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Talk to me, Andy Mabbett

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Wikidata weekly summary #672 (correct version!)

File:Wikidata-logo-en.svg

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-03-24. Missed the previous one? See issue #671

Discussions

Events

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

  • Blogs
  • [https://professional.wiki/en/articles/wikibase-extensions Enhance Your Wikibase With Extensions]
  • [https://tech-news.wikimedia.de/2025/03/21/editing-lexemes-with-your-little-finger/ Editing Lexemes with your little finger]
  • [https://commonists.wordpress.com/2025/03/24/wikidata-and-the-sum-of-all-video-games-2024-edition/ Wikidata and the sum of all video games − 2024 edition] by Jean-Fred
  • [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1902026975210025181.html Thread: Who wins in a Wikipedia race between GPT-4.5, o1, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and @OpenAI's new Computer-Using Agent?]

Tool of the week

  • Lexica - a mobile-friendly tool that simplifies micro contributions to lexicographical data on Wikidata, making various editing tasks accessible and intuitive for contributors of all experience levels.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

  • Mobile Editing of Statements - You have been asking for the ability to edit statements from mobile devices for years, this project will make editing statements on Wikidata Items more accessible and user-friendly for mobile users. [https://greatquestion.co/wikimediadeutschland/bo2e7e2a/apply Sign up to participate in prototype testing and interviews with our UX team]
  • Join the Wikimedia Deutschland software development team: [https://wikimedia-deutschland.career.softgarden.de/jobs/53665453/Product-Manager-Wikibase-Suite-all-genders-/ Product Manager Wikibase Suite] (all genders)

Newest properties and property proposals to review

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

Development

  • Wikibase REST API: We finished work on the simple Item search (phab:T383126) and started on the one for Properties (phab:T386377)
  • Vector 2022 skin: We fixed a number of the remaining issues with dark mode (phab:T385039) and sitelink positioning (phab:T316797)
  • Search: We continued the work on making it easier to search in other entity types (Properties, Lexemes, EntitySchemas) besides Items (phab:T321543)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at [https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/71/query/zfiRgTnZF7zu/?filter=zfiRgTnZF7zu&order=priority the tasks needing a volunteer].

Weekly Tasks

Anything to add? Please share! :)

This Month in Education: March 2025

This Month in Education

Volume 14 • Issue 3 • March 2025

In This Issue

Wikidata weekly summary #675

File:Wikidata-logo-en.svg

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-04-14. Missed the previous one? See issue #674

Events

  • Upcoming events: The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 16:00 UTC, 16th April 2025 (18:00 Berlin time) in the [https://t.me/joinchat/IeCRo0j5Uag1qR4Tk8Ftsg 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.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

  • Blogs
  • [https://lucaswerkmeister.de/posts/2025/04/12/introducing-m3api/ Introducing m3api], By Lucas Werkmeister
  • [https://techblog.wikimedia.org/2025/04/08/wikidata-query-service-graph-database-reload-at-home-2025-edition/ Wikidata Query Service graph database reload at home, 2025 edition]. By Adam Baso
  • Videos
  • [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVqCEeVuzTQ Understanding Why Your OPTIONAL Properties in Wikidata Queries Might Be Ignored]
  • [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh6hi94Imn8 Playing with LEGO on Wikidata]. By Tiago Lubiana
  • Other: Wikidata references made easier. "Several tricks to make it easier and faster, using various scripts and gadgets" to add references to Wikidata statements. By Spinster

Tool of the week

  • [https://topic-curator.toolforge.org/ Wikidata Topic Curator] is a React-based web application. It’s a new and improved version of [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Tools/ItemSubjector ItemSubjector] created to help Wikimedians connect items on Wikidata to the right topics. By entering a topic QID, it finds related articles using the topic’s label, aliases, or custom terms.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

  • Join the Wikidata development team at Wikimedia Deutschland
  • [https://wikimedia-deutschland.career.softgarden.de/jobs/55063868/Staff-Engineer-Wikidata-all-genders-/ Staff Engineer Wikidata (all genders)]
  • [https://wikimedia-deutschland.career.softgarden.de/jobs/53795746/Senior-UX-Designer-Wikidata-all-genders-/ Senior UX Designer Wikidata (all genders)]

Newest properties and property proposals to review

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

Development

  • We merged and prepared changes to rename wikibase:EntitySchema to wikibase:WikibaseEntitySchema in RDF (phab:T371196) – this has been [https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/AAKO2VGVKJXEDH2HPZBGMAUDVGC7SA7R/ announced as a breaking change] and will be deployed to Wikidata on 24 April
  • We made some more improvements to dark mode support (phab:T389633)
  • We’re working on tests for the ScopedTypeaheadSearch feature (phab:T385790)
  • Wikibase REST API: We're going to wrap up pagination on the simple Item and property search endpoint and are working to improve our test architecture for search (phab:T386691). We're going to pick up prefix search for Items and phrase matching next!

