Wikidata:Contact the development team/Archive/2018/04

This page is an archive. Please do not modify it. Use the current page, even to continue an old discussion.

Lua data access timeout errors

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T188378
Resolved

Over the last week or so I've seen pages start timing out that did not before, see Wikidata:WikiProject Roads/United States/Alabama and Wikidata:WikiProject Roads/United States/California. Is this just a temporary issue, or will this be permanent? --Rschen7754 21:30, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing. We will have a look. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 08:14, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

@Lea Lacroix (WMDE): any update on this? I've been pointed to this simple test page User:Happy5214/sandbox/California3 that won't even load. --Rschen7754 06:31, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Thiemo looked into it and left a comment in the ticket linked here. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:40, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Ok I think we fixed it. The pages you mention work again after a purge. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 13:46, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 08:26, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Edit statements without JavaScript

For the record I would like such a feature. -- Palosirkka (talk) 08:19, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

It is unfortunately pretty hard to have an interface for that without java script because a statement can have many different forms (different number of values/qualifiers/ranks/special values/references). We have it on our todo list to look into it but I can't make any promises unfortunately :/ --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:33, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Maybe you are expecting something a bit different, but https://github.com/maxlath/wikidata-cli.--Jklamo (talk) 20:54, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 08:27, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

"Updated alias" showing old alias

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T190492

Whenever I change an alias it shows a message in the history/watchlist etc as: "Updated [language] alias/es", and then the old alias that it was before, but it should show the new alias that has been entered, as it happens when changing a label. Micru (talk) 09:20, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

+1
--- Jura 16:58, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 08:29, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Undoing User:‎&beer&love doesn't trigger notification

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T190491
Invalid

Somehow & converts to "& amp" and this gets too long.
--- Jura 16:58, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

It's standard undo, not the new ping feature.
--- Jura 09:04, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

And how do you know that? Did User:&beer&love tell you this? Because if you undo an edit, you never get a notification (that the other user got a notification). I'll tell after this post if I got a notification for pinging &beer&love ;). --YMS (talk) 09:12, 23 March 2018 (UTC) PS: Yes, for this edit, I got the expected notification "Your mention of &beer&love was sent". --YMS (talk) 09:13, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Good point. I assumed they didn't get it as the edit summary didn't mention their username clearly and they re-did their edit (generally they are responsive).
--- Jura 09:28, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• It seems it didn't work as notifications were turned off and it does work when they are not. It just looks broken in the edit summary. --
  --- Jura 09:28, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 08:32, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Multiple Languages

I cannot figure it out how to link the English and Thai version And when I ask the Thai administration This is what he did .

https://th.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B8%9C%E0%B8%B9%E0%B9%89%E0%B9%83%E0%B8%8A%E0%B9%89:22sep/%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B0%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%B0%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A2 The Thai Wikipedia links to University of Colorado at Boulder

Her English Version is

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thita_Manitkul

I believe Sry85 is not neutral in politic  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nafeby633 (talk • contribs) at 25. 3. 2018, 20:57‎ (UTC).

 Not done See WD:AN. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 06:51, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 08:32, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Can you tell me the guidelines

I would like all my projects in the future be multiple languages,Please told me how to do that. Thanks  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nafeby633 (talk • contribs) at 25. 3. 2018, 21:00 (UTC).

You can take a look to Help:Multilingual. Micru (talk) 06:52, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 08:33, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Property explorer needed

Right now we don't have any up-to-date property list, they are difficult to maintain, and they have many errors. Users don't have any way to discover existing properties that they could use. Ideally we would need a property explorer that would show the property tree and would allow to show which properties are in each category. As it is now Special:ListProperties is not useful because it doesn't allow for an easy navigation, and we have too many properties to display in a list. Micru (talk) 09:10, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Hey Micru,

Thanks for your suggestion. Can you elaborate a bit more on the idea? What features would we need? What would it look like (a search field? what would the results look like?) etc.

Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 13:20, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

@Micru: Do you know Propbrowse and Wikidata:Database reports/List of properties/all? --Pasleim (talk) 19:02, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

@Micru: Please check WDProp (work in progress). Though the goal is to understand the translation process of properties and the associated statistics, you may be able to get the latest statistics (thanks to the SPARQL queries). John Samuel 19:58, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

@Lea Lacroix (WMDE), Pasleim, Jsamwrites: The problem with all the property browsers so far (including SQID) is that they don't offer any option to filter the properties by category. How am I supposed to find properties that are interesting to my topic if ALL properties are shown? And filtering by text often doesn't work because we don't include the domain in the property (for instance ballots cast (P1868) and age of candidacy (P2998) are both related to "elections", but if I type "election" in Propbrowse they don't show up). The closest to have some usability would be to have something similar to categories, and for that we can use the property tree since all properties are "instance of" one of those items. Here you will find a mockup of how it could work. On the left a tree with all the categories, and on the right the list of properties that exist in that category, of course it could be done better by allowing to configure the columns (showing/hiding descriptions, use, example items, etc) or by linking to queries that shows the results of a given property being used in a statement, qualifier or reference. The data is already there, it is just a matter of creating the browsing tool. Micru (talk) 07:46, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

