User talk:AfroThundr3007730/Newsletters/Archive 2

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Wikidata weekly summary #347

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Events
- Past: IRC office hour, January 8th
- Upcoming: Wikidata meetup in WikiBär, Berlin, January 15th (in German)
- Upcoming: Academic workshop on data quality management in Wikidata, Berlin, January 18th (registration needed)
- Upcoming: Wikidata hackathon in Ulm, Germany, on February 22-24. The organization team is looking for people who can give introduction to Wikidata, QuickStatements or gadgets (in German).

Press, articles, blog posts
- Connecting PCGamingWiki and Wikidata by Connor Shea
- VOSviewer supports large number of new data sources (including Wikidata)
- Interview of Denny Vrandečić on the podcast Between the Brackets, about Wikidata and plenty of other things

Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Structured data for Commons: multilingual captions are deployed on Commons on January 10th (documentation)
- The Wikidata Query Service has been encountering some data corruption issues that impact the results you can see when running a query. Some may still be running. You can check the current ticket for more updates.
- New dashboard for percentage of pages on a Wikimedia project make use of data from Wikidata (doesn't include sitelinks, doesn't include Commons file and category pages for now)
- Science Stories, a project highlighting women in sciences, uses Wikidata

Did you know?

Development
- Solving an issue that blocked deployments over the past weeks (phab:T212427)
- Improved the visual appearance of glosses (phab:T207401)
- Fixing problems with reverting Sense addition (phab:T211438)
- Improving our Javascript to be more standard (phab:T210744)
- Working on performing more constraint type checks in PHP before falling back to SPARQL (phab:T209504)
- Making the query service logo and favicon configurable in one's own Wikibase (phab:T212210)
- More work on displaying the termbox on mobile (phab:T207150)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Monthly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
- Suggested and open tasks!
- Contribute to a Showcase item.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 15:41, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-03

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

You can now use Google Translate in the content translation tool. [1][2]
You can now add captions to files on Commons. Captions are short descriptions of the file. They can be translated to all languages we use. They can't use wikitext markup.
Earlier a quoted HTML attribute had to be followed by a space. Now it doesn't. This means that some pages could look different when you save them even if you didn't edit that part of the text. [3][4]
Templates with <templatestyles> could not show the difference between the live template and the sandbox version when they were tested. This has now been fixed. <templatestyles> has a new wrapper parameter now. You can use it for selectors like .mw-parser-output <wrapper parameter value> <selector from CSS page>. [5]

Problems

When you see an edit in the recent changes feed or in the history of a page some of them have tags. Some tags are added automatically. You can also add tags manually. Tags for edits that have been added manually can be edited. This didn't work for a little while. This has now been fixed. [6]

Changes later this week

You can move files from your wiki to Wikimedia Commons and keep the file history with the new FileExporter. It will be a beta feature on all wikis from 16 January. If you want to test it you activate it and check your wiki's configuration file.
Users who could cause more damage to the wikis if someone took over their account have to have more secure passwords. This includes administrators and other user groups. They can't use passwords that are in a list of common passwords. Accounts with common passwords are easy to take over. The list of common passwords was made longer a few weeks ago and has a different error message. Some user groups have been added to those who can't use common passwords. This is to protect all accounts with user rights that could cause damage. [7]
The AbuseFilter variable minor_edit has been removed. It was deprecated in 2016. Now you can't use it. You can fix the filters using it. You can find them if you use the search bar on Special:AbuseFilter.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 15

17:55, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #026, 20 Jan 2019

Well, here's the first issue of the new year. Enjoy...

New participants

A hearty welcome to new arrivals to the portals department:

Harvesting categories tool prototype

DannyS712 has created a user script prototype, User:DannyS712/Cat links, that can pull members from a category, a functionality we've been after since the project's revamp last Spring. Now, it's a matter of applying this technique to scripts that will place the items where needed, such as with a section starter script and/or portal builder script.

New portals since last issue

What else is going on

There have been some discussions at Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines.

DreamyJazz is working on a bot to place links to portals on root articles, category pages, and navigation footer templates.

Portal bugs are getting dealt with soon after they are reported.

Lots of wikignome activity (using Hotcat, etc.).

