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Wikidata and redirects

I couldn't find a definitive guidance for this somewhat trivial question: If an article page is changed to a redirect (as I did here), should the language-specific article link in Wikidata be removed? Not the whole Wikidata page obviously, just talking about the en-Wiki connection. GermanJoe (talk) 11:00, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

It's up to you - I have been deleting them, but as far as I can tell they don't cause any damage. Jane (talk) 18:04, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
It's quite a complicated question! If the redirect refers to exactly the same topic as its target, the the wikidata item should obviously be linked to the article not the redirect. If they are not quite the same though, then it is permissible for the redirect to be attached to a wikidata item. For example Bonnie Parker is attached to Bonnie Parker (Q2319886) and redirects to Bonnie and Clyde. Not sure if this answers your question. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:16, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
PS In this particular case I think it best to keep the wikidata connection. Then if anyone comes along and writes a decent article about him, the wikidata item will already be attached. It also means that there is an interwiki link on fr:Joseph William Thornton which at least points somewhere relevant. Cheers — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:25, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
I agree, Wikidata links to our redirects are generally valuable and should be retained when we replace articles with redirects. (Wikidata does not permit editors to add such links, only to retain the links to articles that are replaced.)
--rather, I should say, Wikidata does not enable such links, but does permit and tacitly endorse them. See d:Help:Handling sitelinks overlapping multiple items#Interwikis. That section describes the obvious work-around warn or plead against it. --P64 (talk) 16:27, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
DEFAULTSORT and article categories are generally valuable too. I restored them for Joseph William Thornton.
So is placement in Redirect categories --generally by insertion of (or tagging with) Redirect templates. Done for Thornton. --P64 (talk) 22:10, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for all the advice, it helps to understand such situations together with possible consequences for each approach. As mentioned it's probably a case by case decision. GermanJoe (talk) 18:11, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Today I was trying to remember the Spanish equivalent of the "Template" namespace. To find out, I went to Wikipedia:Templates, figuring on finding the Spanish interlanguage link. But there wasn't one. After having my memory refreshed through another route that the Spanish counterpart is "Plantilla", I found out that there is a es:Wikipedia:Plantillas, which redirects to es:Ayuda:Plantillas ("ayuda" is Spanish for "help"). The latter does have an English interlanguage link, to Help:Templates.
Even so, I figured there should be a Spanish interlanguage link equating Wikipedia:Templates to es:Wikipedia:Plantillas, so I tried to create it. But I got an error message. I tried to do it in the reverse directions, starting from the Spanish redirection page, and got the same error. Is it because redirection pages can't be on either end of an interlanguage link?
If so, that's really unfortunate. The desirability of getting from Wikipedia:Templates to equivalent information on Spanish Wikipedia doesn't vanish because of the particular circumstance that on Spanish Wikipedia they've decided to have the one page, es:Ayuda:Plantillas, serve the purpose of es:Wikipedia:Plantillas as well. —Largo Plazo (talk) 17:30, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
@Largo Plazo: - you can still create an "oldschool" interlanguage link, when WikiData doesn't have a meaningful connection, or if you want to overwrite the existing WikiData connection for some reason. I added such a link at the end of Wikipedia:Templates to activate the connection to es-Wiki. See Help:Interlanguage links for more info. GermanJoe (talk) 17:40, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
@Largoplazo: GermanJoe (talk) 17:41, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Ha, I didn't know one could mix modes like that. Thanks! —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:22, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
@GermanJoe and Largoplazo: Wikidata guards against linking to redirects possibly because they suspect that it will usually be a mistake to do so. (The target of the redirect would be preferable to the redirect in many cases.) However there is a workaround method: remove the redirect, then add the link, then restore the redirect. I think this is the best method and I have done that with Project:Templates (Q11871615). Regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:04, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Revamp the Authority control template

Hi all, the authority control template is getting a bit unwieldy and is now protected. Since as of this week we have arbitrary access, it should be easy to replace this template with one that grabs authority data from Wikidata directly. All we need locally is a local love list (properties that should always be included whatever Wikidata makes of it) and local hate list (properties that should never be included whatever Wikidata makes of it). Any thoughts? Jane (talk) 12:04, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Does template {{Authority control}} not grab authority data from Wikidata directly?
The parenthetical remarks may be intended to explain "local love list" and "local hate list" but I don't know the meaning of "whatever Wikidata makes of it". --P64 (talk) 14:15, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
No. The local love list would for example the properties that the template accepts today. The local hate list would be those properties that other projects use and which we on English Wikipedia do not want to see appearing on all pages using the template. Jane (talk) 19:11, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
I'm also confused. Why could you not just have one list, which lists all the properties that we would like to include on enwiki? Also where is arbitrary access likely to be needed? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:05, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
Well that of course depends how you implement it. Based on the "instance of" property you could have different lists. For example, I am only here because I noticed that the current list is almost exclusively about people, whereas I happen to be working on paintings right now. Jane (talk) 15:50, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Template talk:Authority control should be the place to discuss expansion of the scope of that template. Furthermore, some people there may have knowledge, or plans, concerning its integration across 50 local languages (D:Q3907614). --P64 (talk) 16:24, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually there are not many people who watch that page, and though there aren't many people who watch this page either, there are more people here than there. I disagree that we have anything to say about the implementation on other projects. What we choose to do with the template is our business as members of the English Wikipedia community. There are two things we need to consider: 1) What the template does today, and 2) What the template could do considering the authority control properties that have since been added to Wikidata. That is all. No more and no less. Jane (talk) 19:28, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

