Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
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:
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. Translations are available.
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.)
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.
AskWikidata: Natural language queries to Wikidata, a naive prototype created by Senior Software Engineer for Wikidata, Robert Timm. Want to try? (Google Colab)
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
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. Translations are available.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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!
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.
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)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The WDQS Graph Split experiment is working and loaded onto 3 test servers. The team in charge is testing the split's impact and requires feedback from WDQS users through the UI or programmatically in different channels. [1][2][3] Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service. [4][5]
Problems
There was a bug that affected the appearance of visited links when using mobile device to access wiki sites. It made the links appear black; this issue is fixed.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (calendar). [6][7]
As work continues on the grid engine deprecation,[8] tools on the grid engine will be stopped starting on February 14th, 2024. If you have tools actively migrating you can ask for an extension so they are not stopped. [9]