Discussions

• Closed request for adminship: ROBERTSHST requested adminship to be able to link protected Wikipedia pages to Wikidata. The request has been denied and closed.
• New request for comments: Frettiebot block? - Bovlb has requested community input about the edit behaviour of this bot, with more discussion found on the Frettiebot Discussion page.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Books: Banned books, Wikipedia and Wikidata - Volume 54, Number 2, 2023 of the focus on International Library and Information Work. Professor Núria Ferran of Women and Wikipedia.
• Papers
  • Assisted Knowledge Graph Authoring: Human-Supervised Knowledge Graph Construction from Natural Language - a Web app allowing domain experts to create natural language Wikidata-based knowledge graphs. By Gohsen & Stein (2024).
  • Large Language Models are Superpositions of All Characters: Attaining Arbitrary Role-play via Self-Alignment - Lu, K., Yu, B., Zhou, C. & Zhou, J., (2024),. This paper explores using Knowledge Graph data silos to enrich interactions and dialogues with AI NPC's in roleplay videogames.
  • Narrowing the Knowledge Evaluation Gap: Open-Domain Question Answering with Multi-Granularity Answers - evaluating predicted answers against a set of multi-granularity answers based on Wikidata. By Yona et al, (2024).
• Videos
  • Introduction to Wikidata Query Tool - Learn A Wiki Skill (LAWS). If you are a Wikidata beginner, enjoy this video provided by Open Foundation West Africa.
  • Wikibase Cloud For Cultural Heritage Data Online and the SNARC Hub for Name Authority Records relating to Wales and the Welsh Language, with Jason J. Evans.
  • How to use Wikidata in research: good practices for using and sharing open data (Portugese). A training session by Rute Correia of Wikimedia Portugal.
• WikidataCon 2023 - (English Audio)
  • Wikifunctions: fulfilling one of Wikidata's missing promises? - with Denny Vrandečić
  • Structured data and collaborative curation: WikiProjects and Wikidata - with Daniel Mietchen.
  • Spreading our Data further with Wikibase REST API by L. Pintscher.
• Presentations:
  • Wikibase for a Research Project - A slidedeck provided by Ruth v.d. Bussche presented at Provenance Loves Wiki '24
  • Provenance Loves Wiki 2024 slides on Linking Boetticher and 19th Century Paintings through Wikidata and Wikisource
• Notebooks: GLAM2: Geolocated and Labeled Articles Map - much like the previously shared GLAM1 visually representing distribution of Good & Featured Articles but in a different visualisation.

Tool of the week

• Wikidata's insights for featured and good Wikipedia articles, a new Observable's notebook which helps exploring good articles or featured articles in any Wikipedia using Wikidata properties such as P31, P21, P106, P17, P27, etc.
• SpeedPatrolling - This tool helps Wikidata editors to patrol recent changes.
• metaphacts and Ontotext launch a new end-user interface on top of the Wikidata Knowledge Graph: try it here!

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• A job opening for a Data Scientist / Knowledge Engineer to use Wikidata as a foundational layer for an NSF-funded Prototype Open Knowledge Network.
• The Wikidata Development team needs your feedback! We are currently evaluating a new feature for the Wikidata Query Service. Fancy sharing your thoughts? We would greatly appreciate it if you could complete this survey on Lamapoll. It should take you around 10–15 minutes. Your input means a lot to us. Thank you!

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • underlying structure(s) (mathematical structure(s) obtained by deleting some data of the subject)
  • working memory type (specifies the type of working memory of this data object)
  • production manager (manager that is responsible for the administration of a feature film or television production)
  • simulates (item simulated, imitated, or made to appear real by this item)
  • Philippine middle name (maternal surname generally placed in the middle of this person's name)
  • combines media (media files that composes this media file)
  • clerked for (this person has held a clerkship with the judge)
• Newest External identifiers: RCS number, Sayed Ganj Balochi Glossary ID, Vazhaju word ID, Stage username, Qué series ver series ID, Baseball-Reference.com manager ID, ‎Playstation Store concept ID, Pallaalcentro player ID, Rowing Canada ID, Rugby Database ID, Encyclopedia of Cacti species ID, Nebula channel ID, fiba.basketball player ID, Académie de Stanislas member ID, National Natural Parks System ID, Bandcamp track ID, NientePopCorn movie ID, NientePopCorn series ID, NientePopCorn person ID, Bavarian school ID, BookBrainz edition ID, British Pathé asset ID, CRIS Unique Site Number, Great American Business Leaders of the 20th Century ID, Merkur author page, ‎Globoplay ID, BindingDB ID, FFTT player ID, Czech geological location ID, etymologiebank.nl ID, Bluesky handle, ‎Parliament of Victoria ID, ArchDaily architecture office ID, HistoryMakers Maker Directory ID, OKRB 011-2022 code, Plant Illustrations taxon ID, Plant Illustrations species ID, Bantumen Powerlist 100, International Hockey Federation competition ID, IndExs Exsiccata editor ID, COSL profile ID, ‎The Models Resource entity ID, HbVar ID, TracesOfWar award ID, Latindex 2022 ID, Flashback lexicon ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • Number of delegates ()
  • afd-verbot.de person id ()
  • date of application (date of a application/request that lead to a membership in an organisation, an employment or issuance of an identifier)
  • authorized image (Proposing to distinguish images with reliable source from GLAM partners or cultural institutions)
  • Dejure.org-Schlagwort (de) (searchword in Dejure.org)
• New External identifier property proposals to review:: VD 17 ID, Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana ID, MobiTUKI English-Swahili Dictionary entry, Singerman Identifier, X place ID, PteridoPortal taxon ID, Plants of Hawaiʻi ID, Kalliope.org author ID, The StoryGraph Author ID, EDIT16 title & place IDs, Myths on Maps Identifier, Anglo-Norman Dictionary entry, Archives départementales du Vaucluse Fonds ID, ru.hayazg.info ID, Sundance Institute Archive ID, Mindat taxon ID, notify.moe ID, nimi.li id, Nintendo eShop (UK) ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • The 100 smallest mountains in France (source)
  • French Prime ministers ordered by age when they start in office (source)
• Newest WikiProjects:
  • Wikidata:WikiProject IBC 2024 - The International Botanical Congress (IBC) takes place once every six years. The organisers of this WikiProject see this conference as an ideal opportunity to engage with the wider botanical community, educate them about the potential of Wikidata and to train them in its use. We will also use this opportunity to improve the data held in Wikidata about the participants, presenters and their contributions to botany.
  • WikiProject Health Data Space - This project is about organising data related to health data spaces, in particular the efforts to create a European Health Data Space. Initially it will focus on Sweden.
• Newest database reports: Differences in birth and death dates - This is list of reports when birth date or death date in Wikidata differs from other sources:
• Showcase Items: Hubble Space Telescope (Q2513) - NASA and ESA space telescope (launched 1990)
• Showcase Lexemes: šťastný (L204262) (Czech) - having luck, fortune, happy. This is our first Czech showcase lexeme and it just so happens to be the largest Lexeme on Wikidata!

