Sjoerddebruin
Wikidata weekly summary #687
bewerkenweek leading up to 2025-067-07. Missed the previous one? See issue #686.
Discussions
- New requests for permissions/Bot:
- Bovlbbot - Task(s): this bot request asks for admin access (or access to deleted revisions if possible) so it can move the updater task for User:Bovlb/wd-deleted.
- Andrebot 3 - Task(s): Fill in historic countries for the settlements, communes, towns and cities of Romania.
Events
- Upcoming events:
- New Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group project series! Mark your calendars for our final session of our event series on the Wikidata graph split project and SPARQL skills! We will be diving into the mechanics of federated SPARQL queries and look forward to a hands-on and interactive session exploring how to use the scholarly article query service. Join us Tuesday, July 8th at 9am PT/ 12pm ET/ 16:00 UTC / 6pm CEST (Time zone converter https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1751990400). Please see our project page for more information and Zoom links.
- Hackathon announced for Wikimania 2025, Nairobi. Call for Projects is now open! Includes a newcomer track for first-time participants. Add yourself to the participants list or see the resources page for further event info.
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
- Press
- Wikidata: Attempting to bridge FOSS ideals and direct democracy - by The Register, this article highlights examples of Wikidata serving and powering a growing ecosystem of FOSS projects, outside of Wikipedia.
- (Italian) WikiLib: Roman+Vatican Librarians compared on Wikidata -
- Blogs
- Preserving Indonesian GLAM Assets in Wikidata - This article documents how Indonesian users collaborated in preserving Indonesian GLAM assets by adding its metadata to Wikidata during 2025 GLAM Wiki Month organized by Wikimedia Indonesia.
- Papers
- Thesis
- The Dictionary of Italian contemporary pseudonym writers in Wikidata. Methodology and results: MA thesis (discussed on 29 May) regarding the systematic addition in Wikidata of all the nearly 500 Italian writers described in a biographical dictionary, with a first introductory part, a second part describing the editing methodology, including the authority work done both in Wikidata and in some major authority files (SBN, GND, IDREF) to disambiguate the main homonyms, and a third part analysing through SPARQL queries the data about these writers
- full thesis (in Italian) published in the University of Pisa thesis repository; work materials available in the Wikidata usersubpage of Sara De Monaco; slides (in Italian) used in the discussion available in Wikimedia Commons; related datasets available in Zenodo
- The Dictionary of Italian contemporary pseudonym writers in Wikidata. Methodology and results: MA thesis (discussed on 29 May) regarding the systematic addition in Wikidata of all the nearly 500 Italian writers described in a biographical dictionary, with a first introductory part, a second part describing the editing methodology, including the authority work done both in Wikidata and in some major authority files (SBN, GND, IDREF) to disambiguate the main homonyms, and a third part analysing through SPARQL queries the data about these writers
- Videos
- (mostly Italian, with some parts in English) Wikidata & Research International Conference (video of 5 June session) - held at the University of Florence 5-6 June 2025, the conference touched on role of Wikidata in academic research (cf. Wikidata and research]), building on past initiatives such as Wikidata Days Bologna 2024.
- (Portuguese) How to add Wikidata-powered Infoboxes to Wikipedia - a short tutorial video from the University of São Paolo Institute of Mathematics and Statistics.
Tool of the week
User:Kod B - ArchiveExternaLinks.js This script automatically archives external links found in the statements of Wikidata items, in order to improve source durability and reduce the risk of broken links (link rot), similar to what already exists on Wikipedia.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
- What belongs where in the Wikibase Ecosystem? There is ongoing research to better understand what people are currently thinking about this and you can take part by sorting some scenarios.
- How to properly cite a Newspaper article? Project Chat discussion.
