own being reverted by a specific person

[2] by User:Quesotiotyo
I was surprised to see about 20 notifications, but which one of these is correct?
for example:

  • Wikimedia disambiguation page <- List of things called "rebaa" in Japanese [3]

Vcvfou698069 (talk) 10:46, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The reversions are correct but I understand what you were attempting to do. "レイバー" being on Labour (Q6120474) is highly questionable as it's a different term, in a different language, that's ambiguous in a different way to everything else on that item. But it's also common to see similar terms shoehorned in to disambiguation items; besides the ones you changed there are probably many thousands more that are questionable in the same way. —Xezbeth (talk) 12:09, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Fatass

Should the description of Q16886883 be "Wiktionary redirect" or "slur in the English language"? This was changed in one of the latest edits. Kk.urban (talk) 23:15, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Sitelinks to redirect don't provide notability. Without notability the straightforward solution is to delete it. I deleted the item. ChristianKl01:10, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

P154 subject type constraint

Hello,

Is it normal that the property https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P154 does not have "subject type restriction"? How can we know to which classes it can be applied?

Thank you very much,

Andreu Sulé University of Barcelona Catalonia, Spain Andreusule (talk) 10:47, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The class can be applied when it makes sense that there's a logo for that item in question. ChristianKl22:03, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

change NACE code rev.2 (P4496) to externalId

Can someone with Prop Creator privileges please change NACE code rev.2 (P4496) to externalId? See https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property_talk:P4496#change_to_externalId (and prev sec) for discussion Vladimir Alexiev (talk) 13:41, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Such request should be raised at WD:RATP. But let's leave the discussion open for some days to receive comments. GZWDer (talk) 15:49, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
Property creators do not have such privileges, you should, as correctly suggested here, submit a request to WD:RATP and wait for someone from the WMF team to handle it. Yes, this may take some time, however it is the only solution. Regards Kirilloparma (talk) 04:22, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
Note we usually require a discussion for some days. GZWDer (talk) 16:50, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Deletion of a duplicate?, but with an overlap at the Listed Buildings England database too

Here's an odd one:

Covered Slip Number 1 (Q17640767) Scheduled Monument Commons:Category:Covered Slip Number 1, Devonport
Covered Slip Number 1 (Q17554683) Grade II* Listed Building

These were both created simultaneously on Wikidata, presumably from an import of the Heritage list, where there are decades between them. I can see no value to WMF in keeping two, but how should the two listings be represented? I can't seem to add both to one wikidata entry, because the identifiers expect a single value. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:33, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

UK Heritage lists have lots of duplicates as far as we are concerned, they have fiddly detail we don't want, and are less well maintained, so I'd accept the warning. Vicarage (talk) 17:39, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
I merged the items and added a heritage designation (P1435) qualifier to the National Heritage List for England number (P1216). An entry in the National Heritage List for England can only be in one heritage category, anything with more than one has more than one list entry. It's the same in Scotland (although many have been reduced to one designation) and Wales (which has separate properties in Wikidata). Other duplicates existed because the list was compiled from separate volumes, and some structures were in more than one volume, usually because they were on a boundary, or because the boundary changed (for this type of duplicate, located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) can be a qualifier, but usually one has been removed and its identifier can be deprecated). Peter James (talk) 21:05, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Trying to understand "What links here"

Why doesn't Special:WhatLinksHere/Q110207680 include, for example, Sylvester Sound the Somnambulist (Q110207752), given

- Jmabel (talk) Jmabel (talk) 00:36, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

And now it does, so presumably just a caching issue. - Jmabel (talk) 01:31, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Is it the case that most individual YouTube videos with qualifiers fail WD:N

Looking at this search , most of the videos do not have articles on WP or the like. A typical example is Q106496207. But many of these items come from experienced contributors, so I feel I may be missing something. Mach61 (talk) 23:31, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, 1336 of 1440 of these lacks sitelinks, which _could_ mean that they are not notable. Some of them seems to be links to free documentaries, so fairly benign in other words. But if you want to give the authors a friendly reminder of the notability policy, knock yourself out. Videos like Gordon Ramsey kicks headchef out of kitchen and Uncle Roger ... fried rice, can be flagged for deletion as they are clearly not notable (there is a gadget that makes this simple). Infrastruktur (talk) 10:35, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Large number of blank pages

there are a large number of pages with zero sitelinks and zero statements.

some of these are the result of people blanking pages instead of merging them (these changes should be reverted and the pages should be merged properly), but most seem to be the result of bots automatically creating pages with nothing but a sitelink, then automatically removing the sitelink when the corresponding page is deleted (these should just be deleted).

here's a SPARQL query that can be used to find such pages.