Development

• [Breaking Change] We are changing how empty Sense and Form lists are represented in dumps
• Fixed the order of item/property suggestions on several occasions, primarily sex or gender (P21) (phab:T355697)
• mul lanuage code: We are wrapping up the usability testing.
• IP Masking: We continued the work on adapting Wikibase for the upcoming change to not show IP addresses for non-logged in users anymore.
• Wikibase REST API:
  • We added the ability to add a sitelink to an Item or edit an existing one (phab:T342987)
  • We are fixing a bug where badges were missing in the API reponse for sitelinks (phab:T355293)

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.
• Participate in this week's Lexeme challenge: Diplomacy
• 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!

Discussions

• New request for permissions/Bot:
  • SamoasambiaBot - Adding coordinate values from fiwiki articles, and 2.) adding location statements based on the coordinates.
  • MidleadingBot 5 - Create items for books in National Diet Library (Q477675).
• Closed request for comments:
  • Closure reason listed as "Not an RfC discussion":
    Moto GP Riders Links, Improve performance of label, description and alias retrieval, Create massive changes in one property for specific categories/properties, Auto analysis and breakdown of links (for social account reference), Separating citations from all Wikipedia articles by using Wikidata, Items for external links
  • Closure reason listed as "No Consensus":
    Remove watchlist summary, Unify GO articles and enzyme articles
  • Closure reason listed as "Stale":
    Potd, Population data model, Handling of data objects for pages in project namespace, Shouldn't there be a feature adding Qualifiers inside Qualifiers?, Auto sorting according to weight assigned, Should we create new properties for beaches, Should previously linked Wikipedia articles be separated?, A meta item namespace (Mxxx) for structured data about Wikidata, Structured path for property definition changes, Improved instructions for translation admin

Events

• Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call February 6, 2024: Wikimedia user Dnshitobu will discuss Wikidata for Education, the Dagbani NLP project, and the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group/sister communities. In the last part of the meeting, Dnshitobu will lead a discussion of your ideas for Wikidata Affinity Group activities in 2024 using Jamboard. Agenda
• Kick-Off Panel Discussion: Black Histories Wikipedia & Wikidata Edit-a-thon February 6, 17:00 - 18:00 CET. Toronto Metropolitan University. Edit-A-Thon's are also being hosted on Feb. 8th 16:00 CET and Feb. 15th 18:00 CET.
• Wikidata 101 is a clinic, part of the #LoveDataWeek hosted at Toronto Metropolitan University; February 13th 11:00 - 12:30 EST in LIB 387 - Library Collaboratory building.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs
  • Diff Blog: #LD42023 II: Getting to Know Each Other, Librarians in the Wikidata World by SEgt-WMF
  • 20th Century Press Archives: access extension and full-text search via Wikidata
• Papers
  • Wikidata Challenges in the Semantic Web Community by Andrea Westerinen. This presentation was given at the Data Modelling Days conference.
  • Comparative Study on the Approaches of Name Authority Control and Wikidata Identity Management pages 63 - 74 of the Proceedings of the 18th International ISKO Conference (2024). Authored by Chen C. & Yuxuan Z.
• Videos
  • Connecting People, Connecting Archives Project (CACP) – Wikidata Workshop (Arabic). Archivists and scholars collaborated to align objectives and methods for the Connecting Archives Connecting People (CACP) Project. The aim of the workshop was to understand biographical data in archives.
  • Wikibase SPARQL Demo A live demo of the SPARQL MediaWiki extension during the February 2024 Wikibase Stakeholder Group meetup.
• Podcasts: Between the Brackets, Episode 155 - Alan Ang and Kris Litson discuss Wikidata partnerships and outreach.
• Notebooks
  • Mapping of a director's work a tool which explores the narrative locations of works directed by a filmmaker.
  • Mapping of a writer's work : a tool which explores the narrative locations of works written by an author.