Keep up the good work. — The Transhumanist 08:32, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #348

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Events
- Past: Workshop on Data Quality Management in Wikidata, 18 January, Berlin. You can check the collaborative documentation
  - Keynote by Amrapali Zaveri (video)
  - Keynote by Daniel Mietchen (slides, video)
- Upcoming: free software workshop (including Wikidata) in Lyon, France, January 23rd
- Upcoming: Wikidata workshop in Côte d'Ivoire, February 9th
- Upcoming: Library data camp, a training for librairies about open data and Wikidata, Manchester, UK, March 11th

Did you know?

Development
- Fixed a small bug that we introduced with editing badges on wd.org (phab:T213998)
- Finished collecting data about the user of the termbox (phab:T211015)
- Fixed an i18n message (phab:T206416)
- Created some maintenance scripts for creating and approving oauth consumers (phab:T211568)
- Checked for possible data coruptions due to an issue with change tags (phab:T213281)
- Fixed an issue with restoring merge revisions in Lexeme (phab:T204041)
- Configured WikibaseQualityConstraints on test.wikidata (phab:T209922)
- Turned on the new entity id formatting for properties (phab:T201838)
- Continued work on glosses, displaying the language name also in edit mode (phab:T209931)
- Starting investigating on Shape Expressions
- Mobile termbox: showing language, description and aliases (phab:T207150)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Monthly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
- Suggested and open tasks!
- Contribute to a Showcase item.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 16:06, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-04

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News

Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [8]

Recent changes

The content translation tool can now use version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category Pages with unreviewed translations to translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category in Special:TrackingCategories on Wikipedias.
https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org can now convert collects of up to 800 pages to PDF, EPUB or ODT. Previously this was 200 pages.

Problems

When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [9]
MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [10][11]
Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [12]

Changes later this week

You will be able to use template styles in the Module namespace. [13]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:37, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #027, 28 Jan 2019

Portal styles

For a visually intensive portal, see Portal:Hummingbirds.

If you find any other portals that stand out, please send me the links so I can include them in the next issue. Thank you.

Conversion continues

There are about 1100 portals left in the old style, with subpages and static excerpts. As those are very labor intensive to maintain (because their maintenance is manual), all those except the ones with active maintainers (about 100) are slated for upgrade = approximately 1000. We started with 1500, and so over a quarter of them have been processed so far. That's good, but at this rate, conversion will take another 3 years. So, some automation (AWB?) is in order. We just need to keep at it, and push down on the gas pedal a bit harder.

You can find the old-style portals with an insource search of "box portal skeleton".

Flagship portals: the portals on the Main Page

Speaking of upgrades...

The following portals are listed in the header at the top of Wikipedia's Main Page, and get far more traffic than all other portals:

Of those, all but one have been revamped to an automated self-updating single-page design.

The remaining one, Portal:Mathematics has manual maintainers, and has been partially upgraded.

As these are our flagship fleet, they need to be kept in top-notch condition.

Check 'em out, and improve them if you can.

And be sure they are on your watchlist.

New portals since last issue

Keep 'em coming!

Deorphanizing the new portals

As you know, thousands of the new portals are orphans, that is, having no links to them from article space. For all practical purposes, that means they are not part of the encyclopedia yet, and readers will be unlikely to find them.

What is needed are links to these portals from the See also sections of the corresponding root articles.

Dreamy Jazz to the rescue...

Dreamy Jazz has created a bot to place the corresponding category link to the end of each portal (if it is missing), and place a link to each portal in the See also section of the corresponding root articles.

That bot, named User:Dreamy Jazz Bot, is currently in its trial period performing the above described edits!

To take a look at the edits it has made so far, see Special:Contributions/Dreamy_Jazz_Bot.

It shouldn't be long before the bot is processing the entire set of new portals.

Good news indeed.

Way to go, Dreamy Jazz!

And, that's a wrap

That's all I have to report this time around.

No doubt there will be more to tell soon.

Until then, — The Transhumanist 13:08, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #349

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Discussions
- Open requests for adminship: Deror avi, Wildly boy

Events
- February 19th: Wikidata meetup in London - Facebook event
- Incoming: Wikidata Lab XII in São Paulo, Brazil, February 14th.

Press, articles, blog posts
- Making Wikidata visible, by Martin Poulter on Bodleian Digital Library's blog
- How to query Wikidata using R, by Envel Le Hir
- Inventory of the Cleveland Museum of Art images, by Magnus Manske

Other Noteworthy Stuff
- There is now a tool to validate mappings between Wikidata and external RDF vocabularies done with the properties equivalent property and equivalent class.
- Topic matcher, a tool to help you adding a "main topic" or "depicts" statement to items about streets, articles, painting, etc.
- Editing Wikidata - Swedish Cuisine by JanAinali on Twitch
- City-Country-Shapes visualization based on Wikidata: how many of a country's largest cities do you need to put on a map to be able to recognise the country?