SELECT ?item ?itemLabel WHERE { ?item wikibase:sitelinks "0" ^^ xsd:integer. ?item wikibase:statements "0" ^^ xsd:integer. } LIMIT 100 Binarycat32 (talk) 01:10, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

The bot or reports don't notice these as they are used in other items, which makes them technically notable but is mostly promo anyway. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 10:22, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Merge of possibly duplicated species entries

(Wikidata newbie here, very much out of my depth.) Q119737298, Q14948456, and Q1367225 all appear to be describing the same species- just different names they were placed under. Q1367225 is the article linked to by most Wikis, but enWiki has linked to Q119737298, I believe because the editor thought that was the current name. Due to this, I'm unsure as to which article the other two should be merged to- or if they need merged. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 02:11, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not an expert in this field, but it seems to be established practice here to keep separate items for distinct names, even if they are currently considered the same species. Bovlb (talk) 06:32, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Well, you certainly know more than I do! Thank you so much for answering. And that's really good to know- I have no interest in going against standard practice. As a follow up- though- is there any sort of pre-established practice on which of those species entry we should link the Wikipedia articles to? I know you can't link one Wiki article to multiple independent Wikidata entries. In the case of duplicate species, is there some policy deciding which one gets preference? It's looking like I'm going to have to merge two articles on enWiki tomorrow, both about the same species, but both linking to different Wikidata entries, (one even containing translated deWiki text, but the deWiki links to the opposite Wikidata entry for some added fun) and I'm honestly I'm just a bit lost. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 06:52, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
@GreenLipstickLesbian: You can't link one Wikipedia article to multiple Wikidata ID, but you can create redirects that we'll be able to link to on Wikidata. You can keep the English Wikipedia page on whichever name you find better and the redirect will handle how they can link to other Wikipedias. --Jahl de Vautban (talk) 08:01, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

How many languages are available for Property P407?

I wanted to add "Argentinean Sign Language" but no match was found. The same is true for "Cameroon Sign Language", "Romanes Kalderash" etc. But maybe they are available but not with an English label? So it's hard to add languages for a website of 1084 languages. Kind regards,  Rodejong  💬 ✉️  22:38, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

@Rodejong, you can see a list of sign language articles at List of sign languages. There is Argentine Sign Language (Q3322073), but I cannot find anything for Cameroon Sign Language or Romanes Kalderash. There is Kalderash Romani (Q16937253), but I don't think that's what you're looking for. Huntster (t @ c) 23:10, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
@Huntster; Thank you. It was what I was looking for. It sometimes is switched around on that website, but hadn't thought of that.
The website states Argentinean Sign Language, But it makes sense that it is Argentine Sign Language. So I just have to keep these things in mind.
Kind regards,  Rodejong  💬 ✉️  23:26, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Some more queries for P407

  • Is there a "Botswana Sign Language" and "Central African Republic Sign Language"? Can't find it on the List of sign languages.
  • Bhojpuri Bhojpuri (Q33268) is spoken in India. On en.wikipedia it is a redirect. But there is also Bhojpuri spoken in Mauritius, but there's no Q for it?
  • There is Cakchiquel/Kaqchikel (Chimaltenango) Kaqchikel (Q35115) but I can't find Cakchiquel/Kaqchikel (Sololá)?
  • There is xiChangana/Tsonga Tsonga (Q34327) (Spoken in Mozambique and Zimbabwe) but the website has it as two separate languages/dialects. Is there a difference?

Kind regards,  Rodejong  💬 ✉️  09:25, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Neither can I find :
  • Beás or Beas other than a Romani group.
  • Abbey = Abɛ
  • Achi Rabinal (or Rabinal Achi) = achí de rabinal
  • There is Chontal Maya (Q35175) (Tabasco Chontal) spoken in Tobasco. But I can't find Oaxaca Chontal
  • "Congolese Sign Language"? Can't find it on the List of sign languages.
  • Cree (Q33390) exists in Roman written text, but I can't find the Syllabic written text (ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐁᐧᐃᐧᐣ), or is it under the same number? In that case, should it be separated?
Kind regards,  Rodejong  💬 ✉️  12:20, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Black box warnings project, parts 1 & 2

Help sought. I'm trying to resolve some remaining issues with part 1 of this project. Also, I've posted some ideas about part 2 at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:Mismatch_Finder/Collaboration/Purdue_Summer_of_Data_2024#FDALabel%20database.