If we're doing a revamp, I suggest that we should take a step back and think about it a little more broadly. I'd also suggest that now the template is so widely used the discussion at least needs a note on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) and Wikipedia:Templates for discussion because the template is on many, MANY articles. Personally I'd like to see a the person-specific functionality lifted into a separate template from non-person things being authority controlled. A person-specific template can also have much better documentation and internal validation from one that does all kinds of things. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:05, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes I would agree. In fact I thought it was a new version of the persondata template at first. We should probably create "Authority control person" and "Authority control artwork" and "Authority control sport" etc. These could be better maintained by the domain-specific projects. [[[User:Jane023|Jane]] (talk) 06:42, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[User:Jane023|Jane]] (talk) 06:40, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

I still don't understand what is problematic about the current template and what Jane or others above think should be changed. It currently uses local data if that local data is given in its parameters, or (preferably) grabs the data from Wikidata. As a template whose code is stored on en, the choice of which data to grab from Wikidata and which to ignore is entirely up to us here on en, not controlled by Wikidata. So what exactly would a "local love list" and "local hate list" accomplish that is different from what we're already doing? —David Eppstein (talk) 21:51, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

David, you are proably thinking, as I once did, that the authority control template grabs all relevant data from Wikidata. This is not true. It only checks the item connected with the article for a very short list of properties. I shouldn't need to tell you that the current list used gives a very narrow, US-Europe-centric view of the world. For pretty much anywhere else, any one of hundreds of other library and scholarly resources have been added to Wikidata in the past year or so since this was implemented. We are missing those, and it is very hard to implement them (the template is currently protected, probably not because it is pushing a POV but just because it is so easy to break tons of pages with problematic edits) Jane (talk) 06:40, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Please be also aware that the WikidataProject Authority control aims to gain more coherence between Wikidata and the AC information using Wikipedia projects (as enwiki). My bot, many others and me try to resolve the difference between Wikidata and enwiki. You can find them in the tracking category and at the Authority control validator. The aim of this activity is to decommission the local parameters at {{Authority control}} at some point. This already happened at 11 Wikipedia projects (see stage 4 decommission at WikidataProject Authority control). Arbitrary access is an important step towards achieving this aim, especially for AC information at redirect pages. For user pages I am proposing another solution. Anyway, What is important in my point of view? A revamp is a very good idea. Please start this process after we managed it to resolve all differences between Wikidata and enwiki (stage 3 of the project), implemented a user template (stage 3.1) and removed the local parameters (stage 4). After we completed all this steps a brand new Authority control template/module with more simple code would be very nice. I would also like to encourage you to help with resolving the differences here. Warm regards, -- T.seppelt (talk) 06:41, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Interesting! I guess I could totally get behind this, but I don't get what was removed. When I look at als:Willibald Pirckheimer I see the "normdata" template at the bottom, and the article for Berlin is missing it (probably because it would be too big otherwise?). Allemanisch is one of the languages that removed the template, according to your table? Jane (talk) 06:54, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
Stage 2 means that the local parameters are removed (my bot did this here). Berlin will {{Normdaten}} within stage 5, but I have to configure the task first. So the templates will stay there, just the local parameters are going to be removed. Regards, -- T.seppelt (talk) 14:12, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
OK I see now. We already have that on the English Wikipedia. The problem is that the selection of properties to pull into the template needs to be easier to manage and expanded per knowledge domain. Jane (talk) 14:36, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

So summing up, it appears that no one here cares what properties are used for the template, but that the template should just pull all properties for the item concerned that are of a certain type (such as reference work, or database)? I would approve splitting the template per domain - so one for people, one for places, one for artworks, etc. Jane (talk) 08:58, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for summing up. I would recommend to implement domain templates after the parameter decommission process is completed. Otherwise the migration would be much more complicated. Please postpone this step. Regards, --T.seppelt (talk) 13:06, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Question about Wikidata policy

Hi. I've asked a question about policy on using data from Wikidata at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Use of data from Wikidata. I'd really appreciate some opinions, as this page contains no useful information on Wikipedia's policies here. Relentlessly (talk) 10:35, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Simon Rodia

Hi, I just am now learning about Wikidata and I have a question about a specific "item" (if that is the right word). I learned about Wikidata when Kaspar grabbed data from Simon Rodia and I have looked at the data for this man and find even more questions.

  • The man's legal name is Sabato Rodia (which is the official page name at en-WP) but he was called by several similar aliases and is best known by the alias Simon Rodia. Many of his aliases come from his name being misspelled in numerous publications (including a documentary film he appeared in) and apparently he was a mischievous sort who encouraged these errors.

I went to the Wikidata page because the persondata fields that were pulled from the article did not include the aliases but apparently Wikidata got SOME of the aliases from some source (where did Wikidata get this name?). However it also included at least one wholly unique alias ("Old Sam") that there is no source for anywhere I can find. I cleaned up the aliases based on the source I found (see the infobox on the main article) and removed "Old Sam".

UPDATE:It seems that a children's book was written about him/his art that called him "Old Sam" but outside of that there is no reliable source for the nickname. There were some articles that said his name was ... 'Simon' or old 'Sam' ... but the "old" was not part of the actual name and the articles are of dubious reliability. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 02:21, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

What I am not clear on is if the data should be primary indexed under "Simon" or "Sabato".

