Wikidata:Project chat/Archive/2025/09

Update French sitelink for Q2378801

Hello, could someone please update the French sitelink for item Q2378801?

The French article has been moved to: Université d'État des transports de Saint-Pétersbourg de l'Empereur Alexandre Ier

Current item: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2378801 New frwiki title: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universit%C3%A9_d%27%C3%89tat_des_transports_de_Saint-P%C3%A9tersbourg_de_l%27Empereur_Alexandre_Ier

The sitelink is protected/locked, so I cannot change it. Thank you!

---

Bonjour,

L’article en français Université d’État des transports de Saint-Pétersbourg de l’Empereur Alexandre Ier a été renommé, mais l’élément Wikidata Q2378801 pointe encore vers l’ancien titre. Pourriez-vous mettre à jour le sitelink frwiki avec la nouvelle URL :

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Université_d%27État_des_transports_de_Saint-Pétersbourg_de_l%27Empereur_Alexandre_Ier

Merci beaucoup ! Sinsterud (talk) 03:40, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

 Done at https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q2378801&oldid=2399441279 DinhHuy2010 (talk) 06:19, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Samoasambia ✎ 14:40, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

Community Appeal: Q131507227

Hi everyone,

I'm here to appeal to do the community appeal of a deleted item Q131507227. Please see the discussion.

The summary is: The entity which the item is about is a notable black musician. Some of his fans or regular users has created multiple items for him here on Wikidata. But his main Item was Q131507227 and it was deleted due to being duplicated all the way. The admin refuses to undelete the main item, they have undeleted and deleted the same item multiple times with different reasons.

So I’m creating this topic to appeal the decision, because there’s a discussion if the entity is notable or not, but he is notable in my opinion. I don’t understand why delete an item just because the figure doesn’t have a Wikipedia article yet, but they have a Wiki commons category. BodyGoo (talk) 08:47, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

It's odd that this discussion comprises your only edits to Wikidata. Have you need editing under another account? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:01, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

There seem to be a lot of new SPAs interested in this topic. See also User talk:Bovlb#Page deleted due to duplicated item and related items. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:26, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #695

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-08-25. Missed the previous one? See issue #694.

Discussions

• Closed request for adminship: Rubah Hitam Vukova

Events

• Upcoming events:
  • Last chance to submit a session for WikidataCon 2025, the proposals deadline is imminent: head to this Call for Proposals page to submit an idea (drafts are welcome, they can be edited for a week after the deadline).
  • New Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group project series: fourth session, Introduction to Wikidata/EMCO, with a hands-on exercise creating a corporate body item and adding statements. Tuesday, September 2 – 9am PT / 12pm ET / 16:00 UTC / 6pm CEST (Time zone converter). More info and Zoom links.
  • OpenStreetMap X Wikidata Meetup #80 September 15 Time: 19:30-21:00 UTC+8 at Mozilla Community Space Taipei.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Press: Big Tech locks data away. Wikidata gives it back to the internet
• Blogs: Wikidata, instance of and subclass of through time (P31 & P279)
• Videos:
  • LD4 2025 - Wikidata Affinity Group Session - Introduction to Wikidata for Entity Management
  • How to create a work and edition in Wikidata

Tool of the week

• DerDieDas for Danish is a Wikidata-based game to practice Danish.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• Wikimedia Deutschland is hiring a Senior Software Engineer (all genders) for the Wikibase Suite, starting October 1, 2025. The role is full-time or part-time, hybrid, and based in Berlin, focused on building open-source tools for linked open data.
• The Rapid Fund/Tech program, launched on July 24, 2025, provides up to $5,000 per project for coding tools that improve contributions to Wikimedia projects. Applications are reviewed every two months, with priority for impactful projects with clear, critical, and well-planned milestones.

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• New General datatypes:
  • parts per area (average number of parts per unit of area)
  • ‎display size (diagonal) (diagonal length of a rectangular electronic display)
• New External identifiers: Digital ROC people ID, Digital ROC event ID, T10 vendor ID string, Confederation of African Tennis player ID, ‎Nextroom building ID, Concept ID in Arab Encyclopedia
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • game stat (metric to what extent a character in a role-playing game (or game with role-playing elements) possesses a specific natural, in-born characteristic common to all characters in the game)
  • open meeting page URL (Information page describing open meetings, public meetings or town hall meetings)
  • Islamic calligraphy (property that shows the Islamic calligraphy for a person)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: Minfin company ID, Swiss Performing Arts vocabularies ID, Doha Dictionary root id, Sharjah Dictionary root id, Fantacalcio ID, GayCities ID, Washington Blade tag ID, IN Magazine tag ID, Teen Vogue tag ID, Diva tag ID, Attitude tag ID, Metro Source tag ID, PLUS tag ID, Wussy Magazine tag ID, Plant Ontology ID, Dimensions.com element ID, ISU-Skating.com-Identifikator

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples: Species of birds and their sounds (source)
• Newest WikiProjects: WikiProject Art UK is an effort to document the various properties and volunteer (art-related) work on Wikidata.
• Showcase Items: SARS-CoV-2 (Q82069695) - virus that causes COVID-19
• Showcase Lexemes: øye (L303896) - Norwegian noun (ˈœʏə) meaning "organ of sight", "gaze or look", or "point of view"

Development

• Mobile editing of statements: We developed the first pieces of the edit mode as well as the ability to add statements. You can always follow along on beta Wikidata and find more information on the project page.
• Wikidata integration in the other Wikimedia projects: We are continuing to look into reducing the number of changes that show up on Wikipedia and co's Recent changes and Watchlist (phab:T401284)
• Federation: We looked at previous requests to add new endpoints to the list of SPARQL endpoints you can federate with and are cleaning up the process for getting new ones added. If you have one you'd like to write federated SPARQL queries to now is a good time to request them.
• Lexicographical data: You can now limit searches to Lexemes with a Lemma in a specific spelling variant with the haslemma keywords and to Lexemes with a specific language with the in language keyword. Examples: 1 2 (phab:T271776)
• GraphQL: We are evaluating feedback we received so far. If you are developing applications with Wikidata's data it'd be great if you could have a look at the current prototype and provide feedback.
• Dumps: We are experimenting to see how we can provide smaller subset dumps for Wikidata (phab:T400870)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Weekly Tasks

• Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
• Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
• Govdirectory weekly focus country:
• Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
• Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
• Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
• Help write the next summary!

· Previous issue · Full report . Unsubscribe . JosefAnthony talk . MediaWiki message delivery (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:28, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Qualifier and Reference edits hidden from Recent Changes/Watchlists (of other Wikis)

What will cause a Recent Changes injection to other Wikis, from a Wikidata Reference or Qualifier edit.

Hello all, please be aware of this upcoming change:
Edits to qualifiers (properties and values) and references (properties and values) within a Wikidata item statement will not produce entries to other Wikis Recent Changes tables or Watchlist notifications.
Wikidata's own recent changes and watchlists remain unchanged.

Explaining the when, what and where is a little convoluted so please see the attached graphic or see the dedicated Meta page for further clarification and direct questions to the discussion page.

This change will be deployed with this week's new MediaWiki version:
MW-1.45/wmf.17, deployed to all Wikis by 05.09.2025. Thank you. - Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 14:18, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

archive team question

there a Archive team property id? 2804:7F0:14:1FC2:1563:6DF1:39BD:D99C 01:13, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

By Archive team, what exactly do you mean? Do you have a link? (I'm guessing archive.org things?) ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 09:55, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

There is a separate group called Archive Team, who have a wiki at https://wiki.archiveteam.org/, which we don't have a property for, but I doubt the OP meant that anyway. Vicarage (talk) 13:14, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

yes, i mean exactly this

because they use the mediawiki engine Trollface 2006ALT (talk) 02:19, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Until some feels there is a need for a property and writes up a proposal, use described by source (P1343) Archive Team (Q4787261) with qualifier URL (P2699) which is better than making it a reference as you did at Sploder (Q134695476) Vicarage (talk) 02:44, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

ok Trollface 2006ALT (talk) 23:53, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

"instance of" versus "subclass of"

Looking at the Beta amyloid (Q417667) entity, the ChEBI CHEBI:64645 webpage says it "is a" polypeptide (Q3084232) but the OWL file (chebi_lite.owl) gives the below RDF/XML. Is it a instance of (P31) relationship or a subclass of (P279) relationship?

   <owl:Class rdf:about="http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/CHEBI_64645">
       <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/CHEBI_15841"/>
       <obo:IAO_0000115 rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">A peptide of 36-43 amino acids that is processed from the amyloid precursor protein. Appears to be the main constituent of amyloid plaques (deposits found in the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients).</obo:IAO_0000115>
       <oboInOwl:hasAlternativeId rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">CHEBI:53002</oboInOwl:hasAlternativeId>
       <oboInOwl:hasOBONamespace rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">chebi_ontology</oboInOwl:hasOBONamespace>
       <oboInOwl:id rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">CHEBI:64645</oboInOwl:id>
       <oboInOwl:inSubset rdf:resource="http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/chebi#3_STAR"/>
       <rdfs:label rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">amyloid-beta</rdfs:label>
   </owl:Class>

Thanks. Int21h (talk) 01:30, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

If there is an established convention that's what one uses. I count 13 cases of instance of polypeptide and 7 cases of subclass of polypeptide. It's not clear that one exists. If this is a group of compounds and not an unique one, it seems to me it would be more appropriate to use class instead of instance. P31 is intended for leaf-nodes only. One uses P279 for entities that can be used to classify other things. Infrastruktur (talk) 11:59, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! Int21h (talk) 15:31, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

subclass of (P279) is the right choice here. All chemical substances are in themselves classes because they are not concrete objects - the instances are the physical instantiations (molecules or pure substances). instance of (P31) should only be used to link to a higher-order class, as is for example done on polypeptide (Q3084232) itself here. That said there are a lot of inconsistencies in the chemical ontology on Wikidata that need to be eventually sorted out. See Wikidata:WikiProject Chemistry and linked archives for previous discussions about this. ArthurPSmith (talk) 13:57, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Duh that's where I should've posted this. Thank you for responding here! Int21h (talk) 15:32, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Contested merge for the same person

I've been privately informed by Buszmail that my action of merging Johnny Alegre (Q135974108) (erstwhile labeled "Buszmail" and described as "Founding Head (emeritus) of Pilipinas Panorama Community"; created last 26 August) into Johnny Alegre (Q6266210) was unwanted as he wants to separate his musician's persona from his Wikimedian persona. I boldly did the merge because both items are about the same instance of (P31)human (Q5) and I don't know of any Wikidata policy or guideline that allows a person to have multiple Wikidata items about themselves with the sole purpose of distinguishing different aspects of themselves. The closest thing that I can find is that there is a separate item for J. K. Rowling (Q34660) and her pseudonym of Robert Galbraith (Q110929251), but the latter is notably not instance of (P31)human (Q5) but rather instance of (P31)pseudonym (Q61002) and instance of (P31)persona (Q1077857). Is my merge incorrect or is it valid?

(Also tagging the other users that have edited the merged item, mainly to add labels, descriptions, and aliases in various languages: JWilz12345, Zirconaut, PhiliptheNumber1, RCJourn, Ralffralff, Wolverène, Woordenbrij2, Davidpar, ᱥᱟᱹᱜᱩᱱ ᱗, Aristorkle, Suyash.dwivedi, Skyshifter, Taravyvan Adijene.)

—seav (talk) 15:00, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

If they are the same person, then your merge was correct, regardless of the wishes of the individual to maintain a separate persona — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:28, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

I've removed some of the unreferenced Wikimedia-related values from Johnny Alegre (Q6266210) (and it's not great that so much else there has no reference). He's primarily known for being a musician, and we should respect and balance that in the way we are describing him. (COI note: I work with him via Affcom.) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:05, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

You probably should not be editing this item if you have a conflict of interest — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:26, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

Memory of the World wiki challenge

There is a wiki challenge running during September in which volunteers on Wikidata or Wikipedia, in any language, can win points. We are looking to improve coverage of the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register, which describes the most important documentary heritage from around the world. I have already imported English, French, and Spanish labels from the UNESCO database; users who translate these into other languages can earn points in the challenge. The Khalili Collections (Q63160499) and UNESCO (Q7809) are providing beautiful printed books as prizes. I hope this interests some of you, MartinPoulter (talk) 11:11, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

Isn’t +1 point for each label added to any of these Wikidata items in a new language. rather … erm, easy to game and somewhat suboptimal for Wikidata? Speaking from someone whose gaming the rules resulted in a total overhaul of one of the more important Wikidata competitions … --Emu (talk) 18:25, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

Bibliography

Aloha! Where do we put written books, or research papers? We can't fill the Wikipedia with lists, they'll probably try to kill us. I was looking for a list of Mark Twains writings, nothing. But every singer under sun has a discography here. That's a bit strange. Any ideas? --Hedwig in Washington (talk) 02:22, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

haswbstatement:p50=Q7245 [1] or build a query with the query service. That's the value of linked data, stuff like this can be derived live instead of having a person or bot stuff an item with things. William Graham (talk) 04:22, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, but only a few people know how to do this. Why not do the same with music? Strange indeed. --Hedwig in Washington (talk) 05:33, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

What is (not) being done with music? --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 15:44, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

See WD:WikiCite. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:20, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Hello, on d:Talk:Q7245 there can be found some Generic queries for authors. M2k~dewiki (talk) 11:41, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

First, this is not about Mark Twain only. What I mean to say is, why are these two mediums treated so differently? There are tons of discographies, but no bibliography. If we do one in a specific manner, we should do the other as well. IMHO that is. --Hedwig in Washington (talk) 04:50, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

There is also a bibliography: d:Q3256326, similar to d:Q960366 list of works or d:Q829965 discographies. M2k~dewiki (talk) 15:40, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

"why are these two mediums treated so differently?" Because there are more people interested in compiling discographies than bibliographies. The vast majority of Wikidata editors are volunteers, whose work is not directed by anyone or anything other than their own enthusiasms. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:50, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

Andy, you're right. I like discographies better, also. M2k~dewiki, thanks for digging! -- --Hedwig in Washington (talk) 00:05, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

@M2k~dewiki 2409:40F0:1031:DDC9:8000:0:0:0 08:50, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Proposal: Implementing a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Wikidata

Model Context Protocol (Q133436854) (MCP) is an emerging open standard that lets AI agents and applications connect to tools and data sources in a consistent way. By creating an MCP server for Wikidata, we could:

• Make Wikidata more accessible: any MCP-aware agent (Claude Desktop, IDE plugins, research tools) could query and reuse Wikidata without custom adapters.
• Support safer contributions: editing tools could enforce references, summaries, batching, and OAuth scopes, aligning with community norms.
• Enable better reconciliation: MCP can expose reconciliation endpoints so external datasets can be matched with QIDs in a standardized, agent-friendly manner.
• Promote interoperability: organizations and researchers could plug their systems into Wikidata as easily as attaching a USB device, lowering the barrier for structured contributions.

A first step could be a read-only MCP server that wraps entity lookups and vetted SPARQL queries. Later, we could add edit tools (e.g. add_statement, set_label) with appropriate safeguards.

This would position Wikidata at the center of a fast-growing ecosystem of AI agents and open data tools, while keeping edits aligned with community practices. 5628785a (talk) 13:55, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

You might want to take a look at https://github.com/zzaebok/mcp-wikidata Bovlb (talk) 13:30, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out mcp-wikidata, that looks like a very relevant starting point. From a quick glance it seems to be an early prototype/wrapper, which raises a few questions we might want to explore here:

• Scope: Should we aim for a minimal read-only server (entity lookups + selected SPARQL queries) as a first concrete deliverable?
• Alignment with community norms: How could an MCP layer enforce/reinforce existing editing practices (references, summaries, batching)?
• Hosting/maintenance: Would it make sense for the WMF or Toolforge to host an “official” endpoint, or would this live as a community tool?
• Interoperability goals: Beyond AI agents, are there particular research or reconciliation workflows that would immediately benefit?

I’d be interested in hearing if others see MCP as complementary to existing APIs (Action API, REST, SPARQL) or more as a unifying protocol layer for external agents. 5628785a (talk) 14:31, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

I see great potential benefits to providing an MCP service for Wikidata, and I have been putting in some thought along the same lines. (I have some experience of implementing MCP servers in my day job.) I would love to provide an MCP wrapper for SPARQL queries, but I have trouble recommending that anyone build services on top of WDQS right now.

This is absolutely the sort of thing that should be hosted as a ToolForge tool. (Another area I have some small experience with.)