I thought I'd nearly completed the part 1 import from the FDALabel database, but some data didn't import, and as I mentioned on the Purdue page, I can't figure out why. Like, NIRMATRELVIR AND RITONAVIR (W:Nirmatrelvir/ritonavir is one of the drugs I/OpenRefine failed to mark in wikidata; not sure why. I'm asking for help to get the import/match to work better. I wonder how many pages the warning is displayed on.

Project purpose: I was disturbed to find that most drugs with FDA-mandated Black box warnings had articles that were missing any mention of the boxes or the risks. It is disturbing to me that many pages mentioned minor side effects but left this critical info out. Part 1 changed this, but there's more to do - adding the text of the warnings.

I've just created w:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Black_box_warnings_2nd_project to see if there's support for part 2.

-- RudolfoMD (talk) 02:22, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

"NIRMATRELVIR AND RITONAVIR" is a different string than Nirmatrelvir/ritonavir so that's likely why there was no automatic match. ChristianKl19:00, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
OpenRefine fixed it ~yesterday when I did a batch match on pharmaceutical product. Automatic match worked. So must have been something else. (restored to respond)

I'm looking to collaborate on expanding to include the boxed warnings themselves and improving on what's been done. --RudolfoMD (talk) 22:00, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

As part of part 1, I recently made a mistake with too broad a match and would like to undo https://editgroups.toolforge.org/b/OR/a6c733dc547/ but the undo button doesn't work. Can someone help me? It seems I added the label to ~100 papers. The description of the edit is "Missed Truvada too". Template:Needhelp RudolfoMD (talk) 20:26, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Undoing works for me, and it is completed for your job. —MisterSynergy (talk) 21:23, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Merge two items

These two items should probably be merged.

Gor1995 (talk) 18:16, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Why do you believe so when looking at the instance of (P31) values that are different? ChristianKl21:33, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
I believe both items refer to the same musical concept.
Another hint is that the wikipedia languages of each item don't overlap.
Item Q116690558:
  1. cs - Czech
  2. es - Spanish
  3. it - Italian
  4. ja - Japanese
  5. ko - Korean
  6. pl - Polish
  7. pt - Portuguese
  8. zh - Chinese
Item Q805130:
  1. ar - Arabic
  2. ckb - Central Kurdish
  3. de - German
  4. en - English
  5. et - Estonian
  6. fa - Persian
  7. hy - Armenian
  8. no - Norwegian
  9. simple - Simple English
  10. tr - Turkish
Gor1995 (talk) 21:49, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
The article on Japanese Wikipedia cover a variety of topics, and it is not limited to those exclusively addressing specific music genres. Afaz (talk) 05:26, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Comparing both languages:
English
Japanese
I'm pretty new here and i'm not sure what to do with this... but this does seem confunsing. Gor1995 (talk) 10:39, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Limitation on Derived statements?

sternocleidomastoid muscle (Q272830)muscle action (P3310)flexion of the head (Q28793181) . But in the object term, flexion of the head (Q28793181), `relateditems` gadget, nothing is display. Should I not expect sternocleidomastoid muscle (Q272830) show up? JuguangXiao (talk) 18:40, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

The gadget only works for properties with an inverse label item (P7087) statement. --Quesotiotyo (talk) 01:36, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
I added action by muscle (Q124020721) , and associated it with muscle action (P3310) via inverse label item (P7087). Few seconds later everything shows up. Thanks   Done JuguangXiao (talk) 20:18, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Watchlist

I don't suppose there's any possibility at all that we could get around to redesigning the watchlist page SO THAT IT MAINLY DISPLAYS A WATCHLIST? Right now, when I click on my watchlist, I see exacly 1 (one) watched item (without scrolling down). The rest of the page is filled up with crap which is not a watchlist. Something about properties. Sprawling configuration user interface. idk.

Is it completely wrong just to want to see a watchlist on a watchlist page? --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:12, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

It's a huge problem in Wikidata that RfC discussions and also the deletion discussions don't get a lot of attention. Taking steps so that they will get even less attention is likely not overall benefitial for Wikidata. ChristianKl15:54, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Visiting gadgets in my preferences and enabling the enhance watchlist 4th from bottom got rid of it for me Vicarage (talk) 00:24, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

A FAQ, probably, from a WikiData ignoramus

The English-language Wikipedia article "Ziemassvētki" doesn't appear to be linked from WikiData. As I read the article, its subject sounds to me remarkably similar to what English speakers commonly call "Christmas". Indeed, (i) the article might be retitled "Christmas in Latvia", and (ii) Latvian-language Wikipedia has an article titled "Ziemassvētki" that's about Christmas (Christmas in general, but unsurprisingly with particular attention to that in Latvia).