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at [https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/71/query/zfiRgTnZF7zu/?filter=zfiRgTnZF7zu&order=priority the tasks needing a volunteer].

Weekly Tasks

Tech News: 2025-16

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

Weekly highlight

  • Later this week, the default thumbnail size will be increased from 220px to 250px. This changes how pages are shown in all wikis and has been requested by some communities for many years, but wasn't previously possible due to technical limitations. [https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T355914]
  • File thumbnails are now stored in discrete sizes. If a page specifies a thumbnail size that's not among the standard sizes (20, 40, 60, 120, 250, 330, 500, 960), then MediaWiki will pick the closest larger thumbnail size but will tell the browser to downscale it to the requested size. In these cases, nothing will change visually but users might load slightly larger images. If it doesn't matter which thumbnail size is used in a page, please pick one of the standard sizes to avoid the extra in-browser down-scaling step. [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:Images#Thumbnail_sizes][https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T355914]

Updates for editors

  • The Wikimedia Foundation are working on a system called Edge Uniques which will enable A/B testing, help protect against Distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS attacks), and make it easier to understand how many visitors the Wikimedia sites have. This is so that they can more efficiently build tools which help readers, and make it easier for readers to find what they are looking for.
  • To improve security for users, a small percentage of logins will now require that the account owner input a one-time password emailed to their account. It is recommended that you check that the email address on your account is set correctly, and that it has been confirmed, and that you have an email set for this purpose. [https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T390662]
  • "Are you interested in taking a short survey to improve tools used for reviewing or reverting edits on your Wiki?" This question will be asked at 7 wikis starting next week, on Recent Changes and Watchlist pages. The Moderator Tools team wants to know more about activities that involve looking at new edits made to your Wikimedia project, and determining whether they adhere to your project's policies.
  • On April 15, the full Wikidata graph will no longer be supported on [https://query.wikidata.org/ query.wikidata.org]. After this date, scholarly articles will be available through [https://query-scholarly.wikidata.org/ query-scholarly.wikidata.org], while the rest of the data hosted on Wikidata will be available through the [https://query.wikidata.org/ query.wikidata.org] endpoint. This is part of the scheduled split of the Wikidata Graph, which was announced in September 2024. More information is available on Wikidata.
  • The latest quarterly Wikimedia Apps Newsletter is now available. It covers updates, experiments, and improvements made to the Wikipedia mobile apps.
  • File:Octicons-sync.svg View all {{formatnum:30}} community-submitted {{PLURAL:30|task|tasks}} that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: an invitation for tool maintainers to attend the Toolforge UI Community Feedback Session on April 15th; recent community metrics; and recent technical blog posts.
  • File:Octicons-sync.svg Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:21, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedia Apps newsletter – First quarter of 2025

Hello, and welcome to the first newsletter of 2025! In this edition, we’ll walk you through the exciting updates, experiments, and improvements made to the Wikipedia mobile apps during December, January, and February.

= iOS =

Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review

We released the improved version of the Year in Review to all users, now available in multiple languages and for both logged-in and logged-out users. While donation rates were lower than our goal, we saw great engagement with the feature & it brought in a higher share of first-time donors and a higher average donation compared to banner campaigns.

Notably:

  • 97.4% of survey respondents rated the experience as neutral or better.
  • We saw a 74% increase in new accounts, with 368 new editors actively contributing as a result.
  • Most users asked for more personalized stats and a better summary of their reading journey.

We’re excited by the results and are already thinking ahead about how to improve it further next year. Want more details? You can check out the full analysis on the project page on MediaWiki.

Alt Text Experiment Wrap-Up

Our 60-day alternative text experiment has ended. While users showed interest in the task, quality was a challenge—especially for newcomers. The experiment helped us understand how we can guide editors better when writing alt text and which improvements to focus on next.

Some key takeaways:

  • Completion rates were decent (28% for newer editors), but the quality of the alternative text needed improvement.
  • Many users wanted clearer guidance and better context for writing alt text.
  • Many users expressed interest in a dedicated feed for image-related tasks.