Did you know?
- Newest properties:
  - General datatypes: none
  - External identifiers: ELNET ID, iTunes book ID, iTunes movie ID, Romanian Soccer player ID, Skimap ID, sports.md athlete ID, Gault et Millau ID, Theatreonline.com ID, Dizionario di Storia Treccani ID, Smarthistory ID, vodnimlyny.cz ID, World Cube Association ID, COOL species ID, CORE ID, LevskiSofia.info coach ID, LevskiSofia.info player ID, Gran Enciclopèdia de la Música ID, JORFSearch organization ID
- New property proposals to review:
  - General datatypes: journal series, has alt-text, has lyrics, day of regular release, CBFC rating, full work on commons
  - External identifiers: sport-strana.ru article ID, football.odessa.ua person ID, NMSRCP reference number, AKB48 member ID, TV Spielfilm Series ID, MCULE ID, Global Species ID, Georgian National Filmography ID, Bureau van Dijk Orbis company ID, Bureau van Dijk Orbis person ID, Musicbrainz Event ID, ManualsLib brand ID, LGD local body code, Hymnary hymnal ID, Hymnary tune ID, Hymnary instance ID, Getty Images ID, Amsterdam code
- Query examples:
- Newest WikiProjects: WikiProject Protected areas in Germany

Development
- Started development on Shape Expressions
- Termbox: show an expanded-by-default section for the user's preferred languages (phab:T211865)
- Provide visualization LUA usage on a dashboard (phab:T211768)
- Fixed issues with sense ID wrapping (phab:T210502)
- Background work to support the deployment of the next pieces for Structured Data on Commons

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Monthly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
- Suggested and open tasks!
- Contribute to a Showcase item.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 16:00, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-05

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 Wikimedia servers use HHVM to run the PHP code. They are going to use PHP7 and stop using HHVM. You can test PHP7 with a new beta feature. That way you can help find and report problems.

Problems

When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed. [14]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 30 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:15, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 January 2019

Op-Ed: Random Rewards Rejected

In focus: The Collective Consciousness of Admin Userpages

News and notes: WMF staff turntable continues to spin; Endowment gets more cash; RfA continues to be a pit of steely knives

In the media: The Signpost's investigative story recognized, Wikipedia turns 18 and gets a birthday gift from Google, and more editors are recognized

Discussion report: The future of the reference desk

Featured content: Don't miss your great opportunity

Arbitration report: An admin under the microscope

Traffic report: Death, royals and superheroes: Avengers, Black Panther

Technology report: When broken is easily fixed

Gallery: Let us build a memorial fit for such pain and suffering

News from the WMF: News from WMF

Recent research: Ad revenue from reused Wikipedia articles; are Wikipedia researchers asking the right questions?

Essay: How

Humour: Village pump

From the archives: An editorial board that includes you

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:49, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #028, 04 Feb 2019

Here's a quicky status report:

Old-style portals: 1,018

Single-page portals: 4,367

Total portals: 5,385

But of course, there has been more going on than just that...

Dreamy Jazz Bot is up and running!

Dreamy Jazz Bot has been approved and is now up and running.

What it does is places missing links to orphaned portals. It places a link in the See also section of the corresponding root article, and it puts one at the top of the corresponding category page.

We have thousands of new portals that have yet to be added to the encyclopedia proper, just waiting to go live.

When they do go live, over the coming days or weeks, due to Dreamy Jazz Bot, it will be like an explosion of new portals on the scene. We should expect an increase in awareness and interest in the portals project. Perhaps even new participants.

Get ready...

Get set...

Go!

Another sockpuppet infiltrator has been discovered

User:Emoteplump, a recent contributor to the portals project, was discovered to be a sockpuppet account of an indefinitely blocked user.

When that happens, admins endeavor to eradicate everything the editor contributed. This aftermath has left a wake of destruction throughout the portals department, again.

The following portals which have been speedy deleted, are in the process of being re-created. Please feel free to help to turn these blue again:

And the corresponding talk pages:

New portals since the last issue

Keep up the great work

Until next time, — The Transhumanist 08:57, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-06

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

It was easy to untick a box by accident in Special:Preferences. This will now be fixed. [15]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 February. It will be on all wikis from 7 February (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:12, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #350

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Events
- Next Wikidata workshop/meetup in Paris: February 15th
- Next Wikidata meetup in Berlin: March 12th
- The conference grant proposal for WikidataCon was submitted and could use endorsements.

