Dear Community,
We are happy to announce the next major version of Wikibase Suite, WMDE.17
based on MediaWiki 1.41.0.
This is a major release including the following notable changes:
-
MediaWiki switched to the “Vector 2022” skin by default.
-
MariaDB switched from 10.9 to 10.11
<https://mariadb.com/kb/en/changes-improvements-in-mariadb-1011/> for a
long term support version.
-
PHP switched from 8.1 to 8.2 <https://www.php.net/releases/8.2/en.php>.
-
WDQS Java switched from OpenJDK to eclipse-temurin JRE, but stays on
java 8.
-
WDQS base image switched from alpine to debian bookworm.
-
WDQS service now uses the “blazegraph” user instead of uid 666.
To review the complete set of components used to build this release, check
out our versions.env file
<https://github.com/wmde/wikibase-release-pipeline/blob/wmde.17/variables.env>
.
Find more information about the MediaWiki 1.41 release here
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.41>.
Are you looking for documentation?
Our Wikibase documentation <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase> is the
way to go for our installation instructions and FAQ. For Wikibase 1.41
developer documentation, take a look at
https://doc.wikimedia.org/Wikibase/REL1_41.
Want to know what’s new?
Sign up for our mailing list to follow and participate in discussions about
Wikibase development:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikibaseug.lists.wikimedia.org/
Got feedback or questions?
Join our channels on Telegram https://t.me/+WBsf9-C9KPuMZCDT or
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/5755/.
We can’t wait to hear what you think of the new version!
Best,
Valerie, on behalf of the WMDE Wikibase Suite team
Valerie Wollinger (She/Her)
Community Communications Manager Wikibase
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0https://wikimedia.de
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe
now <https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>.
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our
vision!https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR
23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende
Vorstände: Franziska Heine, Dr. Christian Humborg
Dear community,
Today we're going to gather for our monthly live session.
Join us at 5:00 pm UTC (UTC+1 for Berlin) here:
https://meet.jit.si/WikibaseLiveSession.
If you like to share what you've been up to these days or ask a question,
just add your topics to the agenda here:
https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/WBUG_2024_02_29.
Looking forward to seeing you!
Best,
Valerie Wollinger (She/Her)
Community Communications Manager Wikibase
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0https://wikimedia.de
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe
now <https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>.
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our
vision!https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR
23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende
Vorstände: Franziska Heine, Dr. Christian Humborg
Dear Wikibase Community,
We’re thrilled to announce the release of WMDE.16
<https://github.com/wmde/wikibase-release-pipeline/releases/tag/wmde.16>,
our security release compatible with MediaWiki 1.40.2.
Changes in short:
-
The QuickStatements image only uses the QS_PUBLIC_SCHEME_HOST_AND_PORT
variable from now on. It should remain set to the public hostname of the
Wikibase instance. WIKIBASE_SCHEME_AND_HOST is deprecated and no longer
used.
Find more details in this change
<https://github.com/wmde/wikibase-release-pipeline/commit/27b4fcdeacd9f707ca…>
.
-
MediaWiki 1.40.2 release announcement
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/…>
-
We are no longer providing tarballs for installation
Previous changes in the 1.40-based releases:
-
MediaWiki 1.40 release announcement
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/…>
-
MediaWiki 1.40.1 release announcement
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/…>
Please also note that, as always, the file LocalSettings.php is
world-readable. Viewing it from within the container reveals the database
password and secret key.
Upgrading your Wikibase
Please note that starting with Wikibase 1.39 release, the Wikibase
extension must be enabled in MediaWiki using the Extension Registration
mechanism. If you have been providing your own MediaWiki configuration file
(LocalSettings.php) for your Wikibase container, make sure to check these
upgrade instructions
<https://github.com/wmde/wikibase-release-pipeline/blob/f2555b07494c9df691cd…>
.
Are you looking for documentation?
Our Wikibase documentation <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase> is the
way to go for our installation instructions and FAQ. For Wikibase 1.40
developer documentation, take a look at
https://doc.wikimedia.org/Wikibase/REL1_40/
<https://doc.wikimedia.org/Wikibase/REL1_40/php/> .
Want to know what’s new?
Sign up for our mailing list to follow and participate in discussions about
Wikibase development:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikibaseug.lists.wikimedia.org/
Got feedback or questions?
Join our channels on Telegram https://t.me/+WBsf9-C9KPuMZCDT or
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/5755/.
We can’t wait to hear what you think of the new version!
Best,
Valerie, on behalf of the WMDE Wikibase Suite team
Valerie Wollinger (She/Her)
Community Communications Manager Wikibase
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0https://wikimedia.de
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe
now <https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>.