@Micru: I think the key solution to your problem is a well-designed (and shared) ontology for each data item type. Finding the relevant properties would then be very straight forward, similar to how the documentation at something like en:Template:Infobox election works. Obviously there is still the effort required in building that ontology, but that should be an essential part of any effective data project. In terms of your specific example, there is already some detail at Wikidata:WikiProject Politics infoboxes. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 11:56, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

@Sillyfolkboy: You are talking about a hypothetical future situation that might or might not happen, whereas the properties are already grouped together NOW by topic, we just don't have any way to display that information. Besides there are many properties that are not included in any Wikiproject. Micru (talk) 14:21, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

@Micru: @Sillyfolkboy: Now, check WDProp. You can navigate all the supported classes and click on any particular class like software, programming language etc. Another option is to search for these items. Take for example, you type software and want to get all the properties related to software, you can make use of search option, example software, music etc. This is still in nascent stage, but I think this is what you are looking for. Search option will give you more results than navigation by classes. John Samuel 18:09, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

@Micru: I just developed a very simple web app based on your description -- https://tools.wmflabs.org/prop-explorer/ , is this something you are looking for?--Stevenliuyi (talk) 04:30, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

@Stevenliuyi: Wonderful! Thanks a lot for developing it, it is exactly what I was looking for :) Just some minor issues:

• when clicking on a branch of the tree, not only the instances of that branch are shown, but also the instances in the sub-branches. Is that intended behaviour? I would prefer not to have the instances in the sub-branches, or ideally have a toggle to configure it.
• the tree is not sorted alphabetically (minor issue)
• sorting by ID does not sort properly, it does some kind of alphabetic sorting

And if you want to develop it further it would be nice to have a language selector and sections with independent scroll bars. Sorry to give you more work to do :) Again thanks a lot for the great (and quick) work. Micru (talk) 07:43, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm glad it helps! I've fixed some issues you mentioned, and I'll try to polish it further when I have more time.--Stevenliuyi (talk) 10:40, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 08:35, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Formatting of time (showing HH:MM:SS for seconds)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T145532

We currently have a bit of barrier for adding finishing times for racing sports (cycling, swimming, athletics, motorsports). These are measured in seconds and should be stored that way, but it's extremely rare that the data is presented that way. This is particularly problematic for longer events, such as marathons, cycle races or rallies, where the times in seconds reach unatural proportions (how long is 22000 seconds?) .Though the separators vary across language, all refer to times in a HH:MM:SS format. In order to add the data to Wikidata, we're currently having to manually convert times elsewhere. Would it be possible to have some form of data input mask to allow users to input something like "2:02:57" and this can then be stored as 7377 seconds? Ideally we would also show the HH:MM:SS format at front end after input, but arguably that's a question of data presentation instead. We have lots of this kind of data on Wikipedia (Olympics being one very active part) but very little of it is currently held at Wikidata due to this reason. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 11:48, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

The "duration datatype" is a long standing issue (see ticket for more details). It affects several existing properties and some that could be created (like "opening hours"). I asked Lea 2 weeks ago if this would be included in the development plan, but no answer so far. @Lea Lacroix (WMDE): Do you have more information? Micru (talk) 14:32, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it is included in the development plan. I can't tell you exactly when it's going to be done. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 09:52, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I have added it here. --Micru (talk) 20:51, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 08:35, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Appearance of bots changes on Special:RecentChanges

Hello.Sometimes bots changes appear on Special:RecentChanges like Prompter Bot here and Liangent-bot locally.Please correct this.Thank you David (talk) 18:20, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Do you have links to edits that show up but that you think should not show up? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:21, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

@Lydia Pintscher (WMDE): Examples David (talk) 17:10, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

You know, that bots can make edits without "b" mark, right? --Edgars2007 (talk) 17:14, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

@Edgars2007: How?!Can the bots do that?!Please clarify your words using a MediaWiki message.Thank you! David (talk) 17:29, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

The edit action of the MediaWiki API [1] has a parameter bot. This parameter has to be set to true such that the "b" mark is set. It is not automatically done. --Pasleim (talk) 18:09, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Changes on Wikidata do not trigger updates to pages that rely on Wikidata

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T173339

As I reported in Phabricator:T173339 , if one has maintenance tracking categories that depend on Wikidata, like the ones in c:Category:Wikidata related maintenance, than changes on Wikidata that should remove the page from the tracking category do not seem to trigger the removal. Even more strange, purge of the page removes the category from the page, but does not remove the page from the category. This issue is being discussed at c:Commons:Village_pump ( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Lua_version_of_{{Artwork}}_is_now_live ). It would be nice to know if Wikidata development team is aware of this old issue and if there are plans to address it. --Jarekt (talk) 14:48, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Let's investigate this in the ticket. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 08:57, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Regex and accented letters

What flavour of regex are we using? Is it possible to use, say, [À-ÿ] or [A-ÿ] to trap accented (and unaccented) characters? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:15, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (Q125267). botanist author abbreviation (P428) is an example how to do that. --Succu (talk) 20:29, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Good list

