Hello, everyone –
We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Session on Tuesday, October 15, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 16:00 UTC / 6pm CEST (Time zone converter<https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1729008000>).
New Format!
We have decided to try a new programming format starting this fall. We’ll work with members of the community to highlight their projects and provide editing support by coordinating Project Series lasting two months. The general format will be to host one presentation and discussion oriented call followed by three Working Hour-style editing sessions in support of that project. All events will take place during our regular every-other Tuesday timeslot (12pm EST/9am PST/16:00 UTC/6pm CEST).
We are thrilled that Christa Strickler will be our first Project Series lead, with her joint project with the Wikidata Religion & Theology Community of Practice to contribute biographical data to Wikidata from the IRFA<https://irfa.paris/en/en-learn-about-a-missionary/> database using the Mix’n’Match tool. We are excited to learn more about this project, provide a forum for discussion and shared learning, and lend a hand while building new skills. Sessions for this series will be on September 3rd and 17th, and October 1st and 15th.
Here is the plan for the series sessions:
Session 1 (September 3)
Intro to community of practice and the project
Session 2 (September 17)
Working session using Mix‘n’Match<https://mix-n-match.toolforge.org/#/catalog/5301> to add Wikidata items
Session 3 (October 1)
Working session using a data model and the UseAsRef user script<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Bargioni/UseAsRef> to enhance items
Session 4 (October 15)
Working session to demonstrate an image search for item enhancement and celebrate with data visualizations of the work we’ve done
Instructions will assume rudimentary knowledge of Wikidata, but beginners and their questions are most welcome! Step-by-step instructions will be provided, so hopefully even those unfamiliar with Wikidata will be able to follow along.
The call details are below. Working sessions will not be recorded, but demos and how-to sections will be made available as recordings. To receive notifications about upcoming calls and session information you can subscribe to the <https://groups.google.com/d/forum/ld4-wikidata> ld4-wikidata Google Group<https://groups.google.com/d/forum/ld4-wikidata>.
Call Details:
Date and Time: Tuesday, 15 October, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 16:00 UTC / 6pm CEST (Time zone converter<https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1729008000>)
Zoom link info: https://notredame.zoom.us/j/97724612314?pwd=SGpWxsAbdUvYQf2GCaPRxlsfkHFYvL.1
Meeting ID: 977 2461 2314
Passcode: 277559
Event Page:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_LD4_Wikidata_Affinity_Gr…
The LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group is associated with the LD4 Community and investigates how libraries can contribute to and better integrate library metadata with Wikidata to improve access to library resources on the web. The Affinity Group calls provide an informal space to share information and learn more about Wikidata.
Communication:
Ld4-wikidata Google group: <https://groups.google.com/d/forum/ld4-wikidata> https://groups.google.com/d/forum/ld4-wikidata
#wikidata channel on LD4 Slack: <https://ld4.slack.com/> https://ld4.slack.com/
Series event page: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_LD4_Wikidata_Affinity_Gr…
Website: <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_LD4_Wikidata_Affinity_Gr…> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_LD4_Wikidata_Affinity_Gr…
On behalf of the LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group co-facilitators,
Hilary Thorsen
Resource Sharing Librarian
Stanford Libraries
thorsenh(a)stanford.edu
650-285-9429
On Thu, Sep 5, 2024 at 8:15 PM Physikerwelt <wiki(a)physikerwelt.de> wrote:
>
> Dear Luca,
>
> the communication was good I think.
>
> However, I don't understand the decision process. Who is the
> responsible person, e.g., the product manager, who eventually decided
> to cut WDQS into pieces?
>
> Moritz
The decision was defined together by the Search Team at Wikimedia
Foundation and the people in charge of Wikidata at Wikimedia
Deutschland. In particular, Lydia Pintscher is ultimately responsible
for all Wikidata product decisions at WMDE.
I would like to stress how this decision was not taken lightheartedly.
It's been three years that we know that Blazegraph is on the verge of
failing, we wrote a playbook in case of dramatic failure,[1] and we
evaluated several alternatives to Blazegraph,[2] each with its pros
and cons.
