Wikidata:Contact the development team/Archive/2013/05

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using sources

I added a source for the birthplace of Marie Curie [1]. My questions:

  • Is this right in this way?
  • Why do we need GND as property for the hole item?
  • Why does this not work in german interface - can't save :( ?

Thank you, Conny (talk) 20:27, 27 April 2013 (UTC).

Right way: Surely one way to do it, yes. The discussion about this is going on at Wikidata:Requests for comment/References and sources.
Why as a property of the whole item: Because the number is the number associated with Marie Curie in that database.
German interface: What were you trying to do exactly and what error did you get? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:24, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Have a look at Help:Sources. I am not aware of GND identifier. My question: is it about the source identifier or is it the identifier of Warsaw ? Snipre (talk) 15:38, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
Interface now works, my first try in german shows all the time grey not clickable words, after changing to english, editing there and change back it works now... Thank you for the information, Conny (talk) 16:12, 1 May 2013 (UTC).

Fat fingers

Does these buttons "[save|remove|cancel]" have to be so close to each other? -- Lavallen (block) 07:31, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Sources & edit conflict

I added a property, I added a description and then I tried to add a source to the property that I added before. But I got a message saying there was an edit conflict and I had to reload the page in order to add my source. Apparently, this conflict was caused by the edit where I added a description. I think this shouldn’t be. I’m using Firefox 20.0 / Ubuntu. Does I need to go to Bugzilla or this bug is already known? — Ltrl G☎, 08:04, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Add IE9 and Windows 7 to that! -- Lavallen (block) 12:04, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
We've fixed some issues with edit-conflicts with the newest version yesterday evening. These problems should be gone now. Please check again. --Tobijat (talk) 06:28, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

The "g" key in JSON objects for statements

The JSON objects representing statements in database dumps looks like this one: 

 {
   "m":["value",107,"wikibase-entityid",{"entity-type":"item","numeric-id":618123}],
   "q":[],
   "g":"q12647$621CAFA3-03B0-4C02-865B-7CC01ED5893B",
   "rank":1,
   "refs":[[["value",143,"wikibase-entityid",{"entity-type":"item","numeric-id":8449}]]]
 }

What is the value for the key string "g", and what information does the encoded hex numbers contain? Byrial (talk) 11:50, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Vilket objekt är det här taget från? -- Lavallen (block) 12:47, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
The example statement is from q12647 – it is supposedly not by accident that the item number is seen as the first part of the value for key "g" – my question is what the rest of these numbers are. Byrial (talk) 13:16, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
Not an answer to your question, but I am more used to reading xml: live database
        <property id="p107">
          <claim id="q12647$621CAFA3-03B0-4C02-865B-7CC01ED5893B" type="statement" rank="normal">
            <mainsnak snaktype="value" property="p107">
              <datavalue type="wikibase-entityid">
                <value entity-type="item" numeric-id="618123" />
              </datavalue>
            </mainsnak>
            <qualifiers />
            <references>
              <reference hash="e7cf51e798e116e5bd98eb234f223960e75461ba">
                <snaks>
                  <property id="p143">
                    <snak snaktype="value" property="p143">
                      <datavalue type="wikibase-entityid">
                        <value entity-type="item" numeric-id="8449" />
                      </datavalue>
                    </snak>
                  </property>
                </snaks>
              </reference>
            </references>
          </claim>
        </property>
I am curious myself of the answer. The "reference hash" is missing in your version. And I see no corresponding to rank in my version. -- Lavallen (block) 13:29, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
This is the Global Unique Identifier (GUID) of the claim with the ID of its item as prefix. --Tobijat (talk) 21:17, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for info. If it is just 128 random bits, there is no point in storing them when I read the database dumps. Byrial (talk) 21:59, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Sapmi

Does the system support Ume Sami? -- Lavallen (block) 14:10, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