"Christmas" in WikiData is Q19809. Should this somehow point to English-language "Ziemassvētki", and if so, how; and if not, should something else be done?

(I thought that this might be classed as a "conflict". But no conflict seems to have been resolved since January, whereas at a rough count a squillion are unresolved; so I thought I'd try educating myself.) -- Hoary (talk) 08:58, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Ziemassvētki (Q8071686) is linked with that English language article. You could create a "Christmas in Latvia" redirect to the Ziemassvētki article over at LatvianWiki and link it with that Wikidata item. ChristianKl21:50, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
ChristianKl, sorry for not having noticed Ziemassvētki (Q8071686). Unfortunately I'm unfamiliar with WikiData redirects.Ziemassvētki (Q8071686) is currently an instance of festival (Q132241). That's curiously vague; it would better be an instance of Christmas (Q19809) and also of "Festival in Latvia" or "Latvian festival" -- but the closest that I notice is Category:Festivals in Latvia (Q8447280), and though Christmas-in-Latvia seems to be a member of such a category, it hardly seems to be an instance thereof. At which point I reflected that I really don't understand WikiData and therefore shouldn't make changes that would risk worsening the mess. -- Hoary (talk) 00:26, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
See https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Sitelinks_to_redirects ChristianKl04:16, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
ChristianKl, I first thought you were suggesting that I should create "en:Christmas in Latvia" as a redirect to "lv:Ziemassvētki" and -- but let's not continue with that idea, because en:Wikipedia doesn't allow redirects elsewhere. Perhaps you meant that I should create "lv:XYZ" (where XYZ is whatever's the idiomatic Latvian for "Christmas in Latvia") as a redirect to "lv:Ziemassvētki" and link to this new redirect page from Ziemassvētki (Q8071686). That does make sense, but as I neither write Latvian nor trust Google Translate, I'll leave this minor chore for a Latvian speaker. -- Hoary (talk) 10:55, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Jakub Piwowarski doubles Jakub P Piwowarski

Jakub Piwowarski (Q124016546) doubles Jakub P Piwowarski (Q64494090). Franek Vetulani (talk) 17:38, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Merged. In future, please see Help:Merge. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:21, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for help! Franek Vetulani (talk) 01:16, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. RVA2869 (talk) 09:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

merge

Hi everyone. I want to merge Q5699925 with Q94532337 because both are for the same man, but I don't know how to merge. can someone please help me and do it for me ? thanks a lot ? Yektehrani (talk) 06:07, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

  Done Ymblanter (talk) 20:10, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. RVA2869 (talk) 09:48, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Popups

Navigation popups do not work for me on wikidata*. archives of this page mention them/stuff (PopupsFix, a gadget in beta and one in prefs) in ways that make me think they did and/or should work for items.

RudolfoMD (talk) 07:28, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

@RudolfoMD: I have asimilar issue on Wikispecies; see en:Wikipedia talk:Tools/Navigation popups#Not working on Wikispecies. You might want to ask there, also. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:42, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
Hmm. Do you have the problem here too? I have the problem on Wikispecies, and tried coping Nux's code, and reloading, but it made no difference.
Also, I thought I had and should have mentioned in my OP that by not work, I mean they show raw code that is not terribly useful. Mouseover of Universe (Q1) shows
{"batchcomplete":true,"query":{"pages":[{"pageid":129,"ns":0,"title":"Q1","revisions":[{"revid":2039014625,"parentid":2037341651,"minor":false,"user":"Sofie Geneea","timestamp":"2023-12-28T09:59:18Z","slots":{"main":{"contentmodel":"wikibase-item","contentformat":"application/json","content":"{\"type\":\"item\",\"id\":\"Q1\",\"labels\":{\"fr\":{\"language\":\"fr\",\"value\":\"univers\"},\"la\":{\"language\":\"la\",\"value\":\"universum\"},\"uz\":{\"language\":\"uz\",\"value\":\"Olam\"},\"ru\":{\"language\":\"ru\",\"value\":\"\\u0412\\u0441\\u0435\\u043b\\u0435\\u043d\\u043d\\u0430\\u044f\"},\"pl\":{\"language\":\"pl\",\"value\":\"wszech\\u015bwiat\"},\"nb\":{\"language\":\"nb\",\"value\":\"universet\"},\"eo\":{\"language\":\"eo\",\"value\":\"universo\"},\"it\":{\"language\":\"it\",\"value\":\"universo\"},\"es\":{\"language\":\"es\",\"value\":\"Universo\"},\"de\":{\"language\":\"de\",\"value\":\"Universum\"},\"ca\":{\"language\":\"ca\",\"value\":\"Univers\"},\"en-gb\":{\"language\":\"en-gb\",\"value\":\"universe\"},\"de-ch\":{\"language\":\"de-ch\",\"value\":\"Universum\"},\"fi\":{\"language\":\"fi\",\"value\":\"maailmankaikkeus\"},\"nn\":{\"language\":\"nn\",\"value\":\"universet\"},\"ja\":... RudolfoMD (talk) 01:29, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Milestones