One point: I recommend that you stick with the idea of readonly MCP for now, not only because it will make it easier to implement, but also because you will encounter far less community resistance. Bovlb (talk) 17:09, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks Bovlb, that’s very helpful context. I agree that starting with a strictly read-only MCP service is the pragmatic path:

• Implementation feasibility: it lowers the technical barrier and makes it easier to ship a working prototype.
• Community acceptance: it avoids concerns about bypassing established editing workflows while still demonstrating value.

On the WDQS point, I share the concern about stability. A minimal server that focuses first on entity lookups (labels, descriptions, sitelinks, claims with references) could already unlock quite a lot for MCP-aware agents, without putting further load on WDQS. Later we might explore a curated set of vetted SPARQL queries, but entity-level access seems like the safest first deliverable.

I also support the idea of hosting on Toolforge as a community-maintained service, at least initially. That would let us iterate quickly, validate the usefulness for reconciliation and agent integration workflows, and only later consider whether WMF-level hosting makes sense.

Curious if others see specific use-cases where even a basic read-only MCP endpoint would provide immediate wins (e.g. reconciliation in external datasets, IDE integrations, teaching materials)? That could help us prioritize what the minimal scope should include. 5628785a (talk) 19:41, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

Is all your text here LLM written? Because it seems like it and it's very hard to take seriously. William Graham (talk) 22:36, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

I wrote the content myself; it’s just LLM-formatted (i.e., I used a model to proofread, tidy wording and bullet the points). If that style is off-putting, I’m happy to rewrite it in plainer prose. Substantively, the proposal is still: start with a strictly read-only MCP endpoint (entity lookups first), avoid WDQS dependence initially, and host on Toolforge to iterate with the community. If you see specific issues, please point them out and I’ll address them. Here you will find a recent video by Google that explains the MCP protocol if you want more context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYpt25GHB1U 5628785a (talk) 23:45, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

We've been working on a Wikidata MCP, you can find more information and a Github repository on the Wikidata:MCP. However, this is still work in progress, so feel free to share your thoughts on the discussion page and suggest potential tools we can include.

The MCP will be specifically for read-only access to Wikidata, as we want to keep edits in the hands of the community. Philippe.saade (talk) 10:59, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Philippe, thanks a lot for your message—this is a great initiative! I agree it makes sense to start with a read-only MCP service.

That said, I do foresee interesting future use cases for hybrid editing, where humans and LLM-agents work hand in hand. For example:

• Asking an LLM-agent to check all the sources on an item and suggest references for statements that are currently unsourced.
• Checking whether information is up to date, then (if the suggested sources look relevant) deciding myself to let the agent update the item.
• Suggesting potential new statements for an item, or evaluate existing ones wrt the ontology.
• Reconciling a short description against Wikidata to propose the most likely entity (related to vector search and the reconciliation API).
• Listing all lexemes connected to an item and pointing out missing or unlinked ones that could be created or linked.

All of this would of course be “human in the loop,” but it seems like it could become both useful and productive.

Do you plan to host the first version of the service on Toolforge? 5628785a (talk) 13:17, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Most linked item has few Wikipedia articles

It may amuse folk to know that the most-linked item, according to Special:MostLinkedPages is "scholarly article (Q13442814): article in an academic publication, usually peer reviewed"—but it only has 14 interwiki links to Wikipedias, and two of those are redirects.

Given its ubiquity, perhaps it would be a good idea for more redirects (or articles!) to be created on other Wikipedias, and added to the item?

(The second most-linked item is Europe PubMed Central (Q5412157), with just eight Wikipedia links; the third: English (Q1860); fourth: human (Q5); fifth: English Wikipedia (Q328); sixth: Wikimedia category (Q4167836); seventh: Crossref (Q5188229).) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:09, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

I now see this "Special page" was last updated in September 2019. Is something broken? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:15, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but it may have been deliberate in response to phab:T213300. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:46, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Could also imagine the query is too extensive to run nowadays compared to the effort it gives. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 11:23, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

Definitely. The database table is so large I cannot even get the number of its rows (and imagine aggregating them into 118M bins). Related discussion in phab:T245818. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 16:31, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

Issues creating / New account, can't add lables

I cannot create any new items. The interface shows a blank page with no options to add labels, statements, or descriptions.” Peachanda.DuBose (talk) 07:34, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

can you remove any restrictions on my account so that I can create a new label? Peachanda.DuBose (talk) 07:38, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

I cannot create any new items. The interface shows a blank page with no options to add labels, statements, or descriptions.” Peachanda.DuBose (talk) 07:35, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

Editing on mobile is work in progress. Currently you can go to the end of the page and click on where it says "Desktop". This gives you the desktop version of Wikidata which is not very mobile-friendly, but it will let you enter data. At some point in the future this will be improved [2]. Infrastruktur (talk) 09:53, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

Editing of labels and descriptions is possible on mobile. The user never mentions mobile interface. It's something else but we are not given enough information to help. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 16:21, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

Their edits were tagged as mobile web edits. Infrastruktur (talk) 16:58, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

yes, ok working from my mobile, and even when I try to use the desktop version from my phone, I'm still not getting any options to add lable or anything. It's a black page, basically. 12.187.43.62 23:59, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

It's possible the item is protected from editing by anonymous and new users. Unfortunately, we still haven't got the information which item and how you want to modify it. To create an item, you should be able to use Special:NewItem. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 06:56, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Merge?

Are Battle of Sikkak (Q131806587) and Battle of Sikkak (Q2890573) about the same thing? If so, can someone merge 'em please? This request was posted here by LeChatiliers Pupper. Thanks, Polygnotus (talk) 12:33, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Based on the date and location, yes. I merged the items. Samoasambia ✎ 12:50, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Sweetie Fox (Q120277703) needs IP edit protection

This item has been vandalized multiple times by IPs: [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9] (to list just a few examples from the last year). The item is in desperate need for protection from IP edits! --178.115.68.67 20:31, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

 Done semi-protected for a year. Infrastruktur (talk) 21:51, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. Infrastruktur (talk) 13:48, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Picture of Weymouth, Dorset

The picture presently at Weymouth - Wikidata is a poor choice, since its main focus is not Weymouth at all but Portland Harbour and foreground buildings on Portland. Weymouth itself is visible only partially and incidentally in the distance. I can't edit this entry as it is protected, but if anyone cares to do it, I suggest swapping the picture for one more relevant, perhaps this one, or whatever someone else prefers. 20:25, 5 September 2025 (UTC) ITookSomePhotos (talk) 20:25, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

 Done for now, though, I still feel like there might be a better image too! :) ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 21:03, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. ITookSomePhotos (talk) 08:41, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

sea cadets (Q7439853), issues in Freebase ID /m/027clfd

Technical problem? Tokeamour (talk) 18:38, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

Free base ID is no longer used, alternative is needed. Tokeamour (talk) 20:52, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

Freebase itself is defunct, and no new Freebase IDs are being minted, but existing IDs are still valid and form part of the Google knowledge graph. sea cadets (Q7439853) doesn't have a instance of (P31) statement, which is why there's a warning against the Freebase ID (P646) statement on that item. M2Ys4U (talk) 00:07, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

Adding P1448 with quickstatements

How do I use quickstatements to add official name (P1448) to an item? I keep running into an error because I need to add a language code and I don't know how to add the language code. ToxicPea (talk) 20:56, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

According to Help:QuickStatements#Add simple statement, prefix the text in double quotes with the language code.

Example: Q183 TAB P1448 TAB de:"Bundesrepublik Deutschland" UndefinedRachel (talk) 22:17, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

Two different texts together constitute one source

How do you indicate that two different texts together constitute one source? The situation is that an article about a sportsperson states that he was born in 1943 at a specific address without giving the exact date. All births in 1943 in the parish where the address is located are recorded in the parish register. The sportsperson has a common name, so he cannot be identified from the parish register alone, but with the name, address, and year known in advance, only one birth record is possible, and it provides the missing date. How do you indicate the source for the date? Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 01:15, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

Interwiki link correction: "インコ" and "True parrot" / "Psittaculidae" and "ヨウム科"

The Japanese Wikipedia article "インコ" is currently linked on Wikidata to the English article "Psittacidae" (Q7256090). However, "インコ" corresponds more precisely to "True parrot" in English. Therefore, I would like it to be linked to the English article "True parrot". Additionally, the English article "Psittacidae" should instead be linked to the Japanese article "ヨウム科" , not to "インコ". Could a Wikidata administrator please correct these interwiki (sitelink) links? Thank you very much! Malonic acid (talk) 06:56, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

 Done Aqurs1 (talk) 09:56, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Renaming item

Per my comment at Talk:Q26580664 - Wikidata, I believe that this item should be renamed. Is there a tool to do this? Is it something that I can do myself? ITookSomePhotos (talk) 20:30, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Hey hey, so the item already had labels and aliases which cover all of this.

"Tennyson's Beacon", "Tennyson Monument", "Tennyson's monument".

Currently, the first of those is the label, and the others are the aliases. See Help:Label and Help:Aliases

You are welcome to go ahead and edit these to change them around, the label will be what most folks see, though the item should always be discoverable via both labels and alises.

·addshore· ^{talk to me!} ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 21:01, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

I get it now, thanks. At least, I hope I have done it correctly. I tried to change the order of aliases but no dice ... am I right in thinking that this is always alphabetical order and cannot be changed? ITookSomePhotos (talk) 17:15, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

These are on the order of being added and the order does not have effect on anything. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 17:56, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

Usually when I click "Edit" next to the "Label / Also known as" panel, I go to "in-line" editing, where I type or overtype in the fields. Here, I cannot change aliases "Tennyson's Beacon|Tennyson's Monument" to "Tennyson's Monument|Tennyson's Beacon". As soon as I get to the exact reversal, the "Publish" button, which was enabled, becomes disabled. I assumed that it was not recognising the items as changed because it was forcing alphabetic order anyway. Any ideas anyone what is going on?

Sometimes, apparently randomly, when I click "Edit" I get taken instead to a "Set Item/Property label, description and aliases" screen. Here I have found that I can change the order, and the new order is honoured. What is it that determines whether I go to in-line editing or the new screen? Please note that I have not changed any preferences or anything else (that I am aware of). ITookSomePhotos (talk) 17:56, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #696

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-09-08. Missed the previous one? See issue #695.

Discussions

• New requests for permissions/Bot: IndExsBot - Task(s): Add Subject external identifier IndExs Exsiccata editor ID (P12371) to existing persons which are stated in the indexes of Exsiccatae database.

Events

• Past events:
  • The WikiCite 2025 conference took place in Berne, Switzerland. It showcased WikiCite-related efforts across multiple wikis, disciplines, languages and countries. Most of it was both streamed and recorded, and the videos are currently being processed.
  • The SEMANTICS 2025 conference took place in Vienna, Austria. Wikidata was mentioned in several keynotes and multiple other talks, posters and demos. The poster The Wikidata Query Service split and its impact on the scholarly graph zoomed in on the WDQS graph split.
• Upcoming events:
  • Wikidata's 13th Birthday update: Funding applications are now closed, and the review process is underway. Applicants will be notified about the status of their submissions shortly. Are you planning to organize an event for the birthday but haven’t added it to the calendar yet? You can do so here: Wikidata:Thirteenth Birthday/Calendar 🎉
  • The deadline for the Fall 2025 MediaWiki Users & Developers Conference CfP is extended until September 15th. The conference will be held on October 28 - 30th, and hosted by the TIB Leibniz Centre in Hanover, Germany.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs: Past, Present and Future: a Wikimedian-in-Residence at the Biodiversity Heritage Library: TiagoLubiana reflects on their tenure at the BHL (Q172266), integrating the biodiversity collections into the Wikimedia projects. Read on Diff Blog
• Papers: Revealing hidden figures within natural history collections by empowering students with data sleuthing skills - Mabry et al.,(2025) Read here
• Videos:
  • WiLES Wikidata Lexicographical Event Semantics modeling for natural languages (LD4 2025) YouTube
  • Wikidata presentations and lightning talks (LD4 2025) YouTube
  • On Wikiskills 1st Wikidata Training (Africa Wiki Women) YouTube
  • (French) Lors de la 1ère formation Wikidata de Wikiskills YouTube
  • Plugging into the WikiVerse: A Plug for a Wikidata Plug-in for ArchivesSpace YouTube
• Presentations:
  • WikiCite 2025 presentation slidedecks can be found linked individually from the programme page or collectively on the Commons category.
  • Wikidata / GLAM a few experiments... by Tim Sherratt showcasing reuse of Wikidata

Tool of the week

• Dacit is a listening-training app for cochlear implant users, built as part of a Master's Thesis for LMU Munich, it is powered by Wikidata-lexicographical data. Practice with 3 different excercises; identify (German-language) speakers, words and minimal pairs in your browser or as an android app
• LexToWiktonaryis a userscript that adds a Wiktionary links button on Wikidata Lexeme pages. It checks the lemmas of a lexeme, finds matching entries across different Wiktionary language editions, and shows them in a popup for quick access, with an option to expand to all Wiktionaries.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• The submission deadline for WikidataCon proposals has passed. Proposals that were submitted in time can still be edited until Sep 9. Proposals are hidden by default, but a page for sharing submissions is available and can facilitate coordination.
• Help Panel has been deployed on Wikidata Beta.🎉 This is a feature designed to guide contributors with quick links to relevant help pages. It currently appears in read mode across most pages and can be configured by admins. You can enable it in your Beta preferences under "Newcomer features". To help shape its future on Wikidata, we're inviting you to test it and share feedback on this talk page.

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• New General datatypes: form factor (physical design paradigm this object is aligned with)
• New External identifiers: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms entry ID, The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military entry ID, Valais cantonal parliament ID, Arcanes ID, A Dictionary of Travel and Tourism entry ID, IGDB keyword ID, A Dictionary of Dentistry entry ID, Record Group Number of the National Archives Administration, National Development Council, Taiwan (R.O.C.), A Dictionary of Environment and Conservation entry ID, Doha Dictionary root id, Sharjah Dictionary root id, Saulchoir library ID, Observer tag, ‎Hamburger Frauenbiografien ID, Ophardt Team Sportevent person ID, Museum of Fine Arts, Lyon object ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • Release date of film (The date when a film was first released to the public)
  • part number 2 (identifier for a product or part designated by its manufacturer for inventory and ordering purposes)
  • backwards compatible with (backwards compatible with the identified platform, software, or system)
  • level or map of (video games that this video game level or map belongs to)
  • resistance (Resistance of organisms (systems) to common adverserial influences like pests, pathogens, drugs, attack vectors, ...)
  • GBFS feed URL (URL of a GBFS feed for the bicycle-sharing system)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: GENC 3-character code, L'Équipe athlete ID, Sancho el Sabio Foundation ID, British Authors author ID, Gamepadla ID, VGA Legacy MKIII ID, Noormags ID, qamus.inoor.ir entry ID, RSQV ID, Naturalis authority ID, Digital Library of the Community of Madrid ID, Trainspo model ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples: Number of hospital beds (Source)
• Newest WikiProjects: WikiProject ASBS 2025 - Aims to Engage the botanical community at the 2025 ASBS Conference to promote and enhance contributions to Wikidata, Wikipedia, and Wikimedia Commons.
• Showcase Lexemes: PC (L739282) - English noun (ˌpiːˈsiː) meaning "Personal Computer", "Printed Circuit", or "Peace Corps"

Development

• We're investigate options for improving information saved while publishing (phab:T403149)
• Mobile Editing Experience: we added multi-language support (T402630)
• Wikidata integration in the other Wikimedia projects: We are continuing to look into reducing the number of changes that show up on Wikipedia and co's Recent changes and Watchlist from edits to aliases (phab:T401288), more info

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Weekly Tasks

• Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
• Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
• Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
• Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
• Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
• Help write the next summary!

· Previous issue · Full report . Unsubscribe . JosefAnthony talk ·MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:39, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

More selective tracking of Alias edits across other Wikis

A change is being deployed to reduce ‘noise’ in the Recent Changes pages and Watchlists of other Wikis, when edits to Wikidata entities are made in the aliases (Also known as) field.

Creating a dedicated aspect type A for aliases, adding a language-modifier (e.g. A.en, A.fr) and setting an entity-usage limit is being implemented to reduce the volume of ‘noisy’ Wikidata edits and load on databases, while also helping Watchlists and Recent Changes pages display the most relevant information.

For more detailed information, please see the dedicated Meta page and address any questions or comments to the discussion page.

