Wikidata:Contact the development team

Shortcut: WD:DEV

Wikidata development is ongoing. You can leave notes for the development team here, on #wikimedia-wikidata <IRC-connect> and on the mailing list or report bugs on Bugzilla. See the list of bugs on Bugzilla.

Regarding the accounts of the Wikidata development team, we have decided on the following rules:

• Wikidata developers can have clearly marked staff accounts (in the form "Fullname (WMDE)"), and these will receive admin and bureaucrat rights.
• These staff accounts should be used only for development, testing, spam-fighting, and emergencies.
• The private accounts of staff members do not get admin and bureaucrat rights by default. If staff members desire admin and bureacrat rights for their private accounts, those should be gained going through the processes developed by the community.
• Every staff member is free to use their private account just as everyone else, obviously. Especially if they want to work on content in Wikidata, this is the account they should be using, not their staff account.

On this page, old discussions are archived. An overview of all archives can be found at this page's archive index. The current archive is located at May.

Special:UnconnectedPages does not work for nds-nl

Hi, Recently, a page with unconnected pages was added to the special pages on the wikipedias. Unfortunately, this does not work correctly for nds-nl. https://nds-nl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spesiaal:OngekoppeldePaginas (Special:UnconnectedPages).

It does show lots of pages that in fact do have a connection with wikidata. I just checked with one other wiki with a dash in the url, and there it also fails. So that may be the cause, like we had an issue with the search before, where wikis with a dash/minus would not be searched correctly, but with an underscore. Ignore the last hint if unrelated, but the issue with the special page is certainly present. E.g. take a look at the page 1179 of the abovementioned wiki. It is coupled, it does have a label, and still shows up on the special page. Droadnaegel (talk) 22:00, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

It may not have connection to the name. Also the Danish Wikipedia (da) have lots of connected pages on that list. Byrial (talk) 00:11, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Its cache problem - save connected page again without chage and it disappear from list. JAn Dudík (talk) 12:02, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Reported as bugzilla:48401. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:42, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Will the move gadget be extended and move associated data too?

I've been busy for a week or so now, solving interwiki conflicts, adding and correcting labels but especially unravelling mixed-up and double items. In the last two instances, language links have to be moved from one item to another. It is only by the use of a very cumbersome and time comsuming procedure, tedious and prone to introducing new errors, that language links along with their associated data (label, description, aliases) can be moved from one item to another. Jet this is a procedure that will have to be executed countless times in order to get this project to function properly. So far, the number of items without errors has been a tiny minority of the items on biological taxa I checked. Everything that can be mixed up, has been mixed up at least somewhere, in a good example of Murphy's Law. Considering the number of taxa, this is not something that will be put to rest in the next few months, or even years. And when new articles are created in wikipedia's all over the world, many languages will not be linked correctly the first time they are entered into Wikidata. Moving language links and associated data is an important maintenance task and will continue to be so in the future. This task will only be taken on by volunteers for a longer period of time if the right tools become available.

Is there any chance of the move tool, in the near future, being extended to the associated data as well, with procedures to choose which label, description, and aliases to keep in the case of conflicts (by clicking on them instead of typing or selecting)? This would already simplify things enormously, even without having the possibility to completely merge two items into one, which would of course also be a good thing but as I outlined above, moving single links with their associated data will also continue to be a main task. Wikiklaas (talk) 00:17, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I thought this question was rather straightforward. A simple "yes, we're working on it" plus an estimation of the time it will take, would do. Or am I wrong in supposing someone of the development team is actually reading this? Wikiklaas (talk) 13:19, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Patience please :) I am reading this page, yes. I have just been incredibly busy the last days.

An integrated merge function is on the todo list (bugzilla:38664). I don't know when we'll get to it though - I hope soon. We understand it is important. As for the existing gadget: You'd need to ask the author if he/she is willing to extend it. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 19:17, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Ah, great. Yes, it is because I think it's important that I was puzzled why I didn't get an answer, but you explained yourself very clearly. Sorry for being so impatient. Wikiklaas (talk) 22:33, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Need for Tool for reverting with exception

There are situations when somebody (newbie) removes from item many sitelinks but one of them adds to another item. This item is not possible to revert, because one of links is used. It would be veru useful if I can select that exclude this one sitelink when reverting. see "revert" for example. JAn Dudík (talk) 08:09, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I'll see what we can do there. Good point. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 19:18, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikibase question

Moved from Wikidata:Requests for comment/wikibase; this seemed like the most logical place to move it — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)}

hi sorry that I am asking here I know I should ask at mediawiki but could I ask how you installed wikibase on wikidata because it isent working for me 86.171.33.224 20:16, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Can you please clarify what is not working? Do you get an error? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 19:19, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Capitalize first letter