Newest properties and property proposals to review
- Newest properties:
- General datatypes: none
- External identifiers: QUDT dimension ID, istina.msu.ru journal ID, Niedersächsische Personen ID, Submarine Cable Map ID
- New property proposals to review:
- General datatypes:
- MediaWiki page revision ID (ID for a MediaWiki wiki revision, Wikimedia projects should use {{P|7569}})
- applies if VIN matches regular expression (this statement is only true if the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) of a vehicle matches this regular expression)
- Cadastral areas (List of cadastral areas of municipality)
- settlement classification (settlement classification)
- Modern Shrine Ranking (Rank in the [[Q712534|Modern system of ranked Shinto Shrines]])
- Divine Rank (The [[Q11591025|Shinkai (divine rank)]] of a Shrine)
- Engishiki celebration category (Celebration category mentioned in the engishiki)
- Engishiki Rank (Rank of a shrine in the Engishiki Jinmyocho.)
- Honji Buddha (Buddha that this kami is identified with)
- Suijaku Kami (Kami that this Buddha is believed to have manifested as)
- identifiant Generation MSX d'une société ou d'un groupe de démo (company or demo group identifier in the Generation MSX database of MSX videogames)
- External identifiers: Knowledge Graph for Irish History ID, National Library of Uruguay book ID, Kokugakuin University Shrine Database ID, Observer tag, Observer contributor ID, Geoguessr ID
- General datatypes:
You can comment on all open property proposals!
Did you know?
- Query examples:
- Newest WikiProjects Postcards was created, including a list of project-specific Queries
- WikiProject Highlights:
- GovDirectory added a Type watchlist.
- WikiProject Taiwan added a Library List.
- Newest database reports: Abuse Filter effectiveness
- Showcase Items: Stefan Löfven (Q2740012) - Swedish politician, Prime Minister of Sweden between 2014–2021
- Showcase Lexemes: sterk (L453737) - Norwegian Bokmål adjective (stæʁk) meaning "strong", "intense", or "durable"
Development
- Wikibase REST API: We finished the Item prefix search (phab:T388209). It'll go live later when we are also done with the Property prefix search.
- Search: We are fixing a bug when pasting into the new search box (phab:T397608)
- Mobile statement editing: We are working on basic viewing of statements (phab:T394886) - nothing useful to see yet
- Dumps: There was an issue with the last dumps not being generated. The Data Platform SRE team is looking into it (phab:T398756)
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.
Weekly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
- Govdirectory weekly focus country: Austria
- 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!
Tech News: 2025-28
bewerkenLatest 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
- Temporary accounts have been rolled out on 18 large and medium-sized Wikipedias, including German, Japanese, French, and Chinese. Now, about 1/3 of all logged-out activity across wikis is coming from temporary accounts. Users involved in patrolling may be interested in two new documentation pages: Access to IP, explaining everything related to access to temporary account IP addresses, and Repository with a list of new gadgets and user scripts.
Updates for editors
- Anyone can play an experimental new game, WikiRun, that lets you race through Wikipedia by clicking from one article to another, aiming to reach a target page in as few steps and in as little time as possible. The project's goal is to explore new ways of engaging readers. Try playing the game and let the team know what you think on the talk page.
- Users of the Wikipedia Android app in some languages can now play the new trivia game. Which came first? is a simple history game where you guess which of two events happened earlier on today's date. It was previously available as an A/B test. It is now available to all users in English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Turkish, and Chinese. The goal of the feature is to help engage with new generations of readers. [1]
- Users of the iOS Wikipedia App in some languages may see a new tabbed browsing feature that enables you to open multiple tabs while reading. This feature makes it easier to explore related topics and switch between articles. The A/B test is currently running in Arabic, English, and Japanese in selected regions. More details are available on the Tabbed Browsing project page.
- Bureaucrats on Wikimedia wikis can now use Speciaal:VerifyOATHForUser to check if users have enabled two-factor authentication. [2]
- A new feature related to Template Recall and Discovery will be deployed later this week to all Wikimedia projects: a template category browser will be introduced to assist users in finding templates to put in their “favourite” list. The browser will allow users to browse a list of templates which have been organised into a given category tree. The feature has been requested by the community through the Community Wishlist.
- It is now possible to access watchlist preferences from the watchlist page. Also the redundant button to edit the watchlist has been removed. [3]
- View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- As part of MediaWiki 1.44 there is now a unified built-in Notifications system that makes it easier for developers to send, manage, and customize notifications. Check out the updated documentation at Manual:Notifications, information about migration in T388663 and details on deprecated hooks in T389624.