It does support Northern and Southern Sami. I don't know if one of them is the one you were looking for as I am not familiar enough with these languages. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:26, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Sami is a group of languages. North-/South-/Ume-/Pite-/Lule-Sami is or has been spoken i Sweden. Therefor I sometimes find the Sami names of a locality in Sweden. It was when I tried to add that as a label here, I couldn't find any way to add the Ume-Sami name to an item. Incubator has pages in sma (South), smj (Lule), smn (Enare) and sjd (Kildin). Ume-sami is or is almost extinct, but the names of localities still exist. Among the "Swedish" Sami-languages, the Lule and North has the most speakers. The South is still alive and growing, but has still only a few hundred speakers. -- Lavallen (block) 07:40, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
It seems like ume-sami is not supported by ISO 639-2, only by the broader code for sami smi. In ISO 639-3 however, ume-sami seems to have code sju. What's the Wikidata policy regarding labels, and does it include ISO 639-3? - Soulkeeper (talk) 14:54, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
You can probably add these names as aliases. --Tobijat (talk) 06:36, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
Only if they are used in the language I am presently installed in. Adding 'Vienna' as an alias to the capital of Austria in Swedish does not make sense. Roma is relevant as a Swedish alias for the capital on Italy, but not Rome. But it does makes sense to add German names to places in Poland, since they have been used in Swedish. But I do not know if Ume sami names are relevant as South sami aliases. -- Lavallen (block) 07:09, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Roadmap?

I'm still looking for the roadmap / development plan, see here and the links within this post. Especially for new data types I'm curious when they will be realized. --Nightwish62 (talk) 11:02, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

The time datatype is currently being worked on. I'm still working on getting more of a roadmap. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:44, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
Thank Lydia. Funny, I expected integer/number would be the next. However, time is important also. --Nightwish62 (talk) 12:48, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

what is the ontology that is being used, and how to access the data?

First off, thank you guys in the development team for the great idea and great work, this is indeed one big step towards a success story of semantic web technology!

Two questions:

1. what is the ontology (ontologies) that is being used? I assume the back end database is a triple store... if so, there has to be some ontology you guys use to create the triples... is it possible to share/download this ontology?

2. It is said here that the data is open and free for others to use, but is there a download page (API, SPARQL endpoint, or something like that) for us to see/download the data?

Thanks in advance! --lyu (talk) 20:21, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I'm not on the development team, but I've been interested in the types of questions you ask. Answering in order:
  • "What is the ontology (ontologies) that is being used?"
The ontology is being built by Wikidata editors. Properties and qualifiers are the terms in the controlled vocabulary -- you can find a list of available properties at Wikidata:List_of_properties. In terms of a taxonomy-building, you might be interested in reviewing the properties instance of (P31), subclass of (P279), part of (P361), parent taxon (P171) and the other biological taxonomic properties, etc. The P31 and P279 are based on the rdf:type and rdfs:subClassOf properties used in RDFS and OWL; a primer on those properties and P361 is available in Help:Basic membership properties. For approximate, non-hierarchical classification, main type (GND) (P107) is also relevant. Emw (talk) 11:05, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
  • "I assume the back end database is a triple store"
To my understanding the back-end database is a relational database (MySQL, see here) not a triplestore.
  • "is it possible to share/download this ontology?"
See http://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/, http://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/incr/wikidatawiki/ and http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Database_download.
  • "is there a download page (API, SPARQL endpoint, or something like that) for us to see/download the data?"
See above for links to the database dumps. Wikidata's API is here: http://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php. A SPARQL endpoint isn't currently available, but it is the first "optional extension" to Phase 3 of Wikidata development: see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata/Technical_proposal#Optional_extensions_to_phase_3. You may also be interested in Wikidata queries.
Hope that helps, Emw (talk) 11:05, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation! Your answers did clear things up a lot. I will have to spend more time understanding the ontology that underspins wikidata here… just one thing though – why not use an existing ontology? Schema.org is a possible candidate… it is at least “supported” by Google, Yahoo and Bing. This way, maybe some day, Google will decide to make use of the knowledge expressed in wikidata. As for now, wikidata has its own ontology… so how could Google easily make sense of wikidata’s triples? --lyu (talk) 02:09, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Impossible to remove property