Press, articles, blog posts
- „Eisberg voraus!“ – Sächsische Landeskunde mit SXRM, Wikisource und Wikidata by Jens Bemme (in German)
- Linking the OLAC Video Game Vocabulary with Wikidata by Tracy Hoffmann and Peter Chan
- Adam blogged about how to update an existing Wikibase docker instance

Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Got some time? SpeedPatrolling, a tool to simplify patrolling of recent changes on Wikidata (documentation), has been announced and you can use it to help fight vandalism.
- Got some time? Match some streets and the humans they are named after.
- Got some time? Help link OpenStreetMap and Wikidata Items with the new OSM <-> Wikidata matcher.
- Wikidata Query Service now has over 7 billion triples.

Did you know?

Development
- Making progress towards first showable version of basic Shape Expression support
- Layout polishing for the mobile termbox (the box that shows labels, desctiptions and aliases) and continuing work on the "in more languages" and "all entered languages" sections in it
- Added tracking for the number of Senses and Forms to our graph for tracking the number of Items, Properties and Lexemes
- Worked more on making it easier to set up Quickstatements in other Wikibase instances
- Preventing an entity to redirect to itself (phabricator:T214919)
- Working on making Federation (reusing Wikidata's Items and Properties to make statements) work for Wikimedia Commons to get the rollout of the next stage (support for depicts statements) unstuck
- Fixed an issue with adding sitelinks from Commons (phabricator:T213975)
- Fixing Cognate support for yue Wiktionary (phabricator:T214400)

Monthly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
- Suggested and open tasks!
- Contribute to a Showcase item.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 21:33, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-07

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

You can use the ambox CSS class to show page issues to mobile readers. When you use ambox there are classes you can use.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 February. It will be on all wikis from 14 February (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:45, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #351

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Events
- Past: Linking OpenStreetMap and Wikidata at FOSDEM

Press, articles, blog posts
- Paper: Discovering Implicational Knowledge in Wikidata

Other Noteworthy Stuff
- There is now an experimental SPARQL service to query Wikidata history

Did you know?

Development
- Working on the "in more languages" and "all entered languages" parts of the termbox on mobile
- Working on making undo, revert, edit summaries and more work for Shape Expressions
- Fixed an error when detecting the same label and description in another Item (phabricator:T194770, thanks Matěj)
- Making Lemma input on Lexeme pages save your input when you press enter (phabricator:T206140)
- Making QuickStatements work more easily for other Docker-powered Wikibase instances (phabricator:T205606)
- Worked more on making Federation work for making Statements on Wikimedia Commons (phabricator:T214557)
- Working on stripping whitespaces at the beginning and end of Glosses when saving them (phabricator:T212019)
- Looking into adding more signals to ORES' vandalism detection model so we can detect bad edits more accurately (phabricator:T194737)
- Preventing a redirect of an Entity onto itself (phabricator:T214775)
- Fixed an issue with adding sitelinks from Wikimedia Commons (phabricator:T213975)
- Unified the separators between language and lexical category in different places (phabricator:T201808)

Monthly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
- Suggested and open tasks!
- Contribute to a Showcase item.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 20:32, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #029, 13 Feb 2019

Where we are at:

Single-page portals: 4,704

Total portals: 5,705

The Ref desks survived the proposal to shut them down

You might be familiar with the Ref desks, by their link on every new portal. They are a place you can go to ask volunteers almost any knowledge-related question, and have been a feature of Wikipedia since August of 2005 (or perhaps earlier). They were linked to from portals in an effort to improve their visibility, and to provide a bridge from the encyclopedia proper to project space (the Wikipedia community).

Well, somebody proposed that we get rid of them, and the community decided that that was not going to happen. Thank you for defending the Ref desks!

Here's a link to the dramatic discussion:

https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Indefinitely_semiprotecting_the_refdesk#Proposal_II:_Shut_down_the_Ref_Desks

The cleanup after sockpuppet Emoteplump continues...

The wake of disruption left by Emoteplump and the admins who reverted many (but not all) of his/her edits is still undergoing cleanup. We could use all the help we can get on this task...

Almost all of the speedy deleted portals have been rebuilt from scratch.