  • I also noticed the man is identified on Wikidata in several foreign languages as an architect, and even in English his occupations are listed as "Architect", "Engineer", and "Artist". The documented fact is that his official occupation was "tile setter" and his role in history as an artist is not occupational (he was never paid for his art, it was a labor of personal ambition/love/interest/hobby).

How does Wikidata ensure that the content it "pulls" is properly vetted and sourced (i.e.: How does Wikidata ensure the data is accurate)? If there is a mechanism for this it certainly failed in this case. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 02:02, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

d:Wikidata:Verifiability and d:Help:Sources describe what should be happening, but like Wikipedia, anyone can edit Wikidata. Much of Wikidata appears (from what I've seen) to be either unsourced or poorly sourced – e.g. many refs there are actually "imported from: [some-language-version] Wikipedia". - Evad37 [talk] 02:44, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

The primary index, what we call the item's label, is usually the name under which he was best known; any other names can be added as aliases. For most part, we default to the title of the local wiki (broadly subtracting disambiguation).

Each Wikidata item has a history page (and in fact, a majority of "the same UI" you know from other wikis), so you can research the introduction of the names (or any other change made, naturally).

The description for many of the other languages was added based on the statements made and specifically in this case the occupation (since occupation is a natural way to describe someone) automatically. The description provides disambiguation, and no more than that.

Each statement needs to be verifiable. There are some ways to manipulate via the UI to indicate whether a particular statement is more trustworthy than not, but this is an advanced concept (what we call ranks). Evad37 has already pointed out the documentation related to sourcing a statement.

Much of the data on Wikidata was pulled from the various Wikipedias (much of which is indicated by a statement of the "imported from LANG Wikipedia") under the notion that that data is mostly right. Sourcing to reliable sources is following, slowly, mostly impeded by the fact that Wikidata is a victim of "that other wiki" (much like Commons, for example) and so people haven't invested much time into the hard work of adding sources. (Also, there are a lot of items--en.wp has 5 million articles... Wikidata has 15 million items and probably in the realm of a 100 million statements by now....) --Izno (talk) 03:09, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

QID lookup from enwp article title

Moved from Module talk:Wikidata § QID lookup from enwp article title

Is it possible to do a QID lookup from an enwp article title? For example, Gasketball → d:Q18150201 (without originating the request from the article's page) czar 23:10, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

There isn't a method documented at mw:Extension:Wikibase Client/Lua. I spent some time looking for a way but didn't stumble across it yet. -- ferret (talk) 00:38, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
Part of the problem is that labels are not unique on Wikidata. What QID would you expect if we could do a QID lookup for "Newport"? d:Q224715 (dab page), or d:Q101254 (Wales), or d:Q54264 (Rhode Island), or one of the other 50-odd possibilities? --RexxS (talk) 01:20, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
I get the predicament but: the dab page. The idea is that when the request originates from enwp, it would use the QID tied to the enwp page. Anyway, this would be really useful. czar 01:37, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

You can use [[d:Special:ItemByTitle/enwiki/PAGENAME]]. {{Wikidata redirect}} uses this code. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:59, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

That would work for getting to the page via a click, but not for being able to call that QID's properties based on the enwp article title (e.g., in a template) czar 13:19, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
True. I find it hard to believe that this can't be achieved ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:06, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
@MSGJ, I'm trying to pull from other pages though, for instance, if I'm making a list of articles and I want to tell whether each item is a book so the title can be automatically italicized. I'd prefer to use the current enwp article name as the parameter instead of requiring a QID for each item (because otherwise that list, in code, would not be human readable, being all QID names and not actual names of articles). czar 14:24, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
All of the functions related to arbitrary access use the QID, so I think you'll need to use QIDs rather than page names. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:05, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Wikidata in infoboxes, opt-in or opt-out?

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Wikidata in infoboxes, opt-in or opt-out?. Evad37 [talk] 03:35, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata references

In response to a question at the above RfC, I've made a sandbox version of a call that will display a table of all the Wikidata claims related to an article, along with an indication of whether the claim is referenced, and if so what it is sourced to. It may be of some use for those brave souls who are trying to improve the quantity and quality of referencing on Wikidata. See

for the basic documentation and the talk page for a couple of examples. Bug reports and ideas for improvements welcome. --RexxS (talk) 16:45, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Displaying a Wikidata entity

When writing a module that reads information from Wikidata, it can be useful to examine a table representing an entity. That can be done with mw.dumpObject(), but a more convenient method is now available. See Module talk:Dump for an example which uses the new Module:Dump. It is very new and may have problems, but I checked that the example table agrees with mw.dumpObject(). Johnuniq (talk) 11:57, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Imprecise dates?

So how do we add imprecise dates to Wikidata? Sadahide died in c. 1878–79. Somehow the erroneous date 1873 got input, and I have no idea how to replace it. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 07:51, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

You use the date qualifiers, like so - I used decade as precision level, but if even that is uncertain you can use unknown value and just leave the qualifiers in place. FYI, imprecise dates (even so precise as month-year) don't work well with automatic import. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:20, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
Thanks—but, wow, talk about unintuitive. I run into these kinds of dates a lot with artists from the period ... Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 12:54, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Is this not a form of machine writing?