Item Q1860 (concerning the English language) had P:P133 ("language family") set to Q19860 ("Indo-European languages") as well as Q1346342 ("English languages"). I believe the latter is incorrect, but when I try to remove it the page gives me this peculiar error message:

* A length constraint is triggered for language code "ko". * There is {{PLURAL:1|a constraint|constraints}} violation for {{PLURAL:1|description|descriptions}} "영국의 잉글랜드 지방..." for {{PLURAL:1|language code|language codes}} "ko".

I have no idea why that is. I've set the property to "no value" for now. Gabbe (talk) 15:55, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

It means the ko description is too long and needs to be shortened. And it won't/shouldn't let you edit it until that gets fixed. Legoktm (talk) 16:09, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
I asked to Korean user to check the description --ValterVB (talk) 16:10, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
That seems to have done the trick, as evidenced by this edit. Thanks! Gabbe (talk) 16:20, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Is there any problem with Wikibase Client?

The RC on Wikipedias is not shown Wikidata edits anymore.  Ę-oиė  >>>  ™ 15:58, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

hmm.... the last change on enwiki is from May 6 12:41 UTC [2] (well before enwiki was updated to new code), itwiki last change is from May 6 18:35 UTC [3], most others that I spot-checked seem up-to-date. I don't seen any configuration or code change that could be an issue, from around that time. It could be a backlog or issue in the job queue. Needs more investigating... Aude (talk) 23:47, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
now the last Wikidata change to appear on enwiki is from May 6 12:53 UTC. It seems there is a backlog in the job queue, but changes continue to appear. It's still not a good situation, though and can be monitored. Aude (talk) 00:01, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
in the time I wrote that, last change on enwiki is now from 13:03 UTC. Aude (talk) 00:02, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
Any idea about this problem? Still not shown. :(  Ę-oиė  >>>  ™ 03:19, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
I still don't know what cause a backlog but definitely seems in the job queue. The last change I see is now from May 7 6:43 UTC (~2 1/2 hours old). The backlog seems diminishing. I see stuff in my watchlist but 2 1/2 hours would still be much too old to really see changes in recent changes. I think this sort of backlog is easy to track and shouldn't be too difficult to setup something to monitor it. We can see if it happens again. Aude (talk) 07:28, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Parser error at position19

Where is exactly position 19? [4] Can anyone fix it? It's appears on all editing toolbar of wikipedia. Thanks in advance.  Ę-oиė  >>>  ™ 03:36, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

It does not look as it is related to Wikibase. -- Lavallen (block) 06:40, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
Ups.. sorry if that's not related to Wikibase. But it appears on editing toolbar of this site. Is that okay we leave that error coz not related to Wikibase, or is not error at all? Can anyone explain it?  Ę-oиė  >>>  ™ 14:01, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
I cannot explain it, but I think I hear complaints about trouble in that area almost all the time. I have solved it by removing all such tools on every project I am active on, but that does not help you, I'm afraid. -- Lavallen (block) 14:36, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Boolean datatype ?

Wasn't a boolean datatype foreseen at some point ? One important usecase would be for distinguishing real and fictional things (see WD:PC#fFictional stuff). --Zolo (talk) 06:23, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

There will not be such a datatype. It is better to express these with things like "is instance of:fictional person" for example. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:53, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Ok, that will be a bit cumbersome for "instance of: fictional spacecraft" :(. --Zolo (talk) 15:14, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Feedback

Hi, yesterdag was the first day I spent a lot of time editing items on Wikidata, following a request on the Dutch Wikipedia to help resolve interwiki conflicts. I encountered several topics that to me seem worthwhile to send feedback upon.

