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Note:
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The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 17:00 UTC, 15th January 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.
Join the Wikidata Training Event 2025 organised by Wikimedia Botswana UG for Wikidata enthusiasts of all levels. Starts 18 Jan 10:00am CAT (UTC+2), registration required.
Wikidata module for the Hidden Figures CURE - The newly published Wikidata module for the Hidden Figures CURE teaches undergraduates to use Wikidata for uncovering and highlighting the contributions of hidden figures in natural history, such as women, people of color, and Indigenous peoples.
Memory of the World: Ways forward - Efforts to improve the representation of UNESCO's Memory of the World (MOW) international register on Wikidata include new articles, enhanced data quality, and training on creating structured data. Key contributions involve updating Wikipedia and Wikidata entries, addressing data inconsistencies, and expanding the visibility of MOW inscriptions across languages.
Public domain visibility on Wikidata (in Catalan). The article discusses how Wikidata is being used to enhance the visibility of public domain works by integrating copyright information and making it easily accessible.
Presentations: Wikibase e Wikidata per lo studio dell'epigrafia greca (in Italian, i.e. Wikibase and Wikidata for the study of Greek epigraphy), presentation at SAEG (Advanced Seminar of Greek Epigraphy) IX in Rome, 10 January 2025, by Pietro Ortimini, Anna Clara Maniero Azzolini, Epìdosis - slides
Tool of the week
Dungeon Of Knowledge - is a roguelike game with Items generated from Wikidata that lets you crawl through the Dungeon of Knowledge in a classic ASCII interface. (toot) (blog)
VIAF (cf. Q54919 and P214) underwent a relevant change of interface on January 10; the way of visualizing clusters in JSON format has changed in comparison with present OCLC documentation and e.g. http://viaf.org/viaf/102333412/viaf.json doesn't work anymore; this broke most or all Wikidata gadgets using VIAF data; in the absence of official communications from OCLC, developers are trying to understand if the new VIAF interface is stable before changing their gadgets accordingly
New General datatypes property proposals to review:
About box (Screenshot of the About Box of the respective software (contains important information such as authors, license, version number and year(s) and is included in almost every software))
nomenclatural type of (taxon item of which this item is the taxonomic type (name-bearing type), e.g. the family for which this genus is the type, the genus for which this species is the type, the taxon for which this type specimen is the type, ect...)
World Heritage type (Propriety of World heritage site : the Type (Cultural, Natural, Mixed))
Entry height (Height of the entrance above ground level for boarding public transport vehicles.)
location code (the location code of the location item. Should be used with qualifier property {{Q|P459}} to specify which location code system being used.)
DIF historia player ID (Identifier for a sportsperson connected to Djurgårdens IF on difhistoria.se (official site))
Latest comment: 28 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
The Single User Login system is being updated over the next few months. This is the system which allows users to fill out the login form on one Wikimedia site and get logged in on all others at the same time. It needs to be updated because of the ways that browsers are increasingly restricting cross-domain cookies. To accommodate these restrictions, login and account creation pages will move to a central domain, but it will still appear to the user as if they are on the originating wiki. The updated code will be enabled this week for users on test wikis. This change is planned to roll out to all users during February and March. See the SUL3 project page for more details and a timeline.
Updates for editors
On wikis with PageAssessments installed, you can now filter search results to pages in a given WikiProject by using the inproject: keyword. (These wikis: Arabic Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage, French Wikipedia, Hungarian Wikipedia, Nepali Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia) [1]
One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Tigre (w:tig:) [2]
View all 35 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a bug with updating a user's edit-count after making a rollback edit, which is now fixed. [3]
Updates for technical contributors
Wikimedia REST API users, such as bot operators and tool maintainers, may be affected by ongoing upgrades. Starting the week of January 13, we will begin rerouting some page content endpoints from RESTbase to the newer MediaWiki REST API endpoints for all wiki projects. This change was previously available on testwiki and should not affect existing functionality, but active users of the impacted endpoints may raise issues directly to the MediaWiki Interfaces Team in Phabricator if they arise.
