Hi all,
We (Wikimedia Sverige) have been experimenting with setting up our first wikibase.cloud instance and a few questions specifically related to the wikibase.cloud installations cropped up. Thought we’d check with the rest of you here how you dealt with them.
Firstly we noticed that wikibase.cloud wikis come without interwiki-link possibilities. This amongst other things makes Special:Import not work since this requires that an interwiki prefix be provided (to source the import which is needed for licensing compatibility). In our case we were planning on importing Template:Q etc. from Wikidata to help with our on-wiki documentation. Is there a way of setting/enabling such so that imports (at least from Wikimedia wikis) become possible?
Secondly, and related, is the ability to create sitelinks in the Item and Properties namespaces. It is unclear if it is at all possible to create sitelinks from a wikibase.cloud wiki. And if so would it be possible to point these to Wikimedia wikis or even other wikibase.cloud wikis? Attempting to add a site link opens a dialogue window where language can be provided but the language in question does not get resolved to a site.
Lastly, on the Special:NewItem (and Special:NewProperty) page we get the following message: By clicking "Create", you agree to the terms of use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the [ None yet set.]. It is unclear where we would set the license which should go here ($dataRightsUrl?), also where we would set the license for the non-data namespaces (i.e. $wgRightsUrl), which would have to be CC BY-SA if we want to import some templates from Wikidata. Interestingly enough, Special:NewEntitySchema already assumes CC0.
These might not be the standard challenges faced by wikibase.cloud users but they quickly become quite central to the way we were thinking of using our instance. Any thoughts, suggestions, pointers to existing bug reports are welcome.
Cheers,
André André Costa | Chief Operating Officer, Wikimedia Sverige | Andre.Costa@wikimedia.se | +46 (0)733-964574
Stöd fri kunskap, bli medlem i Wikimedia Sverige. Läs mer på blimedlem.wikimedia.se
Hi André (and Alicia),
With respect to your sitelinks question, I fear this may require some work on the development team's side, even to work partially. The sites table must be configured via maintenance scripts per https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/Installation/Advanced_configuration#Enab... and there is no access to them from Wikibase.cloud. Similarly sitelink groups are part of code config. On the SPARQL side of things it may be possible to query Wikidata's sitelinks through code like https://opendata.stackexchange.com/a/7690/26857 and https://tinyurl.com/y5kvpxnx (by Andra), but I'm not sure this is useful to you.
There is also no way to inform the target wiki even if the config could be changed, as it is not a local SQL database (this at least might be expected, as WB.C is separate from Wikimedia). The areas of Direct Access and Wikidata Bridge are ones where Wikibase still seems relatively closely coupled to a local installation, complicating standalone hosting; perhaps some magic could be done with foreign data wrappers?
As you say, it'd be good to have interwiki support as well. There are extensions that allow easy editing of the interwiki table, and I think doing so would be sufficient to enable links separately, but they're not currently installed on Wikibase.cloud. To work around external link icons I enclosed links to other wikis in <div class="plainlinks">. A more general CSS override might also be possible (but not JS, yet, as that is not enabled currently).
Licensing issues were raised on https://github.com/wbstack/mediawiki/issues/124 but as far as I can see have not yet been addressed. I put license notifications on https://furry.wikibase.cloud/wiki/Project:About and https://furry.wikibase.cloud/wiki/Project:Copyrights on the grounds that the first is linked from all pages and the second from the edit page for regular pages, however this is not ideal. The specific message you highlighted can also be edited, e.g. https://furry.wikibase.cloud/wiki/MediaWiki:Wikibase-shortcopyrightwarning (note: Wikimedia currently uses CC-BY-SA 3.0, not 4.0; the latter isn't back-compatible, as it grants more rights). You may need to set MediaWiki:Wikibase-shortcopyrightwarning/sv and perhaps other language variants. Entity schemas have a separate message, MediaWiki:Entityschema-newschema-copyright.
There was a detailed discussion of licensing issues on the WBStack/Wikibase.cloud Telegram group on August 18, 2021, if you can access that (if not, poke me at @WikiNorn and I can invite you, though I'm not entirely sure the history will be accessible even then).
Hopefully WMDE can chime in if they have plans to resolve any of the issues you raised, or conversely if they see some of them as out of scope, at least in the mid-term.
Best regards, -- Laurence 'GreenReaper' Parry - greenreaper.co.uk Wikibase Community User Group / WikiFur.com
Many thanks Laurence for the quick reply!
To clarify, i had not expected sitelinks to work (other than perhaps between different wb.c instances) but though it best to check (since the edit function is enabled) before we try to work around that by the use of a property. Thanks also for the sparql pointers around this.