I brought up this error/bug/flaw on WP, but here goes; could we make the search function capitalize the first letter of words like it does on Wikipedia? Right now it very, very very unintuitively returns no results if you don't capitalize the article! For instance, this doesn't work because "cheese" isn't capitalized!! It's frustrating and especially crazy because not even this page capitalizes "cheese"! Could you fix this, please? :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.185.94 (talk) 2:10, May 16, 2013 (UTC)

See Help:Label#Capitalization. Capitalization is very helpful to distinguish term from titles. Try person, female, etc. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 13:43, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

This is not about labels; it is about sitelinks, and only the Lojban Wikipedia have case sensitive titles. The suggestion would break searches for the Lojban sitelinks, while being a great help in all other Wikipedias. Byrial (talk) 14:05, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Can anyone conform this isn't an issue on other Wikipedias? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 19:20, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Typo Lydia? BTW I would also like to know if anyone can confirm that this isn't an issue on other Wikipediae [sic]. Allen4names (talk) 00:30, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

The best people to confirm would be those who configure the Wikipedia servers. I made my statement above based on the info in database about wiki configurations on the toolserver: The query "SELECT * FROM toolserver.wiki WHERE family = 'wikipedia' AND is_sensitive" only returns the Lojban (jbo) Wikipedia. Byrial (talk) 08:37, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

add link to errors and alarms messages

In error's messages Is it possible to convert flat links to active link? for example when I add a link to an item if it is existed in other item it shows an error which says that link is already existed in item Q... would you please make Q.... > Q.... .example please add en:book to item Q1184485 it shows

Site link [[enwiki:Book]] already used by item [[Q571]].

I mean

Site link en:Book already used by item Q571.

in addition this can be solved like MediaWiki:Gadget-slurpInterwiki.js which converts flat errors to linked errors Yamaha5 (talk) 12:59, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

 Support Great suggestion! This would make things so much easier. By right-clicking on the link, for example, one could open it in a second tab and solve the problem while keeping the first tab open to returm to once the conflict has been inspected and solved. Wikiklaas (talk) 13:13, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

 Done MediaWiki:Gadget-errorLinks.js Javad|Talk (26 Ordibehesht 1392) 16:20, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Wow! That's a quick fix. And it works great. Thanks! Wikiklaas (talk) 16:53, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata is not accessible

Good day, I don't see the link "Add links" (nor "Edit" links beside the fields) when using Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP (whitout javascript activated if that changes something). All Wikidata pages loads, but I see "Done, with error on the pages" in the status bar of Internet Explorer (an error message that I don't see on other Wikimedia projects, if that's useful). Let me know if you need more specific details. Amqui (talk) 20:59, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm using a WinXP(SP3) platform (next platform is going to be Win7) and my default browser is IE8. I too have many problems when editing Wikidata in this configuration. For example, I can make only one edit, and then the page will "hang". As I often design webpages, using (x)html and css, and have to check the result in other browsers, I have several other browsers installed. My solution for Wikidata is to turn to FireFox (my version is 18.0), which has none of the problems associated with IE, and works just fine on my XP platform. Support for WinXP will end April 2014. By then IE7 and IE8 will be deprecated anyway. Wikiklaas (talk) 01:49, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Many people worldwide will still use it. For example, when accessing Wikimedia projects through a library or another public Internet access, you have to use the browser and OS already installed. Amqui (talk) 14:55, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I certainly agree that downward compatibility is an issue that has to be taken into account. The question is, however, how many users that only have access through their local library, are going to contribute to Wikipedia, let alone Wikidata? Supporting Win 3.1, '95 or '98 is something anyone would find rediculous, and WinXP will very soon enter that realm too. Wikiklaas (talk) 02:05, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

No value/Some value-options

The interface has changed, and now I cannot add "novalue" or "somevalue" to any claim anywhere, no matter if I use IE, FF or Chrome. -- Lavallen (block) 17:42, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

It works for me with Firefox 21 and Chromium 25. I have no IE. Did you see the icon to the left of inputbox? Byrial (talk) 18:38, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, earlier, it looked a little like File:Gears large.jpg. It worked then.

Now it looks like a number of lines above each other and I cannot edit there at all with any of my installed browser. (on a PC with W7) -- Lavallen (block) 19:13, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Value datatype

Hi, I just wanted to know if you plan to allow interval as value for the numeric datatype. For example, a melting point can be described by an interval like bp = 121-123 °C. This means that the component begins to melt à 121°C but is completly liquid only at 123°C. This is not similar to uncertainty because we can have for the example an uncertainty of 0.1°C. If you can't add this feature in the datatype we can find a solution with a qualifier but it would be great if you can first think about that possibility when you will introduce the numeric datatype. Thank you Snipre (talk) 16:11, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I made an observation here in a talk with Byrial. It would be nice to know if you still have plans for such intervals. -- Lavallen (block) 16:35, 18 May 2013 (UTC)