Discussions

• New request for comments: Constraints for Germanies - Following from a property discussion on P17 (German non-states), this RfC aims to find consensus on how to apply constraints that exclude items of historical periods in German history.

Upcoming events

• Workshop: Lexicography and linguistic sustainability - Mirandese documentation using Wikidata This Portuguese-language workshop takes place Thursday 16 January, 10:00 - 17:00, Room 208, 206 at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto.
• Please submit your proposals for the Data Reuse Days online event until January 12th. See current proposals on the talk page and here's some ideas to inspire you: presentations/demos of tools using Wikidata's data (10mins Lightning Talk presentations), discussions and presentations connecting Wikidata editors with reusers and/or explanations and demos on how to use a specific part of the technical infrastructure to reuse Wikidata's data (APIs, dumps, etc.).
• Talk to the Search Platform / Query Service Team --January 8, 2025. The Search Platform Team holds monthly meetings to discuss anything related to Wikimedia search, Wikidata Query Service (WDQS), Wikimedia Commons Query Service (WCQS), etc.! Time: 16:00-17:00 UTC / 08:00 PDT / 11:00 EDT / 17:00 CET
• 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.
• Wiki Workshop 2025 Announcement and Call for Papers. Submission deadline: March 9, 2025 (23:59 AoE)

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs: (fr) female authors with male pseudonyms, blog post by Le Deuxième Texte including SPARQL queries to find female authors with male pseudonyms.
• Websites :Global Dementia and Risk Factors, website by 'Students at the Maastricht Science Programme', includes data visualizations of the prevalence and current treatments of dementia across the world. It utilises data extracted as SPARQL Endpoints from Wikidata.
• Papers
  • Ontology-grounded Automatic Knowledge Graph Construction by LLM under Wikidata schema - This paper proposes an ontology-driven approach to KG construction using LLMs where competency questions guide ontology creation and relation extraction, leveraging Wikidata for semantic consistency. A scalable pipeline minimizes human effort while producing high-quality, interpretable KGs interoperable with Wikidata for knowledge base expansion. By Xiaohan Feng, Xixin Wu & Helen Meng (2024).
  • Knowledge Incorporated Image Question Answering Using Wikidata Repository - Proposes a Visual Question Answering (VQA) model that integrates external knowledge from Wikidata to address complex open-domain questions by combining image, question, and knowledge modalities. Evaluated on the VQAv2 dataset, the model outperforms prior state-of-the-art approaches, demonstrating improved reasoning and accuracy (Koshti et al., 2024).
• Videos: (arabic) Part 6: SPARQL Demo Session: connecting external services - Sparql SERVICE clause gives access to additional data such as labels via wikibase:label, interaction with MediaWiki APIs using wikibase:mwapi, and integration of data from subgraphs (such as the main graph and the scholarly articles graph). Integration of data from external SPARQL endpoints such as DBpedia.

Tool of the week

• Wikidata Entity Linker - is a Microsoft Edge browser extension that creates web links for matching inner HTML text based on a regex format of Q\d+ which is the format of a Wikidata Entity ID. (email)

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• Vacancy: Research Software Engineer / Wikibase-Expert - The Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) located in Hannover has a research position open for someone interested in the deployment, administration and maintenance of open source knowledge management software such as Mediawiki, Wikibase and OpenRefine as part of the NFDI4Culture partnership within the OSL.
• January 1, 2025, marked Public Domain Day, with hundreds of 1929 films entering the public domain. Sandra has shared helpful notes to assist in making these films discoverable via WikiFlix, by adding video files to Wikicommons and Wikidata. Join the effort!