Toolforge tool maintainers can now share their feedback on Toolforge UI, an initiative to provide a web platform that allows creating and managing Toolforge tools through a graphic interface, in addition to existing command-line workflows. This project aims to streamline active maintainers’ tasks, as well as make registration and deployment processes more accessible for new tool creators. The initiative is still at a very early stage, and the Cloud Services team is in the process of collecting feedback from the Toolforge community to help shape the solution to their needs. Read more and share your thoughts about Toolforge UI.
For tool and library developers who use the OAuth system: The identity endpoint used for OAuth 1 and OAuth 2 returned a JSON object with an integer in its sub field, which was incorrect (the field must always be a string). This has been fixed; the fix will be deployed to Wikimedia wikis on the week of January 13. [4]
Many wikis currently use Cite CSS to render custom footnote markers in Parsoid output. Starting January 20 these rules will be disabled, but the developers ask you to not clean up your MediaWiki:Common.css until February 20 to avoid issues during the migration. Your wikis might experience some small changes to footnote markers in Visual Editor and when using experimental Parsoid read mode, but if there are changes these are expected to bring the rendering in line with the legacy parser output. [5]
Edit-A-Thon for Black History Month: 12 February 1300 - 1500 MST (UTC+7) is an onsite event at the University of Colorado Boulder, with a theme to add or expand items on Black and African-American comics creators.
Data Reuse Days 2025 is from February 18 to 27, 2025! This is an online event focusing on how people and organizations use Wikidata's data to build interesting applications and tools. Don't forget to register so we can know you are coming.
Past: Missed the Q1 Wikidata+Wikibase office hour? You can catch up by reading the session log here: 2025-01-15 (Q1 2025)
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
Blogs: Cleaning up legacy Wikipedia links in Open Library: The blog post discusses cleaning up outdated Wikipedia links to improve article accuracy and navigation, while highlighting the importance of integrating Wikidata for better data management.
Tracking Looted Art with Wikidata Queries - As part of Art History Loves Wiki 25, Laurel Zuckerman will show how Wikidata SPARQL queries can aid provenance researchers and historians find, identify and track looted art.
OpenStreetMap and Wikidata in Disaster Times: Ormat Murat Yilmaz will speak on how Wikidata and OSM play a role in coordinating relief efforts by providing a collaborative platform for providing data about affected areas. Part of WM CEE meeting 2024 Istanbul.
Serbian Novels on Wikidata: Presented by Filip Maljkovič on the progress and process of adding Serbian literature into Wikidata, using OCR methods to map pages and assign Properties.
(german)Wikidata for NGOs: Use and network open data sensibly: Johan Hoelderle discusses how nonprofits can benefit from the largest free knowledge base and show what potential open data offers for non-profit projects.
Data partnerships and Libraries combating misinformation: WMDE's Alan Ang delivers a speech on how GLAM institutions can help prevent the spread of dis- and misinformation whether hallucinatory AI or malicious, part of the Wikimedia+Libraries International Convention 2025.
Product Manager: Wikibase Suite: Wikimedia Deutschland is looking for a PM to lead Wikibase Suite, empowering institutions like GLAMs and research groups to build customizable linked knowledge bases and contribute to the world’s largest open data graph.
New General datatypes property proposals to review:
About box (Screenshot of the About Box of the respective software (contains important information such as authors, license, version number and year(s) and is included in almost every software))
nomenclatural type of (taxon item of which this item is the taxonomic type (name-bearing type), e.g. the family for which this genus is the type, the genus for which this species is the type, the taxon for which this type specimen is the type, ect...)
World Heritage type (Propriety of World heritage site : the Type (Cultural, Natural, Mixed))
location code (the location code of the location item. Should be used with qualifier property {{Q|P459}} to specify which location code system being used.)