I don't get the "Inserting Wikidata values into Wikipedia articles". The examples given are all either examples of how a machine would write an article (or generate a table of data), or how a human would try and automate various processes. None of them are to do with actually writing an article. No-one would ever sit down and say "I am going to write an article that will include Madonna's date of birth and the capital of Germany and the occupation of Douglas Adams. Instead of reading and thinking about how to write an actual article, I will go and look up wikidata property numbers and use those. Oh look, the machine has produced the data for me, isn't that amazing!" Well, no, actually, it isn't. Is the idea here that people will write articles and then other people (not sure what to call them) will add a veneer of 'properties' to help machines understand the text (semantic web), and then, well, what then? This works only if the process of article writing is not interfered with by those inserting wikidata properties and so on. If this is ever done, it needs to be done silently, invisibly, and not in a way that disrupts the writing and editing process. Imagine you were sitting at a desk trying to write, and someone kept coming along and adding post-it notes to what you were writing, labelling fragments of the text with 'properties'. It would be incredibly disruptive. There needs to be a separation between database maintenance and article writing, and an interface between the two that is intuitive rather than opaque. Carcharoth (talk) 08:44, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

But no one's even suggesting that we write prose with successive Wikidata values... The main purpose of the section on inserting Wikidata values is to show how to populate infoboxes, etc. czar 17:23, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
The current layout of the page may be misleading then. If you scan down, you get "Interlanguage links (Phase 1)" and then "Infoboxes (Phase 2)" and then "Inserting Wikidata values into Wikipedia articles". If that means only inserting the values into infoboxes, is that not what Phase 2 is about? Also, at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikidata Phase 2 you get discussion and (thankfully) rejection of the use of Wikidata in running text (but possibly in tables). It is quite clear that some people would be quite happy to use Wikidata in running text. It is also quite clear that this would be a complete disaster - it would impact citation reliability (can you really be sure any more that the citation is correct when the citation is no longer on the page but called from somewhere else?) and it would impact the ability of article writers to actually write without being distracted by database maintainers (I can't think of a politer term). Carcharoth (talk) 22:59, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
How about if someone from the Welsh Wikipedia wanted to start an article on the South Pole Telescope, and perhaps a number of other telescopes afterwards? If they make use of Template:Infobox telescope, they have a start-point for quite a bit of the information needed. Of course somebody will have to flesh that out with references, but it gets something going for others to build on.
Or perhaps we might want a list of 18th century composers (perhaps notable composers born in the 18th century). Why not create the table by reading the information (perhaps: name; portrait; dates/places of birth, death, activity; etc.) from Wikidata? We eliminate the transcription errors and typos. Most of the drudgery is taken out and the creator can concentrate on the prose in the lead, setting the scene. Or maybe 19th century composers? A small tweak to the query and you have most of the new list article. In a contemporary setting, we could generate the list of top first-class wicket takers, which would be automatically updated in the English, Indian, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan Wikipedias when the data is updated in one place (Wikidata).
These are perhaps examples of machine writing, but with the limitations set by Wikipedia, it's only really useful for structured writing. if you're interested in a step beyond that, have a look at Magnus Manske's m:Reasonator - an examples of its use is Douglas Adams. It's never going to compete with Douglas Adams, but for topics which have no article in your own language Wikipedia, it can often create a decent overview. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 20:28, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for those examples. I can see the potential. I hope that becomes possible. I may pop over to your talk page with some examples from the topic area that I am active in at the moment (I'd prefer not to use those examples here). Carcharoth (talk) 22:59, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how you break a link between, say, the English wiki page and the French page.

That is: I'm on the English page for something, and I spot that the language link for French links to the wrong article over at the French wikipedia. Furthermore, it's not that the link is merely wrong, it should not go there at all.

Somebody thought the english concept E and the french concept F is the same thing, or similar enough. I disagree and want to boldly undo that link.

So I want to delete the link (break the EN <-> FR chain), not merely edit the link to point to some other French article. I do not want to delete the English article. I do not want to delete the French article. I do not want to delete the wikidata item.

The English page is fine. Its link to the wikidata item is fine. (That is, the wikidata item represents the concept E just fine. It just isn't appropriate for the concept F)

I want to stop the English page from showing the link to any french page in the Languages column to the left. I guess that means I want to uncouple the French page from the wikidata item.

HOW DO I DO THAT?

This was earlier exceedingly simple. Now it seems exceedingly impossible. The help pages doesn't even seem to mention it, much less discuss it.

Any insight much appreciated, CapnZapp (talk) 10:49, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Crossposted here: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help_talk:Sitelinks#removing_a_language_sitelink
@CapnZapp: You are correct that you need to remove the link to the French page from the Wikidata item. To do that, you go to the entry on Wikidata (on Wikipedia, click the 'Wikidata item' link in the box marked 'tools' on the left of the article) and look for the box labelled 'Wikipedia' that contains all of the language links (it will be on the right on a widescreen, or below 'Statements' on a narrower screen). Once you've found the box containing all of the language links, click on the [edit] link at the top of the box. Now look for the 'bin' icon next to 'fr' and click on it. Finally click on 'save' at the top of the box.
Expect that your edit will be reverted. If so, then please discuss it on the talk page, rather than edit war, for obvious reasons. --RexxS (talk) 11:19, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

CS1 parameter support in Wikidata references

Are there analogs for Citation Style 1 (WP:CS1 ) in Wikidata? For instance, we're working review score integration into {{vg reviews}} (see its talk page) and when I go to add a reference to a score, I can add a |url= ("reference URL"), |date= ("publication date"), |work= ("published in"), and |archiveurl= ("archive URL") but can only add an author if they have a Wikidata node (and not break into first/last names) and cannot seem to add an analog for |archivedate= or |deadurl=... (see Blast Corps (Q339222) for instance) I would also think that it would make sense to have aliases for Wikidata's parameters match the aliases we use in CS1. And is there any automated way of importing these citations? Much slower than just writing by hand. czar 01:49, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Unwatching this page but still interested in an answer. Please {{ping}} me if you do czar 19:43, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Wording