Being deployed with MediaWiki MW-1.45/wmf.18 (deployed to all Wikis on 11.09.2025), thank you, - Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 10:23, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

Duplicate disambiguation item creations

Hello, please see User_talk:DeltaBot#Duplicate_item_creations - Permanent Link M2k~dewiki (talk) 10:28, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Any way of clearing reduced Planck constant (Q2115969) of the pointless labels+aliases because of a merged item?

The ridiculous item ℏ (Q87523828) created by GZWDer was merged into reduced Planck constant (Q2115969), bringing with it hundreds of ℏ-labels and the same amount of aliases U+210F and ħ. Is there any painless way of clearing the current item of this cruft? - Yupik (talk) 11:07, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

I would unmerge the item because it conflates the physical constant (which exists even without human writing) with the Unicode character representing it. Then link them together as done with π and use User:Midleading/RemoveRedundantLabels.js to cleanup redundant labels and aliases. Dexxor (talk) 12:17, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! I've unmerged them and linked them to each other, but have yet to clean up the unmerged item. - Yupik (talk) 20:02, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

-447 languages and -87,334 bytes later, the item is cleaned up. Thanks @Dexxor for the advice! - Yupik (talk) 20:15, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:22, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

I am implementing ‎modern shrine ranking (P13723) with quickstatements

I am aware that I had backlash to my edits and so I took a month long wikibreak. Now I am here and I am going to use quickstatements to implement the ‎modern shrine ranking (P13723) property which unfortunately after approval has not actually been used since it got approved during the wikibreak. I hope that this is a strictly uncontroversial edit and that I can be a better member of the community than I was earlier. Immanuelle (talk) 12:29, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

I seem to recall your last post on issues you were having. Before you take the step of using quickstatements, I think you should devote some time to manually cleaning up the edits you have already made. You have and are currently doing a tremendous number of edits and I am still not convinced these edits are correct or correctly modeled. Owing to your self declared novice understanding of Japanese language. William Graham (talk) 16:41, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

Well none of that was actually related to translation. It was just a conversion of one data representation to another. And it is finished now. Immanuelle (talk) 23:13, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

I am trying to gently suggest you scale back your ambitions and focus on a smaller subset of items for a little while so you don't flame out like last time. William Graham (talk) 02:26, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

I have added and edited many Japanese shinto shrine items for years, but I am at a loss as to how to rebuild it from now on because a large amount of low-quality information is mixed into the factual data there now by this user. I hope the administrator to ban this account "Immanuelle".Higa4 (talk) 02:38, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

I apologize for such issues and I will try to avoid them in the future. There are some additional ways this data that I modified could be cleaned up, such as by adding the effective end dates of all of these (1946 in Japan, and in the overseas shrines 1945), and mentioning that all of these ranks were imported from Japanese Wikipedia. I interpreted the criticism of the usage of instance of (P31) for this purpose (since it is date limited) and the creation of the property as representing a consensus, and I apologize if this was not the case. With the creation of an earlier property Kokugakuin University Digital Museum entry ID (P13677) there was an explicit request for such a practive to clean up the pages. I will hold back on any similar behavior moving forward. Immanuelle (talk) 05:19, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

As far as harming your work goes. I do not think our edits have been in conflict. We have been habitually editing completely different properties. The only case resembling this is the few situations where you accidentally added corporate numbers to unidentified medieval shrines. I feel the community will be wary of me doing mass edits to add sources to the claims that I did not properly add sources to when first adding them. But the vast majority of the info has clear sources, mainly importing from Japanese Wikipedia, and the Kokugakuin University digital museum. Confusing ontology related to overuse of instance of (P31) is a related but different issue. While I made many property proposals to try to address it, they do not seem likely to succeed, and I learned that even such a simple implementation is something I should not be doing right now. Immanuelle (talk) 06:05, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

The problems with your edits have been pointed out by various people in various places, so I'm not going to go into each one of them here, but the fundamental problem is that you are doing a lot of batch edits, without any consensus with Japanese editors, to take old, uncertain information about shrines from books, such as that found like in Greek mythology, and mix it with recent data about real existing shrines, without any sort of modeling. If you want to improve things, you should first revert all of your edits about shrines. After your revert, if there is anything you want to do, please consult with Japanese editors here or elsewhere. Higa4 (talk) 06:41, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Using his wikibreak as an excuse, he seems to be ignoring the past criticisms.

After finishing his wikibreak, I think the first thing he should do is explain the criticism on his talk page, not resume editing, but he hasn't responded to anything on his talk page, yet he wrote his next desired edits here. Since he is ignoring on his talk page, he should not continue editing.

Even if he were to cite sources, he would add incorrect information not included in those sources.

He says he'll avoid low-quality editing, but he won't actually change his behavior. Based on his past behaviors, I can't trust him.

If he continues working with bots, I agree he should be banned. Mariobanana (talk) 07:07, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

I really think you should respond to the messages on your talk page before continuing to edit. I know it's unsatisfying when items don't have all the data that they could, but it's important to do things correctly the first time so that others don't have to clean up after your mistakes. Your intentions are good, but your self-disclosed lack of proficiency with the Japanese language is really concerning given the complex topic area you're choosing to work in. I can read most novels and Japanese Wikipedia pages just fine, but there are still a bunch of areas (like, frankly, religion) that I don't mess with because someday a native Japanese speaker will come and improve these items more accurately than I can. It might help to take that mindset as you search for the niche that you can meaningfully benefit.

Respond to the messages on your talk page (yes even the ones in Japanese--please do your best or write in English), reflect on what work is within your current capabilities... and please slow down. Mcampany (talk) 20:38, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Introducing the Wikidata Platform Team

Hello!

This month, the Wikimedia Foundation welcomed the product and technical leads for the newly established Wikidata Platform team. Our new team will be responsible for the delivery, development, and maintenance of Wikidata query platform products and services. Our mission is to deliver robust data access capabilities for all users, from Wikidata contributors to mission-aligned data reusers. In collaboration with our partners in WMDE and the community, we will shape the vision of how users access Wikidata at scale stably, reliably, and sustainably now and into the future.

To learn more about us, our mission, and the work we will do, check out our team page. We’ll continue to update this page as the team grows and develops. BTracy-WMF (talk) 21:12, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

no clue how to add an image

I tried adding this image to the John William De Forest page, without success. Can someone add it or just delete this comment and not worry about it? Thanks. Geoffroi (talk) 23:39, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

 Done Added to John William De Forest (Q175205) as image (P18). Bovlb (talk) 01:16, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

New property proposal

result of addition—new property proposal about mathematics QwertyZ34 (talk) 14:55, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

Please actually name your proposal here, don't tease. Vicarage (talk) 15:03, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, I did it because it was getting a little unviewed QwertyZ34 (talk) 15:14, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

Wait my bad I read your message bad QwertyZ34 (talk) 15:15, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

I can do that? I thought it would be more appropriate to do it in an actual, specific proposal page QwertyZ34 (talk) 15:15, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

By naming it, you were supposed to write the name here, i.e., result of addition. Speaking of the proposal page, the link to it is Wikidata:Property proposal/result of addition. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 16:22, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, I fixed it. Thanks! QwertyZ34 (talk) 16:27, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

The proposal has garnered unanimous opposition. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:19, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

I withdrawn this proposal. QwertyZ34 (talk) 21:39, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 07:22, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

It is resolved; please archive it QwertyZ34 (talk) 21:38, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Images of victims of murders

Currently on the item of Iryna Zarutska (Q136153659) we have an image of its murder … see current version of image arguably it's not really a good way to represent a person. Plus it's potentially reused on any context, and there is no way to filter that there should be a trigger warning …

Should we add rules about it if they do not exists yet ? author  TomT0m / talk page 08:56, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

I agree. I see an issue with personality rights, too - even though this may differ from country to country. I'd also remove the video. It is already present at killing of Iryna Zarutska (Q136130910). - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 12:15, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

As a first action I replaced the picture with one that does not depict the moment. It is, however, still related to the event and still feels inappropriate to me. - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 12:25, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Either this or no image at all Trade (talk) 13:42, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Can Wikidata link with tools like Calculadora de Horas Online Grátis?

Hello everyone 👋

I’ve been exploring different tools that help in managing and organizing time data, and I came across Calculadora de Horas Online Grátis (a free online hours calculator).

This tool makes it really easy to calculate working hours, overtime, or study schedules. It got me thinking:

• Could Wikidata benefit from linking or structuring similar time-calculation tools in its data model?
• For example, connecting datasets about working hours, productivity, or labor studies with external calculators for better real-world usage.

Has anyone here experimented with integrating such external resources (like time-tracking calculators) into Wikidata projects? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks! 🙂 124.29.230.113 11:47, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Ibrahim (Q892211) and Ibrahim (Q17630264)

Ibrahim (Q17630264) is said to be part of (P361) Ibrahim (Q892211); they has different site links, and they are both instance of (P31) male given name (Q12308941), admitting that these two entities are considered different, I think this instance value (for Ibrahim (Q17630264)) should change.

What is your opinion about it? QwertyZ34 (talk) 20:40, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

One appears to be the arabic version of the name and the other appears to be the anglicisation/latin character transliteration of the first one. In the past those have been treated as distinct. I generally prefer that configuration because the alternative ends with merging every single transliteration/variation of Ibrahim and Abraham into the same item. William Graham (talk) 23:04, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Maybe, we should change the short description of one of the two items QwertyZ34 (talk) 17:08, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Toolforge dashboard for beginner editors

Hello Wikimedia community! I’m planning to build a small Toolforge dashboard for new editors. The goal is to help newcomers contribute more confidently by providing: Edit statistics (total edits, recent edits) Suggested beginner-friendly edits (stub articles, small tasks) Links to tutorials and guides Before I start developing, I’d love your input: Would this tool be useful for beginners? Are there specific features or improvements you think would help new editors? Any potential concerns I should be aware of? Your feedback will help me focus on the most impactful features and ensure the tool meets the community’s needs. Thank you! LoraVega (talk) 18:18, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

An idea I have been tinkering with is a machine learning model that predicts the probability that a new item (if left in its current state) will get deleted. One issue I am wrestling with is that this is a solution idea, and I need to be clear about what the problem is that it is supposed to be solving. For example, administrators and patrollers might use it as a list of proposed deletions. Spammers might use it optimize their items in order to evade review. In the context of this thread, new users might get useful feedback about when they are done with their new item and can safely move on to the next one. Bovlb (talk) 18:53, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

That’s a really thoughtful point — jumping straight to an ML solution can hide the more important question of what problem we’re really trying to solve. From my perspective, the main challenge is that newcomers often don’t know when their new item/page is “ready” and end up discouraged when it gets deleted, while patrollers face big review backlogs.

One way I’ve been thinking about this is starting small with tools that give constructive, rule-based feedback to new users (e.g. “this page is missing references” or “categories are incomplete”), and only later exploring whether ML could add value for triaging patrollers’ queues. That way the focus stays on helping new editors learn, without exposing the system to gaming by spammers.

I see your idea as complementary — if framed around supporting newcomers and reducing patroller workload instead of “predicting deletion,” it could fit nicely into the same problem space. 84.22.38.36 14:51, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

@LoraVega: This doesn't sound like it's focused on Wikidata, is it something general for all the wikimedia sites? On wikidata we don't really have "stub articles", we have items with few statements which is a kind of different issue; there are millions of them, and quick edits could indeed be helpful if the editors understood some basic rules we follow here (such as guidelines for items about people). ArthurPSmith (talk) 18:54, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out — you’re right, Wikidata’s challenge looks different from Wikipedia’s. Instead of “stubs,” we have items with just a couple of statements, and the real issue is whether they meet the basic notability and sourcing guidelines (like for people, organizations, etc.).

I think this makes the case even stronger for giving newcomers clearer, context-specific feedback on Wikidata. A simple tool or dashboard could, for example, highlight that an item about a person is missing key properties (like “occupation” or “date of birth”), or that it may need references to meet notability standards. That way quick edits don’t just add volume, but also move items closer to what the community expects. 84.22.38.36 14:52, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Duplicate items

As I see, the items Template:Pp (Q6466220) and Template:Protected (Q13363911) are duplicate and should be merged, but I am not sure. The connected wiki links are completely different except some redirect links like for simplewiki. Could anyone say whether I am right or not? Karacehennem (talk) 20:25, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

Some languages have two templates, so it would not be possible to merge unless one sitelink is moved to another item. All of the Czech and Slovak links seem to be "semi-protected" at Q6466220 and "protected" at Q13363911; there are also separate Serbian templates. Peter James (talk) 00:26, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Bulgarian for Q173603

For some reason, the Bulgarian translation is added in "Capital case", but Bulgarian has lowercase syntax for nouns. Also "шлем" should be in the "Also known as" section. The "Description" could be "твърдо защитно покритие за главата".

I would do this myself, but the page is semi-protected. Kaloan-koko (talk) 06:03, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

 Done. Added "твърдо защитно покритие за главата" as bg short description and "шлем" as bg alias for item helmet (Q173603). Thanks for helping Wikidata! QwertyZ34 (talk) 13:49, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #697

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-09-15. Missed the previous one? See issue #696.

Discussions

• Project Chat: Multiple items linked to single categories, redux

Events

• Upcoming events:
  • The New Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group project series introduces participants to Wikidata/EMCO. The session guides attendees through creating a project and project page, followed by an open working hour for creating and editing in Wikidata and asking questions. Join on Tuesday, September 16th at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 16:00 UTC / 6pm CEST. More details and Zoom links are on the project page.
  • Wikidata Lab XLVI: Wikidata and semantic memory (in English). On September 18th, at 17UTC. Live on Youtube.
  • Virtual course: Wikidata and public domain (in Spanish). On September 25th start this online course until March 26, 2026. Registration open on this form.
  • Govdirectory US office hour, 25 September
  • Apply now: Scholarships for Wikimania 2026 in Paris! Deadline is October 31, 2025 (anywhere in the world). Notification of decisions will be sent in January 2026.
  • Notifications for Wikidata Thirteenth Birthday microgrant applications are currently being sent out in batches. If you are planning to run an event but have not yet added your event to the calendar, please do so here: Wikidata:Thirteenth_Birthday/Calendar
  • WikidataCon 2025 proposal reviews are about to end. We are currently building an initial programme and will soon inform Speakers before publishing a first Schedule!

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs: GLAM Newsletter: Biodiversity Heritage Library update, harvesting Wikidata identifiers and improving the BHL2Wiki Tool - Read the article
• Videos:
  • EduWiki Conference - Using AI on Wikipedia and Wikidata Editing for Health Education
  • Using Duplicity: Link Wikipedia articles to Wikidata Items
  • How to Get the Used Language in WIKIDATA/SPARQL with [AUTO_LANGUAGE Parameter
  • (Spanish) Let's improve information about Carnival on Wikidata
  • Wikidata Lab XLVI: Wikidata and Semantic Memory, don't miss the workshop! (scheduled: 18.09.25, 1700 UTC) - YouTube
• WikiCite 2025 Presentations:
  • Extracting citation relations from legacy publications, by David Lindeman - watch on Commons
  • A proposal for managing personal collections in Wikidata, by Tania Maio - watch on Commons

Tool of the week

• Paulina is a Wikidata-based tool for the GLAM community that facilitates searching for authors and works, helps identify their copyright status in different countries, and provides access to works when available.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

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Newest properties and property proposals to review

• New General datatypes:
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• New External identifiers: Personnel de l'administration préfectorale depuis 1945 ID, La Fayette ID, Harper's tag, ‎TechnoMusicWorld artist ID, ‎TechnoMusicWorld track ID, ‎Serbian settlement ID, ‎setlist.fm festival ID, ScholarGPS scholar ID, ScholarGPS institution ID, ScholarGPS field and discipline ID, ScholarGPS specialty ID, The Digital Ark person ID, MHOBT ID, Gamepadla ID
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• New External identifier property proposals to review: OpenStreetMap key, Meetup.com Event ID, Biological Imaging Methods Ontology ID, Anne Frank House persond ID, PortableApps ID, Identifiant Maitron d'une commune, National Library Board Singapore ID (new scheme), NWO Project ID, OpenITI Author URI, DisplaySpecifications.com model ID, 网易云音乐专辑编号, PnP vendor ID, PnP device ID, Mellopedia

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· Previous issue · Full report . Unsubscribe . JosefAnthony talk ·MediaWiki message delivery (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:49, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Persian garden (Q4460) and The Persian Garden (Q10624489)

Has anyone looked into these 2 items, should they be merged (not possible)? And see opinion User talk:Henrydat#Persian gardens. Henrydat (talk) 16:12, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Hello, the two items are connected to

• sv:Persisk trädgård
• sv:Persiska trädgården

For two different articles in one language two different wikidata items are necessary. M2k~dewiki (talk) 16:21, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

As the previous speaker already wrote, a merge isn't possible in this case. As far as I can tell from the two Swedish articles, they also describe different things. The article “Persisk trädgård”, linked to data object Q4460, describes a type of garden found primarily in present-day Iran. The article “Persiska trädgården”, linked to data object Q10624489, describes a group of nine Persian gardens that were declared a World Heritage Site in 2011. --Gymnicus (talk) 18:39, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Partial overlap of Q27094 and Q211554

First off, Q27094 has no description, but it seems that it is used for the general idea of an amplifier. Q211554 is a like a hyponym of just an electronic amplifier. However, on inspecting the wiki pages for Q27094 for 10-15 languages, they seem to only include information for electronic amplifiers, i.e. those pages should be marked as Q211554. I did stumble on one language's page that included a picture of an audio amplifier and information about electronic amplifiers, so maybe it actually fit the idea behind Q27094.