While evaluating which way to go, knowing that no solution would be a
"magic wand" that would magically solve all our problems - in fact, no
"magic solution" exists, each comes with its load of problems and
costs - we came to terms with the fact that we needed more time and
the split was a harsh, but ultimately effective solution to buy some
time in the transition to the next backend.
Hope this helps.
L.
[1] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:SPARQL_query_service/WDQS_backend_up…
[2] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:SPARQL_query_service/WDQS_backend_up…
Dear Wikidata community,
we are happy to announce the program for the first European MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference is out: https://conference.knowledge.wiki
We have several talks around Wikidata, Wikibase and Semantic Wikibase.
The program covers a wide range of topics from MediaWiki community and development aspects, business and government use cases as well as MediaWiki in research and GLAM settings.
There are still seats left for participation in Vienna, so please make sure to book tickets at https://mwstake.eventbrite.com/
We want to express our gratitude to our sponsors!
Gold Sponsors:
https://bluespice.com/ Hallo Welt! - The company behind BlueSpice, the open-source enterprise wiki software
https://gesinn.it/ - gesinn.it GmbH & Co. KG. We develop software that makes knowledge accessible and information work more productive.
https://www.wikiteq.com/ - WikiTeq. MediaWiki Built for your Business
Silver Sponsors:
https://professional.wiki/ and https://wikibase-solutions.com/
See you in one month in Vienna!
Best,
Bernhard Krabina - general chair
Sabine Melnicki - program chair
Daniel Dobriy - online chair
Dear Tool Maintainers of Toolforge,
The idea for Tool-Watch <https://tool-watch.toolforge.org/> originated
during the Wikimania Hackathon 2023. A group of us was exploring various
tools from Toolhub and noticed that many of the links we clicked were not
functioning. This sparked our interest in finding an existing monitoring
tool for tools at Toolforge, but we were unable to locate one. Motivated by
this experience, we began developing Tool-Watch, which has been live for
some time now.
As part of this initiative, we are considering implementing email
notifications for tool maintainers. The goal is to notify maintainers if
their tool has been down for an extended period, allowing for timely
intervention and maintenance. We believe this will help keep our tools
running smoothly and reduce unnecessary infrastructure costs and make the
catalogue cleaner.
We value your input and would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.
Specifically, we’d like to know:
- Would you find email notifications helpful if they are triggered only
after extended downtime?
- Should the notification be triggered after 3, 7, or 30 days of
downtime? Or do you have any other time frame in mind?
Please feel free to share your feedback by replying to this email or
joining the discussion on Phabricator T368816#10201603
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T368816#10201603>.
Also, special thanks to Soham and other contributors for supporting me in
building this tool!
Tool: https://tool-watch.toolforge.org/
Phabricator discussion: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T368816
Thank you for your continued support and dedication to our community. We
look forward to hearing from you!
Regards,
Gopa Vasanth <https://gopavasanth.github.io/>
Twitter <https://twitter.com/gopavasanth1999> | LinkedIn
<https://www.linkedin.com/in/gopa-vasanth/> | GitHub
<https://github.com/gopavasanth> | Gerrit
<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/gopavasanth>
“Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.”
Hello all!
The Search Platform Team usually holds an open meeting on the first
Wednesday of each month. Come talk to us about anything related to
Wikimedia search, Wikidata Query Service (WDQS), Wikimedia Commons Query
Service (WCQS), etc.!
Feel free to add your items to the Etherpad Agenda for the next meeting.
Details for our next meeting:
Date: Wednesday, October 2, 2024
Time: 15:00-16:00 UTC / 08:00 PDT / 11:00 EDT / 17:00 CEST
Etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Search_Platform_Office_Hours
Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/vgj-bbeb-uyi
Join by phone: https://tel.meet/vgj-bbeb-uyi?pin=8118110806927
Have fun and see you soon!
Guillaume
--
*Guillaume Lederrey* (he/him)
Engineering Manager
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>