For the portals he/she restarted (many of which were done mistakenly, overwriting restarts and further development that had already been done), and/or tagged as the maintainer, see https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=User:Emoteplump&oldid=881568794#Additional_Portals_under_my_watch

10,000 portals, here we come...

We're at 5,705 portals and counting.

New portals since issue #28

Prior to 2018, for the previous 14 years, portal creation was at about 80 portals per year on average. We did over 3 times that in just the past 9 days. At this rate, we'll hit the 10,000 portal mark in 5 months. But, I'm sure we can do it sooner than that.

What's next for portal pages?

There are 5 drives for portal development:

Create new portals
Expand existing portals, such as with new sections like Recognized content
Convert or restart old-style portals into automated single-page portals
Link to new portals from the encyclopedia
Pageless portals

Let's take a closer look at these...

1: Creating new portals

Portal creation, for subjects that happen to have the necessary support structures already in place, is down to about a minute per portal. The creation part, which is automated, takes about 10 seconds. The other 50 seconds is taken up by manual activities, such as finding candidate subjects, inspecting generated portals, and selecting the portal creation template to be used according to the resources available. Tools are under development to automate these activities as much as possible, to pare portal creation time down even more. Ten seconds each is the goal.

Eventually, we are going to run out of navigation templates to base portals off of. Though there are still thousands to go. But, when they do run out, we'll need an easy way to create more. A nav footer creation script.

Meanwhile, other resources are being explored and developed, such as categories, and methods to harvest the links they contain.

2: Expanding existing portals

The portal collection is growing, not only by the addition of new portals, but by further developing the ones we already have, by...

Improving and/or adding search parameters to better power the Did you know and In the news sections.
Adding more selected content sections, like Selected biographies.
Adding and maintaining Recognized content sections, via JL-Bot.
Adding pictures to the image slideshow.
Adding panoramic pics.
Categorizing portals.

More features will be added as we dream them up and design them. So, don't be shy, make a wish.

3: Converting old portals

By far the hardest and most time-consuming task we have been working on is updating the old portals, the very reason we revamped this WikiProject in the first place.

There are two approaches here:

A) Restart a portal from scratch, using our automated tools. For basic no-frills portals, that works find. But, for more elaborate portals, as that tends to lose content and features, the following approach is being tried...

B) Upgrade a portal section by section, so little to nothing is lost in the process.

4: Linking to new portals

Or "portal deorphanization"...

Dreamy Jazz Bot is purring along.

And a tool in the form of a script is under development for linking to portals at the time they are created, or shortly thereafter.

5...

See below...

New WikiProject for the post-saved-portal phase of operations...

Saved portals, are portals with a saved page.

What is the next stage in the evolutionary progression?

Quantum portals.

What are quantum portals?

Portals that come into existence when you click on the portal button, and which disappear when you leave the page.

Or, as Pbsouthwood put it:

...portals that exist only as a probability function (algorithm) until you collapse the wave form by observing through the portal button (run the script), and disappear again after use...

Introducing...

Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals (see it's talk page).

Keep on keepin' on

...'til next time, — The Transhumanist 10:16, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #352

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Discussions
- Open request for adminship: NewDataB
- New request for comments: semi-protection to prevent vandalism on most used Items, Allow for Wikidata items to be created that only link to a single Wikimedia Commons category (Wikidata notability discussion)

Events
- February 19th: Wikidata meetup in London - Facebook event
- February 21st to 24th: International Mother Language Day edit-a-thon
- February 23rd: editathon about Parliament of Ghana in Accra - Registration
- March 28th: GLAM & Wikidata day in Switzerland (registration running until March 18th)

Press, articles, blog posts
- Let’s Tango: Computational Musicology Using Wikidata, MusicBrainz and the Wolfram Language, by Toni Schindler

Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Got some time? Add QIDs to the tools on Edit items, Query data, Enhance user interface, Visualize data, Lexicographical data, For programmers and List of properties. If some tools don't have their own Items, feel free to create them.
- Hardware issues at Toolforge and CloudVPS affect lots of tools and coincide with changes in the statement stats dynamics
- WikibaseCirrusSearch will become a Mediawiki extension
- You can still help Shani Evenstein with her research: Wikidata as a Learning Platform

Did you know?