DIF historia player ID (Identifier for a sportsperson connected to Djurgårdens IF on difhistoria.se (official site))
We’re making good progress on checking format constraints more efficiently and with fewer errors (T380751)
We’re working on making distinct-values constraint checks works with the split Query Service (T369079)
EntitySchemas: We’re working on making the heading on EntitySchema pages apply language fallback (T228423)
Search: We’ve started working on the new search UI component which will let you search for additional entity types from the main search bar and not just Items anymore (T338483)
Wikibase REST API: We're working on adding search to the API (T383209)
Latest comment: 21 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
Administrators can mass-delete multiple pages created by a user or IP address using Extension:Nuke. It previously only allowed deletion of pages created in the last 30 days. It can now delete pages from the last 90 days, provided it is targeting a specific user or IP address. [6]
On wikis that use the Patrolled edits feature, when the rollback feature is used to revert an unpatrolled page revision, that revision will now be marked as "manually patrolled" instead of "autopatrolled", which is more accurate. Some editors that use filters on Recent Changes may need to update their filter settings. [7]
View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the Visual Editor's "Insert link" feature did not always suggest existing pages properly when an editor started typing, which has now been fixed.
Updates for technical contributors
The Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow) is being progressively removed from the wikis. This extension is unmaintained and causes issues. It will be replaced by DiscussionTools, which is used on any regular talk page. The last group of wikis (Catalan Wikiquote, Wikimedia Finland, Goan Konkani Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikibooks, Wikimedia Sweden) will soon be contacted. If you have questions about this process, please ping Trizek (WMF) at your wiki. [8]
The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: updates about services from the Data Platform Engineering teams, information about Codex from the Design System team, and more.
Latest comment: 15 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue in December 2024. Please help translate.
Upcoming and current events and conversations Let's Talk continues
Ideas for Wikipedia @ 25 needed
Conversation with the trustees: Speak directly with the Wikimedia Foundation trustees about their work at the next Conversation with the Trustees on January 30 at 14:30 UTC.
Community Resilience and Sustainability: Join the conversation hour which will discuss Trust and Safety, the Universal Code of Conduct, Committee Support, and Human Rights on January 30 at 20:00 UTC.
Wikipedia is turning 25: We just celebrated Wikipedia's 24th birthday, and are already planning for next year's big milestone! Share your thoughts on what you have in mind to mark the silver jubilee of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia App: iOS App users worldwide can now access a personalized Year in Review feature, providing insights based on their reading and editing history on Wikipedia.
Tech News: The CampaignEvents extension offers organizers features like event registration management directly on-wiki; The Single User Login system is being updated over the next few months; Administrators can mass-delete multiple pages created by a user or IP address using Extension:Nuke. More updates from tech news Dec 16, Jan 13, and Jan 21.
Resource Support Pilot: Join the discussion about shaping a pilot project on the English Wikipedia that would fund small resource requests (like books) to support editors in improving content.
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
Call for Proposals: IslandoraCon 2025. "IslandoraCon brings together a community of librarians, archivists, cultural heritage collections managers, technologists, developers, project managers, and open source project enthusiasts in support of the Islandora framework for digital curation and asset management." Deadline for session proposals: February 14, 2024.
PhotoNearby.js - a user script that checks Wikimedia Commons for a nearby photo if no image (P18) statement and has coordinate location (P625). Displays above the Statements heading. Defaults to a 500 meter radius. Displays a link to WikiShootMe.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
As part of an effort to benchmark open source SPARQL engines on Wikidata, the page Wikidata:Scaling Wikidata/Benchmarking/Existing Benchmarks contains some initial results and analyses of benchmarking Blazegraph, MilleniumDB, QLever, and Virtuoso on several existing SPARQL query benchmarks for Wikidata. There are some surprising results there, particularly related to different answers produced by different engines. Suggestions on how to improve the effort or provide deeper explanations of the results are particularly welcome on the discussion page.
New General datatypes property proposals to review:
nomenclatural type of (taxon item of which this item is the taxonomic type (name-bearing type), e.g. the family for which this genus is the type, the genus for which this species is the type, the taxon for which this type specimen is the type, ect...)