I opened a ticket for enabling Extension:Interwiki (I did it in the github repo https://github.com/wbstack/mediawiki/, but it's unclear to me what the relation is between that repo and the wb.c Phabricator board https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/5563/.) Afterwards I however found that interwiki links are enabled, the abbreviations are just not the shortened ones we might be used to from Wikimedia-wikis. See api.php?action=query&format=json&meta=siteinfo&siprop=interwikimap https://metabase.wikibase.cloud/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&meta=siteinfo&siprop=interwikimap for the list. So with the `wikidata` as the interwiki prefix I could import the needed templates.
Re licensing (thanks for the pointer to the github issue). In the short term I'll guess we'll just override the system messages.
Cheers, André André Costa | Chief Operating Officer, Wikimedia Sverige | Andre.Costa@wikimedia.se | +46 (0)733-964574
Stöd fri kunskap, bli medlem i Wikimedia Sverige. Läs mer på blimedlem.wikimedia.se
Den tors 13 okt. 2022 kl 04:04 skrev Laurence Parry <greenreaper@hotmail.com
:
Hi André (and Alicia),
With respect to your sitelinks question, I fear this may require some work on the development team's side, even to work partially. The sites table must be configured via maintenance scripts per https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/Installation/Advanced_configuration#Enab... and there is no access to them from Wikibase.cloud. Similarly sitelink groups are part of code config. On the SPARQL side of things it may be possible to query Wikidata's sitelinks through code like https://opendata.stackexchange.com/a/7690/26857 and https://tinyurl.com/y5kvpxnx (by Andra), but I'm not sure this is useful to you.
There is also no way to inform the target wiki even if the config could be changed, as it is not a local SQL database (this at least might be expected, as WB.C is separate from Wikimedia). The areas of Direct Access and Wikidata Bridge are ones where Wikibase still seems relatively closely coupled to a local installation, complicating standalone hosting; perhaps some magic could be done with foreign data wrappers?
As you say, it'd be good to have interwiki support as well. There are extensions that allow easy editing of the interwiki table, and I think doing so would be sufficient to enable links separately, but they're not currently installed on Wikibase.cloud. To work around external link icons I enclosed links to other wikis in <div class="plainlinks">. A more general CSS override might also be possible (but not JS, yet, as that is not enabled currently).
Licensing issues were raised on https://github.com/wbstack/mediawiki/issues/124 but as far as I can see have not yet been addressed. I put license notifications on https://furry.wikibase.cloud/wiki/Project:About and https://furry.wikibase.cloud/wiki/Project:Copyrights on the grounds that the first is linked from all pages and the second from the edit page for regular pages, however this is not ideal. The specific message you highlighted can also be edited, e.g. https://furry.wikibase.cloud/wiki/MediaWiki:Wikibase-shortcopyrightwarning (note: Wikimedia currently uses CC-BY-SA 3.0, not 4.0; the latter isn't back-compatible, as it grants more rights). You may need to set MediaWiki:Wikibase-shortcopyrightwarning/sv and perhaps other language variants. Entity schemas have a separate message, MediaWiki:Entityschema-newschema-copyright.
There was a detailed discussion of licensing issues on the WBStack/Wikibase.cloud Telegram group on August 18, 2021, if you can access that (if not, poke me at @WikiNorn and I can invite you, though I'm not entirely sure the history will be accessible even then).
Hopefully WMDE can chime in if they have plans to resolve any of the issues you raised, or conversely if they see some of them as out of scope, at least in the mid-term.
Best regards,
Laurence 'GreenReaper' Parry - greenreaper.co.uk Wikibase Community User Group / WikiFur.com
I opened a ticket for enabling Extension:Interwiki (I did it in the github repohttps://github.com/wbstack/mediawiki/, but it's unclear to me what the relation is between that repo and the wb.c Phabricator boardhttps://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/5563/.)
As I understand it: WBStack's repo is where WBStack and initial versions of Wikibase.cloud were developed. Phabricator seems to be where WMDE tracks work, and I have seen tickets filed there get some attention. A new GitHub repo is apparently being used now and per WBStack repo's description, is likely to be made public soon, I'd guess under the WMDE account similar to https://github.com/wmde/wbaas-deploy-public
As such I'm not sure how much attention an issue in the soon-abandoned GitHub will get, but at least it's on record.
FWIW, there are various issues in WBStack's repos such as: https://github.com/wbstack/mediawiki/issues https://github.com/wbstack/ui/issues https://github.com/wbstack/cradle/issues Some may have been migrated to phabricator, but as far as I known most have not been, and I hope they are not "lost" as most of the issues remain relevant (if clearly not that pressing, or they would have been addressed already).
Afterwards I however found that interwiki links are enabled, the abbreviations are just not the shortened ones we might be used to from Wikimedia-wikis.
Ah, yes - it has the default set, just not Wikimedia's set. I figured you might want to add a custom interwiki in which case it is less useful. Unfortunately (but understandably) you can't use Wikipedia to "bounce" non-local interwikis any longer.
-- Laurence 'GreenReaper' Parry - greenreaper.co.ukhttp://greenreaper.co.uk Wikibase Community User Group / WikiFur.com
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