What is supposed to be done in this situation? Is there a way to raise this issue to someone in the respective wikis to look at the issue and change the linking here if needed? Kaloan-koko (talk) 20:17, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

What is the best method for mass-creating items about templates on species?

As anyone who looks at my recent contributions can see, I just connected several dozen items here to entries on species:. Unfortunately, there are still many more than 5,000 unconnected pages over there. Quite a few of them are templates that are citations for a scholarly article, so they could plausibly be items that just have a statement marking them as Wikimedia templates and only one interwiki link, which will be to species:. Is there a simple way to make a list these templates and then deploy a bot or WMF Cloud tool to make several hundred/a few thousand of these items here to clear out the UnconnectedPages report there? Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:47, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

What is the purpose of making Wikidata entries for these? Do they fulfill our notability requirements? ArthurPSmith (talk) 14:09, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

To clear out that report was my primary reason, but per the notability requirements, yes, these templates are only used on one project, so they would not meet the first requirement, but they are all academic publications, the substantial majority of which are openly available, meaning that they fit criterion 2. They are instances of academic journal article (Q18918145)/scholarly article (Q13442814) and can be site links that are paired with coverage of academic publications here. This furthers the goals of Wikidata:WikiProject Periodicals, Wikidata:WikiProject Wikidata for research/Data models/Scholarly article, and broadly a number of research and science WikiProjects. It may not be the case that every paper is fully available as an open access publication, so I'm not sure about how that fits our inclusion criteria or the extent to which we are trying to entirely mirror DOIs, but at the very least, I think that's a useful and consistent addition to the database. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:22, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

It might be a better solution to replace these single-use templates with Template:Cite Q on Wikispecies if you can get the Wikispecies community on board with it. A lot of the items for the scholarly articles probably already exist. Infrastruktur (talk) 17:09, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

That's actually an interesting idea. Let me nix this whole proposal for now. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:57, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Good luck with that! Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:26, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

User:Rdmpage has a bot which has done such things in the past, I believe. Although, for obscure reasons, entries about papers on Wikispecies use the Template: namespace, they should be matched to "instances of" papers, not Wikimedia templates. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:26, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Two geographical proposals by me

Maptons ID - published 2025-06-21 - 1 supporters and 2 opposers

Météo-France place ID - published 2025-09-15 - 3 supporters QwertyZ34 (talk) 13:47, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

The Maptons ID has one supporter and two opposers. In both proposals, you need to address the issues others have raised. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:15, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

UNESCO Memory of the World wiki challenge

A reminder that this wiki challenge is running until the end of September and has a new data-driven scoreboard thanks to the Finnish GLAM-wiki folk. There are still real physical prizes available, and earning points can be as simple as giving additional language labels to these items (English, French and Spanish already taken care of). Thanks MartinPoulter (talk) 16:24, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Is "Ahnentafel 3" a synonym for mother?

Q7560 says "Ahnentafel 3" to be a synonym for "mother" in english, frensh and italian. If that's a real thing, that's fine, but I feel like this is a mistake. Can someone enlighten me or have I found an error? TimBorgNetzWerk (talk) 10:42, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

It's a real thing (ahnentafel (Q267388)). You could question if it should be an English, French and Italian alias rather than German, but it's not doing any harm as is. —Xezbeth (talk) 11:10, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

An Ahnentafel is a real thing, calling the mother “Ahnentafel 3” is not, not even in German. --Emu (talk) 16:39, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Seems to be a part of this weird batch by GZWDer. The modeling seems subpar, Q7560#P179 even yields an error. --Emu (talk) 16:43, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

I have previously been involved in this topic; the edits are mainly based on the Ahnentafel numbering system as described on Wikipedia. Surprisingly, it has a different name in German: Kekule-Nummer.
— keepright! ler (talk) 15:13, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Given names in minority languages on Wikidata: label or separate item?

Should given names in minority languages that have their own established form (for example Sicilian Joriu for Italian Giorgio) have a separate item, as it happens with Catalan Jordi, or should they be handled as a label/alias in that language within the existing item Giorgio (Q12900074)?

Moreover in minority languages such as Sicilian, there is often an extra complication: two different forms exist, Joriu (from Greek), which would be more suitable for certain historical figures, and Giorgiu (from Italian), which is the form used in modern Sicilian. What is the preferred approach in such cases? GianAntonucci (talk) 22:45, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

@GianAntonucci: our goal should be global harmonization. Hence I recommend not to create standalone items for local pecularities Estopedist1 (talk) 06:06, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I’m just curious though: How does this fit with the fact that there are already many separate items for the name George in different languages? GianAntonucci (talk) 06:23, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

@GianAntonucci: unfortunately many users are not aware that there exists transliteration rules, e.g. Slavic Галина should be Galina, not separate items for Latin and Cyrillic script. In your case relatd to Q12900074, Sicilian traditional form should be added there (like it is already done) Estopedist1 (talk) 06:37, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I’ve added them myself. But is there a style guide that explicitly states this? Sorry for insisting, but it feels odd that minority languages should be treated differently from majority ones. This isn’t a matter of transliteration: they are distinct languages, just as French and Italian are distinct. GianAntonucci (talk) 07:40, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

@GianAntonucci: enwiki says that Sicilian language has limited recognition. So, if it is sub-language or dialect of Italian language, then this topic is too specific for me Estopedist1 (talk) 06:44, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

I thought you might not have been aware of this. Just to clarify, Sicilian is recognised as a language in its own right by all scholars and institutions, not a "sub-language" or "dialect" of Italian. It has its own grammar, phonetics, and history, and is classified as a separate Romance language under ISO 639 (scn). The confusion comes from the Italian use of the word dialetti to mean any language in Italy that isn't Standard Italian. The English use of dialect to mean a variety of a language is quite different.

That said, my question is really broader. It would be useful to have clear guidance on whether Wikidata aims for one global item per etymological root, or one item per language form, regardless of how widely the language is spoken. At present, practice seems to point to the latter, since Italian Giorgio, English George, Spanish Jorge, and so on are each separate items.

Anyway, thanks a lot for taking the time to discuss this. GianAntonucci (talk) 07:26, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Cannot add Commons sitelink to Q6758146 – edit mode not available

I'm trying to link the Wikimedia Commons category [Category:Marcus Eli Ravage](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Marcus_Eli_Ravage) to the Wikidata item [Q6758146 – Marcus Eli Ravage](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6758146).

The goal is to establish a proper sitelink so that templates like { { Commons category } } (without obfuscating spaces) on Wikipedia work without warnings, and so that the Commons category is officially recognized by Wikidata.

However, the following issues occur:

– On the Commons category page, the message “Wikidata has entry Marcus Eli Ravage (Q6758146)” appears, but also “NO WIKIDATA ID FOUND!”, which is contradictory. – I manually added `{ { Wikidata|Q6758146 } }` (without obfuscating spaces) to the Commons category, which displays the connection, but does not establish an official sitelink. – On Wikidata, when I open Q6758146 using `?action=edit&uselang=en`, I do not get the full edit interface. There is no “Edit” button at the top, and no “Add site link” button at the bottom. – The section “Sitelinks to Wikimedia sites” shows multiple Wikipedia entries, but no entry for Wikimedia Commons, and no way to add one. – This happens even though the Commons category is not linked to any other Wikidata item, and there is no apparent conflict.

Because of this, I cannot create the sitelink from Wikidata to Commons through the usual interface. Is this a bug, a structural limitation, or something that needs admin intervention?

Thanks for looking into it! Tartigradesinspace (talk) 22:31, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

 Done Category added to sitelinks. DinhHuy2010 (talk) 02:15, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

Also please don't use Markdown, use wikitext instead

Thanks. DinhHuy2010 (talk) 02:16, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

Multiple items linked to single categories, redux

I am reminded that we never resolved the issue discussed at Wikidata:Project chat/Archive/2025/04#Multiple items linked to single categories, where I wrote:

Some Russian monuments are linked to regional, rather than specific, Commons categories.

e.g. Q106547672 and Q106547578, and another 43 items have a Commons category (P373) value referring to c:Category:Cultural heritage monuments in Kondopozhsky District.

Example query: https://w.wiki/DsUv

Can we undo this?

At the time of writing, the above query finds 38,195 such items. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:13, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

It looks like some if not all of these were created by AVSBot (talk • contribs • logs). That bot is listed as operated by Olksolo (talk • contribs • logs).

@Olksolo: can you be of assistance in your bot's edits? William Graham (talk) 18:57, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

In the mentioned discussion, no consensus was reached. Valid arguments were presented against these changes. The current category assignments do not contradict the logic of the elements and the existing constraints for P373. Olksolo (talk) 07:35, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

As I said, the matter is still unresolved.

There are no valid arguments for misusing the category property like this. It is not done for any other type of subject.

The claim "The current category assignments do not contradict the logic of the elements" is false and the question of constraints is the issue which remains to be resolved. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:15, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

One can surely return to this question when the constraints change. -- Alexander (talk) 13:11, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

This is a discussion about the constraints. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:55, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

I oppose this change because there is no consensus for it. The existing category assignments in the elements of Russian cultural heritage are used, for example, by Commons mobile app for a proper image categorization during upload. If changed, thousands of newly uploaded images will remain uncategorized.

In my opinion, the best solution will be creating specific Commons categories for individual monuments. As soon as such a category appears in the list of cultural heritage, the bot will automatically update the respective Wikidata element and remove the regional category. -- Alexander (talk) 13:20, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

Where is there consensus to use P373 in this manner?

"used, for example, by Commons mobile app for a proper image categorization during upload" The commons app does not require these categories (or any others) to function. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:55, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

 Oppose use of P373 this way. I think this is a misuse of the property. Any app or process that relies on it should be updated to not rely on it. Wikidata doesn't exist to be a kludge around problems (perceived or otherwise) that can and should be resolved at Commons. William Graham (talk) 13:58, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

Funny, that on Commons they generally say in these situations "go to Wikidata and solve it there". Ymblanter (talk) 19:35, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

Do they? Where? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:37, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

Can someone who is a proponent of this arrangement actually explain what the purpose of using P373 this way? I reread all previous discussion and I didn't see a sufficient explanation. William Graham (talk) 22:57, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

The purpose is automatic categorization of images uploaded via Wikidata-based tools (Commons mobile app). -- Alexander (talk) 17:35, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

@Atsirlin can you elaborate? What are the specific technical reasons and architextures? William Graham (talk) 23:02, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

The technical reason is that Commons mobile app takes the category from P373, but it does not read any other parameters, including the monument ID that would otherwise allow an automatic assignment of the category. One can ask for more details here. -- Alexander (talk) 18:15, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

This is just nonsense: the Commons app does not depend on P373 being abused in this way, which is why no other subset of Wikidata items does so. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:18, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

This issue is still unresolved. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:30, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

There is no issue to resolve, because all existing constraints on P373 are satisfied. The categories are assigned in a way that allows the smooth and automatic categorization of images uploaded via Commons app. The question can be certainly raised again if the constraints change, or the Commons app changes. Any improvements on the Commons app, in particular, the option of reading the monument ID, would be very welcome. -- Alexander (talk) 19:06, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

The question, clearly, is whether the constraints are correct.

No changes are needed to the commons app; that is utterly irrelevant. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:55, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Then it is the wrong place to have this discussion. Resolving any "issue" here will not change the constraints of P373. On the other hand, changing the constraints of P373 will be a compelling argument to update the assigned categories of Russian cultural heritage monuments, without the need for any separate discussion. -- Alexander (talk) 07:31, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

Written right above this section is: Wikidata project chat - A place to discuss any and all aspects of Wikidata: the project itself, policy and proposals, individual data items, technical issues, etc.. HTH. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 07:45, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

As far as I can see, this topic does not contain any concrete proposal of changing the constraints of P373. Therefore, this topic does not seem to be a correct place for this discussion. -- Alexander (talk) 14:48, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

I'm not clear which part of "P373 almost certainly should have a distinct-value constraint" is beyond your comprehension. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:58, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

images/videos of people (in sensitive situations) published without consent

There are Wikidata items using images / videos published without the subject's consent, with at least one showing them in highly sensitive situations (e.g. there is a video depicting a person stabbed and dying without her consent and against her family's wish at killing of Iryna Zarutska (Q136130910)). There is an ongoing deletion discussion on commons and I won't delve into the question if this is ethically acceptable to host such a video, here. I have two different questions:

• Wikidata claims that the data here are free to reuse (copy, modify, distribute and perform) meaning that they are published under a CC0 licence. But some of the data (e.g. images of people published without consent) are actually not free to use everywhere due to - for example - personality right restrictions (as far as I understand even a link to a problematic image/video can be legally problematic at least in some countries). Should there be at least a disclaimer that there might be personality right issues? Or do you think it is enough that there is such a disclaimer at commons and people using images they got from Wikidata should check every image themselves, as a matter of course? I'm sorry if this was discussed before and there already are solutions but I could not find such a discussion or relevant decisions.
• Should there be a link to the full murder at killing of Iryna Zarutska (Q136130910)? For people who really think there should be a video: would a video excluding the footage showing her stabbed and dying be enough? I don't know about the legal situation because I don't even know which legislation applies to Wikidata so I would frame this as an editorial question.

Bluerasberry (talk) 20:24, 26 May 2022 (UTC) HappyBear5000 Tjg6ph manspacetar Daniel Mietchen (talk) 19:37, 2 June 2022 (UTC) BeLucky Jura Marsupium Skim (talk) 07:19, 6 November 2018 (UTC) Satpal Dandiwal (talk) 05:31, 22 July 2019 (UTC) --Epìdosis 14:25, 20 April 2024 (UTC) Soufiyouns

Notified participants of WikiProject Biography (not sure if there are other projects that might be knowledgeable about this) - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 11:17, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

The data in Wikidata is free to reuse. The video (and others; and images, audio and PDFs held on Commons) is not part of that data, but its URL is. HTH. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:08, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

This sounds basically like an appeal to morality with vague allusions to established principles that are unsubstantiated. Nowhere do you claim this somehow breaks specific rules. So let me reply in a language you understand then. Why would you deny the public to know about the exact details of this incident? And how is it moral to keep the public at large in the dark about serious social problems because it might conceivably hurt the feelings of someone who was never involved? It doesn't sound like something a virtuous person would do, quite the contrary. Infrastruktur (talk) 20:58, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

I just raised two questions:

1) The use of pictures / videos without the consent of the depicted is restricted in some countries. You can find a list here: country specific consent requirements at Commons. In these countries it is not allowed to use this due to personality rights. This could also apply to embedding them in automatically generated web pages. Andy is right, that this video etc. is not part of the data, but what I was thinking about was if there should be a way to explicitly state that there are personality rights issue, e.g. via a property, so people easily know this before fetching the video. But maybe it should be taken for granted that people check for this in commons as well. I did not express this well, I admit.

2) Here I raised an editorial question if we should link to the whole video. This is an ethical question (dignity of the deceased vs. public interest), no matter which position you take and it has no point to simply devalue the opposing position for being about "morality" because the other position is no less about "morality". In my opinion the dignity of the deceased outweighs public interest to watch her dying. I don't see how this video helps to educate people about serious social problems because it does not provide any background at all. You can make of it whatever you like. In the end it is just a video of one person killing another. There may be some people out there seeking / showing it to educate themselves / others about social problems but more often than not for its shock value, I fear. The first goal may just as well be achieved with an edited version that excludes the sensitive footage.

BTW there is no reason for personal attacks: There is no need to assume your opponent understands just a certain language just because they support a position different from yours. I'm not a native English speaker, sorry if I expressed things somewhat clumsily. - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 07:20, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

1) Consent is not needed for CCTV footage from public places and video entered into public evidence. The latter probably makes it public domain as well. I see the same argument was used to try to censor the video from Commons [10]. If consent was needed that would mean the camera was put up illegally. The footage is filmed in the US, other countries' laws are irrelevant here.