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • bequest income (the sum a organisations receives from bequests/legacies in a timeframe)
  • taxon known by this common name (taxon item of which this common name refers)
  • homonymous taxon (taxon item of which the taxon name is an exact homonym)
  • role named in credits as (use as qualifier to indicate how the object's role was named in the credits of its respective work)
  • meeting of (subject is a meeting or session of this organization)
• Newest External identifiers: PCGames.de product ID, PUG authority ID, Three Decks class ID, Vidas author ID, Usito ID, ZSL authority ID, Collectie Nederland ID, Hachette author ID, CamerounWeb person ID, Hindi Shabdamitra entry ID, OpenSSF Practices ID, Japanese Health Insurance System Facility ID, Centre d'Etudes Picasso ID, CUATM statistical code, CUATM unique identification code, JudaicaLink person (GND) ID, teams.by national team ID, Eyrolles author ID, Mémoire des avocats ID, BCU Kirundi-English Dictionary ID, Estonian–Latvian Dictionary ID, WHL player ID, Indo-European Lexicon ID, Battle.net game ID, Singapore Unique Entity Number, AniSearch character ID, Three Decks conflict ID, Berlinische Galerie object ID, ThePWHL.com player ID, Play:Right genre ID, Resistance in Belgium ID, Paris Match ID, Kyiv Independent topic, Newmark Albanian-English Dictionary ID, Wellcome Collection concept ID, Amsterdam Monumentenstad ID, VG247 game ID, DNCI label ID, National Football Teams.com stadium ID
• 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))
  • nonprofit tax status (country specific tax status of organisations like non-profits)
  • nomenclatural type of (taxon item of which this item is the taxonomic type)
  • World Heritage type (Propriety of World heritage site : the Type (Cultural, Natural, Mixed))
  • DVD region code (DVD release is restricted to region code)
  • number of shading units (Number of shading units in a graphics card.)
  • Archaeological National Register code (identifier of elements of the National archaeological register of Moldova)
  • presented works (works of art performed, displayed or presented at a given event)
  • identifiant REGAFI ()
  • Maximum beam energy (Maximum beam energy of a particle accelerator)
  • Accused of (Crime or other misdeed a person has been accused of, but ''not proven or convicted'')
  • hat gespendet (Amount of money donated to a person or organization)
  • name starts with (The name that this qualifies, the full contents of which are unknown, is known to start with these characters.)
  • духовный сан (formal styles of address used for members of the clergy)
  • A2B2 user ID (User ID on a2b2.org)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: Algeria Press Service tag ID (French), Algeria Press Service tag ID (English), Algeria Press Service tag ID (Arabic), Norsk oversettterleksikon ID, hockey1946.ru player id, footballdatabase.eu match ID, Kamus Pelajar Edisi Kedua ID, Lyricfind artist ID, HonestGamers game ID, identifiant MACM d'un artisite, Syrian Memory person ID, Identifiant d'un(e) auteurice sur le site Mille ans de littérature d'oc, Kamus Dewan Edisi Tiga, identifiant Registre national des gels, DOSBox Wiki, Identifiant Cimetières de France, Ech-Chaab tag ID, Lutris company ID, Shamela Algeria person ID, enterprise number (Germany), Ohio University ArchivesSpace Subject ID, Progetto Euploos ID, Nafziger Order of Battle ID, DataGov dataset, ERR keyword ID, Comprehensive Historical Dictionary of Ladino entry ID, Ohio University ArchivesSpace Agent ID, Russian Football National League player ID, Gaia ID, Inventory of Natural Heritage site ID, Inventory of Natural Heritage tree ID, Spanish-German Dictionary ID, UAF match ID, Identifiant d'un(e) journaliste sur Francetvinfo, Game Vortex software ID, identifiant Pappers d'un dirigeant, Database of Canada's Early Women Writers ID, Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory ID, Mishramilan catalog ID, SearchCulture.gr ID, Cinema Belgica venue ID, Cinema Belgica person ID, Cinema Belgica film ID, Cinema Belgica company ID, Cinema Belgica censorship ID, Archaeological Cadastre (Greece) ID, Hankook Ilbo tag ID, Rijksmuseum ID, SOIUSA code, myCast work ID, MetalTabs.com track ID, MUBI Festival ID, Beaux Arts ID, rutracker.org page ID, Park Merwestein Bomenwijzer ID, RPG Maker game ID, RateMyProfessors ID, PubMed author ID, BodyMeasurements.org ID, Hessian Biography person ID, Kvikmyndavefurinn, Kvikmyndavefurinn person ID, Bluepages article ID, Kvikmyndavefurinn company ID, Archaeological Cadastre (Greece) info ID, A Dictionary of Geology and Earth Sciences entry ID, Wikishia item ID, EHIS educational institution ID, Bertsolaritzaren Datu Basea ID, A Dictionary of Sociology entry ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • French Photographers born before 1870, who do not have a French Wikipedia article
  • The 10 smallest countries with some kind of urban rail transit system
  • Last meals of people
• Newest WikiProjects: French Scientific Prizes aims to list French-language awards and to ensure the mention of a source associated with each award.
• Newest database reports: Items with "sport (P641)" only
• Showcase Items: 2015 Iditarod Q19455277) - sled dog race
• Showcase Lexemes: trekke (L478233) - Norwegian irregular verb "to pull", "to drag", or "to draw"