There is a discussion on Wikidata_talk:Main_Page#Q124000000_entry_not_displayed_on_the_main_page about the alleged significance of round item numbers and if it is noteworthy for inclusion on the main page. Please only comment on the given talk page. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 14:23, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. RVA2869 (talk) 09:48, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

New item for Paul Lushenko

I tried searching for Paul Lushenko who was interviewed by the WSJ in a story that appeared on the web earlier today. I seached WD and it seems he does not yet have an item here. How can one create a new page for him?

Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 21:37, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

There is a "Create new item" in the site navigation, you seem to have created items in the past. Be sure to include references. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 22:04, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for your help @Sjoerddebruin. Yes, I remember vaguely having created a couple of items, but I don't remember which and don't remember how I did it. Anyway, I'll try to figure out where the " site navigation" is, if time permits. I'll assume that Paul Lushenko is "notable" enough to create an item for. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:27, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Re: "Be sure to include references"
I am not sure what references are acceptable at Wikidata. I am not trying to be difficult, but I have recently been criticized on another wmf-wiki for adding links to sites such as YouTube. My contribution was termed "spam", IIRC. I am therefore hesitant to add any links including the one to the WSJ article I mentioned in my original question. I know the WSJ is ok as a reference at the English Wikipedia, but it is paywalled and may viewed taboo wiki-somewhere else.
Am I making sense? Thank in advance Ottawahitech (talk) 15:43, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
it's fine to link to paywalled content here. generally we want references that are serious (which precludes many user-generated publications or pay-to-publish publications) BrokenSegue (talk) 19:07, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: It's the link below the one you clicked to get to this page (in the left sidebar). --Azertus (talk) 17:16, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Paul Lushenko was already twice mentioned in Wikidata as an "author string". I added him as an author and he can now be seen as such in his scholia  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by GerardM (talk • contribs) at 20:33, 29 December 2023 (UTC).
@User:GerardM Thank you so much for going to all the trouble. I posted a question on the talk page for those interested in Paul Lushenko. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:54, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. RVA2869 (talk) 09:47, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

How to edit Image property

I want to change the image shown for a person. The image in WikiData shows him with closed eyes and there is a better one available in WikiMedia. There appears to be no Image Property edit option. When I select the Edit Whole Page option, it simply offers the name of the person, his occupation, and Other Languages for editing. All other properties present on his listing have no edit option.

This is galling and exclusive. It is extremely hard to understand how to edit this WikiData website. It is so daunting that I have rarely attempted to do so despite having edited Wikipedia for nearly 20 years, and written software professionally for longer. Frankly, I hate how frustrating it is to edit entries here. It is inscrutable, and it is painful to find needed help in the Help section, which I tried without success, for the umpteenth time.

At Help:Properties I read that "You need to be confirmed or autoconfirmed to edit properties". Elsewhere, I read that "more than 50 edits are considered autoconfirmed", but I have 134 edits in the past 11 years. (Only 134, because the interface is so off-putting.)

Anyway, how do I edit an image property when no edit option is presented? Thank you. Spideog (talk) 01:17, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, you should be autoconfirmed by now, it is inconvenient not to be. On a hunch I want you to try the following: Log out from Wikidata and then log back in again on the Wikidata website. If this does not make you autoconfirmed, just let us know and an available administorator will manually add the rights on you user. Infrastruktur (talk) 02:49, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for replying in spite of my bellyaching. I logged out and back in but I still have the original problem. Perhaps an administrator could intervene to help, as you suggest. Ha det godt. Spideog (talk) 02:56, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
@Spideog: it appears you are already autoconfirmed since 2016. What is the item you are trying to edit? –FlyingAce✈hello 06:38, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
It seems that you are editing from mobile, editing statements is not possible in the mobile view. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 09:05, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
@Sjoerd de Bruin Ha! Thank you, Sjoerd. Your hint worked. I switched to Desktop View in the browser on my mobile phone and the page I wanted to edit then displayed the edit option for the Image Property. I performed the change I wanted in a few seconds. I am grateful for your help.
It's such a queer limitation to exclude so many editors, who may wish to use their mobile phones to edit WikiData, and even odder that the mobile phone editing limitation is not clearly advertised when an editor tries to use a phone.
This simple alert: "Switch to Desktop View" would, I'm sure, based on my experience, sharply reduce the amount of frustration and rage for thwarted editors, and greatly increase WikiData productivity with more editing performed, if this invisible barrier was removed. Thanks again. Spideog (talk) 09:51, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
P.S. My Image Property edit just now did not show up in my Contribution History. It seems I was logged out in the browser window I used. Rest assured, the edit worked.  :)
I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. RVA2869 (talk) 09:46, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