Tool of the week

• A Query and UI for exploring works of Venezuelan authors, artists, scientists and creators in the Public Domain.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• Wikidata development goals for 2024 Q1 has been updated: Wikidata:Development plan

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • official list URL (URL of a website listing instances of the subject, maintained by the authority on the subject)
  • Laws of Malaysia URL (Uniform Resource Locator for laws of Malaysia)
  • semantic derivation (links a lexeme sense to a particular sense it is derived from)
  • date of application (date of a application/request that lead to a membership in an organisation, an employment or issuance of an identifier)
• Newest External identifiers: VMH ID, protected heritage site in Brussels ID (web version), Euro+Med PlantBase taxon ID, LoverFans ID, DigiListan artist ID, Letterboxd director ID, Letterboxd user ID, Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana ID, Dansk Forfatterleksikon ID, Qantas hotel ID, Veterans Legacy Memorial ID, China Animal Scientific Database dbb ID, National Library of Malaysia OPAC ID, Taiwan Biographical Database ID, IFOPT stop ID, Jinji Koshinjyo ID (1st edition), Jinji Koshinjyo ID (4th edition), Jinji Koshinjyo ID (8th edition), TheTVDB season ID, TheTVDB company ID, TheTVDB award ID, Kialo ID, Internet Dictionary of Polish Surnames ID, Myths on Maps identifier, Plants of Hawaiʻi ID, Kalliope.org author ID, PteridoPortal taxon ID, Wörterbuch zur Verbvalenz sense ID, XWord Info author ID, Bluesky DID, Unified Saudi Occupational Classification, Lobbypedia ID, ru.hayazg.info ID, VD 17 ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • smells of ()
  • moment of onset of sexual maturity (the point in time after which an individual attains the ability to reproduce sexually)
  • url namespace (URL prefix behind which values of this property can be found using a search engine)
  • ultima verba (last words spoken by a subject)
  • Performing organization (organization that received funding to create this entity)
  • filial church (church which acts as the less important temple of a parish)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: Identifiant Mémoire des lieux d'un bâtiment, PlaymakerStats.com executive ID, Identifiant du Référentiel national des bâtiments, Dictionary of American Regional English ID, Dictionary of Old English ID, Encyclopedia Mythica ID, Shamela Author ID, Oxford English Dictionary object identifier, Daryab Pashto Glossary ID, Great Plains Herbaria taxon ID, PROSPEROPatches game ID, ORBISPatches game ID, Quake Wiki ID, Hong Kong Cinema ID, Műemlékem.hu identifier, Trakt-Film-ID, Arabic Ontology lexical concept ID, MobiTUKI Swahili-English Dictionary entry, Personen der Moderne Basis person ID, Spesalay Pashto (Dari/Persian Dictionary) ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • Projects with which New Zealand Thesis people overlap (source)
  • Most articles about films in each Wikipedia
  • Largest companies by revenue in USD
• Newest database reports: Popular Items without claims (Items with the most links but without statements)
• Showcase Items: Airbus (Q67) - European aircraft manufacturer
• Showcase Lexemes: sala (L578377) - translates to "human" or "charcoal" in Dagbanli

Development

• Wikibase REST API:
  • We are finishing the endpoint for adding/replacing a sitelink on an Item for a given wiki (phab:T342987) and have finished the ones for getting and removing a sitelink from an Item (phab:T344039, phab:T344685)
  • We have documented the differences in sitelink data structure between Wikibase REST API and Action API responses (phab:T355659)
  • We fixed the bug where sitelink data was not including badges even when available (phab:T355293)
• IP masking: We are continuing the work on adapting Wikibase so we don't show IP addresses for non-logged-in users.
• mul: We finished the user testing and will now work on the remaining blockers for the first release.

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.
• Participate in this week's Lexeme challenge:
• 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!

Discussions

• New request for permissions/Bot:
  • CJMBot - let users upload a CSV file in a certain format. The data inside is validated and processed, creating new items or updating existing items by adding statements and references.
  • MidLeadingBot_5 - create items for books in National Diet Library (Q477675).
• Closed request for comments: Revamping Birth related properties the use of P1545-Series ordinal was recommended.

Events

• Knowledge Graphs and large Language Models (KALLM) workshop in Bangkok, Thailand. Call for Papers (details) has begun (deadline May 10th)
• WMF Community Wishathon is coming next month: March 15th-17th, 2024! Sign up by Wednesday, March 15th.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs
  • What does it take to become a Spotify artist? - Skoove blog uses Wikidata and other databases to put together an infographic.
  • WiLMa Updates, OpenRefine training, Biodiversity, and Librarians (GLAM newsletter)
  • Love Data Week - My Kind of Data by Ali Smith. Shared relevant links to learn about data equity and inclusion, disciplinary communities, and creating a kinder world through data.
• Papers
  • Paying it forward: Crowdsourcing the harmonisation and linking of taxon names and biodiversity identifiers - with detailed discussion of curation of taxon-related information in Wikidata
  • Wikidata for Teaching Biology: Coloration in Felines (Spanish) - a paper that showcases Wikidata as a learning tool for students through the use of properties and statements applied to biological entities can enhance students computational and informational skills, by Marín1 D. & Michán L.
  • LIS Journals' Lack of Participation in Wikidata Item Creation by Willey, E. & Radovsky S., Vol. 7 No.1 (2024) of the Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies.
• Videos
  • GLAM Wiki Conference 2023 - Uruguay
    • Wikisource and Wikidata - when 2 cool kids play together. Session given by Bodhisattwa.
    • Wikidata + Education + Heritage - hosted by Sailesh Patnaik (WMF) & Nat Hernández Clavijo (WMU)
    • Using Wikidata integration on Wikimedia projects to enhance GLAM-Wiki content sharing - hosted by Mike Peel (WMB/WMF volunteer) & João Peschanski (WMB)
  • Advancing Drinking Water Justice at the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Conference discusses how Wikidata and Wikibase Cloud can help address differences in data quality (at the 55:00 minute mark)
  • Mapping Graiguenamanagh Heritage Trail 2 - shows how to create a Heritage walking trail and add subject:wikidata to plaques to OpenStreetMap
• Notebooks
  • Au bord de l'eau Mapping Wikidata's items next to a body of water using P206 property.