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T190976
Resolved

Hi, I've done this ask in Project Chat, but they said to ask it here. In Portuguese Wikipedia there is a feature content that doesn't have in Wikidata, the article option "Good list". That's possible create this option, to show that the list is good in another wikipedias, and is needly open a task on Phabricator? Mr. Fulano (talk) 22:43, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Hello,

This feature does not exist in Wikidata. You can create a ticket on Phabricator, providing links, examples and description of what you would like. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 07:32, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

The feature does exist, badges. It seems like we need some extra badge for "good list". Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 16:29, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

 Done, I opened a task. Mr. Fulano (talk) 23:02, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

 Done, good list is now available in the list of badges. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 09:47, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 08:32, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

FactGrid

Reading Wikidata:FactGrid#Problems and more, a brief status report of the FactGrid Project on Friday 13, April 2018, I was wondering what the impact was on Wikidata's own development agenda? I take it that Lucas is a full time employee of WMDE.
--- Jura 10:13, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm also wondering if Problem 5 (presentation layer/wikibase interpreter/reasonator) will be considered. It seems like a good idea but I don't know if the team can handle it. Micru (talk) 13:01, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

We'll have to see how things develop. At this point I think not because the presentation depends so much on the specific project, what they care about and how they want to show their data to the world. But let's see. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:19, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

As you probably understand I can not comment on individual employee's employment details.

As for the impact on the Wikidata development agenda: Making it easier to install Wikibase by 3rd parties is an important topic of this year because it will take pressure off of Wikidata itself. (Less data needs to be here that can reasonably be handled elsewhere for example.) FactGrid is super helpful in this because they work with us on identifying all the issues 3rd parties run into - either in Wikibase itself or in 3rd party tools or in working with the community and a ton of other things. A lot of these things don't require that much time from the developers but more from the non-developer parts of the team so they can for example find the right people to talk to or improve documentation. So I believe it is absolutely a net-positive for Wikidata. (Otherwise of course I wouldn't be doing it ;-)) --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:16, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Sounds good. I think some if it is probably already needed for structured data on Commons. It just seems odd that WMDE would be working on QuickStatements for FactGrid while it isn't doing it for Wikidata itself.
--- Jura 14:22, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Ah. That work wasn't done as part of work time at WMDE. (Not that we have any problem with that. It's a great and useful tool.) --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:27, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

It sure is, but it seems it's too quick for Wikidata. ;)
--- Jura 14:29, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, please understand that we paid University money in extra-contracts mostly to people who are not on the Wikimedia-payroll. That being said: I do think that a Wikidata-Interpreter (a tool that does what the Magnus Manske's Reasonator has proposed to do) would be the extremely cool and a vital thing to develop. We (the Gotha Research Centre, an Erfurt University sub-unit) will not be able to finance the development, but the bigger community should want the tool.

Wikidata will not remain a servant of the 290 Wikipedias and of Wikimedia Commons. It will become a source used by everyone - and if we are not quick: centrally made available by the big players on the web, by Google and Microsoft.

There are things no Wikipedia-article is able to do. A WP-article has is its questionable plot line. It is always the same: Some facts fit into the particular plot line which the "main author" has chosen and others don't - though they are just as true and valid. We are constantly discussing whether this or that statement in a Wikipedia-article deserves to be made or not. "Deserves to be made" is defined in a terrible notability debate. Wikidata will be able to give the entire information we have. Get the full list (for instance of all the places a person has visited) if you are interested in that list or just skip this point if there is something else you want to know - the genealogy, work places, works, you name it.

Wikidata is not 290 Wikipedias produced by 290 - more or less thriving - independent communities. Wikidata is a global project: The user in China will be producing information which the user in Rotterdam will be reading in her or his native Dutch. What we need is a global interpreter producing this information on well structured pages. We will only get more users compiling facts on Wikidata if we have more people making use of the Wikidata fact compilations. The compilations are especially attractive in languages with users of less power to create their own Wikipedias. But there are things we should make sure: The footnoting of this information must improve. Wikidata is weak here. (You, symptomatically, get a Reasonator page filled with facts and no footnotes on this page). The Wikidata-Interpreter must be better than that, it must eventually lead to the first documents that created a fact and to literature about the fact. So, somehow, I hope I can make the argument for the tool that turns Wikidata into a project of its own value; and somehow I hope I can inspire particular features of such a tool.

I remember back in 2004 I said that Wikipedia should enable me to set footnotes. Some people were shocked. "This would be the end of the medium produced by pupils all around the world - a medium that reflects our knowledge as it is..." Today you cannot think of writing anything on Wikipedia without giving the required citation. We should invest in the Wikidata software. If we don't Google will do - and their tool will not be a tool designed to spur collective work on our collective data base. --Olaf Simons (talk) 10:43, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

What prevents you from contributing ? ..
--- Jura 11:47, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Lack of programming skills - I am better at searching archives and writing conventional Wikipedia articles - and can tell you what the researcher would use. --Olaf Simons (talk) 07:22, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. --- Jura 11:22, 24 April 2018 (UTC)