https://docs.microsoft.com/ was moved to https://learn.microsoft.com/. How to rename all those URLs in Wikidata? Midleading (talk) 13:08, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

We can use Special:LinkSearch (API) to find all items containing that link. There are about ~600 of them . Looks like [4] redirects to mozilla docs, though. 94rain talk 00:01, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

How many Wikidata Sandboxes do we need?

Before June 2022, there were only 3 Wikidata (item) Sandboxes, they are Yaw Tuba (Q4115189), Wikidata Sandbox 2 (Q13406268) & Q15397819. Wikidata Sandbox 4 (Q112795079) was created in June 2022 with a link in jawiki meaning the 4th Wikidata Sandbox. Before its creation, there were already some “sandboxes” being deleted based on the history of Template:Sandboxes/text (see Special:Diff/1391069087). Now, there is the fifth sandbox created and I believe that it is likely not being used frequently based on the edit history on Wikidata Sandbox 2 (Q13406268) & Q15397819 shows that alternative sandboxes are less likely being used. As a result, I don’t think that there is a need of creating more alternative sandboxes and I believe that Q123989361 should be deleted or redirected to any one of those 4 sandbox as there are no links from other projects like Q112795079 did. 132.234.228.254 15:20, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm actually a little more interested in why the Japanese Wikipedia seems to think they need their own sandbox linked up to their own wiki testing page (presumably for testing Wikidata stuff). Can someone fluent in Japanese advise them that they should write their templates and modules such that one can specify a parameter to override the QID? And consider removing the sitelink, as there should be no need for explicit sitelinks, especially to sandboxes with such an unlucky number. Infrastruktur (talk) 16:45, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
I don’t know why they need their own sandbox. What I know is that there are already too many sandboxes that we do not need any new. If Q123989361 don’t deleted or redirected, there may be “Wikidata Sandbox 6” or “Wikidata Sandbox 7” and so on created in the future. That’s why I says Q123989361 should be deleted or redirected. 132.234.229.94 01:07, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
If you want to redirect it, then just redirect it. I will do this for you. 210.3.184.46 10:58, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
Why do you believe it's too many sandboxes? What problems do you think arise with having that many sandboxes? ChristianKl21:34, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
The much less edits in Wikidata Sandbox 2 (Q13406268) & Q15397819 cause me believe there are too many sandboxes as most test edits are come from Yaw Tuba (Q4115189). 132.234.228.110 12:28, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Even having 100 sandboxes would have no effect on Wikidata at all. Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 11:07, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
It does make it an hassle sometimes as people can change labels or remove statements that indicate that it's an sandbox, so most bots use hardcoded item numbers afaik. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 11:41, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

LOW-GRADE SEROUS OVARIAN CANCER

A Wikimedia friend has a type of cancer ... no good prospects - There is a list of publications that I want to include in Wikidata as a project. The projectname would be "Low-grade serous ovarian cancer information hub". Thanks, GerardM (talk) 16:53, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear about your friend, and I wish them all the best.
I'm not sure exactly what you're proposing here. If your plan is to make sure that all of the academic publications on this list have Wikidata items, then that sounds like an excellent plan. If you plan to represent the list itself and link it to the publications, then I'm not so sure. For one thing, it's not clear that this list is a static publication. I imagine that they continually add to it as new publications become available, and possibly remove items that are outdated. Bovlb (talk) 20:48, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
There is a huge difference between a "paper based list" and a list based on data like Scholia. In the current paper based list you only find names of papers and a category. When papers are given a subject like "low grade serous carcinoma" in Wikidata they may have or may not have "authors". They may have or may not "cite work"s. As people work the data, the representation of everything linked to a subject or to this list will evolve. My friend may have or may not have the energy to collaborate but as she is a librarian, she understands why this makes sense. She asked me to help her build this up. It showcases how an important list can get additional dimensions in Wikidata and, when as it grows it gains relevance and hopefully usage. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 20:13, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
@GerardM:I'm sorry to hear about your friend! I've got my hands full with my own projects right now, but here's a couple of tools that will be helpful as you import those articles to Wikidata.
  • Zotero will export articles in a way that is compatible with QuickStatements. I noticed that it doesn't always add the "published in" parameter, so I usually do that manually once I've created the item.
  • Author Disambiguator is really handy once the articles you're interested in are in Wikidata. It helps you connect authors to papers semi-automatically.
Hope that helps, and good luck Mcampany (talk) 06:15, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Actually, I just took a look through your contribution history and it looks like you already use those tools. I don't know much about setting up Wikiprojects, but it looks like this would be your best bet. Mcampany (talk) 06:45, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikidata-related grant proposals