2) I don't buy your "dignity" excuse. But the rest of your arguments aren't really substantiated which is why I said it basically boils down to an appeal to morality.

In response to Ainali, I would much rather see the original footage than having to trust someone's version of events. So while the Wikipedia article might give additional details and background, it also suffers from having to rely on journalists and wikipedians retelling the story and having to trust that they don't slant it or frame it. Infrastruktur (talk) 13:45, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

In Germany (for example) it does not matter where the picture was taken. Consent is required to publish it in Germany, even if filmed in the US. So yes - other countries' laws may be relevant for use of the video. That is the reason it is in the category Category:Personality rights warning Note that the first question is just about adding a qualifier informing that there are personality rights issues - this is not about removing the video. - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 14:26, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

The use of pictures / videos of women that show their hair or their ankles is restricted in some countries. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 07:54, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

@Infrastruktur We're not in the dark just because we don't have the video on the Wikidata item. Just go read the Wikipedia article, it gives you better information than the video itself. Secondly, the people hurt are are not hypothetical, it is the family of the victim that has explicitly expressed it. Both of these arguments are strong enough that I don't think you could not be virtuous if arguing to remove the snuff film (Q644437) from a statement. Ainali (talk) 12:09, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

This seems a very clear case of https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:CREEP to me. I support deleting the statement linking to any video where the victim can be identified out of respect for the privacy of the victim. So9q (talk) 19:21, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

I removed it. https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q136130910&diff=2406572831&oldid=2406209387 So9q (talk) 19:26, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Earlier on this page : #Images of victims of murders. author  TomT0m / talk page 09:17, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Scraping for Mix'n'match tool and bot edit request

Recently Rekhta Gujarati author ID (P13717) was created. All authors are listed here. Is there any one who can scrape this website and create a catalogue on Mix'n'match as well as do the bot edit for fully matching items? I have no technical knowledge and tried to use scrape tool but could not understand how to scrape it as I don't understand Regex etc. I could not find other place to request it. Regards,- Nizil Shah (talk) 19:59, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

to bot or not to bot?

I'm a contributor to the OpenITI corpus (a corpus of digital texts in Arabic, Persian and other languages). We currently have more than 13,000 digital editions of more than 8,000 texts, written by more than 3,000 authors.

We'd like to use Wikidata as external authority control, firstly for the authors (in later stages perhaps for texts and editions, too). We would add authors who are in the OpenITI corpus but not yet in Wikidata to Wikidata; and enrich Wikidata on those authors based on our OpenITI metadata.

My question: do I need to create a bot account to add these entities and additional metadata using a script? Or can I do this with my normal Wikidata user account? I expect that in an initial stage, we may have to create about 1000 new entities, and enrich metadata for about 2000.

Some more background:

I've been using OpenRefine to reconcile authors from our corpus with Wikidata entities:

• step 1: many of our texts come from al-Maktaba al-Shamela; 1206 authors from al-Maktaba al-Shamela are in Wikidata, so they are easily reconciled using the Shamela Author ID property (P12435)
• step 2: I use the Arabic wikidata reconciliation service for Arabic names and English reconciliation service for names transcribed in Latin script (multiple rows for each author, each with a different version of the name)
• step 3: I manually compare the authors with the proposed wikidata entities, accepting the reconciliation if correct; if none of the reconciled entities is correct, I do nothing at this stage
• step 4: I manually look up unreconciled authors through wikidata search and google search; if I'm certain the author is not in wikidata, I flag that in a separate column in OpenRefine.

I wrote a script that uses the wikibaseintegrator Python library to create a new (person) entity on Wikidata or, if given a QID of an entity, will update it using metadata from the OpenITI corpus: - name (in English and/or Arabic; as label or alias, if a label already exists) - death date (Common Era (CE) and Hijri Era (AH)) - shamela author ID

Grateful for any replies on the bot question, and any feedback on the whole process.

Pverkind (talk) 13:17, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

@Pverkind, in my opinion, you should probably use a bot acoount and/or request flooder user flag DinhHuy2010 (talk) 13:52, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks @DinhHuy2010, I had not heard about flood flags before. Pverkind (talk) 05:32, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

https://quickstatements.toolforge.org should be find for that data volume. Its easy to use and can make one change per second. Vicarage (talk) 14:06, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks @Vicarage, I'll experiment with quickstatements. Pverkind (talk) 05:34, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Super Long Labels

Is there a way to add a label to an item that is more than 250 characters long? The item The Kent and Medway National Health Service ... Order 2025 (Q136326937) is for a UK Statutory Instrument titled "The Kent and Medway National Health Service and Social Care Partnership Trust (Establishment) and the West Kent National Health Service and Social Care Trust and the East Kent National Health Service and Social Care Partnership Trust (Dissolution) (Amendment) Order 2025". Normally the label for UK Statutory Instruments would be the title of the instrument but that doesn't seem to be possible here. ToxicPea (talk) 19:39, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

No, labels are not allowed to be so long. ArthurPSmith (talk) 00:55, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

The way to handle this is to put the full title in a title (P1476) statement. And then for the label fit as many whole words as possible while still ending with an ellipsis or some other common name. William Graham (talk) 02:59, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

A well worded summary label seems better than pushing the 250 character limit. Vicarage (talk) 11:33, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata:What Wikidata is not

Wikidata:What Wikidata is not

I've noticed this page is quoted a lot (hundreds of times on users' talk pages). If it's an official Wikidata policy then wouldn't it be sensible to link to it in a prominent position on Special:NewItem and Wikidata:Notability. Perhaps it might help to limit the number of new users creating "spam" items and help the admins who have to delete them. Piecesofuk (talk) 09:51, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Given that it does not have the policy template, it's not official Wikidata policy and the process of making it would be a RfC. Practically, some ontology work on Wikidata where there's no established ontology is also original research, so the blanked statement copied over from Wikipedia isn't really matching Wikidata. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 14:46, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Archived, not done property proposal

@SashiRolls has proposed a property in May 2020: banned in; this proposal got cancelled by @BrokenSegue because of the following reason: "Over a year with no consensus.", this property would be a good addition, I'm working on televion series episodes that has been banned in some countries due to their LGBTQIA+ content–I'm not gonna add in Greece (Q41): prohibits (P8739) Roughin' It (Q114530780) because it would be too specific for an item that has 840 statements; better is to add a statement in item Roughin' It (Q114530780) banned in (P999) Greece (Q41) (there is even more countries that this episode is prohibited in). Does this property needs new, full check-up? QwertyZ34 (talk) 18:19, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

This is how democracy works, we entrust some experienced member to take consensus and not be a senile old fart. Either launch specific complaints against User:BrokenSegue, or consider your complaint to be in bad faith. And yes, that means evidence is required. Ok, so maybe properties is not getting the attention it deserves, still you're directing your dismay at someone who isn't responsible for how things are done. Infrastruktur (talk) 20:05, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean it in that way; @BrokenSegue did their work, improve Wikidata, to be clear, I didn't launch "complaints" at BrokenSegue, I just specified that they closed the property proposal: I wanted a better discussion about this proposal: Why it (the property) should be added? or Why it shouldn't be added? since it didn't end correctly. (the discussion stopped for 1 year, then BrokenSegue closed it) QwertyZ34 (talk) 20:14, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

I also think the property proposal process is not really functional as is, although there are properties created.

In my opinion there is different questions that could be answer independantly.

• First "is the information useful / desirable in Wikidata ?" => ask community, if concensus or no opposition (often stalled because very few answer, so assuming usefulness would be less of a intiative stopper). If the answer is negative, we archive, maybe some page on the relevant project for archive / documentation / future reference.
• Second, if we want the data : "how should we represent the data." => A property, several ? => Discussion. When a concensus is reached, we create the or the needed properties, if needed. And we add a schema / documentation on "what is the model for this kind of data" on a project or a page. If properties already exists but not really documented for this kind of data, we just update the doc.

Either way we archive question on "how to represent this data" (not at all, with these properties, with items, whatever) somewhere. author  TomT0m / talk page 09:54, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Should I perhaps make a new proposal for this property? With new arguments QwertyZ34 (talk) 12:16, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Go ahead, the views of the community may have changed. But be sure to refer to the failed proposal, alert the old contributors there about it, and be prepared to address any negative comments you might get. Vicarage (talk) 16:02, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

I think I'll do that; thanks! QwertyZ34 (talk) 17:52, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

I will firstly do a different generic property proposal, then this one QwertyZ34 (talk) 18:08, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

It's worth noting that it's custom practice to ping everyone involved in the last discussion when opening a new proposal for the same property. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 17:15, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

The model isn't supposed to be Greece (Q41)prohibits (P8739)Roughin' It (Q114530780) but "regulation XY"prohibits (P8739)Roughin' It (Q114530780)country (P17)Greece (Q41) or some other qualification. This means that you actually have to understand the process of how the ban works. This approach forces data quality which means that it takes more effort but it does allow users to better understand what a given ban involves as banning can mean many different things.

In this case, you find that there's no regulation banning the episode. Given that the Government of Greece did nothing to ban this episode, it quite questionable statement but at least users wouldn't be as easily mislead as by the modeling propose. When you want to make statement about things being banned when they are also legally allowed in a country allowing low-quality statements is problematic.

The broadcaster made a decision not to air the episode. This is the core problem with creating the property. It encourages people to add a lot of misleading statements. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 17:15, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Confusion regarding Wild Kratts episode order and numbering

For TV series where the episodes are supposed to have a specific order because of their plot, the numbering is obvious.

However, Wild Kratts (Q2875960) is a TV series where the episodes mostly don’t tie into each other. In fact, there are many different ways in which they’re ordered in different places:

• Release date (aka original air date): This is what Wikipedia and the Wild Kratts Fandom wiki currently use. However, they still have different numberings because, for some episodes like Seahorse Rodeo (Q114526149), sources disagree on the air date!
• Production code numbers
• IMDb^{[link in German, I’m unable to access English version]} and TVDB each have their own numberings which significantly differ from both production codes and air-date numbering in some places!

As of 1 September 2025, the order and numbering in Wikidata is as follows:

Season 1

Numbering matches production codes except for episodes 1 to 7: Wikidata numbers the pilot episode Polar Bears Don't Dance (Q114546479) as the 1st episode, but it’s the 7th episode according to its production code and original air date.

Season 2

Numbering matches production codes exactly.

Season 3

Numbering matches production codes exactly.

Season 4

Numbering would match production codes if each of the two-part episodes A Creature Christmas (Q114465359) and Creatures of the Deep Sea (Q114477253) were counted as two episodes instead of just one.

Season 5

Numbering matches production codes except for the two-parters Wild Kratts Halloween: Creepy Creatures! (Q114508685) and Wild Kratts Alaska: Hero's Journey (Q114522540), which are only counted as one episode each and are also swapped (so that “Hero’s Journey” is followed by “Creepy Creatures!”).

Season 6

Numbering mostly matches the one on IMDb (as of 24 May 2025), except for these four episodes: Uh-Oh Ostrich (Q114537655), The Great Creature Tail Fail (Q114526802), Adapto the Coyote (Q114542444), Tardigrade Xtreme (Q114523892).

Season 7

Numbering matches IMDb exactly (as of 24 May 2025).

So, which numbering is the “correct” one for Wikidata?
— keepright! ler (talk) 10:25, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

Would you please read this and reply?!
— keepright! ler (talk) 09:13, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

@Keepright! ler The people at Wikidata:WikiProject Movies might know the answer to your question. RVA2869 (talk) 10:49, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

The problem is that it’s even less likely to ever get a reply there compared to here! However, I did copy this topic over there.
— keepright! ler (talk) 09:28, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

[preventing automatic archival] keepright! ler (talk) 09:27, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

I would say that Wild Kratts Episode Directory is the most authoritative source and follow that, not the production sequence or IMDB/Wikipedia. Difool (talk) 10:27, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Not sure about your choice. The wildkratts.com episode list may be official, but it has some peculiarities, notably that Back in Creature Time: Day of the Dodo (Q114528868) isn’t directly followed by Back in Creature Time: Tasmanian Tiger (Q114524382) even though these episodes belong together; Prairie Who? (Q114520175) is placed between the two!

In general, the source doesn’t seem very polished to me because it has severely different titles for some episodes and also some typos in a few titles:

• Googly Ege: The Night Guru for Googly Eye: The Night Guru
• Snowly Owl Invasion for Snowy Owl Invasion

— keepright! ler (talk) 09:17, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

I've read the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style for Television, which recommends listing episodes in order of airdate unless that sequence is illogical. For example, Firefly uses the ordering of a DVD. And if an alternative ordering is used, it should be sourced in the episode table.

I don't work on television series data so I may be missing some context, but from an outsider's perspective it seems odd that Wikidata uses the series ordinal (P1545) only as qualifier, and then it is used a lot: on episode items (at part of the series (P179) and season (P4908)) and on season items (at has part(s) (P527)). The qualifier is not sourceable and doesn't clarify what ordering is being followed.

So my suggestion would be to:

• Use the series ordinal (P1545) as a main statement on episode items and use a qualifier (For example based on heuristic (P887) production code number (Q7247820)) if you don't use the order of airdate.
• Add multiple values, if you think that is necessary, and if so with qualifier (and source if possible).
• Mark one value as preferred and use that ordering in the qualifiers

Difool (talk) 08:25, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

[preventing automatic archival, again] keepright! ler (talk) 09:57, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Please accept that no-one is going to answer this question Vicarage (talk) 11:07, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Wild Kratts isn’t the only TV show with an ambiguous episode order out there, you know … but apparently, there doesn’t seem to be a “correct” episode order for Wild Kratts if no-one knows it …

So far, for my personal leisure, I’ve always used the production code numbering for seasons 1 to 4, and recently started adopting it for seasons 5 to 7. This order makes the most sense to me – should I change the Wikidata order of episodes to match the production codes?

PS: In regards to sources disagreeing on the air date of Seahorse Rodeo (Q114526149) and some other episodes, maybe one release date applies to Canada and the other one applies to the United States?

— keepright! ler (talk) 15:06, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

What's the correct creator (P170) value to use for CCTV images and footage

? Trade (talk) 14:15, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

How about No value, especially if it's a jurisdiction where copyright can't be claimed. -Animalparty (talk) 18:31, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

If i do that then there is still zero indication that the image came from a CCTV

There are plenty of images without human authors that come from places other than CCTV screenshots Trade (talk) 15:09, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Then your question is the wrong one. If you wanted to know "how can we indicate that a video came from a CCTV system", the answer is to use subject has role (P2868). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 07:51, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

What value would fit that? Trade (talk) 02:49, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

I just typed "CCTV" into the search box on this page, and the first result was closed-circuit television (Q242256): use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place on a limited set of monitors. If that doesn't suit, you could create an item for "video made with CCTV system". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:50, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Nomenclature: Splash pad vs Water playground

It seems we have two things with the same meaning, "splash pads" and "water playgrounds".

I can see a distinction here,

• Splash pads are smaller and have no standing water.
• Water playgrounds have standing water.

But I really don't see the point. By any means, It seems the nomenclature is lost in use. Is having no discernable pattern in use sufficient to merge the two?

For some examples of the confusion,

• Gator Splash in Texas is billed as "The largest interactive play structure in Texas includes over 300 water play elements, multiple slides, and sprayers. It’s an entire waterpark in and of itself!" They call it a waterpark. It looks gigantic. You can see the feature here. Is this a splash pad, or water playground?
• Splash Cove in Houston is billed as water attraction, and it has standing water.. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Splash_Cove_(78423).jpg It has a whole beach that all the water flows to, and the beach generally has areas with 2-3 inches of water.
• Noah's Ark in Houston is literally in a baby pool, and it's billed as a pool with a structure, avoiding the term "water playground." https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Noah%27s_Ark_II

I just wonder if we're not trying to impose a taxonomy here that isn't clearly in use _anywhere._

I almost think "water playground" is better. Then it's a playground with water. This would work with other things like "trampoline playground" or "inflatable playground" both of which exist and are abundant. Ideas? EvanCarroll (talk) 03:31, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata isn't primarily about nomenclature (and English terms) but about items. When discussing whether it makes sense to merge items, it's useful to think about the items in question and not just English terms.

Currently, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Water_playgrounds and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Splash_pads both exist and have Wikilinks. The taxonomy clearly exists outside of Wikidata. If you believe that those categories are basically the same, I would first focus on merging them over at WikiCommons. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 11:00, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #698

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-09-22. Missed the previous one? See issue #697.