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our
vision!https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR
23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende
Vorstände: Franziska Heine, Dr. Christian Humborg
Dear Community,
I would like to remind you of our ongoing research
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Deutschland/Knowledge_Equity_in_L…>
and your chance to participate!
The goal of this project is to better understand how the use of Wikidata,
Wikibase Suite, and Wikibase Cloud both support knowledge equity and create
barriers to knowledge equity when people are contributing historically and
structurally marginalized knowledge and perspectives.
What is learned in this project will directly inform WMDE product decisions
toward removing barriers and better supporting knowledge equity in the
Wikimedia LOD ecosystem.
Wondering how you might contribute?
We would like to talk with you for an hour or an hour and a half, or the
time you're available, about your experience contributing knowledge using
the products mentioned above.
In short, these interviews will be:
-
fairly compensated
-
recorded and documented (only with permission of participants)
-
take place between February 9 and March 29, 2024
-
stored on Design Research Services Google drive (until the project ends
May 31, 2024, when it will be deleted)
-
deleted at any time upon participant’s request.
-
summarized for findings (participants will remain anonymous unless
otherwise requested)
If you are interested in participating in this project, please fill out this
survey <https://greatquestion.co/wmde/4c3dr1vk>
Have a lovely day, everyone!
Valerie Wollinger (She/Her)
Community Communications Manager Wikibase
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0https://wikimedia.de
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe
now <https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>.
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our
vision!https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR
23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende
Vorstände: Franziska Heine, Dr. Christian Humborg
Dear Wikibase community,
I realized that I'm not doing my best to inform you about upcoming
deadlines when it comes to application processes for Wikimedia-related
events. My apologies! I will try to find better ways here.
This is a first step.
I would like to invite you to subscribe to this mailing list. Not
everything is of high importance, but it will certainly inform you about
upcoming events and deadlines to apply for scholarships and such. You can
sign up for it here:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikimedia-l.lists.wikimedia.org/.
Have a lovely weekend!
Valerie Wollinger (She/Her)
Community Communications Manager Wikibase
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0https://wikimedia.de
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe
now <https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>.
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our
vision!https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR
23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende
Vorstände: Franziska Heine, Dr. Christian Humborg
Dear Wikibase community,
We would like to inform you about our current research and invite you to
participate!
We're currently doing a Knowledge Equity in Linked Open Data Research (in
short: KELOD) where we try to better understand how the use of Wikidata,
Wikibase Suite, and Wikibase Cloud both support knowledge equity and create
barriers to knowledge equity when people are contributing historically and
structurally marginalized knowledge and perspectives.
What is learned in this project will directly inform WMDE product decisions
toward removing barriers and better supporting knowledge equity in the
Wikimedia LOD ecosystem. You can read more about this on a meta page that
we will publish next Monday.
We would like to talk with people for an hour or an hour and a half, or the
time they have available, about their experience contributing knowledge
using the products mentioned above.
In short, these interviews will be:
-
fairly compensated
-
recorded and documented (only with permission of participants)
-
take place between February 9 and March 29, 2024
-
stored on Design Research Services Google drive (until the project ends
May 31, 2024, when it will be deleted)
-
deleted at any time upon participant’s request.
-
summarized for findings (participants will remain anonymous unless
otherwise requested)
If you are interested in participating in this project, please fill out this
survey <https://forms.gle/2foXicqD5kt1486x7>
Thank you for your participation!
Valerie Wollinger (She/Her)
Community Communications Manager Wikibase''
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0https://wikimedia.de
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe
now <https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>.
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our
vision!https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR
23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende
Vorstände: Franziska Heine, Dr. Christian Humborg
Dear Wikibase/Wikidata Community,
We are trying to understand which database technologies and strategies Wikibase/Wikidata uses for storing, updating, and querying the data (knowledge) it manipulates.
By looking at the documentation<https://wmde.github.io/wikidata-wikibase-architecture/assets/img/03-dataflo…> we understood that RDF is only used for the Wikidata Query Service, but we could not find out exactly how Wikibase/Wikidata stores the information that is translated to RDF during the data dump.
More specifically, we understood that a MySQL (or is it MariaDB?) relational database is used as the key persistence component for most of Wikibase/Wikidata services and that the information that is maintained in this database is periodically exported to multiple formats, including RDF.
In addition, looking at the relational database schema published in the documentation<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Database_layout> we could not locate tables that are easily mappable to the Wikibase Data Model<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/DataModel>.