This is related to WD:AN#Recent_crop_of_new_Nigerian_items, but it covers a much broader point, so I am posting it as a separate topic.

I knew that the WMF makes various grants. I recently became aware that grant proposals are posted publicly while awaiting review and the talk pages are open to comments from everyone.

Grant proposals have to describe what work they will cover, and typically name specific WMF projects. Many of them name Wikidata. There are various types of grant, but the criteria for Rapid grants include "Applicants need to demonstrate current editing history and experience on the target Wikimedia project(s) mentioned in their grant application. ... For example, if the applicant is planning to train people on creation or improvement of Wikidata items, the applicant should demonstrate editing and training history on Wikidata." and "Within the last year, applicants have not been repeatedly blocked or flagged for the same issue and/or have not been banned on the Wikimedia Projects. If a block/ban is recorded in the applicant's account history, the applicant is required to demonstrate learning and understanding in regard to the cause for the block, such that they are ready to serve as a role model for others as a grantee."

One lesson I take from this is that it matters whether grant applicants are blocked and, to a lesser extent, whether they get talk page feedback for any mistakes they might be making. I'm not sure what process the WMF goes through to evaluate these criteria, but it surely ought to include a review of block logs and user talk pages for cited projects. I would interpret "repeatedly ... flagged for the same issue" as receiving multiple instances of talk page feedback about the same type of problem, especially when the user is not appropriately responsive to feedback.

I reviewed some of the grant proposals current open for review where the proposal names Wikidata. I specifically focussed on reviewing the experience and record of the editors listed in the grant proposal. My review included examination of deleted contributions. As many of these projects involve community outreach and training of new users, I attempted to evaluate whether editors were likely competent to be Wikidata trainers. I found that grant applicants fell into four main groups: very experienced Wikidata editors with a clean record; moderately experienced editors who make many mistakes such as poor descriptions, empty items, and items that fail to establish notability; editors with little to no experience editing Wikidata; and contributors that cannot be linked to a valid account. Not every participant needs to be highly experienced in every project, but I think it's a red flag if none are in the first group, and a big red flag if any fall into the second group, especially if they also fail to respond to feedback.

So I have three calls to action:

  1. Communicate with users who are making mistakes by leaving messages on their talk pages. In particular, don't use edit summaries to communicate with a user. Do this even if they have past messages about the same problem. This makes it easier for administrators (or anyone else reviewing their record) to see the scale of the problem. It also gives the user an opportunity to respond and improve.
  2. Report (on WD:AN) users who repeatedly make mistakes and do not respond to feedback. This applies even if you believe they are editing in good faith. Administrators will try to fix the problem and will not necessarily block immediately.
  3. Help the WMF by reviewing some of the grant proposals. You don't need to take the same approach that I did. In particular, I made no attempt to evaluate the proposed contribution to Wikidata. See meta:Grants:Project/Rapid/Browse_applications, meta:Grants:Programs/Wikimedia_Community_Fund/Review/2023-24, and various other links at meta:Grants:Start.