Double items

In the fish genus Ancistrus I found that language links had been imported in two groups. For nearly every species, an item existed holding the Catalan (ca), Spanish (es) and French (fr) language links, and a separate item holding the other language links (most of the time the Dutch (nl), Cebuano (ceb), Winaray (war), Teng Viet (vi) and Swedish (sv) ones). This is a systematic error. In this genus I corrected most of them yesterday by hand and today I was helped by Soulkeeper to finish the job. I think however this is more something for a bot to be solved and corrected, as the error is a systematic one and many more genera of fish are likely to have the same problem. I found exactly the same situation in the somewhat smaller genus Atherinella today.

Moving links

Solving the problem I described above, I moved many language links from one item to the other one, using the "move" gadget. I was very disappointed when I discovered that only the link, and not the label and description are moved. This means that the latter ones had to be moved by hand, or neglected, in which casee I would have undone some of the hard work other contributors already put in the item, so I did my best to move everything. If it is possible to design a move gadget, it can't be too much of a problem to include the associated data, can it? I hope you can forward this to the development team. A tool for "merging" two items at once would of course be even better.

Double items for categories

Much worse than the double items I encountered for biological taxa were the problems I discovered when dealing with items for categories. In all families or genera I edited, I found multiple separate items for the categories. The oldest one usually was the item holding the Swedish (sv) category, then later on a new item was created for the Winaray (war) and again a separate one for the Cebuano (ceb) language. In some cases there was also a separate item for the French language (fr) category. In a minority of cases, two or more categories had correctly been joined in the same item; in most cases these were the Dutch (nl) and the English (en) ones, sometimes accompanied by a Spanish (es) one. This too seems to be a job for a bot, as the word for category is always the same in the same language, and it is the word for the content of the category that is the binding factor. An example can still be found in the small family Chanidae.

Editing labels in the Labels list

The procedure to edit labels once the "Labels list" is visible, is very awkward, cumbrous and time consuming. Even when the Language codes are visible on screen, you have to click an "edit" button, fill in the language code by hand, do very awkward things if one wants to remove aliases and can only see the result after the final clicks on "save", "finish" and "close". There should be a way to make this much, much easier.

Now don't think I was put of by these minor inconveniences. I enjoyed solving the conflicts and adding labels and descriptions to the languages that are in my Babel box (which makes editing labels and descriptions much easier, petty that one has to use the Label list again for adding aliases). I think I had two rather fruitful days and will certainly continue to correct the obvious errors like unequal language links and the likes, adding labels to items that lack them and merging obviuos doubles. Cheers. Wikiklaas (talk) 22:33, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your feedback. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:30, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for reading. I hope it will help improve the procedures to build and maintain this usefull project. Wikiklaas (talk) 13:39, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

True duplicate

Currently both Q12863749 and Q2618201 link to ka:დიდი ბრიტანეთი 1960 წლის ზაფხულის ოლიმპიურ თამაშებზე. Thought we made that impossible ages ago? — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 11:51, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Same with Q12863758/Q146146/ka:დიდი ბრიტანეთი 1996 წლის ზაფხულის ოლიმპიურ თამაშებზე. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 11:58, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Urgh. This is not good. I have opened a bug report at bugzilla:48260. We'll investigate. Thanks for bringing it up. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:52, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

How to extract all property values?

Hi, I have a task: get all values of specific property, for example MusicBrainz artist ID. I can use API, but number of requests is: 23325 / 5000 (backlinks) + 23325 / 50 (wbgetentities&props=claims) = 473, too many requests for not most popular property. I can use dump ...-pages-meta-current.xml.bz2, but BZ2+XML+JSON - is not simple bunch for using + archiving time lag. Could you please recommend more simple way to execute this task? — Ivan A. Krestinin (talk) 21:05, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