World Heritage type (Propriety of World heritage site : the Type (Cultural, Natural, Mixed))
location code (the location code of the location item. Should be used with qualifier property {{Q|P459}} to specify which location code system being used.)
DIF historia player ID (Identifier for a sportsperson connected to Djurgårdens IF on difhistoria.se (official site))
Newest WikiProjects: No Longer at the Margins - aims to highlight and document the contributions of women in science, ensuring their visibility and recognition in the historical and archival record by addressing biases and gaps in representation.
Storage growth: We are making some changes to the terms-related database table in order to scale better (phab:T351802)
Constraint violations: We’re working on making distinct-values constraint checks works with the split Query Service (phab:T369079)
EntitySchemas: We’re working on making the heading on EntitySchema pages apply language fallback (phab:T228423)
Search: We are working on the new search UI component which will let you search for additional entity types from the main search bar and not just Items anymore (phab:T338483)
Wikibase REST API: We're continuing the work on adding search to the API (phab:T383209)
Lua: We are investigating if we can increase the Entity Usage Limit on client pages (phab:T381098)
Latest comment: 14 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
Patrollers and admins - what information or context about edits or users could help you to make patroller or admin decisions more quickly or easily? The Wikimedia Foundation wants to hear from you to help guide its upcoming annual plan. Please consider sharing your thoughts on this and 13 other questions to shape the technical direction for next year.
Updates for editors
iOS Wikipedia App users worldwide can now access a personalized Year in Review feature, which provides insights based on their reading and editing history on Wikipedia. This project is part of a broader effort to help welcome new readers as they discover and interact with encyclopedic content.
Edit patrollers now have a new feature available that can highlight potentially problematic new pages. When a page is created with the same title as a page which was previously deleted, a tag ('Recreated') will now be added, which users can filter for in Special:RecentChanges and Special:NewPages. [9]
Later this week, there will be a new warning for editors if they attempt to create a redirect that links to another redirect (a double redirect). The feature will recommend that they link directly to the second redirect's target page. Thanks to the user SomeRandomDeveloper for this improvement. [10]
Wikimedia wikis allow WebAuthn-based second factor checks (such as hardware tokens) during login, but the feature is fragile and has very few users. The MediaWiki Platform team is temporarily disabling adding new WebAuthn keys, to avoid interfering with the rollout of SUL3 (single user login version 3). Existing keys are unaffected. [11]
For developers that use the MediaWiki History dumps: The Data Platform Engineering team has added a couple of new fields to these dumps, to support the Temporary Accounts initiative. If you maintain software that reads those dumps, please review your code and the updated documentation, since the order of the fields in the row will change. There will also be one field rename: in the mediawiki_user_history dump, the anonymous field will be renamed to is_anonymous. The changes will take effect with the next release of the dumps in February. [12]
We are excited to reveal WikidataCon 2025 will be returning this year, keep an eye on the project page for more details to come, and block your calendar for October 31 - November 2.
New Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group project series! The next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group project series session on Tuesday, 4 February, 2025 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET Time Zone Converter Eric Willey will be facilitating a series of four sessions focused on starting a Wikidata project from the foundation up at your institution. The first session will focus on selling your project to administrators.
Wikidata Indonesia is holding a Datathon (February 5 - 7) and Quiz (January 31 - February 7), take part!
Data Reuse Days, February 18-27: online event dedicated to the applications using Wikidata's data and their technical setup. A first version of the program is now available. Make sure to register to receive the event's access links.
Why Wikidata? and edit-a-thon hosted by Illinois State University on February 4, 1400 - 1600 CST (UTC-6). Eric Willey and Rebecca Fitzsimmons will hold a hands-on demonstration of Wikidata, at the Milner Library, ISU (Room 165).
Past Events
Wikidata Workshop Jan 2025 - Hosted by Wikimedia Canada, this workshop offered 2 sessions for English and French-speaking attendees. Subjects covered include the basics of Wikidata, intro to editing, linking photos to Commons and how to query Wikidata. The workshop took place 30 January 01:00 - 03:00 UTC.