@CapnZapp: Concerning: the second paragraph in the inter-language links section phase 1: http://imgur.com/a/RWtaz I'm a little confused as to the grammar, could you explain? Maybe that section could be reworded too. Attached is the screenshot link. Thanks, Icebob99 (talk) 22:22, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

so outdated, it is harmful

This page is so outdated, it is harmful. Four years of d: and all it says is "interwikis". -DePiep (talk) 20:00, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

WP:Be bold. Or at least provide suggestions for improvement. --Izno (talk) 13:55, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
You're right. This was my first reaction after a long and unsatisfying search. -DePiep (talk) 14:04, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

How do new pages get on Wikidata?

Are they automatically migrated? How long does it take? I've just noticed there is no Wikidata item for a page I created yesterday. Can someone mention put this info about new articles on this page? Thanks. —МандичкаYO 😜 23:49, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

@Wikimandia: What often happens is that bots or editors on Wikidata scan Wikipedias for new articles that may not exist on Wikidata. If you look at the page history of Jacques de Gastigny (Q27983407), which you effectively created on English Wikipedia at 05:32, 10 December 2016, you'll see that User:MechQuester, who uses a programme called Petscan to import data from the English Wikipedia, created the Wikidata item at 06:10, 10 December 2016. That's pretty quick. However, nobody has yet created the Wikidata item for Michael Babington Smith. You could make a start on that yourself if you wished by clicking on d:Special:NewItem and filling in the form. If you check the page history for Jacques de Gastigny (Q27983407), you'll get an idea of the sort of statements you might be able to add to a Wikidata entry for MJBS. --RexxS (talk) 00:55, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the info! This is what I needed to know. So someone already Wikidata item for MJBS. But it needs to be populated - I added the description. Do I need to manually add the birthdate, death date, etc., or is that automatically populated via the infobox? I seem to remember we got rid of the Persondata info for that reason. It would be great if you could add this info to this page for other inquiring minds. It seems like the page is out of date. —МандичкаYO 😜 04:58, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
As far as I know, Persondata is more or less dead. Bots are able to collect info for Wikidata from infoboxes, and that obviously includes more than just biographies. Also, infoboxes, being visible, tend to be kept more up-to-date than the invisible Persondata was. Anyway, there's no guarantee that a bot will collect info from the MJBS article in any particular time-frame, so adding it manually yourself is one way to ensure the job is done. It's also a chance to add the best references to Wikidata for each statement (obviously you don't needs cites for things like instance of human). When you've done a few references manually, check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew7oGEhtTPI and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP-qJIkjPf0 for Magnus Manske's tools to drag'n'drop statements and references from Wikipedia to Wikidata. --RexxS (talk) 22:09, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Categories for deletion

Users who follow this page may be interested in Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 December 21#Category:Commons category with page title same as on Wikidata. --Izno (talk) 08:47, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Tool to create Wikidata entry with one click

I'll often write or come across a new article that has no Wikidata entry (though some of its contents should be imported to Wikidata and removed from enwp) but there's no way of doing this with one-click, as far as I know. Is there some kind of tool that will create a relevant Wikidata entry with one click (like PetScan but faster)? At least if it created the page with one click, I can save some time before building the entry manually... czar 08:46, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

@Czar: QuickStatements is an alternative to PetScan that can create items, add statements, and set labels/aliases/descriptions/sitelink. Or to just create an item for a page you're viewing, try the user script d:User:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js – it shows Wikidata information (label, Q-number, link) under the page title if there an item is linked, otherwise it gives a link to d:Special:NewItem with most of the fields filled in. - Evad37 [talk] 15:07, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
Note that to install the script, you should add 
mw.loader.load("//www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=User:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript"); // [[d:User:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js]]
to your common.js- Evad37 [talk]

Wikidata state of affairs

Having witnessed many (and participated in some) Wikidata-related discussions recently, I have the intention to have an RfC on Wikidata usage on enwiki (with the intention to create an up-to-date policy or guideline). Before this can start, I believe it is best to have a preliminary state of affairs to base the RfC discussion on. With that in mind, I have created Wikipedia:Wikidata/2017 State of affairs.

Everyone is invited to contribute their knowledge of Wikidata on enwiki there. I have explained the purpose of the page at the top of it, but it is not my page so feel free to change that as well of course. I just hope that we can restrict the page to what is and what has already happened, and leave the "what should happen" for the future RfC. Fram (talk) 15:08, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Is there an ETA on the RfC? Should we wait to discuss solutions until the RfC? SharkD  Talk  03:24, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Deleting interwiki links by clicking on edit and then on the bin, does not work anymore. Clicking on edit takes one to the page "Set a sitelink". So how does one delete a sitelink now? Dogo (talk) 09:09, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

It was working for me when I just tried several items. What item where you trying to modify and what browser/os were you using? --RexxS (talk) 10:40, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for your reaction, however I have already figured out what I did wrong. I should have clicked on the pen, not on edit. It works. Dogo (talk) 21:08, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Moving categories to Wikidata

Where can I find prior discussion on using Wikidata to handle English Wikipedia (enwp) categories, possibly as a complete replacement in the future? Didn't see any in these archives. czar 19:53, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

What do you mean by handling/replacement? --Izno (talk) 20:03, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
I assume there has been discussion of whether Wikidata's structured data can/should replace Wikipedia's categorization system (easier to maintain, easier for doing intersections, searching across languages, etc.) but not sure what forum would have discussed it czar 20:28, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
That's a (really?) long-term goal, yes, though there's no specific location for that goal or even defined shape. The structured metadata for Commons actually does something similar but I doubt that will be implemented on individual wikis (per the reason Wikidata exists). --Izno (talk) 21:08, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata script errors

Screenshot of Minneapolis showing errors

I keep seeing errors like this:

Lua error in mw.wikibase.entity.lua at line 34: The entity data must be a table obtained via mw.wikibase.getEntityObject.