Tool of the week

• MediaWiki:Gadget-dataDrainer.js - this userscript allows you to delete the data of an item. You can choose what you want to delete: labels and/or descriptions and/or aliases and or sitelinks.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• There is a new update relative to the experiment with splitting the Wikidata Query Service graph. A project page for the experiment has also been published.
• WMDE is currently conducting a research on Knowledge Equity in Linked Open Data. The goal is to try to better understand how the use of Wikidata, Wikibase Suite, and Wikibase Cloud both support knowledge equity and create barriers to knowledge equity when people are contributing historically and structurally marginalized knowledge and perspectives. If you are interested in participating in this project, please fill out this survey!

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • Environmental Performance Index (measure of understanding environmental performance and sustainability for 180 countries)
  • age of onset of sexual maturity (the point in time after which an individual attains the ability to reproduce sexually)
  • Beta Code (representation of Ancient Greek as ASCII characters)
  • phonetic value (phonetic value of signs/characters)
  • civil rank (non-military rank of a civil office holder in Russian Empire)
• Newest External identifiers: Dongqiudi.com team ID, ‎Nintendo eShop (Europe) ID, Joseph Smith Papers person ID, Il Nuovo De Mauro ID, ‎Sundance Institute Archive film ID, Sundance Institute Archive event ID, Sundance Institute Archive person ID, notify.moe anime ID, Swetrails POI-ID, UT.no ID, The StoryGraph author ID, X place ID, nixpkgs path, Shamela author ID, PROSPEROPatches game ID, ORBISPatches game ID, Quake Wiki ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • is invariant under (subject is preserved by this process / function / group of transformation)
  • formatter URL for IIIF manifest (URL to generate IIIF manifest from specific ID)
  • location information URL (URL of a web page providing information on the locations of stores or other physical locations of a brand or operator)
  • SMIRKS (A superset of "reaction SMILES" and a subset of "reaction SMARTS", is a line notation for specifying reaction transforms.)
  • appeals to (court or other body that hears appeals from subject's decisions)
  • in service of (qualifier, which must be used when a person is in the service of a settlement or institution through his position)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: Spesalay Pashto (Dari/Persian Dictionary) ID, government.ru person ID, Kremlin.ru glossary ID, British Listed Buildings Online ID, Parsifal cluster ID, Oskar Schindler Archive agent ID, Souls Grown Deep ID, OHDSI ID, identifiant Trismegistos d'une divinité, Encyclopedia Sindhiana entry, Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330-1500) ID, GNM ID, AniSearch anime ID, livechat.me anime ID, NACSIS-CAT library ID, JAHIS Law Database ID, Texas Legislator ID, Company ID number (Slovenia), Weird Gloop article ID, nagrada.srs.kg person ID, who.ca-news.org person ID, literatura.kg person ID, 2nd German Basketball Bundesliga ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • Map of items next to the Seine (source)
  • 300 most followed Mastodon accounts (source)
  • Hospitals across Scotland (source)
  • People educated at the University of Leeds with a Wikipedia article (source)
  • Compare lat/long of UK Parliament and Wikidata constituency records [federated query] (source)
• Newest WikiProjects:
  • Library and Information Science - this new Wikiproject aims to identify and fill gaps in LIS-related content. If you are interested in the areas of librarianship, information studies, metadata and indexing; then please consider joining!
  • Political murders in the Weimar Republic - Collect historic political murders in the Weimar Republic e.g. through historic newspaper articles or scientific articles.
• Newest database reports: Humans with missing claims
• Showcase Items: Cactaceae (Q14560) - family of mostly succulent plants, adapted to dry environments
• Showcase Lexemes: ग़रीब को कौड़ी अशरफ़ी है/غریب کو کوڑی اشرفی ہے (L656971) Hindustani proverb that translates to "a farthing is a pound to one who is poor"

Development

• The new mul language code is now ready for beta testing. You can find out more at Help talk:Default values for labels and aliases.
• The graph split testing for the Wikidata Query Service has started. Please find more details in the "Other Noteworthy Stuff" section above.
• IP Masking: We are continuing the work on adapting Wikibase for the upcoming IP Masking feature, so that IP addresses for non-logged-in users are no longer published.
• Wikibase REST API:
  • We finished the route for getting and removing a sitelink from an Item (phab:T344039, phab:T344685) and we continue work on the one for adding/ replacing and modifying a sitelink on an Item (phab:T342987, phab:T342988)
  • We now handle of case sensitive statement IDs in GET, PUT, PATCH and DELETE requests as HTTP redirect (phab:T354261)
  • We documented the differences in sitelink data structure between Wikibase REST API and Action API responses (phab:T355659)
  • We fixed the bug where sitelink data did not include badges (phab:T355293)

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.
• Participate in this week's Lexeme challenge:
• 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!

• Welcome to 2023’s Final Weekly Summary!

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to the newsletter this year!👏🙏 As we step into 2024, we'd love to hear what changes you would like to see in the newsletter. Share your wishlist here: What changes would you like to see in the newsletter in 2024?"

• Discussions
  • Open request for adminship: EPIC (RfP scheduled to end after 26 December 2023 20:34 UTC)
  • New requests for permissions/Bot: Balyozbot. Tasks:

1. Import sitelinks, labels, descriptions from ku wikipedia pages which use the template w:ku:Template:Înterwîkî etîket û danasîn. (There are over 1800 articles that use this template waiting to be connected to Wikidata at the moment.)
2. Add sitelinks to kuwiktionary / kuwikipedia categories / create an item for the category if necessary. I have been doing this manually for quite some time using Quickstatements but since I need to get permission for the first task, I will be handling them using a bot as well.