Development

• The development team is just settling back in after the holidays, so there haven’t been any significant updates yet.

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:
• 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!

Events

• Upcoming events:
  • 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.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs
  • Updates on the Wikimedian-in-Residence at the Biodiversity Heritage Library focusing on Structured Data on Commons and Wikidata
  • 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.
  • Empowering Multilingual Knowledge: The Journey Behind the 1-Click-Info Extension Powered by Wikidata - Introduces the 1-Click Data extension for your browser. A project funded by the Arcadia grant through Wikimedia Deutschland and fiscally sponsored by the Dagbani Wikimedians user group.
  • 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.
• Videos
  • Tracking Looted Art with Graphs, Graphs and Networks in the Humanities 2022 Conference
  • How Wikimedia Uses AI to Vectorize its Knowledge Base
• 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)

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• Zita Ursula Zage has joined the Software Communication team (SCoT) at Wikimedia Deutschland as an intern until the end of June 2025. Welcome Zita!
• 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

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • bequest income (the sum a organisations receives from bequests/legacies in a timeframe)
  • taxon known by this common name (taxon item of which this common name refers)
  • homonymous taxon (taxon item of which the taxon name is an exact homonym)
  • role named in credits as (use as qualifier to indicate how the object's role was named in the credits of its respective work)
  • meeting of (subject is a meeting or session of this organization)
  • organisation tax status (jurisdiction specific tax status of organisations like non-profits)
• Newest External identifiers: Collectie Nederland ID, Hachette author ID, CamerounWeb person ID, Hindi Shabdamitra entry ID, OpenSSF Practices ID, Japanese Health Insurance System Facility ID, Centre d'Etudes Picasso ID, CUATM statistical code, CUATM unique identification code, JudaicaLink person (GND) ID, teams.by national team ID, Eyrolles author ID, Mémoire des avocats ID, BCU Kirundi-English Dictionary ID, Estonian–Latvian Dictionary ID, WHL player ID, Indo-European Lexicon ID, Battle.net game ID, Singapore Unique Entity Number, AniSearch character ID, Three Decks conflict ID, Berlinische Galerie object ID, ThePWHL.com player ID, Play:Right genre ID, Resistance in Belgium ID, Paris Match ID, Kyiv Independent topic, Newmark Albanian-English Dictionary ID, Wellcome Collection concept ID, Amsterdam Monumentenstad ID, VG247 game ID, DNCI label ID, National Football Teams.com stadium ID, Kamus Pelajar ID, Dictionary of Norwegian Translators ID, MACM artist ID, Lutris company ID, hockey1946.ru player ID, DOSBoxWiki article, NBA G League player ID, World Women's Snooker player ID, footballdatabase.eu match ID, GERS ID, Comprehensive Historical Dictionary of Ladino entry ID, SBOID, Game Vortex software ID, Syrian Memory Institution person ID, Mishramilan catalog ID, myCast work ID, Hessian Biography person (GND) ID, Beaux-Arts ID, Gaia ID
• 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))
  • DVD region code (DVD release is restricted to region code)
  • number of shading units (number of shading units in a graphics processing unit)
  • Archaeological National Register code (identifier of elements of the National archaeological register of Moldova)
  • presented works (works of art performed, displayed or presented at a given event)
  • identifiant REGAFI ()
  • Maximum beam energy (Maximum beam energy of a particle accelerator)
  • Accused of (Crime or other misdeed a person has been accused of, but ''not proven or convicted'')
  • hat gespendet (Amount of money donated to a person or organization)