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
Blogs
Bob duCharme, author of Learning SPARQL posts a blog entry on filtering (only) foreign labels from a SPARQL query, using the WDQS to illustrate their example.
Towards a Sustainable Community-Driven Documentation of Semantic Web Tools A Wikidata-based toolkit to help knowledge engineers and developers find and document semantic web tools by categorizing them into a taxonomy and integrating GitHub metadata to track their maintenance status. By A. Reiz, F.J. Ekaputra & N. Mihindukulasooriya (2025).
(arabic)OpenRefine and QuickStatements - In this 2nd session of the Arabic Wikidata Days 2024, advanced skills of OR such as improving and importing tabular data. QS will also be demonstrated and how it simplifies adding and editing Wikidata. Presented by Professor Qais Shraideh.
Resource, Description & Access & STA - Michaela Edelmann introduces the cataloging platform that runs on Wikibase for the German-speaking DACH countries.
New developments of Wikibase-as-a-Service at the Open Science Lab (part of NFDI4Culture). Presented at Art Loves History Wiki Conference, it shows developments to the WB software suite.
Tool of the week
Holonet Galactic Map - Explore information and facts of the planets that inhabit the Star Wars universe, powered by Wikidata.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
⚠️ Wikidata Query Service graph split: The graph split is about 2 months away. If you are doing queries that involve scholarly articles or if you have an application that does you will be affected. Please check d:Wikidata:SPARQL query service/WDQS graph split for details.
We (Peter F. Patel-Schneider and Egezort) want to run a course on the Wikidata Ontology for a limited number of participants. Designed for those already familiar with Wikidata, it will present information about ontologies and how they form the core of Wikidata, incorporating several exercises on analyses of and fixes to the Wikidata ontology. Upon successful completion (ending with a group project in consultation by us), participants will receive certificates. Please give feedback and suggestions to improve the structure and course content (found in more detail at WikiProject:Ontology Course) which will be incorporated into our Wikimedia rapid grant application to support the effort. Interested in helping or want to share your thoughts? Let us know.
Several database changes will impact Wikidata in the coming months, including the migration of the term store (wbt_ tables) to a dedicated cluster to improve performance and enable future growth. This move will speed up most Wikidata SQL queries but prevent direct joins between term store data and other Wikidata tables. Additionally, the wb_type table will be removed, with its mapping hardcoded in Wikibase, simplifying the codebase. More details.
Call for projects and mentors for Google Summer of Code 2025! Deadline: February 28th. More info!
nomenclatural type of (taxon item of which this item is the taxonomic type (name-bearing type), e.g. the family for which this genus is the type, the genus for which this species is the type, the taxon for which this type specimen is the type, ect...)
World Heritage type (Propriety of World heritage site : the Type (Cultural, Natural, Mixed))
location code (the location code of the location item. Should either be used with qualifier property {{Q|P459}} to specify which location code system being used, or be used as the qualifier of {{P|31}}.)
DIF historia player ID (Identifier for a sportsperson connected to Djurgårdens IF on difhistoria.se (official site))
directs readers to (document or class of documents to which this item or class directs readers (aliases: is citation of {{!}} links to {{!}} refers to {{!}} target))
items classified (class of items that this classification system classifies (aliases: items categorized {{!}} classifies {{!}} categorizes))
WikiProject: Ontology Course - as mentioned above, this WikiProject plans to be a certified course to teahc participants about proper Wikidata ontologies.