• Events
  • Upcoming: Introducing WMF Wishathon for Wikimedia’s Community Wishlist! "focused on bringing together people who already contribute to technical aspects of the Wikimedia projects, who know how to find their way on the technical ecosystem, and who are able to work or collaborate on projects rather autonomously." March 15th to 17th, 2024.
  • Ongoing: Weekly Lexeme Challenge #122: Rock-forming minerals

• Press, articles, blog posts, videos
  • Blogs
    • African Librarians empowered to share knowledge and enhance information visibility through AfLIA Wikidata Online Course --> The "Promoting Open Knowledge Practices in African Libraries through Wikidata" project, executed by AfLIA with support from the Wikimedia Foundation, trained African librarians on using Wikidata to enhance the visibility of library collections and close the knowledge and gender gap on Africa. The course was facilitated by experienced African Wikimedian editors and included diverse strategies for learner engagement and support.
  • Papers: Increasing Coverage and Precision of Textual Information in Multilingual Knowledge Graphs by (Conia et al, 2023) --> This paper introduces a novel task of automatic Knowledge Graph Enhancement (KGE) to bridge the gap in the quantity and quality of textual information between English and non-English languages in Wikidata. It presents M-NTA, an unsupervised approach that combines Machine Translation, Web Search, and Large Language Models to generate high-quality textual information, and studies its impact on Entity Linking, Knowledge Graph Completion, and Question Answering tasks.
  • Videos
    • Wikidata, Wikisource and Wiktionary: Wikisource for DH (WiSe 2023) --> The lecture "Fundamentals and application-oriented methods of the Digital Humanities" by Kay-Michael Würzner is designed as a series of lectures in which teachers in the "Digital Humanities" course present their fields of work and key topics and present them for discussion.
    • Empowering Open-Source Generative AI by Integrating the Wikidata knowledge graph --> Generative AI has changed the information ecosystem, and open-source knowledge graphs like Wikidata can become invaluable assets, propelling a myriad of applications forward. Jonathan Fraine & Lydia Pintscher present the practical integration of Wikidata's open-source, open-access knowledge graph to empower Generative AI applications. Harnessing the real-time updated, structured data encapsulated within Wikidata, they explore automated content creation, data augmentation, and semantic analysis, underpinning the generative paradigms. Through a blend of theoretical insights and real-world applications, they elucidate how to leverage Wikidata to elevate generative AI applications, breaking down existing data silos, and fostering a collaborative ecosystem within our global community of developers and contributors.
    • Wiki Indaba 2023 - African content on Wikidata --> Discussion with Alice Kibombo, Georges Fodouop and Jesse Asiedu-Akrofi, about Wikidata for African Librarians during the Wiki Indaba conference, that took place between 3-5 November 2023 in Agadir, Morocco.
    • No Time to Wait - S07E10 - ACMI // Wikidata - Paul Duchesne + Simon Loffler --> Report on recent residency program to extensively link together collection data from ACMI with Wikidata. This work has allowed the organisation to import vast quantities of data and media to enrich their own internet collection experience, as well enable writing information back to source and federating with other linked institutions.
    • Wiki(s)data #5: Wikidata Live editing (in Italian) --> The ontology of Wikidata: how to interact with it for a better quality, by Epìdosis
  • Notebooks
    • Map of K-Pop Idols --> An interactive map where each red dot represents a K-pop Idol (a singer or musician in South Korean Pop music) you are able to click on.
    • Disney as the Mega Corporation it is Today --> Disney has greatly evolved from the simple animation company that first debuted in 1923 with its signature Steamboat Willie animation. This analysis details some of the major acquisitions Disney has chosen to help expand its reach as a media and entertainment company.
    • The Gender-Equality Gap in STEM Awards --> A network graph and multiple data visualizations on UCLA's alumnni awards based on gender.
    • Exploring The Belichick Coaching Tree --> This analyses details the coaching tree of the prolific American Football coach Bill Belichick.
    • State of statues in the US --> Map of how many statues there are, who is depicted in the statues, their genders, and where the statues are concentrated.
    • An Analysis on Nepo Babies: Net Worths and Fame --> This work uses Wikidata to analyze the influence and success of children of famous actors (nepo babies) in the entertainment industry, and compares the careers and net worth of these children with their parents to understand the impact of nepotism on their success.

• Tool of the week
  • Cersei - is a tool designed for importing or scraping data from various third-party sources, using source-specific Python code. It can use a "headless browser" to scrape complicated websites that rely on eg JavaScript to navigate. It can therefore access data sources that can not be accessed via eg Mix'n'match. The data from sources can be updated regularly, either for everything, or just changed entries (if the source has a "recent changes" equivalent).
  • Wikidata:Zotero/Cita - is a Wikidata addon for Zotero that adds citations (i.e., what other items an item cites) metadata support to this open source reference management software, using cites work (P2860) information available from Wikidata, and enabling users to easily contribute missing data.

• Other Noteworthy Stuff =
  • Job opening: Data Scientist / Knowledge Engineer to use Wikidata as a foundational layer for an US National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Prototype Open Knowledge Network.