I can handle bz2/xml/json and extract the values from database dumps for you, but I cannot do anything about that the current dump is about 2 weeks old at the moment. Are you interested, and what do you need besides a list of used values for property P434? (like for instance how many times each value is used, or which items use the values.) Byrial (talk) 12:32, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
Thank you, but I need this functionality not permanently, I plan to use it for regular generation lists like this. I can write code for parsing this dump, but I hope that more simple and efficient way present. Such task is very standard step for many applications, simple way must present for this step. — Ivan A. Krestinin (talk) 13:25, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
Well, P:P434 wasn't created yet when the last database dump was made on April 17, so you cannot even use that. Byrial (talk) 04:55, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
I solve the problem using incremental dumps. But this is bad solution: I need two parsers (XML and JSON), 27 minutes to parse all these files... — Ivan A. Krestinin (talk) 06:41, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
But this way has one more problem: information from incr file is not enough to update base dump file. Incremental dumps do not contain information about delete events to exclude deleted items from base file. — Ivan A. Krestinin (talk) 08:33, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Database tables for statements

Wikidata provides specific tables for terms (labels, descriptions and aliases) and for sitelink. It's planning to add more tables specific for statements (claims, sources, qualifiers and rank)? --β16 - (talk) 13:08, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

This is not planned. What are you trying to do? Maybe we can figure out how to do this in another way. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:54, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
The first target is maintenance reports to find errors in new users edits. For example: I can see if an item is used in a statement through 'WhatLinkHere', but I can not know if it's used as value in a claim, or in a qualifier or in a reference. Or in which elements are used 'novalue' and 'somevalue'. The only way is parsing the XML dump (with this problem)? Thanks. --β16 - (talk) 07:53, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Permission to edit article

E.g. Alois Alzheimer . Is there a reason old school Single User Login-users like me (used 2b m:User:Pato can not update those kind of objects about famous Gemini? A zodiac sign starting within about two weeks? Thank you very much indeed for an answer. Eventually it would make me happy to get permission to make some valuable and possibly appreciated changes to those kind of biographies, one of the things I like a lot. Greetings and salutations from Arezzo province, region Tuscany, Italy, European Union, Klaas V 20:39, 7 May 2013 (UTC) bureaucracy is evil, long live free will(y)

What's the problem? What kind of error message did you get? Or are you using IE8? Wikiklaas (talk) 00:30, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I did not get an error message. I just had no visible 'Edit' button. Perhaps the article is protected for some odd reason and only editable (is that proper English?) for administrators, bureaucrats and higher peeps? Now it was possible to edit a paragraph; just the entire article is apparently protected. Sorry for the inconvenience and bugging you. "Problem" solved, it seens. Thanks for your great help, WikiKlaas!  Klaas|Z4␟V:  12:36, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Ahh, this is a common source of confusion here. There is no single "edit" button for items; instead, you edit the fields individually. See Help:FAQ. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 00:54, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
Why? So for moving 40 interwiki links from one item to another you need 80 edits instead of 2. -- Aspiriniks (talk) 06:47, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
And if it is not possible to edit the complete item, is it at least possible to see the complete item? For example in Q12981444 the French label was changed yesterday, as I can see in my watchlist. But I can't see the French label and I can't see in which other languages a label exists, as this information is hidden (it seems you can only see the label in the language you use yourself). -- Aspiriniks (talk) 15:32, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
it is possible to see and change them, if you use the labellister gadged. and it's possible to see and edit selected languages if you use wd:babel on your userpage. but usability could be better. --Akkakk 16:51, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
Thank you! -- Aspiriniks (talk) 09:47, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Api option to avoid creation of duplicate statements

To avoid that bots create duplicate statements, it might be easier if there was an option they could invoke when adding statements.