Events

• Upcoming events:
  • Exploring Seediq: A Journey through Translation and Linked Data Documentation 25 October .This event will showcase the Seediq communities’ translation of the OCLC white paper on Wikibase, followed by an overview of the full paper. It will conclude with an open discussion on the lessons learned during the translation project and broader reflections on linked data.
  • Govdirectory US office hour, 25 September
  • FREE virtual 1hr Wiki webinar focusing on plant biodiversity. Open to anyone wanting to improve their digital outreach skills by enriching Wikidata. Tuesday 14th of October at 3pm NZST. Register to get link.
  • Wikidata’s 13th Birthday is just around the corner! Are you planning to host a celebration but haven’t added it to the calendar yet? Join the party! Thirty-nine (39) events are already scheduled, and yours can be too: Birthday Calendar. It’s also the perfect time to contribute a birthday present or message to this list. Gifts can be anything that celebrates Wikidata and its amazing community like a script you’ve written, a tool improvement, a visual, a poem... 🎉

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Videos: (French) Formation Wikidata 2 de WikiSkills By Africa Wiki Women

Tool of the week

• Duplicity This tool can pick a random article on a wiki without associated Wikidata item, and offer some possible matches on Wikidata, so you can add it to an existing item, or create a new one.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• Call for Projects and Mentors for Outreachy Round 31! If you have some ideas for coding or non-coding (design, documentation, translation, outreach, research) projects, share them by Sept. 26, 2025, at 4 pm UTC

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• New General datatypes:
  • number of ray tracing cores (number of ray tracing cores in a graphics processing unit)
  • VRAM capacity (amount of dual-ported video RAM (VRAM) modules used by this device)
  • ‎has wireless capabilities (type of wireless connectivity this device has/supports)
  • date filed (filing date for a document, e.g. a patent or court case)
• New External identifiers: Gamepadla ID, OpenStreetMap key, EU-ID, Roma road ID, ‎LTT Labs product ID, Swiss Performing Arts Vocabularies ID, wikiHow article ID, ‎GamesIndustry.biz tag ID, ‎Dimensions.com element ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • image+display resolution (pixel resolution of images generated or captured by this item (camera, software, etc))
  • firmware (firmware installed on this hardware)
  • excluding work (work or narration for or in which this statement is <em>false</em>)
  • has grammatical number (grammatical number used in this language)
  • Day of Reisai (Annual Festival done by a Shinto Shrine)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: https://football.aek.com/, Météo-France place ID, Hex package, Maptons ID, BVPB catalog ID, dati.lnb.lv ID, The Needle Drop tag ID, AfterEllen tag ID, OpenStreetMap relation type, Them.us tag ID, DOAB book ID, identifiant Liste unique des décorés, Deník tag ID, The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture entry ID, qamus.inoor.ir root ID, Filmarks ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • A map of IEC 60320 power connectors - a cool SPARQL visualisation, by User:IagoQnsi
  • 350 people who were married, then married the sibling of their previous spouse (source)
• Showcase Items: Northern Sami (Q33947) - famoumost widely spoken of all Sámi languages
• Showcase Lexemes: Waage (L37547) – German noun (‘ˈvaːɡə’) meaning "scale (device for measuring mass)", "Libra constellation", or "equilibrium"

Development

• Mobile statement editing: We are working more on the editing state of statements, especially qualifiers and progress indicators during saving (phab:T402620)
• Dumps: We fixed an issue with some of the dumps (phab:T403882) and are improving the monitoring
• GraphQL: We are working on making it easier to get labels of linked entities in an API response, starting with Items (phab:T404692)
• Sustainability: We have now rolled out improvements to the tracking of Wikidata changes on the other Wikimedia projects on all projects in order to decrease the size of the database table that tracks these changes (phab:T401288)
• Bug fixes: Tacsipacsi submitted fixes for two issues in error messages on Special:SetSiteLink. Thank you! (phab:T404499, phab:T404500)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Weekly Tasks

• Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
• Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
• Govdirectory weekly focus country: United States of America
• Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
• Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
• Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
• Help write the next summary!

· Previous issue · Full report · Unsubscribe · JosefAnthony talk · MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:14, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

everything is protected

why Imakeflags (talk) 18:23, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Not everything is protected.

Can you give more information? What did you do? What happened? What did you expect to happen instead? Bovlb (talk) 17:20, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 09:36, 28 September 2025 (UTC) LTA

Seeking Advice On Q136100349 and Q136094540

Hi everyone, I’ve requested undeletion for two items I created as AfricanMarketOS—Q136100349 (Farouk Mark Mukiibi) and Q136094540 (Minimum Viable Relationships framework)—via Fralambert’s talk page, as they were deleted on Sept 13 for notability concerns. They’re backed by sources like a SocArXiv preprint (https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/3467j_v1), Figshare (https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Minimum_Viable_Relationships_MVR_Framework_Africa_s_Prerequisite_to_MVP/30108931), and my book *The African Startups Playbook* (Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/faroukmarkmukiibi). Any tips on the process or support would be appreciated—thanks! AfricanMarketOS (talk) 14:48, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

If you are trying to promote your own work, this is a big conflict of interest. It needs someone else (and not a friend) to make the case, and its likely that it will fail notability again. Vicarage (talk) 16:20, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Relevant items:

• Farouk Mark Mukiibi: Q136100349 (AfricanMarketOS). CC deleting admins @Fralambert
• MVR (Minimum Viable Relationships): Q136094540 (2C0F:3D00:649:8700:5128:C589:1642:A094). CC deleting admins @Fralambert

Previous discussion: User_talk:Fralambert#Undeletion_Request_For_Q136100349_and_Q136094540, Wikidata:Requests_for_deletions/Archive/2025/09/13#Bulk_deletion_request (CC @Jamie7687)

See Wikidata:Guide to requests for undeletion for tips on the process. Bovlb (talk) 17:53, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Merging problems

I'm trying to merge Q1181170 into Q10752438, but it keeps giving "error:conflicting descriptions for language de" despite it doesn't seem to be the case. Could someone please help me? Baal Nautes (talk) 16:09, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

These two data objects cannot be merged because they describe different things. --Gymnicus (talk) 18:49, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Request to merge Q134475173 into Q309468

The entity Humat ad-Diyar (Q134475173) is the Esperanto version of Humat ad-Diyar (Q309468). I tried merging them myself, but Q309468 is currently fully protected and I can't edit it. Could someone with the appropriate permissions merge the Esperanto version into the main entity? Thanks in advance. Tymewalk (talk) 22:00, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

@Tymewalk  Done --Emu (talk) 09:23, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Samoasambia ✎ 15:23, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Wikimania talk about apps using Wikidata

At https://www.youtube.com/live/WaWk6hNGRrk?t=2072 she answers a question saying there is basically no page that lists tools/apps that use Wikidata after mentioning there is one that is neglected. That is just plain false. There is a page and it's not very neglected if at all and super comprehensive, containing also most of the apps she highlighted in the talk: Wikidata:Tools / Wikidata:Tools/Visualize data. Couldn't comment there as the Wikimedia Foundation disabled comments for these Wikimania videos.

Of the apps, I haven't heard about https://www.opensanctions.org/ which seems to have some potential. I don't think most of the other apps are useful in practice so far: Scholia is missing data on studies to be useful where all the graphs, lists etc in it are flawed because over half of studies are missing (often the most notable not vice versa). Wikiflix can only be used for public domain movies of which 95% are older than 70 years instead of also allowing users to watch free nonpublicdomain films on YouTube & Co within this free software UI using Wikidata. Using Wikidata for free software as with https://code.gouv.fr/sill/list could be a good idea but there also are too few items and those that exist may not have it well specified which type of software or tasks they're for. Note via a recent update to the Wikidata infobox, Commons is now using various data in software items like programming language and OS to automatically set the corresponding categories on a software's category. It would need some bulk imports of data on software from sites like GitHub. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:37, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

"She" is User:LydiaPintscher. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:34, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

I'm sorry but that page is not what people were asking for. That page is randomly mixing editing tools with reuse applications for example. It also contains a bunch of things that I don't think I want to show a random person I want to convince about building their application on top of Wikidata. It's a good page for us internally but it's really not what we'd need for the outside world. LydiaPintscher (talk) 20:43, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that's the case. The person wasn't asking for a perfect or no page. The page contains many apps shown in the talk which is a clear indication that this is a page that collects such apps and where people can find many more such apps. The page does not randomly mix editing tools with reuse applications as far as I can see: for the subpage it's all visualizations of data in Wikidata which some people use for editing and some for other purposes. In addition, there also is Wikidata:Wikidata front ends. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:41, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Category:Wikidata status updates

Somebody needs to clear out all the User talk pages that were accidentally added to Category:Wikidata status updates by the recent update, on this wiki and most others (I've done en.Wikipedia and Commons). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:22, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata should be clear now. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 16:46, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. I just tried to remove the category from User talk:PokestarFan/Archive 1, but my edit failed, with "The text you have submitted is 3,888.152 kilobytes long, which is more than the maximum of 2,048 kilobytes." [User has been idef' blocked since 2017] Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:10, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Looking at the history, the 3.5MB addition is certainly not what Adding archive template should have caused, so I have undone it. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 18:27, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Feedback sought for SPARQL Recent Changes 2

I recently published SPARQL Recent Changes 2. It enables users to keep track of whole subgraphs in any timeframe. It also enables mass-validation of entities in Wikidata based on their recent changes. This tool enables users to ensure that whole subgraphs are valid according to any given EntitySchema. Feel free to try it out and leave a comment on-wiki or open an issue in GitHub :) So9q (talk) 07:19, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

Nice! But why the 2 in the name? Did you do an earlier version before? Ainali (talk) 09:13, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

Sure. Some ideas for small things that might be useful. 1) A user aggregation. 2) Have the user names hyperlinked to the user contributions within the given time-period. 3) Rather than listing the first and last revisions I think it would be more useful to list the number of revisions in that time-period and hyperlink to the item history page. 4) Basic JS table-sorter. Infrastruktur (talk) 07:24, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Proposal to Add Verified Store Locations to Wikidata

I am contributing on behalf of SingleInterface, a trusted digital partner working with Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL). As part of our collaboration, we manage and maintain IOCL’s Google Business Profile (GBP) map listings, which gives us access to accurate and verified outlet information.

I would like to add Multiple store locations to Wikidata using these reliable sources to improve the accuracy, coverage, and completeness of location data. Each entry will include factual and verifiable details such as the store name, address, coordinates, postal code, phone number, and official website links. This will make it easier for users to find reliable information about IOCL outlets in one place, while also enhancing Wikipedia articles, mapping tools, and knowledge graph applications that rely on Wikidata.

These contributions will strengthen linked open data integration, connect Wikidata with external datasets, and provide structured information that can support research, urban planning, and public services. To build trust within the community, I am happy to start with a small set of sample entries for review before proceeding with the full set of locations. I look forward to your feedback. SingleInterface (talk) 07:30, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

A key question is whether the individual stores are notable. They might be on OpenStreetMap but not here. I would be much happier if you started with updating existing stores here, and don't add lots of new entries.

Are you working witb OpenStreetMap? Vicarage (talk) 08:52, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Yes, we also aim to publish our locations on OSM, but first we would like to publish on Wikidata and achieve maximum accuracy.

Also, we won't be publishing any unnecessary duplicate entries. All the locations and their data are accurate and already published on Google.

Looking forward to next steps! SingleInterface (talk) 07:21, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

I think this is a very ambitious programme given you are completely new to WD. I would urge you to make minor fixes to existing entries, and join in discussions on relevant project and property pages to familiarise yourself with WD culture before launching in to what will be a huge project. I also think OSM is the place to start, as they want details of every individual commercial building on the planet far more than we do. Vicarage (talk) 07:33, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Linking two different language articles

Can someone help me link these two Wikipedia articles please:

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%83%80%E3%83%B3

Pandanus odorifer

(Directed here from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Linking_two_different_language_articles)

Thank you, 2604:3D08:2C89:7400:E9D5:CB31:B3C7:960B 07:48, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Pandanus fascicularis (Q11564204) and Pandanus odorifer (Q15578898) are the relevant items. I moved the Japanese site link over. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 13:29, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. 2604:3D08:2C89:7400:AC2A:DB8D:3DCE:154A 17:35, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Conflation

Secretary of State of Washington (Q7444392) appears to conflate the Secretary of State (an individual) and the Office of the Secretary of State (the government agency that person heads, which is listed as an a.k.a.). May I assume that these should be separated into two items, and the current item should be for the individual? - Jmabel (talk) 01:42, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds reasonable. It's worth noting that the Secretary of State probably is a legal person as well and signs things in their capacity as a legal person.

You would need to decide for Washington State Archives (Q134547123), Washington Digital Newspapers (Q134519989) and Washington State Corporations and Charities Division (Q107180324) which item is appropriate after you split. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 08:04, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel: if you come across more of these or would like to work on untangling them in the future, we have a WikiProject for that and we could always use more help! - Yupik (talk) 12:19, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

I'm mostly focused on Commons, and usually only notice these when they are an issue there. - Jmabel (talk) 17:51, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

If you don't mind, it would be great if you could add those to the project page too. There are a few of us who fix them across as many wikiprojects as possible. - Yupik (talk) 00:51, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

How do we represent foreign taxons where the distinction isn't valid in English?

Many terms in Wikidata are confusing to English speakers.

• Here is an example in Dutch
• Here is example in German

If these terms as I expect have no English analog, is it right to enter a Label and Description for them. It seems to ultimately confuse English users by creating another term for taging that has a distinction they're unaware of that is rooted in foreign language they don't speak. EvanCarroll (talk) 16:19, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

English has no special role in Wikidata. Wikidata items represent real-world entities or concepts, and labels in any language should try to represent that meaning. Confusing labels may be disambiguated by their descriptions, but ultimately it is the statements and linked wikipedia pages that most clearly define what a Wikidata item means. ArthurPSmith (talk) 17:31, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

I don't think this answers the question. But to be honest, maybe it does. Let's say

• English has a concept for "retail space" being "any space in a retail building". And,
• Bulgarstan has a concept of "retail space" being an "area of a retail building where retail operations are performed".

That is to say, in Bulgarstan they distinguish between "retail space" compared to "storage space" where in English we just call all space leased for the purposes of a retail operation "retail space".

Now, what I agree would be great, is if English incorporated all the complexity of every language so all distinctions could be modeled in the language! But that's not what happens. What happens is the creation of two items,

• "Retail space"
• "Space used for retail"

And people type in "retail" see "space" and pick one of the two at random. Worse, is when there is no clear grammar or distinction between the two of them. Just look at this comment, https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/51371/clarification-of-kantoorgebouw-vs-bedrijfsverzamelgebouw-to-an-english-speaker#comment121602_51371 how is an English speaker supposed to address that?

Why is "bedrijfsverzamelgebouw" described in English as a "business complex"? I know what a commercial complex is. I know what business is. It doesn't sound like a bad term. But it adds nothing to the English users experience. Am I supposed to learn how to use the term "bedrijfsverzamelgebouw" so I can list domestic real estate in wikidata using a regional term only relevant in Dutch?

I almost think what would be ideal here is if the concept doesn't make sense in Engish, delete the English label for it and let the Dutch make use of it. EvanCarroll (talk) 20:46, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure how a concept "doesn't make sense in English" - in your first example you have a label ("retail space") with two different descriptions, both in English, which clearly define and disambiguate them. If the label seems inaccurate then I guess it could be deleted, but preferably it should be replaced with something more accurate? Labels don't have to be just one or two words. ArthurPSmith (talk) 21:00, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

If there is no clear English term for a concept, it's also ok to use a non-English term as the label. See for example Wissenschaft (Q8027727). ArthurPSmith (talk) 21:04, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Of course if the English label is missing, often the next fallback is Q123456 which is really ugly. I've been in the habit for things with country information to select the label in the language of that country as the fallback beyond English, but its quite complicated (and slow) SPARQL to do that. So I often feel something is better than nothing. Vicarage (talk) 21:29, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

The general principle in Wikidata is that we focus on items and not on English terms (or any other language). Why don't create items because there's a specific term in the English language. If we use a recent example, the English language both has a term for "slash pad" and "water playground" but that alone does not mean that we need two items. Asking on linguistics versions of stack exchange does not give you an answer about which items should exist. It might give only you answers about which label would be best for an existing item.

If you take the example of office building (Q1021645) and multi-tenant, shared-amenity office building (Q2396523), the first obvious question is about whether the two can be merged or not. While the usage of a Wikidata item can differ from the related Wikipedia articles asking for whether the Wikipedia articles describe the same thing is a good step to resolve the question. I asked ChatGPT "Do https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCrogeb%C3%A4ude and https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedrijfsverzamelgebouw describe the same thing?"