• Did you know?
  • Newest properties:
    • General datatypes: none
    • External identifiers: ‎WHDLoad database ID, Shanghai Library movie ID, ‎PCSX2 Wiki ID, KRS number, ‎Twitch numeric channel ID, ‎RPCS3 Wiki ID, ‎Black Games Archive ID, ‎Citra compatibility database ID, ‎DraCor ID, ORBi article ID, ‎IGN wiki article ID, ‎AreWeAntiCheatYet ID, ‎RPGFan game ID, ‎Arcade Hub ID
  • New property proposals to review:
    • General datatypes:
      • Laws of Malaysia URL (Uniform Resource Locator for laws of Malaysia)
      • production manager (manager that is responsible for the administration of a feature film or television production; oversees production plans, controls resources, initiates production, ensures ongoing operations, monitors schedules and expenditures, and creates a detailed production schedule and budget)
    • External identifiers: Schnittberichte.com ID, National Library of Malaysia OPAC ID, HistoriaGames series ID, Kemono Games game ID, Internet Game Database event ID, GamesMeter ID, Walk Score ID, Malaysia company new number, Am Faclair Beag ID, xemu compatibility database ID, Sofascore player ID, GameGear.jp ID, RPGWatch IDs, Team England ID, TORCH taxon ID, ScummVM ID, Abandonware France IDs
  • Query examples:
    • Distribution of the different tram gauges in Germany (source)
    • Scale of stampedes reported on Wikidata (source)
    • Timeline of the Christmas movies (source)
    • Christmas traditions around the world (with pictures) (source)
  • Newest WikiProjects: WikiProject Städel Museum Wikidata Clean-Up - This WikiProject from the Städel Museum aims to actively participate in the Wikimedia community by maintaining and updating the quality of its data. This includes their collection of public domain art, which has been digitized and made freely available for public use. The project focuses on ensuring that the most current and high-quality data, including high-resolution images and improved metadata, are available on platforms like Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.
  • Newest database reports: children of dead mothers - List of mother-children pairs, where death date of parent < birth date of child
  • Showcase Items: Esperanto (Q143) - international auxiliary language designed by L. L. Zamenhof
  • Showcase Lexemes: L1222568 (বড়দিন) - Bengali noun for 'Christmas'

• Development
  • Due to the winter holidays, the development team is taking a break and no deployment is happening for Wikidata at the moment.

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.

• Monthly Tasks
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
  • Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
  • Contribute to a Showcase item.
  • 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!

• Discussions
  • Open request for adminship: WikiBayer (RfP scheduled to end after 8 January 2024 12:01 UTC)
  • Closed request for adminship: EPIC (closed as successful). Welcome onboard \o/
  • New requests for permissions/Bot: HVSH-Bot . Task: Import data about politicians from the Q119949776, now only partially online available.

• Events
  • Upcoming: The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 17:00 UTC, 17th January 2023 (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.
  • Ongoing: Weekly Lexeme Challenge #123: Ologist

• Press, articles, blog posts, videos
  • Papers: Improving maintenance of community-based knowledge graphs. This paper by Nicolas Ferranti addresses the critical issue of data quality in open knowledge graphs, with a specific focus on Wikidata. It aims to formalize Wikidata's unique approaches to assess and resolve data inconsistencies, proposing a semi-automatic refinement pipeline to empower the Wikidata user community in maintaining and enhancing the reliability of this extensive collaborative knowledge graph.
  • Videos: WikidataCon 2023 Day 1.5 - The past and future of Wikidata. In this video Lydia Pintscher takes a moment to review the major events of Wikidata over the past few years. Then turns to look forward and predict what Wikidata's prospects will be over the next year.

• Tool of the week
  • WICA: Wikidata's insights for created articles is an updated version of an old tool. It now includes many new features to analyse your list of created articles using Wikidata properties.

• Did you know?
  • Newest properties:
    • General datatypes: none
    • External identifiers: Shamela book edition ID, ‎HistoriaGames series ID, ‎Schnittberichte.com title ID, ‎Kemono Games game ID, ‎Internet Game Database event ID, Xemu compatibility database ID, ‎GamesMeter game ID, ‎GameGear.jp ID, Walmart product ID, Swissubase person ID, RPGWatch game ID, RPGWatch company ID, RPGWatch press ID, ‎Indie DB company ID, ‎NIWA article ID, turismoroma.it place ID, ‎ScummVM ID, ORBi author ID, Abandonware-France video game series ID, Abandonware-France video game compilation ID, Abandonware-France person ID, Abandonware-France company ID, Abandonware-France magazine ID, Abandonware-France award ID, Kanjipedia word ID, Moviefone movie ID, South African NPO number, ‎Nigerian registered company ID, Abandonware-France video game ID, ‎AFJV directory ID
  • New property proposals to review:
    • General datatypes:
      • Nonprofit Status (Indicating the legal and tax status of a non-profit organization (specific to served legal areas, aka. Countries). Addition to {{P|1454}}. {{P|1628}} to [https://schema.org/nonprofitStatus nonprofitStatus] from schema.org. Organizations can have multiple Nonprofit Status from different countries.)
      • International Classification of Nonprofit Organizations ({{Q|2976602}} for {{Q|163740}} created by the {{Q|193727}} and adapted by the {{Q|1065}}.)
      • creative director (person who makes high-level creative decisions, oversees the creation of creative assets such as adverts, products, events or logos and guides and directs the creative people who create the end result)
      • television judge ()
    • External identifiers: SERNEC taxon ID, Consortium of Bryophyte Herbaria taxon ID, Rhineland-Palatinate school ID, nebula channel id, Deutsche Bahn station number, ISzDb series ID, BG localisation unit ID, Cathopedia article ID, Native Plants Hawaii ID, Taiwan Biographical Database ID, Penstemon Database ID, Wikisage ID
  • Query examples:
    • Visual artists whose works will enter the Public Domain in Mexico on January 1, 2024 (source)
    • Top music album languages found on Wikidata right now (Week 52, 2023) (source)
    • Western composers until the end of the Renaissance (source)
  • Newest database reports: Merge candidates: Identical birth and death dates
  • Showcase Items: Team Fortress 2 (Q382108) - team-based first-person shooter multiplayer video game.
  • Showcase Lexemes: ورھا لگّݨ / ਵਰ੍ਹਾ ਲੱਗਣ (L907713) - Punjabi verb expressing the setting in of a new year.