Development
- Improve the tools dropdown on query.wikidata.org, which now links Tools categories and the Toolforge (phabricator:T214577)
- Implement the diff view for Schemas (phabricator:T214396, phabricator:T215514)
- Implement undo for Schemas (phabricator:T214914)
- Prevent redirecting an entity to itself (phabricator:T214775)
- Make pressing enter when editing a lemma save the lemma (phabricator:T206140)
- Strip whitespace around sense glosses (phabricator:T212019)
- Create LilyPond datatype (phabricator:T215284)
- More work to get the new version of the termbox readable on mobile

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Monthly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
- Suggested and open tasks!
- Contribute to a Showcase item.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 15:36, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-08

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

When you thank someone on the mobile web you will now have two seconds to cancel the thank. This is in case you clicked on the thank button by accident. [16]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 February. It will be on all wikis from 21 February (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

There is a proposal to add a red link to mobile search results if there is no page with that name. This is how it works on desktop. You can leave feedback. [17]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

23:13, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #353

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Discussions
- New request for comments: Talk pages consultation 2019 (feel free to add more sub-sections)

Events
- Past: Wikidata hackathon in Ulm with Open Knowledge Foundation. Video of the presentation of the projects (in German)
- Running until March 2nd: International Mother Language Day edit-a-thon
- Upcoming: Wikidata and the Diversity of Knowledge workshop in Graz, Austria, on March 3rd
- Upcoming: Wikidata meetup in Berlin, March 12th
- Upcoming: Wikidata meetup in Paris, March 15th
- Upcoming: Wikidata & Wikipedia workshop in Aberdeen, Scotland, on March 19th

Press, articles, blog posts
- Inside the Alexa-Friendly World of Wikidata, by Tom Simonite on Wired
- Align BNF's video games and Wikidata with Dataiku DSS (in French) by Envel Le Hir

Other Noteworthy Stuff
- If you're using Wikidata's data dumps, you may want to give feedback on a potential change about when those dumps are generated (ticket)
- Some games and tools developed during the Wikidata hackathon in Ulm:
  - Card game generator
  - Multiplayer game Guess the (German) Politician
  - Telegram bot @WikidataMisfitBot, sending pictures with one wrong label
  - WikiProjekt offeneregister.de
- If you're developing new tools or hear about new tools, please add them to Wikidata:Tools so other people can find them :)

Did you know?

Development
- Updated some icons with the new WikimediaUI icon set (phab:T209259)
- Fixed an issue that was causing occasional failures when creating new Items (phab:T194299)
- Investigated Wikidata Tours not loading correctly (phab:T215919)
- Adjusted spacing between Sense ID, bar and Gloss (phab:T215502)
- Fixing a long time issue with introducing new data types in production (phab:T216728)
- Fixing docs for backup of wikibase container images (phab:T214941)
- Making undo, rollback and restore work on schema content pages (phab:T214399)
- Improving edit summaries for schema content pages (phab:T213724)
- Tightening up the process for editing "identifying information" for Schemas (phab:T214466)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Monthly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
- Suggested and open tasks!
- Contribute to a Showcase item.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 15:58, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-09

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

There is a new version of the iOS Wikipedia app. It has for example syntax highlighting and new toolbars to make it easier to write wikitext. It also has night mode, a find-on-page function and other things. You can give feedback and suggestions. [18]

Changes later this week

When you look at your watchlist or the recent changes page you can use the new filters for edit review. There you can choose tags to filter different edits. Empty tags will no longer be shown. [19]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 February. It will be on all wikis from 28 February (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:17, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 February 2019

From the editors: Help wanted (still)

News and notes: Front-page issues for the community

In focus: Wikimedia affiliate organizations seek community participation in 2019 board election

Discussion report: Talking about talk pages

Featured content: Conquest, War, Famine, Death, and more!

Arbitration report: A quiet month for Arbitration Committee

Traffic report: Binge-watching

Technology report: Tool labs casters-up

Gallery: Signed with pride

Recent research: Research finds signs of cultural diversity and recreational habits of readers

Essay: Optimist's guide to Wikipedia

From the archives: New group aims to promote Wiki-Love

Humour: Pesky Pronouns

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:15, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #354

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Discussions
- Open request for adminship: Esteban16
- Closed request for comments: 2018 administrator policy update

Events
- Upcoming: WikiConNL in Utrecht (Netherlands), on March 8-9th (in Dutch and English)
- Upcoming: Wikidata meetup in Berlin, on March 12th
- Upcoming: Wikidata meetup in Paris, on March 15th
- Upcoming: Wikidata & Wikipedia workshop in Aberdeen, Scotland, on March 19th
- Upcoming: GLAM and Wikidata in National Library, Bern (Switzerland), on March 28th (in German and French).
- Upcoming: Wikidata Workshop for GLAM in Lausanne (Switzerland), on March 29th (in French).