That was at the end of Jews, in place of the Authority Control template. But there was and is nothing wrong with the page; purging the page clears it. And there is no recent change that could of caused it, that I can see. And this happens again and again, at a few places in articles, usually at the end or in an infobox. I suspect it is happening far more times than I am seeing, as the category Category:Pages with script errors is having dozens mainspace articles added to it on a daily basis, the majority of which have no visible error. I suspect they are being added to the category by errors like the above, but someone else is editing the article or purging it to remove the error before I see it.

So they are trivial to fix if you know how, but until fixed are glaring errors appearing in prominent places in articles, in place of some other piece of content such as the Authority Control template or the infobox map. It seems to be a consequence of data being moved to Wikidata and accessed there, which has been happening at an accelerating rate recently. Certainly these errors are very recent, I have only been noticing them for a few weeks. But they seem to be getting more frequent, and appearing more often in more important articles.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 16:53, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

I have been seeing weirdness in the list of articles with script errors for a week. I have not seen the error above, but I have noticed articles in the error category that do not show the hidden category on the page, and where the article and "related changes" show no activity in the last six months. Searching the html source of the article likewise does not show any error (it sometimes does, although when that happens the category is on the article). I was thinking of asking at WP:VPT but I've been busy and it's hard to pin down. I often purge the long list in an effort to find any pages that really have problems. Johnuniq (talk) 23:28, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
I saw one more of these errors today. In Magnus Carlsen. It disappeared before I purged it though, due to an edit elsewhere in the article.
Oddly I saw two errors. One identical to the above one, where the Authority Control should be. And another where the {{Official Website}} was. A different error but they were both Wikidata related. Seemingly the templates and the relevant entries on Wikidata were fine, but both templates failed in getting data from Wikidata. I have seen this before, a couple of times, where two templates are affected, though normally it’s just one. Seems it’s a general failure to access Wikidata, rather than a failure in one item or template.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 10:48, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Another example with 2 errors in prominent positions, in an article not edited for over a week. I will not fix this by purging; though it could go away any time it’s a low priority page so the errors might stick around. The page is Miami, Oklahoma.

Coordinates:Lua error in mw.wikibase.entity.lua at line 34: The entity data must be a table obtained via mw.wikibase.getEntityObject.

and

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for [[Wikivoyage:Miami (Oklahoma)#Lua error in mw.wikibase.entity.lua at line 34: The entity data must be a table obtained via mw.wikibase.getEntityObject.|Miami, Oklahoma]].

The first is an error at line 482 of Module:Coordinates, the second is line 1004 of Module:Wikidata, with the lines both looking like this:

local entity = mw.wikibase.getEntityObject()

It seems to very intermittently fail inside that function, for all of its uses on that page. That function is described here: mw:Extension:Wikibase Client/Lua. but there’s no indication why it might occasionally fail. The problem is, when it does the errors simply stay in the page. A search for "mw.wikibase.getEntityObject" across WP pages turns up more affected pages, all fixed but with the search engine having cached a broken version.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 00:16, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

I see it, and have stored the wikitext and HTML. Obviously Wikidata can fail intermittently, and some debug code to capture what is going on might need to be added to both modules. I'll have a deeper look when I get a chance. It might be useful to raise the issue somewhere at Wikidata, perhaps d:Wikidata:Project chat or d:Wikidata:Contact the development team. Johnuniq (talk) 02:17, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

My superficial reading of mw.wikibase.entity.lua and mw.wikibase.lua suggests that these events occurred:

  • As described by JohnBlackburne above, a module executes
    local entity = mw.wikibase.getEntityObject()
    and Scribunto tries to get the entity for the current page.
  • Function getEntityIdForCurrentPage gets the result from php.getEntityId.
  • The result is then checked, and the error message occurs because the following check fails:
    type( data.schemaVersion ) ~= 'number'
    where data is the result (the entity object) from php.
  • The probable issue is that data does not contains schemaVersion, or it is present but is a string representation of a number. Could a particular server be running old code?

It looks as if there is nothing a module could do to avoid the issue—trapping the error and bailing out seems unhelpful because that approach would suggest that every call to a mw function might crash and so would need an error handler. At any rate, this is above my pay grade so I am calling Anomie for help. Johnuniq (talk) 05:22, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

