Matthewrb

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #172 is out: Introducing focus topic areas

There is a new update for Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we introduce focus topic areas for generating natural language texts and we update you on last week's site incident.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:30, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-39

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday September 25 at 15:00 UTC. Reading the wikis will not be interrupted, but editing will be paused. These twice-yearly processes allow WMF's site reliability engineering teams to remain prepared to keep the wikis functioning even in the event of a major interruption to one of our data centers.

Updates for editors

A screenshot of the interface for the Alt Text suggested-edit feature

• Editors who use the iOS Wikipedia app in Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Chinese, may see the Alt Text suggested-edit experiment after editing an article, or completing a suggested edit using "Add an image". Alt-text helps people with visual impairments to read Wikipedia articles. The team aims to learn if adding alt-text to images is a task that editors can be successful with. Please share any feedback on the discussion page.
• The Codex color palette has been updated with new and revised colors for the MediaWiki user interfaces. The most noticeable changes for editors include updates for: dark mode colors for Links and for quiet Buttons (progressive and destructive), visited Link colors for both light and dark modes, and background colors for system-messages in both light and dark modes.
• It is now possible to include clickable wikilinks and external links inside code blocks. This includes links that are used within <syntaxhighlight> tags and on code pages (JavaScript, CSS, Scribunto and Sanitized CSS). Uses of template syntax {{…}} are also linked to the template page. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [1]
• Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [2][3]
• View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• From Wikimedia Enterprise:
  • The API now enables 5,000 on-demand API requests per month and twice-monthly HTML snapshots freely (gratis and libre). More information on the updates and also improvements to the software development kits (SDK) are explained on the project's blog post. While Wikimedia Enterprise APIs are designed for high-volume commercial reusers, this change enables many more community use-cases to be built on the service too.
  • The Snapshot API (html dumps) have added beta Structured Contents endpoints (blog post on that) as well as released two beta datasets (English and French Wikipedia) from that endpoint to Hugging Face for public use and feedback (blog post on that). These pre-parsed data sets enable new options for researchers, developers, and data scientists to use and study the content.

In depth

• The Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is used to get answers to questions using the Wikidata data set. As Wikidata grows, we had to make a major architectural change so that WDQS could remain performant. As part of the WDQS Graph Split project, we have new SPARQL endpoints available for serving the "scholarly" and "main" subgraphs of Wikidata. The query.wikidata.org endpoint will continue to serve the full Wikidata graph until March 2025. After this date, it will only serve the main graph. For more information, please see the announcement on Wikidata.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:33, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #173 is out: Quarterly planning for October–December 2024

There is a new update for Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we give you an overview of what we will focus on in the next three months, we discuss our presentation at Celtic Knot conference 2024, and we take a look at the latest software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:42, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 September 2024

• In the media: Courts order Wikipedia to give up names of editors, legal strain anticipated from "online safety laws"

• Community view: Indian courts order Wikipedia to take down name of crime victim, editors strive towards consensus

• Serendipity: A Wikipedian at the 2024 Paralympics

• Opinion: asilvering's RfA debriefing

• News and notes: Are you ready for admin elections?

• Gallery: Are Luddaites defending the English Wikipedia?

• Recent research: Article-writing AI is less "prone to reasoning errors (or hallucinations)" than human Wikipedia editors

• Traffic report: Jump in the line, rock your body in time

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:10, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin September Issue 2

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the second half of September 2024. Please help Translate.

---

Upcoming and current events and conversations

Wikimedia event at the United Nations

Talking: 2024 continues

• "Wikimania Katowice coverage travels around the world" – a curated list of community and media coverage of Wikimania 2024. Over 100 pieces so far have been published about the event.
• WikiForHumanRights will lead a conversation about the future of the campaign with the Africa region on September 25 at 15:00 UTC.
• Let’s Connect: “Technology for Language Diversity in Wikimedia” will take place on September 26 at 15:00 UTC.
• Wikisource Conference 2025, the deadline for scholarship applications  has been extended to September 29.
• Big Fat Brussels Meeting 9 will be held in Brussels, Belgium from September 29–30.
• WikiConference North America will be held in Indianapolis, USA from October 3–6.
• WikiIndaba Conference 2024 will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa from October 4–6.
• Wikimedia Technology Summit (WTS 2024): will be held in Hyderabad, India from October 4–5.
• ESEAP Community Call will be held on October 6 at 07:00 UTC.
• Wikimedia+Libraries International Convention 2025 is accepting submissions until October 6.
• The Language and Product Localisation team is hosting two office hours to discuss this year's plans and gather feedback from event organizers. The first session is October 5 at 16:00 UTC (Europe-Africa-Americas friendly), and the second is on October 6 at 03:00 UTC (Asia-Pacific friendly).