We’re not making the alternative text suggested edit permanent at this time. If we decided to focus on this task again, we would invest in improved guidance for writing alternative text, and make improvements to the user flow.

Navigation Refresh

We made significant progress in refreshing the app’s navigation. Highlights include:

  • A more native iOS feel with system-standard navigation bars.
  • New access points for the Profile menu across multiple screens.
  • Ongoing A/B testing of a more prominent search bar in articles, available in Arabic, French, German, and Japanese.

We also began tracking where article views come from (e.g., from Places, History, or Explore), which will help us understand user behavior better.

Tabbed Browsing Begins

We kicked off discovery and design work for adding tabs to the iOS app—one of the most requested features! Based on user feedback and inspiration from other apps, we’ve created a prototype and started user testing. Stay tuned as this exciting feature continues to evolve!

Bug Fixes & Developer Contributions

Thanks to volunteer contributions and internal efforts, we fixed several bugs including:

  • Search results overlapping with the status bar.
  • Crashes while editing specific articles.
  • Incorrect day shown in “In the News.”
  • Improved handling of italics and language variants.

= Android =

WikiGames & WikiTrivia

We released the Wikipedia Game to production in German Wikipedia and began work on WikiTrivia using “On this day” content. User feedback from initial testing is helping shape both features.

Private Donor Recognition Experiment

We wrapped up our donor recognition experiment in France and the Netherlands. While overall donations were lower than expected, user feedback was clear:

  • 81% of surveyed users want the dashboard to exist on multiple platforms.
  • 39% of users who saw the donor icon feature chose to personalize their app icon.
  • Many users prefer automatic updates to their donor stats without manual input.

Rabbit Holes

To improve reader retention, we tested two approaches: suggested articles in search and personalized reading lists. Results showed strong engagement:

  • 93.3% of feedback was positive or neutral.
  • Pageviews were significantly higher for users who engaged with the feature.
  • Users preferred reading lists over suggested search results.

Jetpack Compose Migration

We've started migrating our Android layouts to Jetpack Compose to modernize the app and improve performance long-term.

Other Fixes & Enhancements

  • Fixed bugs related to offline article loading, push notifications, and language variants.
  • Enhanced language support in captions and local language display.

Looking Ahead

From improving editing tasks to adding new ways to discover content and expanding personalization—this quarter was packed with learning and progress. Your feedback continues to shape where we go next.

Make sure you’re subscribe to this newsletter to stay in the loop, and thank you for being a part of this journey with us!

~~ARamadan-WMF07:49, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

''The Bugle'': Issue 228, April 2025

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Your Military History Newsletter

|}

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 14:40, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

[[:Category:Richard Twentyman]] has been nominated for renaming

File:Ambox warning orange.svg
:Category:Richard Twentyman has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether it complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. 1857a (talk) 18:28, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

A fox for you!

File:Fox sleeping (51901885260).jpg

Thanks for that patrol.

Iljhgtn (talk) 14:59, 19 April 2025 (UTC)


:Foxes are cool! Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:01, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

April music

{{User QAIbox

| image = Meadow with dandelion near Lindenmühle, Lindenholzhausen.jpg

| image_upright = 0.8

| bold = story · music · places

}}

My story is about music that Bach and Picander gave the world 300 years (and 19 days) ago, - listen (on the conductor's birthday) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:08, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-17

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

Updates for editors

  • Wikifunctions is now integrated with Dagbani Wikipedia since April 15. It is the first project that will be able to call functions from Wikifunctions and integrate them in articles. A function is something that takes one or more inputs and transforms them into a desired output, such as adding up two numbers, converting miles into metres, calculating how much time has passed since an event, or declining a word into a case. Wikifunctions will allow users to do that through a simple call of a stable and global function, rather than via a local template. [https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikifunctions:Status_updates/2025-04-16]
  • A new type of lint error has been created: {{int:linter-category-empty-heading}} (documentation). The Linter extension's purpose is to identify wikitext patterns that must or can be fixed in pages and provide some guidance about what the problems are with those patterns and how to fix them. [https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T368722]
  • File:Octicons-sync.svg View all {{formatnum:37}} community-submitted {{PLURAL:37|task|tasks}} that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Following its publication on HuggingFace, the "Structured Contents" dataset, developed by Wikimedia Enterprise, is [https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/blog/kaggle-dataset/ now also available on Kaggle]. This Beta initiative is focused on making Wikimedia data more machine-readable for high-volume reusers. They are releasing this beta version in a location that open dataset communities already use, in order to seek feedback, to help improve the product for a future wider release. You can read more about the overall [https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/blog/structured-contents-snapshot-api/#open-datasets Structured Contents project], and about the [https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/blog/structured-contents-wikipedia-infobox/ first release that's freely usable].
  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings and events