Obviously there may be reasons to create several statements with the same property and value, but I'm not sure that this is frequently what bots are programmed to do. --  Docu  at 08:16, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

 Support: a boolean duplicate flag would definitely solve the problem, with ease for developers. --Ricordisamoa 08:43, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Dates of birth and death

Are there plans to have the dates of birth and death in the items concerning people, like there are already things like "place of birth", "sex" and "native language"? Will these dates be filled in by bots using the Persondata in articles of the English and German wikipedia? -- Aspiriniks (talk) 09:52, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

There are plans, but we have to wait until the developers create the "date" data type. The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 15:48, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)
It works for me and a few others I have asked here too. Can you describe the issue more? When you click the icon what happens? Are you logged in? Does it happen on all items you try? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:42, 21 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)
It is planned but will not be possible initially. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:44, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Trailing space

Please take a look at Property talk:P227#STICKY: Explanation of format constraints. There is problem with trailing space in P227. Is it a software bug or a bot problem? --Kolja21 (talk) 13:06, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for poking. Denny will look into it and answer there. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 15:25, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
Wow, that was fast! Thanks to both of you. --Kolja21 (talk) 22:44, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Date of ness and moor

I demand you pardon may my english is tree notgood, it is because I not ness in land who one parl english (I not can choose).

Goodday. In the pages sur a man, i not see comment meter the dates of ness and (for certain) moor.

The ness and the moor is very important car than monter the epoque who vive the man, one voice al the sequence if the man is modern man, historic man, antiquity man...

And not onli for man : that mark the date of fonding city, lance of boat, invention.

Strange : tape the world "ness" make come "look of ness".

Tank you for lecture mi, I esper rapid respond.

Tout d'abord, veuillez accepter mes excuses pour mon très mauvais anglais. N'ayant pas eu la possibilité de choisir mon lieu de naissance, je suis hélas né dans un pays non-anglosaxon.

Voici ce qui motive mon intervention : Dans les pages Médiaviki concernant une personne, je n'ai pas trouvé le moyen d'indiquer les dates de naissance et éventuellement de décès, de la personne concernée.

Or (du moins à mon sens) ces dates ne sont pas sans importance : elles montrent immédiatement s'il s'agit d'un personnage contemporain, historique, de l'antiquité...

Ces dates ne seraient du reste pas réservées à des personnes : elles pouraent indiquer la fondation d'une ville, le lancement d'un navire, la date d'une invention...

Mais, étrangement taper le mot "naissance" ne fait venir que "lieu de naissance"

Merci de m'avoir lu, en espérant une prompte réponse.

--Jean-François Clet (talk) 15:55, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes we are working on this. Hopefully it'll be possible next week. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 16:02, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
Bonjour, pour des raisons techniques, il n'est pas encore possible d'ajouter des dates sur Wikidata. Cela devrait venir d'ici quelques semaines je crois. --Zolo (talk) 16:03, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

m:Www.wikidata.org template

Is this still needed? It's clearly not what shows up when you go to http://www.wikidata.org, and it's clearly out of date if it is used anywhere. It's confusing to have it listed at m:Project portals, where no other multilingual projects are listed. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 10:23, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

No that is no longer needed. I think it was just totally forgotten about. Could you get it removed? Thanks! --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:43, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Errorlinks