Storage growth: We are continuing to make some changes to the terms-related database table in order to scale better (phab:T351802)
Wikibase REST API: We are continuing to work on bringing search to the REST API (phab:T383126)
mul language code: Support for the language code has been rolled out fully
EntitySchemas: We finished adding language fallback to the heading of EntitySchema pages (phab:T228423)
Sitelinks: Fixed a bug that prevented linking Wikidata Items from Wikipedias (phab:T385261)
Scoped search: We continued working on improving the main search field on Wikidata in order to allow you to search for Properties, Lexemes, etc more easily with it (phab:T321543)
Latest comment: 7 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
Editors who use the "Special characters" editing-toolbar menu can now see the 32 special characters you have used most recently, across editing sessions on that wiki. This change should help make it easier to find the characters you use most often. The feature is in both the 2010 wikitext editor and VisualEditor. [13]
Editors using the 2010 wikitext editor can now create sublists with correct indentation by selecting the line(s) you want to indent and then clicking the toolbar buttons.[14] You can now also insert <code> tags using a new toolbar button.[15] Thanks to user stjn for these improvements.
Help is needed to ensure the citation generator works properly on each wiki.
(1) Administrators should update the local versions of the page MediaWiki:Citoid-template-type-map.json to include entries for preprint, standard, and dataset; Here are example diffs to replicate for 'preprint' and for 'standard' and 'dataset'.
(2.1) If the citoid map in the citation template used for these types of references is missing, one will need to be added. (2.2) If the citoid map does exist, the TemplateData will need to be updated to include new field names. Here are example updates for 'preprint' and for 'standard' and 'dataset'. The new fields that may need to be supported are archiveID, identifier, repository, organization, repositoryLocation, committee, and versionNumber. [16]
Germany report: Exploring Wikidata & Building Community for Cultural Heritage Professionals
Indonesia report: Celebrating Public Domain Day 2025 in Indonesia
Italy report: New Wikimedia Italia Grant for GLAMs
Netherlands report: 3 Million Dutch Cultural Heritage Images in Commons & 400,000 RCE images now in higher resolution & Usage of DBNL in Dutch Wikipedia articles
Latest comment: 1 day ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the week leading up to 2025-02-10. Missed the previous one? See issue #665
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
TiagoLubianaBot 5 - Task(s): Add image or reference illustration based on categories for botanical illustrations on Wikimedia Commons. Only add when only 1 or 2 files in category.
Closed request for permissions/Bot: MangadexBot - Task(s): add metadata from mangadex to manga with Mangadex manga ID - closed as relevant Property has been deprecated and marked for deletion.
Whose (Wiki)Data is it anyway? - Ethics & Consent when cataloguing people, places and things. An on-site Library workshop of the Toronto Metropolitan University, February 12, 1200 - 1600 EST (UTC-5).
Comics Edit-A-Thon for Black History month, hosted by the Center for Research Data and Digital Scholarship of the University of Colorado (onsite only & registration required). February 12, 1300 - 1500 MST (UTC-7).
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
Blogs
Making SPARQL more accessible: Daniel Motz's bachelor's thesis on visual query graphs, check out their project in Tool of the Week
Preserving Community History with Wikibase - Tan Li Qi of MyCommunity, a Singaporean nonprofit dedicated to preserving the stories of everyday people by documenting community narratives, social memories, and local heritage.
Query by Graph - build a SPARQL query using drag'n'drop visual elements. This is an interesting tool that provides another way to approach building SPARQL queries, especially for those that find the Query builder or raw SPARQL unintuitive or complex.
CivData - "Cividata makes the diverse world of non-profit organizations visible. As a volunteer project, Cividata provides a comprehensive overview of non-profit organizations worldwide, based on data from Wikipedia's sister project Wikidata."
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Creation of the interim Global Resource Distribution Committee - Call for candidates ends February 25, midnight (AOE). The interim GDRC is being established to oversee and adjust resource distribution for the Community Fund, aligning with the movement's evolving needs. Currently open to applications from candidates with experience in grantmaking, budgeting and knowledge of Wikimedia's grant types. Further information on the role and how to apply can be found on the GDRC Meta page
Curationist seeks Digital Archivist - Curationist, a free online resource for cultural heritage seeks a part-time archiver who can navigate Wikidata, SPARQL and create metadata and support writers.
romantic orientation (pattern of romantic attraction of this person or fictional character — use ONLY IF they have stated it themselves, unambiguously, or it has been widely agreed upon by historians after their death)
location code (the location code of the location (please use more specific property if available))
directs readers to (document or class of documents to which this item or class directs readers)
nomenclatural type of (taxon item of which this item is the taxonomic type (name-bearing type), e.g. the family for which this genus is the type, the genus for which this species is the type, the taxon for which this type specimen is the type, ect...)