• Development
  • The development team is just returning from the winter holidays so there is no development update at the moment.

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.

• Monthly Tasks
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
  • Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
  • Contribute to a Showcase item.
  • 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!

Discussions

• Closed request for adminship: WikiBayer (closed as successful). Welcome onboard \o/
• New requests for permissions/Bot: So9qBot 9. Task: Add DDO identifier to Danish lexemes.

Events

• Upcoming:
  • The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 16:00 UTC on Wednesday, 17th January 2024 (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 Mentor Africa (WMA) Hackathon, 19th to 21st January 2024
  • Forschungsdatenmanagement: Wikidata as a collaborative information resource on research data management (German), takes place online, Wednesday 10th January 2024, 10-11am (CET).

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs: PubChem on Wikidata – What is the state of coverage? by Tiago Lubiana. In summary, Wikidata has good coverage of the structured chemical data in PubChem, though there are improvement points. PubChem displays, and will always display, textual information and vendor-specific data that do not fit Wikidata, but they are complementary tools in the ecosystem of open chemical data.
• Papers
  • Linked data: un’opportunità per il riuso (Q124079430) "scientific article published in 2023" (paper in Italian) - deals with linked data in library catalogues, with many mentions of Wikidata.
  • Automatically Constructed Indonesian Question Answering Dataset by Leveraging Wikidata by K. Doxolodeo & A.A. Krisnadhi - researchers have created a new Indonesian Question Answering dataset that is produced automatically end-to-end using Context Free Grammar, the Wikipedia Indonesian Corpus, and the concept of the proxy model
  • LIS Journals’ Lack of Participation in Wikidata Item Creation by Eric Willey & Susan Radovsky, discusses the gap of Wikidata items being created for scholarly articles by the scholar's themselves and if this can lead to inconsistent or inaccurate data model.
  • Quantifying Americanization: Coverage of American Topics in Different Wikipedias: this paper asks whether there is an americanisation bias in the content created by the communities. By Piotr Konieczny & Włodzimierz Lewoniewski.
• Videos
  • Map Kerala Initiative is an opendata portal geospatial map powered by Wikidata and OpenStreetMap, introduced by Manoj Karingamadathil.
  • This video on Biodiversity Explorations with Machine Learning: Biodiversity Data Access Functions shows how Wikidata is being used to populate species entity profiles at Wolfram U, presented by Jofre Espigulé-Pons.
• Notebooks: Wikipedia article as a timeline - This tool transforms a Wikipedia article in a timeline by parsing all internal links in a Wikipedia article and retrieving the date corresponding to each internal link using the point in time (P585) property in Wikidata.

Tool of the week Map your list of created articles - a notebook display of geolocated articles on a map created by a user per chosen project and batch (featured/good article).

Other Noteworthy Stuff Wikimedia Indonesia and Wikimedia Deutschland ended their partnership within the project Software Collaboration for Wikidata prematurely. Read their joint statement here.

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • Flora of the Hawaiian Islands URL (URL of the entry for a plant genus, species, subspecies, or variety in the Flora of the Hawaiian Islands website)
  • (Montana Plant Life URL (URL for a plant family, genus, or species on the Montana Plant Life website)
  • ‎plate(s) (plate number(s) in the reference source being cited to support the statement being made)
• Newest External identifiers: Abandonware-France book ID, ‎MilliBase taxon ID, Monasticon Hibernicum database ID, Rhineland-Palatinate school ID, Enciclopedia di Roma monument ID, Enciclopedia di Roma street ID, Mid-Atlantic Herbaria Consortium taxon ID, ‎The Criterion Collection spine number
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • Water bottle volume (Volume of the water bottle)
  • Is it metric? (To check if it's a metric.)
  • Anti-Cheat software used (anti-cheat solution used by this multiplayer video game)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: turismo.marche.it place ID, Joseph Smith Papers person ID, Team Scotland ID, Globoplay ID, DoblajeVideojuegos game ID, National Natural Parks System ID, Commonwealth Games Australia ID, Adventure-Treff game ID, TouchArcade game ID, Mod.io ID, The Models Resource game ID, The Models Resource entity ID, tourist information point number, Jinji Koshinjyo ID, Bandcamp track ID

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • Average age of supporters of Gérard Depardieu according to Appel de 50 personnalités du monde de la culture (source)
  • Format:LangSwitch
  • Bridges in the UK with photos (source)
  • Programming languages influenced by Niklaus Wirth (directly or indirectly) (source)
• Newest WikiProject: Podcast Episodes 2024 - The goal of this project is to add episode pages for individual podcasts.
• Newest database report: children of unborn parents
• Showcase Item: Helsinki (Q1757) - capital and most populous city of Finland
• Showcase Lexeme: Allah korusun (L1226849) - Turkish for 'God forbid'

Development

• IP masking/temporary accounts: We are adjusting Wikibase to be prepared for the upcoming changes to no longer expose IP addresses for non-logged-in users (phab:T351968)
• Dumps/lex. data: We’re adjusting how empty lists of Forms and Senses are represented in JSON dumps (phab:T305660)
• Wikibase REST API:
  • We finished the work on making it possible to get all sitelinks of an Item (phab:T344041)
  • We are working on getting a sitelink for a given wiki (phab:T344039)

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.
• Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
• Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
• Participate in this week's Lexeme challenge: Ologies
• 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!

