• Events/Press/Blogs
  • During the British wildlife edit-a-thon 2016, attendees added bird sounds from Europeana Sounds to Wikidata and over 60 Wikipedias
  • Past: WikiConference in San Diego, USA
  • Upcoming: Wikidata workshop by Wikimedia Nederland, October 20, Utrecht
  • Wikidata & Wikipedia edit-athon about Ramon Llull by Amical Wikimedia (ca)
  • A Natural Language Query Engine without Machine Learning, on A Young Programmer's blog
  • The Wikimedia Foundation will now directly fund basic expenses for Wikidata software development, on WMF blog
  • People buried on cemetery and if they have a picture of the grave or not by Magnus Sälgö
  • Sunday Query : où meurent les Bretons ? (fr) by Ash_Crow
  • Charts and data about Brexit & US Elections, by Hector Perez

• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Proposition for upgrading the default copyright license for Wikimedia projects to CC-by-SA 4.0 (does not affect the structured data part of Wikidata, which uses CC0).
  • 3 Wikidata-related projects will be funded by WMF grants : Librarybase, Lua module and WikiFactMine
  • Query service analysis: What kind of things are people doing with WDQS? and Who are our WDQS users and where are they from?
  • chemical compounds in Wikipedia and Wikidata, talk by Sebastian Burgstaller
  • PetScan tool past half a million queries since April (source)

• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: KANTL member ID, Angel List ID, storyboard artist, content deliverer, Actorenregister ID, Zeri image ID, compulsory education (maximum age), compulsory education (minimum age), Fotografen.nl ID, PORT organization URL, Flickr user ID, LocFDD ID, MySpace ID, radix, base, has anatomical branch, anatomical branch of, points awarded, intangible cultural heritage status, LiveJournal ID, Queensland place ID, Cave E-Cadastre ID, Property proposal discussion, optimum viable temperature, maximum viable temperature, minimum viable temperature
  • Query examples:
    • Chemistry Nobel prizes through time (source)
    • Former countries without continent (P30) (source)
    • Rivers without any mouth specified (source)
    • Interesting items near you (source)
  • Newest external tools: new Wikidata game, Alias Candidates (by MagnusManske)
  • Newest database reports: List of embassies has now summaries by host country and by country represented

• Development
  • The property talk namespace now has subpages enabled (phabricator:T146271)
  • More work on automated sitelinks for Wiktionary (phabricator:T987)
  • More work on federation for Commons in order to be able to use Wikidata's items and properties there (phabricator:T76007)
  • Adding entity usage information in action=edit on Wikipedia and co (phabricator:T144921)
  • Working on making it possible to get formatted values back on the client. With this we will for example link the value to a Wikipedia article where possible. (phabricator:T142940)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here.

• Monthly Tasks
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item
  • Help translate or proofread pages in your own language!
  • Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
  • Comment on property proposals: all open proposals - proposals needing attention

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 16:13, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

• Events/Blogs/Press
  • Upcoming: Connected Data London meetup with Navino Evans
  • Upcoming: Andy Mabbett & Liam Wyatt speaking about GLAM-Wiki (including Wikidata) at Muzeum Cyfrowe in Warsaw, 19 October.
  • Upcoming: Andy Mabbett speaking about Wikidata & running a GLAM-Wiki workshop at SFK 16 ("Software Freedom Kosova Conference") in Pristina, 21-23 October.
  • Past: CCBWIKI
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • World Spider Catalog has been added to Mix'n'match
  • Mix’n’match can now limit auto-matches to instances of a specific item and its subclasses
  • Sitelinks for the new Livvi-Karelian Wikipedia (olowiki) can be added
  • There is now a "userbox" for Wikidatans wishing to mark Wikidata's fourth birthday on their user pages
  • myMuseum was created at the hack4heritage hackathon and won a prize
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: DRÚSOP ID, code, encoding, BALaT image ID, DocCheck Flexikon De ID, DocCheck Flexikon En ID, biography at the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Cellosaurus ID, World Spider Catalog ID, Squash Info ID, MSC ID, Yahoo! Japan Talent Database ID, Bandcamp artist ID, French National Assembly Lobbyist ID, BanQ author ID, statistical leader, Sandbox-Monolingual text II
  • Query examples:
    • first Nobel Prize winner who was born after Alfred Nobel’s death (source)
    • streets in Paris named after doctors (source)
    • international land tripoints (source)
    • national flags depicting stars or constellations (source)
    • national flags with inscriptions (source)
    • people who died the furthest away from where they were born (source)
    • closest pairs of capitals (of UN member states, <500km) (source)
    • people who received military decorations from two different countries (source)
    • volcanoes and earthquakes (source)
    • height/width ratios of paintings (source)
    • birthplaces of Members of the European Parliament (source)
    • birthplaces of US Senators (source)
  • New template: d:Template:Poland properties. Please add labels in your own languages, and consider making a similar template for your country or region.
• Development
  • Worked further on automatic linking of pages between Wiktionary language editions
  • Worked further on making it possible to use Wikidata's items and properties to describe files on Commons
  • Reviewed error messages and made them easier to understand
  • Added tooltips in some places in the UI to make them more understandable (e.g. ranks, special values)
  • Made the loading animation clearer in embedded query results (phabricator:T148042)
  • Making it possible to paste the full URL of an image on Commons into image properties (phabricator:T147917)
  • Worked on a small birthday present
  • Fixed run button not being reenabled after some queries (phabricator:T147114)
  • More work on better parser function and Lua functions that return formatted values (phabricator:T142940)
  • Undoing the last edit to an item will now show a undo summary, not a restore one (phabricator:T147631) Thanks Matěj!
  • Lule Sami and Pite Sami are now supported languages in Wikidata (phabricator:T146707)
  • Brainstormed about how to make it easier to write queries without knowing SPARQL
  • Fixed a bug with spaces in language codes in queries (phabricator:T147729)
• Monthly Tasks
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item
  • Help translate or proofread pages in your own language!
  • Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
  • Comment on property proposals: all open proposals - proposals needing attention