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org

• MediaWiki Product Insights: The latest edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
• Tech News: Find out about the new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page, the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and more recent tech updates.
• Wikidata Query Service: A new change to Wikidata Query Service will impact certain uses. The project will enter a transition period until the end of February 2025. For more details, visit the announcement page.
• Wikimedia Enterprise: Enhanced Free API Accounts: Recurring Credits and More Frequent Updates, early beta release of Structured Contents in Snapshot API, and early beta dataset release to Hugging Face.
• Wikifunctions: Status updates from September 20.
• Wikipedia Mobile Apps: Over 20,000 images have been added via the "Add an Image" feature on both iOS and Android (T372954)!
• Knowledge is Human: Read about ongoing work on the 2024 iteration of the "Knowledge is Human" public awareness campaign
• Server Switch: A server switch was completed successfully on September 25 with a read-only time of only 2 minutes 45 seconds.

Annual Goals Progress on Equity See also a list of all movement events: on Meta

• Wikimedia Research Showcase: Watch the latest showcase with the theme of Curation of Wikimedia AI Datasets.
• Conference and Event Fund: Updates and changes to the Conference and Event Fund program beginning in September 2024.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• UN Summit of the Future Action Days: Watch the Wikimedia event titled "The Power of the Commons: Digital Public Goods for a more secure, inclusive, and resilient world" at The Summit of the Future. This is expected to result in a negotiated Global Digital Compact, which represents the final phase of our movement-wide campaign to impact the text of the Global Digital Compact.
• Wikipedia and the Digital Services Act: Lessons on the strength of community and the future of internet regulation.

Foundation statements

• Ahead of UN General Assembly, Wikimedia Foundation calls on governments to ensure the future internet is shaped by communities for the public interest.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 17:10, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikidata Weekly Summary #647

<languages/>

<translate> Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2024-09-30. Please help Translate. Missed the previous one?
See issue #646</translate>

<translate>Discussions</translate> <translate>* Closed request for adminship: Andrei Stroe - Success! Welcome User:Andrei Stroe as Wikidata's latest Admin.

• New requests for permissions/Bot: QichwaBot - Task(s): Creating wikidata lexemes for the Quechua languages.
• Closed request for comments: Do we want automatic inverse statement creation and if so, how should they happen? - Closed due to lack of comments for longer than five years. Despite multiple suggestions, there is no clear consensus to move forward.</translate>

<translate>Events</translate> <translate>* Wikidata's 12th birthday is coming up on October 29th. Have a look at the birthday parties and more planned around the world.

• Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group session 1 October, 2024: We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Session on Tuesday, 1 October, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET (Time zone converter). Christa Strickler will be our first Project Series lead with her joint project with the Wikidata Religion & Theology Community of Practice to contribute biographical data to Wikidata from the IRFA database using the Mix’n’Match tool. We are excited to learn more about this project, provide a forum for discussion and shared learning, and lend a hand while building new skills. Event page.</translate>

<translate>Press, articles, blog posts, videos</translate> <translate>* Papers

• • A Systematic Review of Wikidata in GLAM Institutions: a Labs Approach - Presents a systematic review of Wikidata use in GLAM institutions within the context of the work of the International GLAM Labs Community (glamlabs.io). The results summarise academic literature on Wikidata projects. By G. Candela et al.
  • (es) Wikidata course in Spanish: Data for collaborative knowledge - Throughout October, the WikiLearn platform is hosting a course on Wikidata aimed especially at Latin Americans. Enroll here.
  • Project SHADOW: Symbolic Higher-order Associative Deductive reasoning On Wikidata using LM probing - SHADOW is a fine-tuned language model trained on an intermediate task using associative deductive reasoning, its performance is measured on a knowledge base construction task using Wikidata triple completion. By Hanna Abi Akl.
  • Using Wikidata for Managing Cultural Heritage Information - The present study uses model wikidata elements as a basis and explores its dynamic formation into a cultural heritage information management tool within a museum. By D. Kyriaki-Manessi and S. Vazaiou.
  • Enriching Archival Linked Data Descriptions with Information from Wikidata and DBpedia - This paper investigates the potential to use information in archival records in a larger context for ArchOnto and aims to leverage classes and properties sourced from repositories deemed informal due to their crowd-sourcing nature. By I. Koch et al.
  • A framework for integrating biomedical knowledge in Wikidata with open biological and biomedical ontologies and MeSH keywords - This paper utilizes primary data sources of OBO ontologies and MeSH keywords classified using SPARQL queries for RDF knowledge graphs, to contribute to the robustness and accuracy of collaborative biomedical knowledge graphs. By H. Turki et al.
• Videos
  • Serbian Novels on Wikidata: Project wikiELTeC & Tesla Part of Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2024 in İstanbul, this session presented by Filip Maljković charts progress on contributing Serbian literature to Wikidata.
• Dataviz
  • Find your most famous neighbour, a world map of notable people based on Wikipedia and Wikidata.</translate>