What happened to the very useful gadget errorLinks that Javad designed for us (see here)? For me it worked fine but I don't see the links anymore. It's also not in my preferences list, so I can't check it. Do I have to enable it in my .js myself now? Also I was puzzled about the tab "request deletion" having disappeared from my tabs on the item edit page. It turned out, it had been unchecked in my preferences but not by me. Wikiklaas (talk) 11:31, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Do you know when this happened? We had this issue quite a while ago but I've not heard any reports recently. If this happened recently we need to look into it further. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:03, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
About the errorlinks gadget, see this edit and related discussion Wikidata:Project_chat#Issues_with_new_gadgets. --Stryn (talk) 12:15, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing at the removal of errorLinks, due to a security issue, from the list of gadgets in preferences. The "request deletion" tab disappeared between 19 and 27 May. I'm sorry I can't be more specific as I was away for several days and in my last edits (22 and 24 May) did not need the gadget, so it escaped my attention. Can Wiki13's edit have something to do with the disappearance? Cheers, Wikiklaas (talk) 12:59, 27 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)
The world is not limited to developed countries, where renew of old hardware (and software) is fast. And Wikipedia (so also Wikidata) is not targeted only to users with recent hardware and software (for example in China is share of of MSIE 8 and lower versions is still above 50%). As Wikidate replaced interwiki on wikipedia, i think it must be editable with same software, with which is editable Wikipedia. I already reported twice problems with older MSIE here.Jklamo (talk) 16:10, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
I have had the same problems with IE8 and Windows 7 and I am coming from a quite developed country (Germany). In Germany the internet explorer 8 quite popular and is used on about 23% of all computers (new statistik of May 2013). This value is not a peripheral product.--Salino01 (talk) 05:51, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
Yes we're aware that using Wikidata without JS enabled is still very problematic. Is there anyone willing and able to put some coding time into it? I have to be honest with you that there are a lot of things that have higher priority for the dev team to work on so it'd need someone else to put some time into it. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:56, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
I am afraid my coding skills are not enough to solve it (and it will be not easy to found "open-source minded" coder able and willing to make MSIE optimalizations). But it is a question of priorities, from my view these MSIE problems (that may prevent noticeable part of wikipedia contributors from contributing to wikidata) have very high priority, as it is bugfixing of Phase 1. So from my point of view this bugfixing has higher priority than other work on Phase 2 or subsequent phases. --Jklamo (talk) 16:39, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Monolingual datatype

Do you still plan to create that datatype ? Is there a demand for that datatype or the string datatype can handle most of the cases and for particular cases a additional property like Property:P407 can do the same work ? Snipre (talk) 07:47, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I'll poke Denny about this when he's back and get back to you. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:02, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
I know the data model documentation. However, can someone explain me what's the advantages and disadvantages using monolingual datatype instead of just use qualifiers as Snipre propose? --Nightwish62 (talk) 17:49, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
If you have a text as monolingual datatype you know in which language the text was writing, even if you don't want to have a translation. For example the property original title for book or for film can use this property. Right now we find a solution by creating a original language property. Snipre (talk) 13:25, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
To quote Denny: "Yes, totally still planning to do it." ;-) --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 13:58, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Link from Wikipedia still in phase 1?

In Wikipedia we have the link "Edit links" to access the Wikidata item associated with the article. This has some problems/limitations:

  • After phase 1, we are editing much more than just links, so the link text is slightly misleading.
  • If the associated Wikidata item only has one Wikipedia link, the "Edit links" link don't bring us to the Wikidata item, so we can't use it to edit properties.
  • If the article has no associated Wikidata item, there's no obvious way to make one, so we can't use it to edit properties.
  • The interface doesn't even tell us whether there is an associated Wikidata item or not, which makes deciding what to do next even more cumbersome.