Future Audiences: Watch the recording for lessons from the short video experiments. A new Discord bot experiment as a way to interact with Wikipedia, the Future Audiences Discord server and future plans for experiments around how to use gamification.
Tech News: Editors who use the “Special characters” editing-toolbar menu can now see the 32 special characters you have used most recently, across editing sessions on that wiki; The Data Platform Engineering team has added a couple of new fields to MediaWiki History dumps to support the Temporary Accounts initiative. More updates from tech news week 05 and 06.
Product & Tech Advisory Council: The council looked at data, needs and trends to make a recommendation for the Foundation's annual plan. They recommended that improving mobile contribution experiences has the greatest potential to bring in new and unheard voices onto Wikipedia and sister projects, and improve the experience of readers and contributors most widely. They are requesting feedback and discussion.
Structured Tasks: The "Add an Image" structured task is being tested on a representative sample of Wikipedias which allows users to add an image and an appropriate caption to a Wikipedia article.
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
Latest comment: 21 hours ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
The Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) has published a draft of their recommendations for the Wikimedia Foundation's Product and Technology department. They have recommended focusing on mobile experiences, particularly contributions. They request community feedback at the talk page by 21 February.
Updates for editors
The "Special pages" portlet link will be moved from the "Toolbox" into the "Navigation" section of the main menu's sidebar by default. This change is because the Toolbox is intended for tools relating to the current page, not tools relating to the site, so the link will be more logically and consistently located. To modify this behavior and update CSS styling, administrators can follow the instructions at T385346. [19]
As part of this year's work around improving the ways readers discover content on the wikis, the Web team will be running an experiment with a small number of readers that displays some suggestions for related or interesting articles within the search bar. Please check out the project page for more information.
View all 22 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the global blocks log will now be shown directly on the Special:CentralAuth page, similarly to global locks, to simplify the workflows for stewards. [21]
Updates for technical contributors
Wikidata now supports a special language as a "default for all languages" for labels and aliases. This is to avoid excessive duplication of the same information across many languages. If your Wikidata queries use labels, you may need to update them as some existing labels are getting removed. [22]
The function getDescription was invoked on every Wiki page read and accounts for ~2.5% of a page's total load time. The calculated value will now be cached, reducing load on Wikimedia servers. [23]
As part of the RESTBase deprecation effort, the /page/related endpoint has been blocked as of February 6, 2025, and will be removed soon. This timeline was chosen to align with the deprecation schedules for older Android and iOS versions. The stable alternative is the "morelike" action API in MediaWiki, and a migration example is available. The MediaWiki Interfaces team can be contacted for any questions. [24]
In depth
The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: Updates about the "Contribute" menu; details on some of the newest language editions of Wikipedia; details on new languages supported by the MediaWiki interface; updates on the Community-defined lists feature; and more.
The latest Chart Project newsletter is available. It includes updates on the progress towards bringing better visibility into global charts usage and support for categorizing pages in the Data namespace on Commons.
View all 35 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a bug with updating a user's edit-count after making a rollback edit, which is now fixed. [3]
Wikimedia REST API users, such as bot operators and tool maintainers, may be affected by ongoing upgrades. Starting the week of January 13, we will begin rerouting some page content endpoints from RESTbase to the newer MediaWiki REST API endpoints for all wiki projects. This change was previously available on testwiki and should not affect existing functionality, but active users of the impacted endpoints may raise issues directly to the MediaWiki Interfaces Team in Phabricator if they arise.
wikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
Edit patrollers now have a new feature available that can highlight potentially problematic new pages. When a page is created with the same title as a page which was previously deleted, a tag ('Recreated') will now be added, which users can filter for in Special:RecentChanges and Special:NewPages. [9]