It answered:

• Short answer: no.

  de: Bürogebäude = any building primarily used for office work; covers everything from ministries and HQs to call centers and research offices—single-tenant or multi-tenant. Wikipedia

  nl: Bedrijfsverzamelgebouw = a building where multiple companies are housed, typically with shared facilities (reception, meeting rooms, mail handling, canteen), popular with start-ups and small firms due to flexible, lower-cost leases. Wikipedia

  So a bedrijfsverzamelgebouw is a type of building that can include offices but is defined by its multi-tenant, shared-amenity setup, whereas Bürogebäude is the broad category “office building” regardless of tenancy model. Overlap? Sure—many bedrijfsverzamelgebouwen are also Bürogebäude—but the Dutch term is narrower and more specific.

This information makes it clear that multi-tenant, shared-amenity office building (Q2396523) describes a subclass of office building (Q1021645), so I clarified that relationship. I also added an English label and description that makes it clear what multi-tenant, shared-amenity office building (Q2396523) is about. I also looked for the existing uses of multi-tenant, shared-amenity office building (Q2396523) and it seemed to be okay with the renaming. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 11:33, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Sitelink as fully-fledged entities

Currently, sitelinks are just a link and some badges. What if sitelinks are fully-fledged entities like items?

This is useful for easy parsing of project-specific things like WikiProject focus list, quality assessment, and more!

Any feedback on this idea? Thanks! DinhHuy2010 (talk) 05:49, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

Core decisions about the data model come with a lot of implications and are not easy to change. A lot of them matter for database performance.

If you think that a specific use-cases doesn't work well with the current system, it would make sense for you to explain the use cases you think you think aren't served well currently. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 19:05, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

new property: Bibliosurf Author ID

English

Hello, I have proposed a new property: Bibliosurf Author ID, a persistent identifier.
For more than ten years, Bibliosurf has been structuring the French literary web: blog posts, press reviews, podcasts and videos are linked to EANs and to standard identifiers (ISNI, VIAF, Wikidata).
Creating this property would allow Wikidata to connect to a French-speaking literary corpus that is currently missing.

Proposal: Wikidata:Property proposal/Bibliosurf ID I would be very grateful if you could let me know whether you think this proposal is relevant. Français

Bonjour, j'ai proposé une nouvelle propriété : Bibliosurf Author ID, un identifiant permanent.
Depuis dix ans, Bibliosurf structure le web littéraire : billets de blogs, critiques de presse, podcasts et vidéos sont reliés à des EAN et à des identifiants normalisés (ISNI, VIAF, Wikidata).
La création de cette propriété permettrait de relier Wikidata à un corpus littéraire francophone qui lui échappe actuellement.

Proposition : Wikidata:Property proposal/Bibliosurf ID D’avance merci de me dire si cela vous semble pertinent et utile pour Wikidata. Bibliosurf (talk) 11:52, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

You need to link here to a formally curated property proposal page, and from your username it seems you are strongly connected to the site, which makes a conflict of interest that might worry us. It always concerns us if a new user leaps in with a property proposal without spending some time working on the site generally, and understanding its culture. I see that the bibliosurf has not been seen notable enough to have it own entry here, let alone a property. Vicarage (talk) 12:51, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

Here is the missing link: Wikidata : Property proposal/Bibliosurf ID

I echo the concern of Vicarage. We welcome new editors, but it is seldom the best idea for the first edits to be to propose a new property. Your proposal would carry more weight if it came from an established member of the project. Bovlb (talk) 19:36, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #699

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-09-29. Missed the previous one? See issue #698.

Discussions

• Open request for adminship: Empat Tilda: RfP scheduled to end after 3 October 2025 18:30 (UTC)

Events

• Upcoming events:
  • New Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group project series! Mark your calendars for our first session of our WikiProject Personal Pronouns event series, which will provide a high-level overview of WikiProject Personal Pronouns' goals, past work, and implementation plans. The session will also serve as a practical orientation to the implementation work for this project, ending with a demonstration of the workflow to be used in subsequent sessions. No previous Wikidata experience is needed to participate. This session will be recorded. Slides and recordings will be found on the project page after the session. Join us Tuesday, September 30th at 9am PT/ 12pm ET/ 16:00 UTC / 6pm CEST (Time zone converter). Please see our project page for more information and Zoom links.
  • Wikidata are hosting a webinar on the Embedding Project: AI/ML Project Manager Philippe Saadé (WMDE) will introduce the project, including early experiences, wins and pitfalls, and open up the floor to your questions.
    • Takes place 1600 - 1700 UTC, October 9, 2025.
    • Embedding Project? Read about it here
    • Want to join the Webinar? Please register here with your Wiki account
  • 🎁 Countdown to 13!🎁 Wikidata's 13th Birthday is fast approaching and this week marks the start of the first Birthday Events! For a full rundown of all Birthday Events, please see the Birthday Calendar.
    

Starting the month of celebrations this week include: Wali Wikimedians Community, Latin America in Wikidata 2025, Hausa Wikipedians User Group and the language communities of Zambia, Twi and Kinyarwanda and regional celebrations from the Northern Nigerian, Dagbani and Ghanaians Wikimedian communities!

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs:
  • Enhanced Search for Wikibase
  • Suggesting new relations in ROR from Wikidata By Charles Tapley Hoyt
• Papers:
  • Protoknowledge Shapes Behaviour of LLMs: Text-to-SPARQL
  • Wikidata Workflows: with ORCiD and OpenRefine - a Binghamton University Case Study By Sasha Frizzell - This lightning talk outlines Binghamton University Libraries’ pilot project to convert ORCID faculty data into Wikidata entries, showcasing linked data integration, data cleaning workflows, and strategies for enhancing institutional research visibility.
• Videos:
  • Wikidata tutorial: how to merge duplicate items
  • Wikidata Wikishootme SAT
  • How to Fetch Subclasses and Parent Classes in Wikidata SPARQL Queries
  • (Portuguese) Black women in history through Wikidata
  • Provenance and Restitution: Shared knowledge graphs as a tool in recovering looted cultural heritage

Tool of the week

• senseItemLabel is a UserScript by User:Jon Harald Søby The Script Lets you add the lemma for the current lexeme as a label to items added to the lexeme's senses as item for this sense (P5137) in one click.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• If you've noticed a performance issue with Magnus Manske's MixMatch gagdet, User:IagoQnsi has suggested a fix, the comment and code is available from Talk:Magnus Manske#MixMatch performance

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • ‎Lemmy instance URL (the Lemmy instance of or about the subject)
  • ‎part number (identifier for a product or part designated by its manufacturer for inventory and ordering purposes)
• Newest External identifiers: Noormags ID, PnP device ID, PnP vendor ID, ‎GENC 3-character code, ‎Sancho el Sabio Foundation ID, ‎British Authors author ID, VGA Legacy MKIII graphics card ID, ‎qamus.inoor.ir entry ID, PortableApps ID, Chinese Engineers Relational Database ID, ‎DisplaySpecifications.com model ID, Vix Vocal work id, Naturalis author ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • maximum supported display resolution (maximum pixel resolution that this computing hardware or technological standard supports)
  • cookie policy (cookie policy of this website, software or digital product)
  • yayasan ID (identifier for Indonesian foundation on vervalyayasan.data.kemdikbud.go.id)
  • luminance (measured quantity of photometric brightness (luminous intensity per area))
• New External identifier property proposals to review: Filmarks ID, Medicin.dk disorder ID, Interaktionsdatabasen ID, A Dictionary of Food and Nutrition entry ID, OpenStreetMap role, TechPowerUp CPU Specs Database ID, GPUZoo ID, CPU-World ID, Adebiportal author, RIA Novosti person ID, The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion entry ID, Qalamger.kz author ID, Does the Dog Die? media ID, Sultanlar Ligi player ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • maps of running and closed railway stations in Denmark
  • Formula One Teams by employee count - source: Discord
• WikiProject Highlights:
  • Piano Rolls - has bee greatly expanded and subpages added.
  • Open Topstukken Maastricht University and Radboud University - A user manual for contributing.
• Showcase Items: Because You Left

(Q1059888) - episode of Lost (S5 E1)

• Showcase Lexemes:Knoten (L298686) - German noun (ˈknoːtn̩) meaning "tied fastening of ropes/strings", "speed unit in aviation/shipping", or "tangled clump of hair"

Development

• Mobile statement editing: We continue to make good progress, which you can check out on beta Wikidata. Specifically it is now possible to
  • save changes to edits made to string Properties on statements (without losing qualifier / reference information) (phab:T401405)
  • change the rank of statements (phab:T402436)
• Query Service UI: jhsoby submitted patches for two issues related to the example dialog. Thank you! (phab:T405747, phab:T405720)
• Lexicographical data: 1F616EMO submitted a patch to fix a localization issue on the Lexeme page. Thank you! (phab:T322526)
• Dumps: We fixed issues with the n-triples and truthy dumps generation and set up a dashboard for monitoring (phab:T403882)
• GraphQL: We are continuing to make labels of linked entities accessible in the GraphQL endpoint (phab:T404692)
• Wikidata in Wikipedia and co: We are continuing to work on improvements to how we technically track the use of Wikidata in the other Wikimedia projects in order to reduce the amount of changes from Wikidata in the watchlist and recent changes on Wikipedia and co.
• Wikidata Query Service GUI: We deployed two fixes by User:Jon Harald Søby, thank you! (phab:T405720, phab:T405747)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Weekly Tasks

• Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
• Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
• Govdirectory weekly focus country: Bulgaria
• Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
• Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
• Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
• Help write the next summary!

· Previous issue · Full report · Unsubscribe . JosefAnthony talk ·MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:53, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Statements in item for "<bird species> in <plant species>"

Recently, I created a Wikidata item Q136278724 for Commons CAT:Chrysomma sinense on cenchrus americanus. The CAT has images of Yellow-eyed babbler (Chrysomma sinense) perched on or foraging in Pearl millet (Cenchrus americanus). I added "part of" statements, but this does not capture the relationship between the two species. What statements will capture the relationship between the two species? Tagooty (talk) 12:52, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

Some examples I found:

• Multiple category's main topic (P301): Used by Category:Roman governors of Lycia et Pamphylia (Q10020032)
• Multiple category combines topics (P971): Used by Category:Dutch politicians (Q7068416), Q105254332, Q109379637, Category:Frost on trees (Q115697829)
• Multiple depicts (P180): Used by Claddagh ring (Q965753), Moai kavakava (Q6886361)

I'm not familiar with common categories, but based on these examples category combines topics (P971) seems to work the best. Difool (talk) 06:08, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

@Difool: Thanks for the pointers. Tagooty (talk) 06:50, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

@Tagooty I further cleaned the category item Q136278724 for you, have a look. Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 15:32, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks Tagooty (talk) 16:00, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Please note our notability policy. According to #1.4 "Category items with a sitelink only to Wikimedia Commons are not permitted, unless either a) there is a corresponding main item which has a sitelink to a Commons gallery or b) the item is used in a Commons-related statement, such as category for pictures taken with this camera (P2033)". Samoasambia ✎ 16:06, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

@Samoasambia: Thanks for this info. The new item is part of the main item Yellow-eyed babbler. This seems to qualify as #1.4(a). What statement(s) should I use to indicate this? Tagooty (talk) 03:58, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Is sex/gender common knowledge not requiring source?

Hello, I got this revert from @Estopedist1 saying that sex or gender (P21) does not require sources, at least in the more 'obvious' cases. Is this true and should I then be not adding sources to these statements?

By the way, if you are looking for the information in the source cited, you have to go to 'MARC' tab to see the full data (line 375). Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 06:53, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

I don't see how sources are a bad thing, but how does the source know, unless they just inferred the gender? Not a very useful source maybe. You probably want a citation for people who are living to satisfy WD:LP. Any source will do for that, even a crappy one. Infrastruktur (talk) 08:38, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Yes indeed, most database sources for sex/gender are probably going to be a little doubtful for that reason, but I thought that 'anything is better than nothing' in most cases. Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 09:02, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

to say that someone is "human" and which gender he/she is, shouldn't be never referenced, it is obvious infoclutter. LGBT+ or possibly fictional human may have reference(s). More interesting topic is given and family names, especially when dealing with older humans (lived before 1900) Estopedist1 (talk) 11:17, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

I don’t see how proper references for potentially doubtful statements could constitute obvious infoclutter. --Emu (talk) 22:44, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

We do have roughly 5 million items with referenced P21 values and I don't see that as a problem. Sometimes items have multiple P21 statements and having references on them helps out in finding what is the correct one in order to deprecate the incorrect one. Most basic reference one could add is based on heuristic (P887)inferred from person's given name (Q69652498), and that's used on nearly 1 million items (I can't remember which bot were adding these). Some external databases have more false values and some less. At least IdRef ID (P269) has been found to have lots of gender mismatches. DifoolBot (ping Difool) has been lately adding some P21 statements/references based at least on GND and I find that useful. Samoasambia ✎ 15:19, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

I think saying instance of (P31)human (Q5) can require no reference is reasonable, although a discussion before a massive removal of references would be needed; I disagree about removing references to sex or gender (P21), firstly because I also think "that 'anything is better than nothing' in most cases", secondly because the community in 2024 approved a bot task exactly adding GND ID (P227) as source for P21 with no objection (Wikidata:Requests for permissions/Bot/EpidòseosBot); thirdly, I think that this should not be discussed here but in Property talk:P21#References, hierarchy of sources, and redundancy. Epìdosis 17:38, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

@Epìdosis Thanks for the pointer to the discussion. NKC would qualifier there as a 'good source' unless otherwise challenged. I don't have a well-founded opinion on based on heuristic (P887) which seems to be the only remaining controversial point in the discussion there. Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 07:34, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

I would agree that, in many case, a sex or gender (P21) claim does not require references. That is entirely different from saying that they must have no references. I see no point in removing such references once they have been provided. Bovlb (talk) 21:29, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

"significant person" and BLP

significant person (P3342) is a topic of a discussion in frwiki. Some media person in France, Wikipedia detractor but it's not relevant, published a complaint about being associated to another person somewhat mistakenly. It turns out the edit had been made with this property on Wikidata, as I understand.

The linking between two person, whatever it is, can be sensitive and should be under WD:BLP sensitive information rule. I think we should add a constraint to require a reference in those kind of case (although the property is not used only in person items). And the kind of relationships should be explicited by a qualifier, but maybe it's another story.

Can we handle this ? Agree this is sensitive ? Does this require a property split to have a property dedicated to persons ? author  TomT0m / talk page 14:53, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

WD:BLP does lay out the process for adding things to BLP categories. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 21:47, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

OK, two questions

1. What happens to properties on that list ?
2. That does not seem to solve the constraint problem ? How a user that adds some statements and does not check the list has a message "this needs a reference" ?

author  TomT0m / talk page 07:41, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Cancelled honours

James Wallace (Q96152128) is a formally high-flying living person who has had a fall from grace. I've added their convictions, based on examples given in convicted of (P1399). I can't work out how to add their parole (primary source at https://www.paroleboard.govt.nz/decisions/decisions_2023/james_hay_wallace_17112023, many secondary and tertiary sources in google); the stripping of royal honours (primary source at https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2023-10/dpmc-roia-oia-2023-24-0151.pdf, many secondary and tertiary sources in google); or the (now expired) court-ordered suppression of their name (primary source at https://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/assets/cases/2023/2023-NZSC-74.pdf, many secondary and tertiary sources in google). Also, given that these are very serious things about a living person, should I be double-referencing these things, or is a single reference acceptable? Stuartyeates (talk) 06:37, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

@Stuartyeates If you have a place of detention (P2632) you could add an end time (P582) and end cause (P1534) parole (Q5357120) qualifier. With the stripping of royal honours you could add end time (P582) and end cause (P1534) forfeiture (Q66004555) A single reliable reference should be enough but there's no harm in adding more, Piecesofuk (talk) 08:56, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Do items have to have external identifiers to pass Wikidata Notability criteria #2 (WDN2)?

This follows from an RFD discussion with @Bovlb in https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Requests_for_deletions#Q124971965

WDN2 in full states: "It refers to an instance of a clearly identifiable conceptual or material entity that can be described using serious and publicly available references."

Bovlb claims that for an item "To satisfy N2, it requires both references and identifiers", "N2 requires items to be identifiable. The normal way we identify items is through the use of identifiers.", "This seems to me to be the plain language interpretation of the policy you quoted, so I'm not sure what else you're looking for."

