(This announcement is relevant for all Wikidata users working with Labels
and Aliases.)
Hello,
We're excited to invite you to participate in the community testing of the
“default values for labels and aliases” feature. Based on a long-standing
community request around language fallback (T285156
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T285156>), and based on your feedback
from our previous announcement
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org/message/IIEZFOF2F7JUKGM7HSAOC4KXQYMJWWOB/>,
we are currently testing this feature on
https://test.wikidata.org
<https://test.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42> with the release planned for Q1 2024.
What is coming?
1.
Default values for labels and aliases (mul): Items that repeat the same
label and aliases over and over are hard to maintain and can strain our
infrastructure, especially the Wikidata Query Service. As a solution, we
are introducing the option for default values in the termbox. The
default values are considered in the language fallback chain (language code
“mul”).
1.
Visualisation of the language fallback chain: Previously, Wikidata’s
fallback chain was not visible in the user interface, making it challenging
to determine if additional information was needed. As a first step toward
improvement, we will now clearly show what content is already available via
language fallback in the placeholders for labels (including default values).
We need your feedback
Please leave your feedback on Help talk:Default values for labels and
aliases
<https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Help_talk:Default_values_for_labels_and_aliases>.
Your feedback will play a crucial role in verifying if the current version
is ready for Wikidata. Additionally, you can find some test Items, known
limitations and open questions there for you to review. We will analyze
your feedback one week after today's announcement.
The next steps
After you have left your feedback, please make sure that the
guidelines on Help:Default
values for labels and aliases
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Default_values_for_labels_and_aliases>
are ready for the launch. You can also already plan bot-runs for mul, but
please be sure to start with uncontroversial cases. If there are no
blockers, we will then prepare a limited release on Wikidata in the coming
weeks. The limited release will only be visible if you put mul in your
Babel boxes. We will use this limited release to test the performance and
verify that everything works as planned. Please don’t start any bot-runs
for mul during the limited release. A full release will follow a few weeks
later, displaying default values for everyone by default, and featuring an
onboarding element that will guide people to the help page. Bot-runs for mul
can commence at this stage.
Do not hesitate to reach out with questions or concerns in the talk page of
the help page
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help_talk:Default_values_for_labels_and_aliases>
and for technical details in this Phabricator ticket (T356169
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T356169>).
Thank you for your support!
Cheers,
--
Mohammed Sadat Abdulai
*Community Communications Manager, Wikidata*
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0) 30 577 116 2466
https://wikimedia.de
Grab a spot in my calendar for a chat:
calendly.com/masssly.
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