I tried JohnBlackburne's suggestion of doing an enwiki search for mw.wikibase.getEntityObject. It showed 24 hits at enwiki and one under sister projects, namely s:Kilvert, Francis (DNB00) which was last edited in January 2014, although the HTML source includes "Cached time: 20170620104652". The cache for Miami, Oklahoma has been updated and it no longer shows the error. Of the 24 search hits, only these four pages show the error: Bosilegrad + John Calvin + Oechse + Stephen F. Austin State University. The error in John Calvin is due to its use of {{Internet Archive author}} which calls Module:Internet Archive. In the others, the problem is {{Coord}}. Johnuniq (talk) 10:42, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
For completeness when first looking at this most of the errors seemed to be in {{Authority control}}, and its module calls mw.wikibase.getEntityObject() every time it is used on line 346. This explains what was initially confusing about these errors: they can occur in almost any article as templates using Wikidata are now common and widespread. Even if they don’t actually need to pull data from Wikidata they seem to be checking whether it exists. I am hardly seeing the error in articles any more, I suspect as other editors are noticing them first and are purging the articles.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 18:52, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
@Johnuniq: Your best bet would be to file a task in Phabricator with as much information as you have available. Anomie⚔ 12:06, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks but it was easier for me to post at d:Wikidata:Contact the development team#Lua error in mw.wikibase.entity.lua. Johnuniq (talk) 06:01, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
One more example, the first time I’ve seen three errors on a page I think, at Minneapolis, so I took a screenshot for reference, though it does not show anything new.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 14:03, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

@JohnBlackburne: After a spectacular failure to get any interest at Wikidata, I reported the issue at T170039. Johnuniq (talk) 09:05, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

 Comment: este tema también se estátratando en es.wiki. El arículo que se reportó en la sección técnica del café de es.wiki ya no muestra el error pero este otro sí. Perdón por escribir en español. --Jcfidy (talk) 09:46, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

"This topic is also being discussed in the Spanish Wikipedia. The article that was reported in the technical section of es:Wikipedia:Café (Village Pump) no longer shows the error but this one (Jerusalem) does." no need to apologise! --RexxS (talk) 14:27, 30 July 2017 (UTC)
I purged es:Jerusalén, error gone. This is all that's usually needed. -- ferret (talk) 15:26, 30 July 2017 (UTC)
Other in es.wikipedia. --Jcfidy (talk) 16:11, 30 July 2017 (UTC)
Done. To purge, just save the page with no changes. -- ferret (talk) 16:36, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

The issue has been reported at Phabricator—see T170039. There are some other related problems (see (VPT) and the underlying cause is not clear. However it is being pursued by developers and will be fixed in due course. There is nothing we editors can do other than purge problem pages. Johnuniq (talk) 22:30, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Lists

How to create a list using data from wikidata? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 06:37, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

@Capankajsmilyo: Review the documentation for {{Wikidata list}}. --Izno (talk) 14:16, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
@Izno: thanks. I have created User:Capankajsmilyo/List of Jains, and now I want to compare it with List of Jains. Can you please help? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 15:34, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

CS1 parameter to wikify journal name when given ISSN

I requested that our main citation template (CS1) have an optional parameter that, when an ISSN is provided, would use Wikidata to provide the publication name wikilink instead of having to set it manually. I considered it a simple, textbook case for something Wikidata is suited to automate. Discuss at Help talk:Citation Style 1#Wikify journal based on ISSN czar 23:04, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Not sure about how to add Wikidata entry to new page

I just created Pavel Blatný, for whom articles already exist on 5 other language Wikipedias. There's also already a Wikidata page for him, but I can't get it to display on the English Wikipedia page as it does on, for instance, the German Wikipedia, nor can I get the 5 other language versions of his page to display in the left bottom corner like they should. I hope someone can help me with this issue here. Everymorning (talk) 20:37, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Page needed purged. You can do this by editing the article and saving with no changes made. -- ferret (talk) 20:39, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
(ec) It seems to be a caching issue, I can see them fine.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:40, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
@Everymorning:, I also removed the obsolete manual language link within the article's source code. You (usually) don't need to add such links manually, but should connect pages in different languages via the "Languages" functions in the lower left corner ("lower left" in Vector skin). GermanJoe (talk) 20:43, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
OK, thanks for fixing it. Advice is noted. Everymorning (talk) 20:44, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Formatting a math formula property

Density, mass density (Q29539)
enwiki showsL^{-3}M Red XN
Expected Green tickY

{{Infobox physical quantity}} reads ISQ dimension (P4020). That is a <math> formatted text. However, in enwiki it shows unformatted (see infobox demo).

I tried this: | data5 = <math>{{#property:P4020}}</math> → error.

Note: the symbols like L and M should be upright, not italics. Issue raised at d:Property talk:P4020. Does not alter this problem.

Any suggestions? - DePiep (talk) 10:09, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

@DePiep: {{#invoke:wd|property|Q29539|P4020}} seems to work: . Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:23, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

 Done Applied and works fine. Thx. -DePiep (talk) 11:42, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata notifications

Hello, occasionally (not always, confusingly) when I delete an article on Wikipedia, I get a notification that I have made an edit to Wikidata. I am quite sure I haven't, but when I went to look on Wikidata, sure enough, I apparently have made 11 edits there ([1]). I definitely have not made these edits. Can someone explain to me in simple terms a) What those edits are, and b) how I can stop them happening without my consent? Thanks fish&karate 14:56, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