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 21:56, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

• Wikidata's birthday is coming!

Wikidata celebrates its 4th anniversary on October 29th. Around this date, a lot of events will happen online and offline.

Birthday events

Editors all around the world organize meetups to celebrate the birthday. You can join one of them or create an event in your own town!

• San Francisco (USA), October 26th
• Torino (Italy), October 26th
• Tokyo (Japan), October 28th
• Paris (France), October 29th
• Utrecht (NL), October 29th
• Berlin (Germany), November 4th
• Rennes (France), November 5th

Online

A lot of surprises, stories and presents will be shared between October 29th and November 4th. Check the project chat or the mailing-list every day to see what happens!

You can also participate by posting a story (more info here), a tweet with #WikidataBirthday, let a message or a present on the birthday page.

If you're participating to Wikidata's birthday, you can add this template to your user page.

• Events/Press/Blogs
  • Wikidata workshops in Paris : every month, Wikimédia France and editors organize a workshop about Wikidata and related tools. Check out the schedule
  • Upcoming: Ladies that FOSS October 29th in Berlin, organized by Lucie and Julia from the Wikidata team

• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • WikiCite 2016 report

• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: Third-party formatter URL, Open Media Database film ID, broadcast by, musical conductor, Student register of the University of Helsinki 1640–1852 ID, Belgian Senate person ID, Flemish Parliament person ID, DRÚSOP ID
  • Query examples:
    • places of birth of living US senators (compare with last week's)
    • Wikidata map of filming locations (source)
    • Streets in Paris named after a physician (source)
    • Moons of trans-Neptunian objects (source)
  • Newest WikiProjects: Chess

• Development
  • Fixed a rounding error in the geo coordinate formatter (see GitHub). Thanks, 0x686578!
  • Improvements to technical error messages, e.g. "illegal value" when editing a Commons media statement (phabricator:T141880).
  • Continued working on a new parser function to get rich, formatted statements.
  • Continued working on making entity usage information visible to users.

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here.

• Monthly Tasks
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item
  • Help translate or proofread pages in your own language!
  • Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
  • Comment on property proposals: all open proposals - proposals needing attention

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 10:37, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

• Wikidata's birthday: presents, stories and events

The birthday week started and already a lot of events happened, presents have been shared, stories have been told! Here's what you may have missed:

• • a word from the development team by Lydia
  • a new version of the map showing all the Wikidata items with geolocalisation, by Addshore, who explains how he generated it in a blog post
  • The 4th birthday logo by Incabell
  • A new release of the Wikipedia and Wikidata Tools for Google Spreadsheets add-on has made working with Wikidata a lot easier for Google Sheets users, by Tomayac
  • A guide to SPARQL and the Wikidata Query Service, by TweetsFactsAndQueries
  • Four new types of charts for the Query Service: line chart, bar chart, scatter chart and area chart (read more and try examples in the documentation) by Jonas
  • ((#statements:…)), a new parser function is currently in development with better features that you can try on beta by the Wikidata dev team and volunteers
  • Search field added in Scholia, a tool to create scholarship profiles, by fnielsen
  • 10 cool queries for Wikidata that will blow your mind. Number 7 will shock you, by Jens and Cornelius
  • 4 years of Wikidata by Stryn
  • A lot of people celebrating and posting pictures on Twitter or on Commons!

The birthday party is not finished yet, every day until November 4th you will discover new presents and stories. Follow the project chat or the mailing-list or #Wikidatabirthday to get the news!