<translate>Tool of the week</translate> <translate>* Three new Userscripts for Wikidata - User:Lagewi has written 3 scripts to simplify reading references, explore property-value pairs in use for a statement or attaching a full bibliography to the end of the item page.</translate>

<translate>Other Noteworthy Stuff</translate> <translate>* OpenSactions:Wikidata Persons in Relevant Categories - Using PETScan, generates a list of profiles of politically exposed persons by querying specific categories on Wikidata and extracting the entities.</translate>

<translate>Newest properties and property proposals to review</translate>

• <translate>Newest properties:</translate>
  • <translate>General datatypes: </translate>
    • game designer (person(s) who devised and developed this game)
    • handwriting example (sample image of the person's handwriting)
    • objects of occurrence have role (role that objects of this occurrence take on in the context of this occurrence. (For selectional restrictions, use "object class of occurrence" (P12913) instead.))
    • agents of action have role (role that agents of this action take on in the context of this action. (For selectional restrictions, use "agent class of action" (P12994) instead. ))
    • agent class of action (class of items that may initiate this action or class of actions (For roles filled by agents of an action, use "agents of action have role" (P12993) instead))
    • agent of action (particular item that initiates this action or class of actions)
  • <translate>External identifiers: </translate>‎Altar of Gaming character ID, WikiYeshiva article ID, Yediot Books book ID, Mapcarta ID, VIRIN, cnkgraph person ID, Tabletopia game ID, cnkgraph book ID, cnkgraph poem ID, Lexikon der Mathematik entry ID, ‎CNES ID, ‎Tretyakov Gallery artist ID, ‎TV Maze character ID, Say Who ID, ‎Finnish Business ID, Prosocour person ID, Stadtwiki Karlsruhe ID, Athletics New Zealand athlete ID, Encyclopedia of Tunisian Women person ID, ‎LMFDB knowl ID, ACUM performer ID, ACUM creator/publisher ID, ACUM Work ID, ACUM album ID, culture.ru organization ID, ‎Hindustan Times topic ID, Newgrounds submission ID, Storia della civiltà europea ID, Encyclopedia of Brno History literature ID, Linked Open Vocabularies ID, ‎Ontobee ID, ‎typeset.io journal ID, NooSFere editorial collection ID, pomniky.npmk.cz ID, ‎Dictionary of guerrillas and anti-Franco resistance fighters ID, e-LIS publication ID, GameReactor company ID

<translate>* New property proposals to review:</translate> <translate>** General datatypes: </translate>

• • • Larval host plant (Larval host plant - used only for insects - subclass of P1034)
    • has reading (phonetic reading or pronunciation of the kanji)
    • chemical formula (Description of chemical compound giving element symbols and counts)
    • mode of reproduction (ways for living organisms to propagate or produce their offsprings)
    • health points (health or armor points of this video game, board game or role-playing game character)
    • damage (damage value of this video game weapon, ability or character)
    • magazine capacity (In (real or fictional) devices like a firearm, weapon, or engineered thing, this is the default capacity or size of a devices' magazine, clip, or other container typically used to hold ammunition, bolts, cartridges, tools, etc. which pushes those items as needed usually through a spring-based mechanism into a receiver for further use by the device)
    • male mean age (male mean age in a given place; qualifier of {{P|4442}})
    • female mean age (female mean age in a given place; qualifier of {{P|4442}})
    • Mummy of a person (mummy of a person)
    • publication type of scholarly article (Publication type of scholarly article)
    • characteristic of ((qualifier only) statement value is a characteristic, quality, property, or state of this item)
    • Medietilsynets filmdatabase (identifier for a film in the Norwegian Medietilsynets database)
    • Western Australian Biographical Index (Card ID from the Western Australian Biographical Index, a set of handwritten index cards compiled in the 1970s.)
    • leased to (person or organisation that holds or was granted a lease on the subject)
    • WPBSA com player ID (Identifier for an athlete on the main website of WPBSA)
    • JLPT level (difficulty of word by the level of JLPT)

<translate>** External identifiers:</translate> case id (mainland China), NWIS site ID, Biblioteka Nauki IDs, LWW journal ID, BioMed Central journal ID, Historical Encyclopedia of Siberia ID, FightTime fighters ID, Korean Basketball League ID, Identifiant L'Humanité d’un sujet, Chinese Basketball Association ID2, Koha Kütüphane ID, MyWaifuList character ID, FantLab artist ID, Münzkabinett, Latgales dati person ID, identifiant inventaire Grand Est, RedBA Granada authority ID, MetalTabs.com musician ID, HA! ID, Identifiant Radio France d'une émission, Identifiant France Télévisions d'une émission, beniabbandonati ID, DDB person ID, European Parliament document ID, Hlídač státu subject ID, Kramerius of Czech Digital Library UUID, Acervo de Literatura Digital Mato-Grossense ID, Persons and Names of the Middle Kingdom and early New Kingdom person ID, Cihai encyclopedia entry ID, Cihai dictionary entry ID, Duocet Wiki of Plants ID