  • The Editing and Machine Learning Teams invite interested volunteers to a video meeting to discuss Peacock check, which is the latest Edit check that will detect "peacock" or "overly-promotional" or "non-neutral" language whilst an editor is typing. Editors who work with newcomers, or help to fix this kind of writing, or are interested in how we use artificial intelligence in our projects are encouraged to attend. The meeting will be on April 28, 2025 at [https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1745863200 18:00–19:00 UTC] and hosted on Zoom.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:57, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #676

File:Wikidata-logo-en.svg

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-04-22. Missed the previous one? See issue #675.
Translations are available

Events

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

  • Blogs
  • [https://thottingal.in/blog/2025/04/15/qjson/ qjson: Fetching all properties of a Wikidata item in a single API call] By Santhosh Thottingal
  • [https://olea.org/diario/2025/04/14/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2025-proposals-Wikibase.html A Wikibase call for action at the Wikimedia Hackathon 2025] By Ismael Olea
  • [https://museumdata.uk/blog/putting-uk-collections-on-the-map/ Putting UK collections on the map] by the Museum Data Service
  • [https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/2025/04/20/the-april-2025-scholia-hackathon.html The April 2025 Scholia Hackathon] by Egon Willighagen
  • Papers
  • [https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/talking-wikidata-communication-patterns-and-their-impact-on-commu Talking Wikidata: Communication Patterns and Their Impact on Community Engagement in Collaborative Knowledge Graphs] - Investigative study on Wikidata discussions, revealing that the community is generally inclusive and conflict is rare, but many controversial topics lack consensus, and valuable contributors disengage early. By Koutsiana et. al., (2025)
  • [https://zenodo.org/records/15226371 Natural history specimens collected and/or identified and deposited] - By Latham (2025)
  • Videos
  • [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWoNZLBj7mM Wiki Workshop 2025 - Wikidata Inconsistencies with Language Models and Data Mining in a Pipeline] by Houcemeddine Turki
  • (Italian) [https://youtube.com/dL9JEfHpU68?si=RXymgDS8-ZE687aE Cla-G, an instance of Wikibase as a tool to support game classification] by Carlo Bianchini
  • Other
  • [https://x.com/afliacon/status/1908928893727211669?s=46 Wikidata & Wikibase for Authority Control & Knowledge Organization Workshop] By AfLIA
  • [https://github.com/oolonek/daily-lotus Mastodon bot] that "highlights natural compounds found in plants, fungi, bacteria or animals — and includes Wikidata references and visual structure depictions."

Tool of the week

  • User:Spinster/Wikidata references made easier: The script helps in adding references to statements, in order to provide context for our data, make the data more reliable, transparent and trustworthy for anyone who uses it .

Other Noteworthy Stuff

  • Registration is open for a Wikidata ontology course led by Peter Patel-Schneider and Ege Doğan. To register, email pfpschneider{{@}}gmail.com with your Wikidata username and a brief note on your interest. The course starts 1 May, with weekly lectures on Thursdays from 1–3pm EDT (skipping 29 May and 12 June). Space may be limited; priority goes to those already interested. Participants should know Wikidata, attend sessions, complete weekly exercises (~1 hour), and join a group project. Details: Course page
  • Wikifunctions is now integrated with Dagbani Wikipedia since April 15. It is the first project that will be able to call functions from Wikifunctions and integrate them in articles.
  • Wikidata job openings at the The Wikimedia Foundation
  • [https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/6814912 Lead Product Manager, Wikidata Platform] (remote)
  • [https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/6816145 Tech Lead, Wikidata Platform] (remote)

Newest properties and property proposals to review

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

Development

  • Wikidata changes in watchlist and recent changes on Wikipedia and co: We are continuing the work on making the edit summaries more understandable (phab:T386200)
  • Wikibase REST API: We are continuing to build out the simple search functionality (phab:T389011)
  • Dark mode: We are fixing a few remaining issues with dark mode support in the Vector 2022 theme (phab:T389633)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at [https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/71/query/zfiRgTnZF7zu/?filter=zfiRgTnZF7zu&order=priority the tasks needing a volunteer].

Weekly Tasks