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- WikidataCon 2025, the conference dedicated to Wikidata is now open for session proposals and for registration. This year's event will be held online from October 31 – November 02 and will explore on the theme of "Connecting People through Linked Open Data".
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Wikidata weekly summary #688
bewerkenweek leading up to 2025-07-14. Missed the previous one? See issue #687.
Discussions
Events
- Upcoming events:
- The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 16:00 UTC, 16th July 2025 (18:00 Berlin time) in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
- Submit Your Program Proposal for WikiIndaba 2025 by 20th July. Apply for a scholarship to attend the event here.
- Wikimania 2025 Hackathon kicks off on Tuesday, 5 August and a dedicated workspace will be available throughout the conference until Saturday, 9 August. Have a technical idea, tool, or project you want to build during the hackathon? Submit it now and start connecting with collaborators! Add your project here.
- WikiCite 2025 will take place from Friday 29th to Sunday 31st of August! in Bern (Switzerland) and online! See the draft program here.
- 2025 LD4 Conference: Linked Data in the Real World (website; schedule and registration; streaming on Youtube), 28th-30th July 2025, virtually on Zoom; many Wikidata-related sessions:
- July 28, 2025 1:30pm - 2:30pm EDT - Has This Been Done Before? Exploring Wikidata Projects Through Diff and TMIG Archives by Silvia Gutierrez (workshop)
- July 29, 2025 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT - Wikidata Affinity Group: Introduction to Wikidata for Entity Management by Alex Jung, Kyla Jemison, Susan Radovsky (cf. d:Wikidata:WikiProject LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group)
- July 29, 2025 3:15pm - 3:45pm EDT - Scholarly profiling in Wikidata: Creating a knowledge graph for the SEEKCommons open science research network by Dorothy Howard
- July 29, 2025 3:45pm - 3:55pm EDT - From Biographical Dictionary to Linked Data by Sara De Monaco (cf. d:User:SaraDeMonaco/Tesi magistrale and d:Q135208119)
- July 29, 2025 3:55pm - 4:05pm EDT - LCCNbot one year on: an update by Mary Muratsubaki Campany (cf. d:User:LccnBot)
- July 29, 2025 4:05pm - 4:15pm EDT - Supporting access to CD-ROMs while using and contributing to Wikidata by Claire Fox
- July 29, 2025 4:15pm - 4:25pm EDT - Surfacing Sociotechnical Research with Wikidata by Kathleen Burlingame
- July 29, 2025 4:25pm - 4:35pm EDT - Wikidata Workflows with ORCID and OpenRefine: A Binghamton University Case Study by Sasha Frizzell
- July 30, 2025 2:45pm - 4:45pm EDT - WiLES: Wikidata Lexicographical Event Semantics modeling for natural languages by Humza Yaqoob, Mahir Morshed (workshop)
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
- Blogs
- Scaling the Knowledge Graph Behind Wikipedia By Alex Woodie
- The power and potential of Wikidata for botany (see paper below) By Heidi Meudt
- Papers
- Wikidata for botanists: benefits of collaborating and sharing Linked Open Data By Sabine et al., (2025). This study explores Wikidata as an open, multilingual knowledge base that connects botanical data across sources, and urges botanists to collaboratively enrich its content to support a broad spectrum of plant science.
- Videos
- Wikidata labels and descriptions By Moore Wikimedia Community
- Wikidata Lablar Description Stockholm Archipelago trail By Magnus Sälgö
- Presentations
- How To...Wikibase? - Senior Partner Manager, Christos Varvantakis has produced this set of training and educational material to get you started with Wikibase.