<translate>You can comment on all open property proposals!</translate>

<translate>Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • Network of European Union Independent Fiscal Institutions
  • Opera singers who are sopranos with an article on English Wikipedia
• Newest WikiProjects:
• Newest database reports: Popular_items_without_claims
• Showcase Lexemes: هُئَڻُ L1126190 Sindhi verb (to be)</translate>

<translate>Development

• Search: The haswbstatement search magic word has been improved by the Search Platform Team. Previously it was limited in which Properties were indexed for it. Going forward haswbstatement:P123 will work for all Properties, regardless of their datatype. This will allow you to filter search results for Items that have a statement with a specific Property. (Searching for a specific complete statement with haswbstatement:P123=xxx will still only work for specific datatypes.) For this to work all Items have to be reindexed and this will take up to 1 month.
• Design system migration: We have migrated the Special:NewLexeme page from Wikit to Codex and are working on finishing the migration for the Query Builder.
• EntitySchemas: We finished the investigation about how to support search for EntitySchemas by label or alias when linking to an EntitySchema in a statement. (phab:T362005)
• Wikibase REST API: We worked on integrating language fallbacks into the API (phab:T371605)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.</translate>

<translate>Weekly Tasks

• Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
• Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
• Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
• Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
• Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
• Help write the next summary!</translate>

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Help translate · Previous issue · Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 19:03, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-40

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• Readers of 42 more wikis can now use Dark Mode. If the option is not yet available for logged-out users of your wiki, this is likely because many templates do not yet display well in Dark Mode. Please use the night-mode-checker tool if you are interested in helping to reduce the number of issues. The recommendations page provides guidance on this. Dark Mode is enabled on additional wikis once per month.
• Editors using the 2010 wikitext editor as their default can access features from the 2017 wikitext editor by adding ?veaction=editsource to the URL. If you would like to enable the 2017 wikitext editor as your default, it can be set in your preferences. [4]
• For logged-out readers using the Vector 2022 skin, the "donate" link has been moved from a collapsible menu next to the content area into a more prominent top menu, next to "Create an account". This restores the link to the level of prominence it had in the Vector 2010 skin. Learn more about the changes related to donor experiences. [5]
• The CampaignEvents extension provides tools for organizers to more easily manage events, communicate with participants, and promote their events on the wikis. The extension has been enabled on Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, and Meta-Wiki. Chinese Wikipedia has decided to enable the extension, and discussions on the extension are in progress on Spanish Wikipedia and on Wikidata. To learn how to enable the extension on your wiki, you can visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-Wiki.
• View all 22 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Developers with an account on Wikitech-wiki should check if any action is required for their accounts. The wiki is being changed to use the single-user-login (SUL) system, and other configuration changes. This change will help reduce the overall complexity for the weekly software updates across all our wikis.

In depth

• The server switch was completed successfully last week with a read-only time of only 2 minutes 46 seconds. This periodic process makes sure that engineers can switch data centers and keep all of the wikis available for readers, even if there are major technical issues. It also gives engineers a chance to do maintenance and upgrades on systems that normally run 24 hours a day, and often helps to reveal weaknesses in the infrastructure. The process involves dozens of software services and hundreds of hardware servers, and requires multiple teams working together. Work over the past few years has reduced the time from 17 minutes down to 2–3 minutes. [6]

Meetings and events

• October 4–6: WikiIndaba Conference's Hackathon in Johannesburg, South Africa
• November 4–6: MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 in Vienna, Austria

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 22:16, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2024).

Administrator changes

• Asilvering
• Significa liberdade

• Good Olfactory
• Hesperian
• I JethroBT
• TommyBoy
• Woody

CheckUser changes

• Barkeep49
• Izno

• Doug Weller
• Spicy

Guideline and policy news

• Administrator elections are a proposed new process for selecting administrators, offering an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA). The first trial election will take place in October 2024, with candidate sign-up from October 8 to 14, a discussion phase from October 22 to 24, and SecurePoll voting from October 25 to 31. For questions or to help out, please visit the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
• Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether there is a consensus to have an administrator recall process.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Historical elections has been closed.
• An arbitration case regarding Backlash to diversity and inclusion has been opened.
• Editors are invited to nominate themselves to serve on the 2024 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission until 23:59 October 8, 2024 (UTC).

Miscellaneous

• If you are interested in stopping spammers, please put MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist on your watchlist, and help out when you can.

---

• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:00, 2 October 2024 (UTC)