Bovlb (talk) 19:13, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

To follow up on this: When investigating the experience of grant applicants, I found some who had a history of making errors but never received any user talk page feedback about it. (They have have received reversion notifications.) Getting feedback about problems is essential for editor development. I found others who had received a lot of feedback, but never responded to any of it and continued to make the same error. This is a case where sanctions such as blocking might have been helpful. I also found many grant proposals related to Wikidata where the criteria above were (in my opinion) not met, but no sign that this is being considered. WMF staff were not responsive to questions about how they evaluate these criteria. I am left with the feeling that the foundation is essentially sponsoring disruption of the project. I don't believe we should be spending foundation money to create extra work for volunteers while also degrading the reputation of the project within the community. Bovlb (talk) 17:24, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your work! Sadly, I find your evaluation of WMF activity in this field frustratingly plausible. --Emu (talk) 20:09, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. In reviewing whether an editor would make a good Wikidata trainer, I considered four criteria:
  • Do they have a history of abuse? E.g. blocks, spamming, recreation of previously-deleted items, abusive comments.
  • Do they have significant experience on Wikidata? I'm looking for at least 300 for moderate experience, and over 1,000 for substantial experience. I'd also hope that they managed to create items of more than one type.
  • Do they have a low error rate? This can be assessed using several means: deleted contributions, user talk page feedback; reverted edits; abuse filter log; and reviewing a sample of edits.
  • Are they responsive to feedback? As mentioned above, many have a significant error rate, but have never received feedback. Others get many comments but never respond and never improve.
Bovlb (talk) 20:28, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for the work. Have you pinged the WMF grantmaking team about your results, so that they can possibly take this into consideration in future decisions? Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 11:02, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
I have put my reviews on the discussion pages for the grant proposals. I have no idea whether and to what extent the WMF takes such comments into account in decision making. I do know that I have been contacted by several grant proposers who were unaware that there was a problem, and who want to improve, so that's something.
I pinged six seven WMF employees, requesting information on how grant proposals are evaluated against these criteria, given that the original grant got funded when the team members had obvious problems. No response yet. Bovlb (talk) 16:25, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
After another round of pings, I finally got a response that the WMF grants office has been closed for two weeks. Still no substantive response. Bovlb (talk) 00:06, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
I see. Classic 150m+ USD revenue business behavior. --Emu (talk) 00:33, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
There has now been a more substantive response. Hopefully a useful conversation will ensue. Feel free to weigh in.
For discussion here, I wanted to call out one comment: " until you raised the issue with this one granted project, we have not received complaints previously". Am I really the first person every to have drawn the foundation's attention to a problem of this type? Bovlb (talk) 17:52, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
I think that’s entirely possible. My experience with WMF and many chapters (though not all of them) has generally been that emails and messages are often ignored and even if not, everything takes forever or peters out eventually. Judging from some off-wiki face to face conversations, this problem is general knowledge. So I generally try to avoid any direct contact with them and I imagine that I’m not the only one. Which is probably a mistake – so I’m really glad you brought this issue up. --Emu (talk) 22:22, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
That has also been my experience. I thought I was the only one who was being ignored. Now I know better, but as a small-time volunteer I have to carefully choose my battles. Ottawahitech (talk) 21:51, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
Apparently it is long-standing practice that the entire organization is closed "between December 25th to January 1st". Bovlb (talk) 15:27, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
Does anyone know what a "certified trainer" is, in the context of WMF projects? Who does the certification? What are the criteria? Is there a list somewhere? Bovlb (talk) 02:33, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for bringing this up here on Wikidata and especially searching for the root of the problem. I noticed some effects of these trainings while nominating items for deletion over the last year but wasn't able to find out what was going on and didn't take the time to dig deeper. I also want to add that the problem of items of questionable notability and/or badly modelled items is not restricted to one country, I found similar problems for e. g. Ghana. Nonetheless I want to emphasize that it is very important to include historically under-represented communities and their knowledge in my opinion and I would wish that these trainings could be adjusted accordingly. --Dorades (talk) 23:22, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
The conversation on Meta seems to have petered out again. I did get a couple of answers:
  • The reason it took over 16 days to get a response from the WMF is because the entire office was closed for 8 days. This closure doesn't appear to be documented anywhere. ref
  • To be certified as a trainer does require familiarity with core policies, but does not require any on-wiki experience. The WMF team that oversaw trainers has been dissolved, so they are now self-organizing. ref
I have received no answer to my other questions: ref
  • What does the WMF do to ensure that grants are not simply funding disruption and making extra work for volunteers?
  • How did we come to approve grants that did not meet the criteria?
  • How can we improve the grant review process going forward?
Bovlb (talk) 18:10, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
It's been about a month since I raised this issue at Meta. Pretty much the only substantive response I have received from WMF staff is that it's unreasonable for me to complain about WMF staff being slow to respond. None of them have yet gotten around to actually addressing the issues raised. Bovlb (talk) 00:02, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
I really don’t get it. Not doing anything – well, I guess that’s standard practice for large bureaucracies. But not even being able to come up with some nice PR talk within two weeks, that’s something. --Emu (talk) 00:44, 20 January 2024 (UTC)