Is there a plan to fix this? - Soulkeeper (talk) 10:44, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Today I've twice had to explain how to "manually" add a new article on nowp to an existing Wikidata item. The existing link seems to do nothing to help users understand how to use Wikidata. Removing the link completely would probably make them less confused than they are now. - Soulkeeper (talk) 15:06, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
How should that be? Some people may have problems to find the link. Okay (I don't understand why, as the placing and labelling seems to be logical to me, but okay). Now how would it help those people if the link was removed for everybody? --YMS (talk) 08:58, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
The user interface would at least be consistent. The problem is not finding the link. It is easy to find. The problem is that the user interface that you get when you click the link is so limited that it is useless. How do you add a new article to an existing item using the link? How do you make a new item for a new article using the link? And how do you check whether the item exists in the first place, so that it should be linked to the existing item instead of making a duplicate, or if the item is lacking on wikidata and therefore needs to be made, using the link? None of these things are possible to achieve by using the link (AFAIU, but I might of course be wrong, since I cannot exclude the possibility of the interface being even more non-intuitive than I think). This makes the useage value of the link so limited that it might as well be non-existent. Therefore the link is in practice only a distraction. Whatever a user wants to do, if they want to do it somewhat properly, they will have to go to www.wikidata.org and use the search function. If they start out by trying to achieve their goal by using the link, they are most likely wasting time and energy on a dead end, and they will have to fall back to opening www.wikidata.org manually and using the search field anyway. - Soulkeeper (talk) 09:34, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
I have a hard time figuring out what exactly is problematic for these users. But since there are obviously issues with it we need to look into it. Can you try to explain where they are confused more please? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:01, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
I'm actually not 100% sure how the link works today, but I will try to explain how I would like it to work, and I'll try to use a specific example.
  • When I view the article no:Pynten Borettslag, which has no interwiki, the link only gives me one option: To link the article to an article in another language. I don't want that. What I want is:
    • If a Wikidata item exists for the article, I want the link to take me directly to this Wikidata item, so that I can view/edit its properties. Or, if I want to edit its interwiki links, take me to the Wikidata item so that I can edit them in an interface that is appropriate for the task.
    • If an existing Wikidata item is not currently linked to the article, I want to be informed about this! It would not hurt if it also took me to the Wikidata search page, where I can try to figure out whether an appropriate item exists or not. This is actually a vital piece of information. The current interface seems to do absolutely nothing to help the user find this vital piece of information.
      • If and only if an appropriate Wikidata item does in fact seem to not exist, would I want to be able to make a new Wikidata item and link it to the article. This is actually a less important functionality than 1) finding the correct item or 2) learning that such an item does not exist.
    • In the case of my example no:Pynten Borettslag, a Wikidata item actually does exist: Q11996527. So why can I not go to this item directly from no:Pynten Borettslag by clicking a link in the menu? Or can I? Either way, this should not be opaque. This is a very important link, and it should not only be existent, it should also be highly visible and unambiguous.
  • I tried to find another example, of an article on nowp that does not have a corresponding Wikidata item, but it seems a bot has gone through them, and I will not make a new article on nowp just to illustrate the example. But part of my problem with the current solution, is all the hoops that I have to jump through in order to simply decide if an interwiki-less article on nowp (like for instance no:Pynten Borettslag) has a corresponding Wikidata item or if the article does not have a corresponding Wikidata item. The steps I have to take are disjoint, logically unneccessary, and they obscure the very important link between the Wikipedia article and the Wikidata item. This link should be made visible and streamlined to the greatest degree possible. I hope I'm making more sense this time. - Soulkeeper (talk) 10:32, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me that Yair rand's tool "WikidataInfo.js" gives precisely the link you ask for, Soulkeeper… or is it not what you want ? 

// [[d:User:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js]]
importScriptURI("//www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=User:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript");

it gives the link at the top of the page… :) --Hsarrazin (talk) 18:34, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but I don't want it for myself. I have already learned how to navigate the existing interface. I want it for everyone else. ;) So I guess I'll have to wait until someone deems accessibility for newbies sufficiently important to do something about it. But in the meantime I'll check out WikidataInfo.js for myself, so thanks again. - Soulkeeper (talk) 10:30, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Make labelling more efficient

When a user adds a link to Wikidata from his home wiki, please also make the title of the article the label of the item. I can't immediately see any really serious issues with this method; at worst we'll get some disambiguation in the label, like "(city)" and incorrect capitalisation (very likely). Disambiguation and incorrect capitalisation is a lot better than "QXXXX". There could also be an input box in the dialogue displayed at the home wiki, perhaps under and "advanced" header in case the 'label' concept could confuse new editors more than necessary.

The most important point is that we get a more efficient labelling system, which today is frustratingly inefficient with lots of duplicated work. --Njardarlogar (talk) 11:25, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

 Support. - Soulkeeper (talk) 11:45, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
 Comment. There are things that could be better with labels (fallback...), but I think that addings labels based on Wikipedia titles should be done by a bot rather than directly by the software. --Zolo (talk) 13:20, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
Which advantages will a bot give? --Njardarlogar (talk) 13:25, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
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