Press, articles, blog posts
- Matching BnF and Wikidata video games using Dataiku DSS (in English) by Envel Le Hir

Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Congratulations to Siobhan Leachman (d:User:Ambrosia10), awarded the "Companion of the Auckland War Memorial Museum" medal for her volunteer work, including contributions to Wikidata: [20].
- You can now try Shape Expressions on a test system
- Creative Commons has a proposal for tool development with Wikidata's copyright metadata for the 2019 edition of Google Summer of Code. Interested student developers are invited to apply.
- Tpt's Wikidata history query service stores and allows querying metadata about Wikidata's edit history
- A new beta version of the Daty Wikidata Editor has been released, check out the changelog. You can also show your endorsement to the project over here.
- Scholarship application phase for Wikimania 2019 is now open until March 15th. The call for track leaders is also open.
- OpenRefine 3.2 beta was released, with a collection of new features and bug fixes, many of which improve the Wikidata integration.

Did you know?

Development
- Added monolingual language code tlb (Tobelo), thanks User:Mbch331! (T216798, will be deployed next week)
- Integrating the termbox with Wikibase (phab:T214679)
- Viewing historic revisions and fetching the termbox data from Special:EntityData (phab:T210615)
- Fixing emoji breaking the termbox (phab:T217244)
- Renamed special pages under Wikibase to avoid confusion with Schemas special pages (phab:T216719)
- Removed unsupported php 7 constant in production, causing a notice and potential undefined behavior ([[phab:T217241
- Investigated wb_term normalization solution (phab:T215902)
- Fix for outdated cached WB datatypes on client-side (phab:T216728 (blocks enabling new datatypes, e.g. phab:T216730))
- Allowing access to wikibase entities from multiple (wikibase) databases (phab:T214557)
- Allowing to return a proper API error on 'wbformatvalue' action (phab:T207479)
- Providing open-graph title and discretion meta-tags for lexemes (phab:T206414)
- Allowing quickstatements to work out-of-the-box in wikibase-quickstatments docker image (phab:T205606)
- Implementing “undo” for Schemass (phab:T214914, making it work via the API (phab:T217250)
- Implementing “restore” for Schemas (phab:T214915)
- Adding created and edited Schemas to the watchlist according to the user’s preferences (phab:T213725)
- Splitting edit parts on Schemas (phab:T215395, phab:T215393, phab:T215392, phab:T215394)
- Improving support for multilingual edit comments in MediaWiki (phab:T215637)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Monthly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
- Suggested and open tasks!
- Contribute to a Showcase item.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 16:20, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-10

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

You can give feedback on the future of talk pages.
The mobile website will use the standard fonts on your computer or phone instead of a generic font. This will make it easier to read text in many scripts. [21][22]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #355

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Discussions
- Open request for adminship: Dimon2711
- Closed request for adminship: Esteban16, welcome onboard!

Events
- Upcoming: Wikidata meetup in Berlin, on March 12th
- Upcoming: Wikidata meetup in Paris, on March 15th
- Upcoming: Wikidata & Wikipedia workshop in Aberdeen, Scotland, on March 19th
- Upcoming: GLAM and Wikidata in National Library, Bern (Switzerland), on March 28th (in German and French).
- Upcoming: Wikidata Workshop for GLAM in Lausanne (Switzerland), on March 29th (in French).
- Upcoming: Where iNaturalist meets Wiki (Invasive plants) April 16th, Meise, Belgium
- Upcoming: How does Wikimedia Solve the Problems of Biodiversity Informatics? Biodivesity Next (Leiden, the Netherlands), October 19th-25th 2019

Press, articles, blog posts
- Combining AI and Human Judgment to Build Knowledge about Art on a Global Scale by Andrew Lih
- Data Quality Management in Wikidata – Workshop write-up, by Cristina Sarasua, Claudia Müller-Birn, and Mariam Farda-Sarbas
- Museum Collections on Wikipedia: Opening Up to Open Data Initiatives by Elena Villaespesa and Trilce Navarrete

Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Client wikis calling geocoordinate statements from Wikidata using mw.wikibase.entity:formatStatements or the #statements parser function will now have it displayed using a Kartographer <maplink> if available. In case of bug or question, feel free to ask in phab:T210926. Thanks to Tpt for the change!
- A Google Summer of Code/Outreachy project seeks to add structure to the Commons app. Photographers will be able to pick Wikidata items that are depicted by the picture they upload.
- Suggestions based on constraints can be enabled for all users

Did you know?