Tool of the week
- Commons Depictions is a tool that display depictions of Wikidata items on Wikimedia Commons
Newest properties and property proposals to review
- New General datatypes
- official donation page URL (official URL for making donations to the subject)
- image of cosplay (cosplay that depicts this character or person)
- worn on (part of the body where an item of clothing, equipment, or jewelry is worn)
- warranty period (warranty period of this product as covered by the original manufacturer or creator)
- matricule number (identifier for a football club affiliated with the Royal Belgian Football Association)
- New External identifiers: CABR-identifier, Nederlands Film Festival person ID, The Sun topic ID, IMDb interest ID
- New General datatypes property proposals to review:
- Cyclocross24 rider ID (identifier for a cyclo-cross cyclist in the Cyclocross24 database)
- Polyhedron net (A net of attached 2D polygon created for each polyhedron)
- Kanpei or Kokuhei ()
- file name (name used for this entity in a computer file system)
- Anthologia Graeca author (Author number in the Anthologia Graeca Project, an online annotated edition of the [[w:Greek Anthology]])
- langue locale dominante ()
- New External identifier property proposals to review: accomplice, CCCA ID, Cover Art Archive image, Athletics Podium person ID, CESAR title ID, GaultMillau-idenficatiecode Nederland, eFloraMEX ID, BORIS Unibe author ID, EDBO institution code, OSHWA Identifier, identifiant Personnel de l'administration préfectorale depuis 1945, identifiant Personnel de l'administration préfectorale au 19e siècle, The Traditional Ballad Index file name, ID edizioni CoBiS LOD, SIK-ISEA person ID, SIK-ISEA group ID, SIK-ISEA institution ID, SIK-ISEA work ID, SIK-ISEA document ID, speedrun.com level ID, Polski Petersburg encyclopedia ID (Polish version), Polski Petersburg encyclopedia ID (Russian version), Mizuumi Wiki article ID
You can comment on all open property proposals!
Did you know?
- Query examples:
- Top album languages found on Wikidata right now source
- The names of the characters from Asterix & Obélix, in French, English, German, Latin and some other languages (source)
- Map the global distribution of periodicals in publication languages from the Eastern Mediterranean (Arabic, Ottoman, Greek, Ladino, Coptic etc) (source)
- Showcase Items: Das Erste (Q49727) - German public-service television channel
- Showcase Lexemes: reference (L5785) - English noun/verb (ˈɹɛf.ɹəns) meaning "source citation", "supporting document", or "relationship"
Development
- Wikibase REST API: We started work on the simple Property prefix search phab:(T397838)
- Mobile statement editing: We continued the work on the basics with viewing of statements (phab:T394886])
- Search: Fixed a bug when pasting into the search box (phab:T397608)
- Integration in Wikipedia and co:
- We began research into current limits for collapsing entity usage. (Basically when an article uses more data from an Item than the configured limit then we consider all data on that Item to be used. This is done for infrastructure reasons.) We’d like to improve this to further reduce unnecessary Wikidata changes showing up on watchlist and recent changes on Wikipedia and co.
- We will roll out showing labels instead of IDs in Wikidata edits in watchlist and recent changes to more wikis later this week.
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.
Weekly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
- Govdirectory weekly focus country: Chile
- 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!
Tech News: 2025-29
bewerkenLatest 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
- Featured templates, a new feature related to Template Recall and Discovery will be deployed this week to all Wikimedia projects: With this feature, editors will be able to quickly access a list of templates that are likely to be useful. These templates will be displayed in a list, under the "featured" tab of the template discovery interface. Administrators can define the list via the Community Configuration interface. The feature fulfills a request by the community through the Community Wishlist. [4][5]
- View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the request to add Malayalam fonts in the Wikisource Book Export Tool was resolved and now, the rendering of Malayalam letters in exported Wikisource books are accurate. [6]
Updates for technical contributors
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
In depth
- Developers, designers, and all Wikimedians are invited to submit a project idea for the Wikimania Hackathon 2025. Read this Diff blog post for more details.
Meetings and events
- WikiIndaba 2025 scholarship application and program submission is open until 23:59 GMT on July 20. WikiIndaba is a regional conference for African Wikimedians both on the continent and in the diaspora to unite and grow together. Submit your scholarship application and program proposal now!
- WikiCon Brasil 2025 will take place on July 19-20 in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The Brazilian community members are encouraged to register and attend!
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.