Thus, we hypothesize that there is some software component (Wikibase Common Data Access?) that dynamically translates the data contained in those tables to Statements, Entities, etc. Is that hypothesis, correct?
If yes, does this software component uses any intermediate storage mechanism for caching those Statements, Entities, ...? Or are those translations always performed at runtime on-the-fly (be it for querying, adding, or updating Statements, Entities, …)?
Finally, we would like to understand more about how Wikidata REST API<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:REST_API> is implemented:
• In which database are the statements that added/retrieved through it stored? Is it being stored in the central MySQL database or in another database?
• Does it have any support for pagination of statements? For example, if an item has many statements associated with a property, does the API assumes that both the underlying database and the network will support the retrieval of all those statements?
• Are you currently considering implementing the support for more flexible querying of statements, or such requirement has been fully delegated to the Wikidata Query Service?
If there is an updated documentation that could help us answer those questions, could you kindly point us to it? Otherwise, would you be able to share this information with us?
Best Regards,
Elton F. de S. Soares
Advisory Software Engineer
Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
IBM Research
E-mail: eltons(a)ibm.com<mailto:eltons@ibm.com>
Dear Community,
I’m thrilled to announce that we’ve found a new way to try to prevent spam
in your Wikibases!
You’ve often reported that many spam accounts were being created on your
Wikis (see this ticket <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T327176> for more
context).
We started looking for an additional security layer to prevent this in the
future, or at least to make it more difficult to get around for spammers.
This is where Questy
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:QuestyCaptcha> comes into play.
QuestyCaptcha can be more effective than either ReCaptcha or HCaptcha,
since it requires a set of questions and answers that you choose to make
them harder to be answered by non-legitimate users.
If you’re suffering from spam account signups, give it a try and let us
know how it goes.
We would love to hear whether it makes your life easier and whether the
number of spam accounts has been reduced with this new feature. Feel free
to use this ticket <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T342143> or our other
channels for feedback.
Thanks for being on this journey with us! :-)
Valerie, on behalf of Wikibase Cloud
Valerie Wollinger (She/Her)
Community Communications Manager Wikibase
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0https://wikimedia.de
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe
now <https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>.
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our
vision!https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR
23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende
Vorstände: Franziska Heine, Dr. Christian Humborg
If you missed today's Wikidata+Wikibase office hour, don't worry; we've got
you covered. Here is the link to the session log:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Events/Telegram_office_hour_2024-01-…
Thank you all for attending and see you at the next one🤞
On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 2:46 PM Mohammed Sadat Abdulai <
mohammed.abdulai(a)wikimedia.de> wrote:
> Wikidata/Wikibase office hour starts in about 3 hours at 17:00 UTC (18:00
> CEST) in the Wikidata Telegram group
> <https://t.me/joinchat/IeCRo0j5Uag1qR4Tk8Ftsg>.
>
> See you soon :)
>
> On Mon, Jan 15, 2024 at 12:17 PM Mohammed Sadat Abdulai <
> mohammed.abdulai(a)wikimedia.de> wrote:
>
>> A quick reminder:
>>
>> the Wikidata+Wikibase office hour is this week, Wednesday January 17th,
>> at 5:00 PM UTC (6:00 PM Berlin) in the Wikidata Telegram group
>> <https://t.me/joinchat/IeCRo0j5Uag1qR4Tk8Ftsg>.
>>
>> As usual, the notes from our discussions will be posted on the wiki
>> <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Events/archive#2023>.
>>
>> See you there!
>>
>> -Mohammed
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 8, 2024 at 11:20 AM Mohammed Sadat Abdulai <
>> mohammed.abdulai(a)wikimedia.de> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> Our next Wikidata+Wikibase office hour
>>> <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Events#Office_hours> is
>>> scheduled for Wednesday 17th January at 17:00 UTC (18:00 Berlin). As usual,
>>> the office hour will happen in the Wikidata Telegram group
>>> <https://t.me/joinchat/IeCRo0j5Uag1qR4Tk8Ftsg>.
>>>
>>> *The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the
>>> development team presents what we 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.*
>>>
>>> Make sure to mark your calendars and see you next week.
>>> --
>>> Mohammed S. 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.
>>>
>>> A lot is happening around Wikidata - Keep up to date!
>>> <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Status_updates> Current news
>>> and exciting stories about Wikimedia, Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our
>>> newsletter (in German): Subscribe now
>>> <https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>.
>>>
>>> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
>>> the sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our vision!
>>> https://spenden.wikimedia.de
>>>
>>> Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
>>> Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR 23855 B.
>>> Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin,
>>> Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende Vorstände: Franziska Heine,
>>> Dr. Christian Humborg
>>>
>>