It is removing the sitelink to enwiki when you delete the article. It'll only happen when the article has a Wikidata item linked, so very new articles or CSD candidates usually won't. -- ferret (talk) 15:00, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, but why are they showing up as my edits? I'm not making them. fish&karate 15:04, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
You are making them by deleting the article here. You shouldn't normally get notifications apart from on milestones - presumably you got saying that you'd made 10 edits on Wikidata? If so, the next one you should get is 100 edits. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:16, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Mike, that makes sense. That being said I don't really want to edit Wikidata without consenting to do so, I assume I don't have a say in the matter? fish&karate 12:24, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
I am afraid the only option is to get blocked on Wikidata (or otherwise to stop moving and deleting pages completely).--Ymblanter (talk) 12:29, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
These sitelinks maintain the interwiki language links. It's mildly important that they get updated when you move or delete pages. -- ferret (talk) 12:38, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
I think the point is that Fish and karate didn't actually go to Wikidata and remove the sitelinks; the software did that for them. That must be unexpected for anyone who's not aware of the interconnectedness of everything, as Dirk Gently would put it. On the other hand, Fish and karate, you must accept that someone deleted those sitelinks on Wikidata, and if it wasn't you, who was it? --RexxS (talk) 14:05, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
That's what freaks me out man fish&karate 14:44, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
It is no different to what happens if you rename (move) or delete an image or other file on Commons - your action would show up in the edit history of any article that was transcluding that image, here and on any other Wikipedia or sister project. This has been the case for well over a decade. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:32, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
This is not correct. If I delete a file on Commons, it gets deleted by a bot here. It used to be like this but changed four or five years ago.--Ymblanter (talk) 00:57, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
"Delete" duly struck; thank you - but my general point stands. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:29, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

RFC here, please join -> MediaWiki_talk:Wdsearch.js#Add_link_to_search. --Superchilum(talk to me!) 10:51, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Data fetching from wikidata to Wikipedia infobox

I what to fetch the value along with the 'point of time'. For example i what to import value of population from wikidata to Wikipedia Infobox along time. If polullation data is entered for more than 2 years. jinoytommanjaly (talk) 17:29, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikidata/2018 Infobox RfC

An RfC on the use of Wikidata in infoboxes has just started. Please !vote and/or comment on the RfC page. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:47, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Merge talk pages?

We seem to have both this page, and Wikipedia talk:Wikidata/2018 State of affairs (and, for that matter, Wikipedia talk:Wikidata/2017 State of affairs) that seem to be unnecessarily splitting discussions about wikidata - discussions on the state of affairs pages are going far beyond just discussing the topic of those pages. Why not have them all on this page instead? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 16:30, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Agree -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 13:23, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

You can ask for future discussions to be had here, but merging an historically very active talk page, and thereby removing it from its original main page, is highly unusual and doesn't seem to serve a real purpose. Anyway, the last 500 edits to this page date back to March 2013, which is the number of edits the 2017 state of affairs page had between October 2017 and December 2017 alone. Merging the page histories may be technically hard already, as too many revisions may need deletion, and will result in very "dirty" page histories as the few edits here will drown in the merged ones and will make it hard to reconstruct conversations. For better of for worse, the "state of affairs page is where the actual fundamental discussions are held, and this page is more a place where people already using Wikidata on enwiki come to have some minor techhnical discussion and so on. Fram (talk) 13:49, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Mike, instead of readding the merge tag, you could at least reply to my remarks above first. Fram (talk) 07:28, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

@Fram: I was waiting for more people to join in the conversation, I didn't realise that wasn't going to happen since you removed the merge tag. The subpages have turned into closed groups that feature the same people again and again, in a hidden location. This page is the more obvious place to have those discussions, and might make it easier for others to find them. Rather than merging the page histories, I was expecting that we'd move active conversations here, archive the rest, and just use the archive links from this page (not even trying to merge the archives at this point). I'll add the tag back, and hopefully we can get some more voices chiming in on this. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:10, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
So you don't want to merge the pages, you just want to have new discussions here, not there. No one stops you from having discussions here, or from asking people there if they want to move the discussion here. But please don't misuse the merge tag like this. Fram (talk) 06:29, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Is there a better tag to use? Following the merge link above says "Merging creates a redirect from the source page(s) to the destination page, with some or all of the content copied and pasted into that page." - that's what I was proposing. I wasn't proposing "History mergers ..." which "... cannot be proposed using this procedure." Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:40, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

This page has more watchers, so it makes sense to move things here so that more people have a chance to see discussions. Redirects help merges because a single diff proposing to move elsewhere is easy to miss. Nemo 14:57, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Putting "2017" in the original page name was a really bad move, and jumping to a new 2018 page compounded that mistake. I'd support it if an ambitious admin volunteered to history-merge the 2017 and 2018 pages into one page without a year-title (the two archives could be combined with ordinary page moves). However I think attempting to merge or move things to here would be a mess for no gain. It's already a subpage here, and anyone watching this page has seen the link to it. Alsee (talk) 11:00, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Strongly support. No need for history merge etc - move current threads here, move past threads into archives and link them here. I don't know where people are getting history merge from this - i don't care about the history, I care about not splitting discussions across numerous pages.

This is especially bad for short descriptions as there are four places where one could discuss short descriptions (WP:Short descriptions, WT:Wikidata, Template:Short description the state of affairs page... Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:57, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#WikiData_source

I just spotted that there's a relevant discussion going on at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#WikiData_source - but it's a bit of an echo chamber at the moment between two editors. Additional input there might be useful. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:10, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Keeping track of what’s going on on Wikidata from Wikipedia

Hello all,

In order to answer some of the concerns that have been raised during the RfC, we've been compiling a few tools that help Wikipediens to monitor the changes happening on Wikidata. You'll find a short description of them in this blog post. I hope that is helpful, and feel free to ping me if you have questions or need precisions. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 15:41, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

@Lea Lacroix (WMDE): Do you know if this possible to push the following Phabricator task ? This can help to reduce malicious vandalism aiming to change only part of a statement. Snipre (talk) 22:02, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
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