(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/me…>,
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_lab…>.
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_alias…>
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.
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
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.
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.
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Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende Vorstände: Franziska Heine,
Dr. Christian Humborg
Hello,
As many of you may already know, we have been working on introducing a
new Wikidata
data type <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Data_type> that will make it
easier to find EntitySchemas
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Schemas> and use them to connect to
other Wikibase Entities. This will allow editors to refer to existing
EntitySchemas in statements to indicate what class of Items, Lexemes etc.
are governed by an EntitySchema. This new EntitySchema datatype is now live
on Test Wikidata <https://test.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page> for
testing and your feedback.
Background
EntitySchemas were first introduced in 2019 as a way to model the structure
of Wikidata Items and validate data against those specifications. There are
a number of shortcomings with EntitySchemas still, which means they are not
as useful and used as much as they should be. We are now addressing a
number of those issues, starting with this new data type.
In 2019, we built the first version of the EntitySchema datatype, but it
was eventually rolled back based on your feedback. We have made a lot of
progress since then and take your feedback into account when developing
this new iteration.
The main goal of this development is to help editors model data more
consistently by making EntitySchemas more visible and integrated into
day-to-day editing work. The new EntitySchema data type offers the
following features:
-
A new data type that allows making statements that take an EntitySchema
ID as a value
-
A canonical URI scheme for EntitySchemas has been developed that matches
prefixes of other Semantic Entities (Items, Lexemes, and Properties) to
identify them as concepts and access them when they are referred to in
statements in various formats such as RDF
-
"What Links Here" now enables you to see what Items, Lexemes, and
Properties link to an EntitySchema in a statement
-
A “Concept URI” link has also been added to the EntitySchema’s sidebar,
mirroring the same format as Items
What will come next for EntitySchemas:
-
Displaying EntitySchemas linked in statements by their labels instead of
their IDs, making them more readable and easier to understand.
-
Support for language fallback to make EntitySchemas legible across
languages.
-
An updated termbox (the table with labels, descriptions and aliases) to
provide a more consistent experience between Items, Properties and
EntitySchemas in the future.
Testing and Feedback
Today, we’d love for you to explore EntitySchemas on Test Wikidata
<https://test.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page> and provide feedback.
We hope that the new EntitySchema data type will increase centralized
discussions around the modelling of specific classes in Wikidata. This new
visibility will allow for more integration of EntitySchemas into the
ecosystem, leading to improved data quality through more consistent
modelling. Ultimately making the reuse of our data easier, especially for
small to medium-sized reusers.
Here is an example we prepared earlier Q497
<https://test.wikidata.org/wiki/Q497>.
If you encounter any issues, have questions or concerns, or want to provide
feedback, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us on Wikidata talk:Schemas
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:Schemas#New_EntitySchema_data_t…>
or
leave a comment on this ticket phab:T332724
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T332724>.
Thanks so much,
Arian
--
Arian Bozorg (he/him)Junior Product Manager Wikidata
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-230https://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
Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig
anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin,
Steuernummer 27/029/42207.
Hello all,
The next language community meeting is scheduled in a few weeks - May 31st
at 16:00 UTC. If you're interested, you can sign up on this wiki page: <
https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Language_engineering/…
>.
This is a participant-driven meeting, where we share language-specific
updates related to various projects, collectively discuss technical issues
related to language wikis, and work together to find possible solutions.
For example, in the last meeting, the topics included the machine
translation service (MinT) and the languages and models it currently
supports, localization efforts from the Kiwix team, and technical
challenges with numerical sorting in files used on Bengali Wikisource.
Do you have any ideas for topics to share technical updates related to your
project? Any problems that you would like to bring for discussion during
the meeting? Do you need interpretation support from English to another
language? Please reach out to me at ssethi(a)wikimedia.org and add
agenda items to the document here: <
https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/language-community-meeting-may-2024>.
We look forward to your participation!
Cheers,
Jon, Mary, Oscar, Amir and Srishti
*Srishti Sethi*
Senior Developer Advocate
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>