Development
- Work page to get the Schema Text by subpage syntax (phab:T214383)
- Set up a page to set label, description and aliases for Schema (phab:T215392, phab:T217313)
- Remove edit tab from Schema pages (phab:T215394)
- Disable possibility to enter duplicate aliases for the same Schema (phab:T217634, phab:T217749)
- Add ULS, Babel and CLDR support on wikidata-shex.wmflabs.org (phab:T216146)
- Add the option to restore Schemas! (phab:T214915)
- Undo edit on Schemas through API (phab:T217250)
- Multilingual support on Special:NewSchema (phab:T216154)
- Work on Termbox SSR integration (phab:T214679)
- Provide meta tags for lexemes (phab:T206414)
- Make Quickstatements work out of the box in wikibase docker image (phab:T205606)
- Disabling RDF for Media Info (phab:T213483)
- Add tooltips for statements linking to a lexeme form (phab:T205279)
- Allowing multiple wikibase DBs access (phab:T214557)
- Add baserevid to WikibaseLexeme API (phab:T217243)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Monthly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
- Suggested and open tasks!
- Contribute to a Showcase item.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 15:55, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-11

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

Pages can use geocoordinates from Wikidata with the mw.wikibase.entity:formatStatements Lua function or the #statements parser function. If they do, they will now be shown using a Kartographer <maplink> if the wiki can use Kartographer. You can report bugs or ask questions on Phabricator.
There is now an EventStream to see when links are added or removed on Wikimedia wikis. You can read the discussions and plans.

Problems

Some wikis will not be able to edit for a short period of time on 19 March (UTC). This will start at 15:00 UTC. It will last up to 15 minutes but probably shorter. You can see the list of affected wikis. This is because of network maintenance. You can still read the wikis.
Editors who use Firefox to edit with the visual editor had a problem with copying text. When they tried to select text that included footnotes, templates or block images in the middle they would often only get part of the text. This has now been fixed. [23]
Some maps didn't work for a while on 8 March. This has been fixed. [24][25]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:29, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #030, 17 Mar 2019

Previous issue:

Single-page portals: 4,704

Total portals: 5,705

This issue:

Single-page portals: 4,562

Total portals: 5,578

The collection of portals has shrunk

All Portals closed at WP:MfD during 2019

Grouped Nominations total 127 Portals:

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/US County Portals Deleted 64 portals
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Districts of India Portals Deleted 30 Portals
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portals for Portland, Oregon neighborhoods Deleted 23 Portals
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Allen Park, Michigan Deleted 6 Portals
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Cryptocurrency Deleted 2 Portals
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:North Pole Deleted 2 Portals

Individual Nominations:

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Circles Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Fruits Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:E (mathematical constant) Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Burger King Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Cotingas Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Prostitution in Canada Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Agoura Hills, California Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Urinary system Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:You Am I Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Cannabis (2nd nomination) Reverted to non-Automated version
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Intermodal containers Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Adventure travel Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Adam Ant Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Benito Juárez, Mexico City Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Spaghetti Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Wikiatlas Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Greek alphabet Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Accounting Deleted G7
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Lents, Portland, Oregon Deleted P2
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Ankaran Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Jiu-jitsu Deleted G8
Portal:University of Nebraska Speedy Deleted P1/A10 exactly the same as Portal:University of Nebraska–Lincoln also created by the TTH

Related WikiProject:

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals Demoted

(Attribution: Copied from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Portal MfD Results)

WikiProject Quantum portals

This was a spin-off from WikiProject Portals, for the purpose of developing zero-page portals (portals generated on-the-screen at the push of a button, with no stored pages).

It has been merged back into WikiProject Portals. In the MfD the vote was "demote". See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals.

Hiatus on mass creation of Portals

At WP:VPR, mass creation of Portals using semi-automated tools has been put on hold until clearer community consensus is established.

See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Hiatus on mass creation of Portals.

The Transhumanist banned from creating new portals for 3 months

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Proposal 1: Interim Topic-Ban on New Portals.

Until next issue...

Keep on keepin' on. — The Transhumanist 02:50, 17 March 2019 (UTC)