Discussions

• New request for comments: Domain name as data (Summary: How should Wikidata store the domain name associated with an item? There are many properties for URLs, but a domain name is a different value.)

Events

• Past
  • Wikidata+Wikibase office hour session log: Telegram office hour 2024-01-17
  • PLW 2024: Provenance loves Wiki - Fri. 12th - Sun. 14th January. If you missed the event, catch up by reading the slides, Notes and watching the recordings on the Project page
• Next: Linked Open Data in Heritage Workshop > Jan. 23rd, 13:00 - 15:00 CET. If you are in the Maastricht University Faculty and want to know enhance heritage research, improve data management, connectivity and visualisation, register for the Workshop.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs
  • Languages with the best lexicographic data coverage in Wikidata 2023
  • Working with catalogues: a Wikidata volunteer’s perspective --> interview with Epìdosis where they discuss the challenges and opportunities of working with catalogues on Wikidata.
• Papers
  • The reconciliation of SBN authority records with Wikidata. Progresses and perspectives after a decade of work (2013-2023) (Q124289369) (Italian title: Riconciliare le voci di autorità in SBN con Wikidata. Progressi e prospettive dopo un decennio di lavoro (2013-2023)) (paper in Italian) - deals with the reconciliation of the authority file of the biggest Italian collective library catalogue (OPAC SBN) with Wikidata
  • The evolution of authority work in SBN. From origins to Alphabetica and future prospects (Q124289388) (Italian title: L’evoluzione dell’authority work in SBN. Dalle origini ad Alphabetica e prospettive future) (paper in Italian) - deals with the evolution of the authority work in the biggest Italian collective library catalogue (OPAC SBN), with many references to Wikidata
  • Biological Pathway Abstractions: From 2D drawings to Multidimensional Linked Data > this thesis by Andra Sachinder Waagmeester discusses the utility of using Wikidata as a Knowledge Graph for Life Sciences.
• Videos
  • "From Wiki to Digital Humanities - Establishing a Literature Index Network" Symposium(Taiwanese) from Wang Shiqing. A scholar of Taiwanese history, this symposium explores linking their historical and academic research with Wikidata.
  • Semantic MediaWiki Con 2023
    • AskWikidata: Natural language queries to Wikidata, a naive prototype created by Senior Software Engineer for Wikidata, Robert Timm. Want to try? (Google Colab)
    • Fixing Wikidata: by viewing it as a series of tables by Yaron Koren, who challenges that Wikidata can become more useful with more structured editing and querying practices.

Tool of the week

• Wikimedia Commons based streaming services by Magnus: WikiFlix for movies and the companion tool WikiVibes for audio.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• Wikimedia Deutschland hiring:
  • Software Engineer, Wikidata
  • Software Engineer, Wikidata for Wikimedia Projects
  • Senior Software Engineer, Wikidata for Wikimedia Projects

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • underlying structure (an instance of the subject becomes an instance of the object if some of its data are lost)
  • working memory type (specifies the type of working memory of this data object)
  • production manager (manager that is responsible for the administration of a feature film or television production)
  • simulate (the element imitates or makes the value of the property appear real)
  • Philippine middle name (maternal surname generally placed in the middle of this person's name)
• Newest External identifiers: ‎ISzDb series ID, IFTTT service ID, National-Football-Teams.com team ID, Moviefone person ID, Commonwealth Games Australia athlete ID, Team Scotland athlete ID, Kicker team ID, goalzz.com team ID, vesti.kz team ID, ‎Am Faclair Beag ID, tourist information point number, Alexandria.dk person ID, Babelio serial ID, Moviebuff ID, RCS number, Sayed Ganj Balochi Glossary ID, Vazhaju Word ID, Stage, Qué series ver ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • If non-metric ()
  • civil rank (non-military rank of a civil office holder in Russian Empire)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: PhoneScoop phone ID, TopKar ID, IFOPT stop identifier, Flashback lexicon ID, Letterboxd director ID, Letterboxd user ID, HbVar ID, MobiTUKI Swahili-English Dictionary entry, HistoryMakers Digital Archive Maker ID, Wörterbuch zur Verbvalenz sense ID, Euro+Med PlantBase taxon ID, Code de la collectivité territoriale ayant les compétences départementales, Dansk Forfatterleksikon ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • Distance between the birthplace of UK ministers and London (source)
  • Map of countries receiving the Nobel peace prize
  • People who have returned to being their country’s head of government after the longest gap
• Newest WikiProjects: WikiProject Media art - to work together with initiatives archiving media art and find common best practices.
• Newest database reports: Count of Senseless Lexemes per language
• Showcase Items: Mona Lisa (Q12418) - oil painting by Leonardo da Vinci
• Showcase Lexemes: grilldress (L1131949) - track suit for grilling in Bokmål

Development

• IP Masking: We are continuing to adapt Wikibase to the upcoming IP Masking feature. We worked on hiding warnings about IP addresses being saved when they don’t apply (phab:T353807, phab:T352006) and creating temporary accounts when editing (phab:T354730)
• Wikibase REST API:
  • We continued working on the ability to get a sitelink for a given site (phab:T344039)
  • We started working on the ability to remove a sitelink for a given wiki (phab:T344685)
  • We worked on fixing a bug where the REST API PUT request does not handle statement on Items with lowercase statement IDs (phab:T352644)
• mul language code: We did user testing to find any remaining issue before release

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.
• Participate in this week's Lexeme challenge: Cinematography
• 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!