  • name starts with (The name that this qualifies, the full contents of which are unknown, is known to start with these characters.)
  • духовный сан (formal styles of address used for members of the clergy)
  • A2B2 user ID (User ID on a2b2.org)
  • Source language (headword languge of dictionary)
  • 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))
  • number of texture mapping units (number of texture mapping units in a graphics processing unit)
  • number of render output units (number of render output units in a graphics processing unit)
  • number of ray tracing cores (number of ray tracing cores in a graphics processing unit)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: Algeria Press Service tag ID (French), Algeria Press Service tag ID (English), Algeria Press Service tag ID (Arabic), Lyricfind artist ID, HonestGamers game ID, Identifiant d'un(e) auteurice sur le site Mille ans de littérature d'oc, Kamus Dewan Edisi Tiga, identifiant Registre national des gels, Identifiant Cimetières de France, Ech-Chaab tag ID, Shamela Algeria person ID, enterprise number (Germany), Ohio University ArchivesSpace Subject ID, Progetto Euploos ID, Nafziger Order of Battle ID, DataGov dataset, ERR keyword ID, Ohio University ArchivesSpace Agent ID, Russian Football National League player ID, Inventory of Natural Heritage site ID, Inventory of Natural Heritage tree ID, Spanish-German Dictionary ID, UAF match ID, Identifiant d'un(e) journaliste sur Francetvinfo, identifiant Pappers d'un dirigeant, Database of Canada's Early Women Writers ID, Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory ID, SearchCulture.gr ID, Cinema Belgica venue ID, Cinema Belgica person ID, Cinema Belgica film ID, Cinema Belgica company ID, Cinema Belgica censorship ID, Archaeological Cadastre (Greece) ID, Hankook Ilbo tag ID, Rijksmuseum ID, SOIUSA code, MetalTabs.com track ID, MUBI Festival ID, rutracker.org page ID, Park Merwestein Bomenwijzer ID, RPG Maker game ID, RateMyProfessors ID, PubMed author ID, BodyMeasurements.org ID, Kvikmyndavefurinn, Kvikmyndavefurinn person ID, Bluepages article ID, Kvikmyndavefurinn company ID, Archaeological Cadastre (Greece) info ID, A Dictionary of Geology and Earth Sciences entry ID, Wikishia item ID, EHIS educational institution ID, Bertsolaritzaren Datu Basea ID, A Dictionary of Sociology entry ID, A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology entry ID, A Dictionary of Geography entry ID, DGLAi ID, Jeune Afrique person ID, norskeflyplasser.no-ID, taz topic ID, Euronews topic ID (English), Euronews topic ID (French), Euronews topic ID (Spanish), Euronews topic ID (Arabic), Roman Inscriptions of Britain Online ID, Unine thesis id, Enpedia ID, Dizionario Biografico della Calabria Contemporanea ID, Bahamut Animation Crazy Serial Number, Finnish Olympic Committee ID, Team Norway profile ID (new), NOC of Belarus champion ID (new), JOC profile ID (new), Répertoire du patrimoine bâti de Québec

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • Search for Items where description begins with capitalised letters, filter by language, country of citizenship and occupation
  • Wikidata Items using the 'smells of' property
• Newest WikiProjects: Writing Systems aims to standardize and enhance Wikipedia's coverage of writing systems and related subjects.
• Newest database reports: Some statistics about sitelinks
• Showcase Items: The Night Watch (Q219831) - 1642 painting by Rembrandt
• Showcase Lexemes: дополнение (L107276) - Rusian noun (dopólnenie) that can mean "addition", "supplement" or an "an object"

Development

• Wikidata Query Service UI: We fixed a long-standing issue with missing edge labels in graph visualisations (phab:T317702)
• Wikibase REST API: We implemented a proof of concept for a search endpoint you can try out.
• EntitySchemas: We’re working on language fallback for the heading on EntitySchema pages (phab:T228423)
• Language codes: We cleaned up language codes in WikibaseLexeme after moving some of them to CLDR (phab:T352922)

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: Greenland
• 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!