• Events/Press/Blogs
  • Wikidata birthday in Kanpur (India), November 3rd
  • Wikidata birthday in Berlin (Germany), November 4th
  • Wikidata birthday in Rennes (France), November 5th
  • OKlab Berlin hacknights, October 31st and November 7th
  • Pidapalooza, Reykjavik, November 9-10
  • Past: Ladies that FOSS (livetweet report)

• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: SummitPost ID, lib.reviews ID, Galiciana Author ID, ICAA rating, KINENOTE person ID, NGS pumping station ID, third-party formatter URL, Open Media Database film ID, broadcast by
  • Query examples:
    • Deities and their families
    • Most frequently variants of given names (source)
    • Cheese made with cow milk (source)
    • Abandoned villages in the Czech Republic (source)
  • Newest WikiProjects: WikiProject Informatics: File Formats
  • Newest database reports: Liam Neeson filmography

• Development
  • We proposed a meaningful initial order for the statementSort gadget (phabricator:T147062)
  • Commons media file properties now support pasting full Wikimedia Commons URLs (phabricator:T147917)
  • Added distinct hover tooltips to rank and snak type selectors, as well as some of the "add" buttons (phabricator:T139356)
  • Our concept base URI will be exposed as part of the meta=siteinfo API (phabricator:T143910). Thanks, user Lokal Profil!
  • Progress on the list=wbsubscribers API module to query entity usage information (phabricator:T145880)
  • Progress on the new parser function for rich, formatted statements (phabricator:T142940)
  • Released Wikibase DataModel 6.2.0
  • Released ValueView 0.18.0

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here.

• Monthly Tasks
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item
  • Help translate or proofread pages in your own language!
  • Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
  • Comment on property proposals: all open proposals - proposals needing attention

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 15:06, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

• Fourth birthday: thank you!

Thanks to everyone who celebrated the birthday by organizing or attending to an event, letting a message on Wikidata or on the social networks, writing a story or creating a present!

Here's the list of the birthday presents from the community and development team:

• d:Template:User Wikidata birthday 2016 (Pigsonthewing)
• A new version of the map showing all the Wikidata items with geolocalisation (Addshore)
• Wikidata's 4th birthday logo (Incabell)
• A new release of the Wikipedia and Wikidata Tools for Google Spreadsheets add-on has made working with Wikidata a lot easier for Google Sheets users. (Tomayac)
• A guide to SPARQL and the Wikidata Query Service (TweetsFactsAndQueries)
• Four new types of charts for the Query Service: line chart, bar chart, scatter chart and area chart! Read more and try examples in the documentation (Jonas)
• ((#statements:…)), a new parser function is currently in development with better features: try it here! (Thiemo, Wikidata dev team and volunteers)
• Search field added in Scholia, a tool to create scholarship profiles (fnielsen)
• Technical documentation about Wikibase for PHP and JS scripts (Ladsgroup and Jonas)
• new feature for the graph view in the Query Service: it can now browse the properties of items. see in the video (Jonas)
• graph builder tool for the query service to create and export graphs (demo video) (Jonas, [[d:user:Smalyshev (WMF)|Smalyshev)
• d:Module:PropertyPath and d:Template:Show Path Items (TomT0m)
• Everything is connected, a knowledge game based on Wikidata and Commons (list of levels) (Denny)

• Discussions
  • New request for comments: Editing descriptions from Wikipedia Android app

• Events/Press/Blogs
  • Histropedia: “The power of data visualisation combined with free knowledge” on WMF's blog
  • Presenting the Wikidata Human Gender Indicators by Max Klein
  • How the world’s first Wikidata Visiting Scholar created linked open data for five thousand works of art on WMF's blog

• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Music in Canada at 150 Wikipedia Project, a multifaceted campaign to increase the amount and quality of content about Canadian music in Wikipedia and Wikidata
  • 400,000,000th edit was made.
  • The average amount of statements per item became higher than five and is still growing.
  • Wikidata entities usage on Wikimedia projects

• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: DRÚSOP ID, code, encoding, BALaT image ID, DocCheck Flexikon De ID, DocCheck Flexikon En ID, biography at the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Cellosaurus ID, World Spider Catalog ID, Squash Info ID, MSC ID, Yahoo! Japan Talent Database ID, Bandcamp artist ID, French National Assembly Lobbyist ID, BanQ author ID, statistical leader, Sandbox-Monolingual text II
  • Query examples:
    • Continents on Wikidata (All eleven of them) (source)
    • Sluices on the river "Vilaine" in Brittany (source)
    • Countries with most cities named after saints (source)
    • Disney characters who share name with their actors (source)
    • 204 items that cite themselves (source)
    • Statements with two references where one source cites the other (source)

• Development
  • Stable interface policy update
  • More work on federation in order to be able to use Wikidata's items and properties to describe media files on Wikimedia Commons in the future (phabricator:T149580)
  • Worked on first version of Lexeme entity type (phabricator:T148139)
  • Worked more on linking values in Lua and the property parser function instead of just returning the label (phabricator:T142940) You can test it here: https://de.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Statements
  • Improved map layer colors in the query service (phabricator:T148022)
  • Improved size of map markers in the query service (phabricator:T148496)
  • Upcoming: quantity changes
  • Worked more on automated sitelinks for Wiktionary (phabricator:T987) Test system is coming in the next days.

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here.

• Monthly Tasks
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item
  • Help translate or proofread pages in your own language!
  • Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
  • Comment on property proposals: all open proposals - proposals needing attention

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 15:08, 7 November 2016 (UTC)