I claim that the word "identifiable" as used in WDN2 means "able to be recognized or named" eg https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/identifiable This does not suggest that external identifiers are required, so that only "serious and publicly available references" are necessary to pass WDN2.

If external identifiers are necessary to pass WDN2 why doesn't it explicitly state that?

Was this policy enforced back in the early days of Wikidata when barely a fraction of the current external IDs would have existed? (This wording for WDN2 has existed since at least 2013 https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata:Notability&oldid=50367175) I imagine that the current external IDs are barely a fraction of what will exist in the future.

I believe this policy would be pro-Western biased, i.e. most of the external IDs are for organisations based in Europe and the US with English (where the language is specified) being the most widely used language. The item in question in the RFD is an Egyptian publication published in Arabic (which does have serious and publicly available references).

What types of external identifiers are necessary? instance of (P31) Wikidata property for an identifier that suggests notability (Q62589316) (about 10% of all identifiers) or perhaps any identifier that is not instance of (P31) Wikidata property for an identifier that does not imply notability (Q62589320)? Piecesofuk (talk) 08:31, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Creating a new item with neither wikidata or external ids does make it vulnerable to deletion as its not been shown that any of the notability clauses apply. Adding an external ID should satisfy the serious, public reference clause, as the property review process should have ensured the source is trusted. I don't see why you'd also need to invoke the reference qualifiers. And your Wikidata property for an identifier that does not imply notability (Q62589320) caveat seems sensible. A described by source (P1343)/URL (P2699) pair should also be acceptable if refers to a trusted source. We don't want to have to create properties for everything.

So, for example, I'm considering adding all the caves in the Peak District Caving (Q130381737) site. They will just have the name, length and position scraped from the site and a described by source (P1343)/URL (P2699) pointing to the site which might have reams of information on the cave's map, access, photos etc. As a clear physical thing, notability is not really a problem for a cave, but we want to say more than just "there is a cave".

The way to avoid pro-western bias must be to have more trusted non-western external identifiers and sources, not to be more lax. Vicarage (talk) 08:42, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

@Vicarage Are you saying that even if it has "serious and publicly available references" it must also have an external ID?

No, but unless you record something in WD, how else are you going to demonstrate to other WD users that it does?Vicarage (talk) 08:52, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

I am equally confused. @Vicarage are you suggesting, that the use of extensive references to URLs and Wikidata items for each statement (as is the case for item Q124971965, which sparked this discussion) is insufficient and should be supplemented by described by source (P1343)/URL (P2699)? This would contradict years of discussions on and arguments behind the necessity of referencing statements. OpenArabicPE (talk) 09:14, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

No. Vicarage (talk) 11:35, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

I think there are plenty of existing Wikidata items that don't have external identifiers and don't remember us having a standard for WDN2 requiring external Ids before.

In this case "Jara'id: A Chronology of Arabic Periodicals (1800-1929)" does seem to me clearly a serious and publicly available reference and it was properly referenced. We can argue that a P1343 "Jara'id: A Chronology of Arabic Periodicals (1800-1929)" claim would be good at the item in question but I don't think it should be required for notability. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 12:22, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Agree with ChristianKl here. External identifiers are great, but they are neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for notability − per Q62589320 there are IDs that do not mean much ; and as the present example seems like there is no ID but the notability is granted by Q124971965

Now, we can also get a “Jara'id periodical ID” going, so that we can have al-Ṭalba al-Miṣriyyūn (Q124971965)Jara'id periodical IDt1r1861. Sounds like a good idea to me, but it’s orthogonal to this notability question. Jean-Fred (talk) 16:27, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

How to express that a source is part of a series

At Lacul Furtuna (Q35721723), in a reference I use several times (e.g. for official name (P1448), I get a warning for indicating that the referenced online document is part of the series (P179) Romanian Statistical Yearbook (Q23073957). Is there some better way to express this within the item, or would I actually have to create a Wikidata item for the referenced PDF to express this without violating constraints? - Jmabel (talk) 23:47, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

User:باسم

Hello. I was wrongly blocked "from specified non-editing actions" by administrator باسم under the pretense of vandalism on Noureddine Bikr (Q12249129), specifically its languages spoken, written or signed (P1412) for which I have provided a source, and over which we've already had a discussion on the Administrator's noticeboard which resulted in keeping the value as Moroccan Arabic (Q56426). The administrator is abusing his user privileges to settle the dispute in which he is involved, and claims that "Moroccan Arabic is a spoken Accent not a written language", which is out of scope (the property concerns spoken languages too), and not factual, as Moroccan Darija, aka Moroccan Arabic is a recognized dialect/language with the ISO-639-3 code ary, and is written both online and offline, though the number of serious publications is relatively limited. Examples include Khbar Bladna (Q108629364) which was a newspaper published in Moroccan Arabic (Q56426), as well as Nichane (Q3339636) magazine; literary works by Driss Amghar Mesnaoui (Q108610496), Ahmed Lemsyeh (Q4695897), Mourad Alami (Q100376399) and others. list of Moroccan Darija books (Q108603387) represents a list of such publications with dozens of titles, and there's also Moroccan Darija dictionary (Q115182612) which lists 40 Moroccan Arabic (Q56426) dictionaries, list of Moroccan Darija theater publications (Q124071294) and hundreds of published poetry collections in list of Moroccan Darija poetry collections (Q109031442). I have written a similar message on the talk page of the item, asking the administrator to restore the item and remove the block, but unfortunately he did not comply. I opened a discussion on the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and was redirected here. Thank you and have a good day! Ideophagous (talk) 08:39, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Relevant previous discussion: Wikidata:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive/2022/09#Ideophagous

TLDR: Three years ago, the same admin blocked the same user for the same thing. The user was unblocked and there was a general consensus that the block was inappropriate, although a number of editors spoke up in the administrator's defence. The underlying content issue is that many Arabic speakers do not consider dialects like "Moroccan Arabic" to be a legitimate language, and that using it with languages spoken, written or signed (P1412) is therefore inherently vandalism. Bovlb (talk) 16:57, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

From claims in the previous discussion, there appear to be sources that indicate Noureddine Bikr (Q12249129) spoke Moroccan Arabic, Arabic, and French. All parties were urged to add sources to their language claims, but this still doesn't seem to be happening. Bovlb (talk) 17:03, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

I have removed the block as "clearly inappropriate given the previous discussion". As above, I don't think Ideophagous is acting perfectly here, but it should have been perfectly obvious to باسم that they should not have made this block. Let's discuss what further action would be appropriate here. Bovlb (talk) 17:06, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Bovlb. I have added a source (also mentioned above), but Bassem removed it as well. Ideophagous (talk) 18:20, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for removing the block by the way. You stated that I was "not acting perfectly" in this matter. What do you suggest when dealing with such situations? Ideophagous (talk) 18:22, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

Let me explain what I meant by "not acting perfectly". On 2025-08-33, you replaced Arabic with Moroccan Arabic without adding any reference. You have already been asked to made such changes as additions instead of replacements. (I wish I could say the stronger "you should not be removing sourced claims", but that claim was inexplicably not sourced either and still isn't.) And you only added the source several weeks later, when you should already have been well-aware that the claim was controversial. None of this is block-worthy, in my view, but it's needlessly provocative and therefore harder to defend. Bovlb (talk) 20:20, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

@Bovlb: Thank you for considering this matter. The issue is not between me and this particular user, but rather one that has faced the Arabic Wikipedia community as a whole since 2008. The root of the problem lies in the fact that no one listened to the objections voiced by members of the community when the establishment of a Wikipedia in the Egyptian dialect was announced.

We have repeatedly emphasized that the primary reference should be the perspective of the speakers themselves regarding their identity and language, not the stance of international organizations, whatever they may be. In the Arab world, we firmly believe that we all speak Arabic in its various dialects, across a vast region stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Zagros Mountains, and from Cilicia to Yemen.

We do not consider, for instance, that Moroccans speak an entirely separate language—despite the fact that many Arabs find Moroccan Arabic to be the most challenging dialect. Yet, if someone were to live in Morocco for only a few months, they would quickly come to understand it just as the locals do. If you ask any Arab—or anyone who understands Arabic—what language the people of a given Arab country speak, the answer will simply be “Arabic.” If they say “Lebanese Arabic,” “Egyptian Arabic,” or “Moroccan Arabic,” it is merely to point out the dialect, not to imply that it is a distinct language.

This is the view at the popular, everyday level. At the scholarly level, if you were to ask the distinguished academies of the Arabic language in Damascus, Cairo, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, or even in Turkey and Western institutions that teach Arabic, whether “Moroccan Arabic” (for example) constitutes a separate language, they would readily provide numerous arguments as to why it is not. This was precisely what I asked the colleague mentioned above to demonstrate, but he refused.

We have also reiterated many times that Arabic dialects have not historically been used for serious scholarly or literary works, nor is it appropriate to write in them for reasons too lengthy to enumerate here. Those who have written in dialects, such as the aforementioned figures, had specific nationalistic or ideological motivations. They represented only a small subset of society, and such individuals cannot be counted among the ranks of mainstream scholars and writers. If they did so at some point, it was, in the eyes of many, a “misstep”.

I apologize for this lengthy preface, but it was necessary in order to convey the following point: The Arabic Wikipedia relies heavily on Wikidata to display information in various templates. When someone’s language is presented as “X dialect,” it exposes us—and our encyclopedia—to ridicule from readers, including Moroccans themselves. Some even go so far as to claim that we are an unreliable encyclopedia, or that we harbor agendas aimed at fragmenting the Arab identity of one nation or another, or that we are “anti-Arab.” Such accusations are both offensive and disheartening.

Most importantly, however, the Arabic Wikipedia community has felt insulted, disregarded, and demeaned since 2008, as I have noted, and the appeals of those who objected with solid arguments and evidence have gone unheard. I admit there has been significant and regrettable negligence on the part of Arabic Wikipedia editors. Many object but remain passive, leaving only a small group to act. When these few become discouraged by the lack of response, we are left with nothing but individual efforts to defend the encyclopedia against these injustices.

I sincerely hope that the administrators of all sister projects—including Meta and the Incubator—recognize that this matter is offensive to the peoples of the region and to their language. Personally, I no longer object to the existence of a Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia; I treat it as any other project. But I cannot accept that such a contentious claim be disseminated through Wikidata, where it appears across multiple Wikipedias as though it were an undisputed fact. If it must indeed be published, and the objections of the Arabic community are once again to be ignored, then I hope those responsible for the site’s technical structure can at least provide a satisfactory solution.

One final note: these words do not stem from any ideological bias, as I have been accused of in the past.

kind regards-- باسم (talk) 06:12, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the lengthy explanation. This makes things a little clearer than they were last time. If I might summarise, you are saying that there is widespread resistance in the Arabic Wikipedia community to showing dialects of Arabic in infoboxes. Serving the needs of client projects is an important part of Wikidata's mission, but we need to consider the needs of all client projects, and we also need to consider the other parts of the Wikidata mission. This is not the first time the issue has come up that someone decides that infoboxes on a specific project can be improved by deleting information from Wikidata, but we repeatedly determine that is not a sufficient reason to delete sourced information, especially if it might be useful to another client project.

Normally we encounter this problem from newcomers, not administrators. It might be the case that simply claiming that someone speaks a dialect of Arabic is considered vandalism and grounds for a block on the Arabic Wikipedia. Here on Wikidata, such a block is considered to be an abuse of administrative powers. Three years ago, I thought it might be a simple error that we could move on from. Doing the exact same thing a second time after being reversed and rebuked suggests that there is no learning or improvement taking place here. Your position here is starkly at odds with the norms and policies of the Wikidata community. How do you want to resolve this? Bovlb (talk) 15:52, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

@علاء, @Mohammed Qays: Can you offer any perspective here? Is this really the way things are done in the Arabic Wikipedia? Bovlb (talk) 16:27, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

@Bovlb I agree with what my colleague @Bassem mentioned, and indeed, as an editor in the template namespace who constantly works on them, I can say that Arabic Wikipedia templates rely almost entirely on Wikidata, which causes significant harm to Arabic Wikipedia. Also, the dialects referred to are merely means of communication, similar to the Iraqi dialect. These dialects can even differ within a single country or region. In Iraq, for example, there are tribes whose dialects differ from those of other tribes, and this in itself highlights the major weakness of dialects. Therefore, in all Arab countries, the official dialect is Arabic, and no other language exists. Mohammed Qays (talk) 16:48, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. If it is indeed the case that "claiming that someone speaks a dialect of Arabic is considered vandalism and grounds for a block on the Arabic Wikipedia", is this policy documented anywhere? Bovlb (talk) 19:00, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

I would consider that to be a significant misuse of the term "vandalism". Vandalism is characterized by malice (or, at least, by frivolity). To say that [describing X as Y] is vandalism, is to say that no one actually believes that. There is a significant difference between "I must add the truth to this entry" and "LOL PRANK'D".

"That is how it should be described" vs "hahahaha they'll never catch that!" (or "I'm sure they'll revert it in a few seconds, so it doesn't matter!").

You might argue that anything which diminishes the integrity of the database should be called vandalism, but that is equivalent to arguing that there is no difference between "you could probably benefit from being a little more polite" and "you're an abusive monster".

And you (not you, Bovlb!) could probably benefit from being a little more polite.

Characterizing a disagreement as vandalism raises the emotional stakes, hinders dispute resolution, and risks driving away good-faith contributors. DS (talk) 13:28, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Bovlb @Mohammed Qays @باسم. Thank you for presenting your perspective on the matter. Let me answer Bassem's points one by one:

The root of the problem lies in the fact that no one listened to the objections voiced by members of the community when the establishment of a Wikipedia in the Egyptian dialect was announced.

Even though many editors work on both Arabic and Moroccan Darija Wikipedias, the latter constitutes a community of its own made up of and dedicated only to Moroccan Darija speakers (i.e. more than 90% of Moroccans who speak it as L1 or L2). This community, small as it is, also has its own rules, concerns and aspirations. It makes no sense to claim that the existence of another community bothers you or offends you. Nobody is forced to contribute to the Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia and vice versa. The Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia is irrelevant to this discussion.

We have repeatedly emphasized that the primary reference should be the perspective of the speakers themselves regarding their identity and language, not the stance of international organizations, whatever they may be. In the Arab world, we firmly believe that we all speak Arabic in its various dialects, across a vast region stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Zagros Mountains, and from Cilicia to Yemen.

The contributors to the Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia are mainly its native speakers (such as myself), with some L2 speakers occasionally contributing. And contrary to what you claimed at the end of your comment, your statement "In the Arab world, we firmly believe that we all speak Arabic", is very ideological. Who put you in charge of speaking in the name of Moroccans? Unless you have firm statistics, please restrict your statement to your country or whichever countries or communities you actually know closely. Sure there are Moroccans who are against writing Darija, but also those who support it. The issue of writing Darija is highly controversial in Morocco, but the Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia exists because there was a community that built it and continues to do so, even though it's still not widely known among Moroccans, and does not always appear on the first page of web searches.

We do not consider, for instance, that Moroccans speak an entirely separate language—despite the fact that many Arabs find Moroccan Arabic to be the most challenging dialect.

It's a separate language, though lacking a standardized form. That's what most linguists who studied it agree upon. The statement "it's just a dialect" is only espoused by laypeople with limited knowledge of linguistics, since the difference between "dialect" and "language" is only political. Here's a quote from the book "Initiation to language: A Moroccan perspective" (pages 11-12) by Abdellah El Haloui, professor of linguistics at Cadi Ayyad University (Q737095) in Marrakesh (Q101625):

... Some politicians took advantage of the confusion resulting from the common people's misconceptions about language to maneuver their views and choices. One example of these misconceptions is the misleading contrast that has been often made in the public discussions about the language issue in Morocco between what common people are willing to call "language" and what they frown upon as mere "dialect", where the former term is used for "an inherently qualified, sophisticated and high communication system" while the latter is used for "an inherently disqualified, degenerate and low communication system". In this sense, Arabic and French are thought to be "languages" while Moroccan Darija and Amazigh are thought to be "dialects". Although unbiased linguists would judge these definitions as inadequate in terms of what they intend to describe and disoriented in terms of how they are used...

Yet, if someone were to live in Morocco for only a few months, they would quickly come to understand it just as the locals do. If you ask any Arab—or anyone who understands Arabic—what language the people of a given Arab country speak, the answer will simply be “Arabic.” If they say “Lebanese Arabic,” “Egyptian Arabic,” or “Moroccan Arabic,” it is merely to point out the dialect, not to imply that it is a distinct language.

This just proves my point. You need a few months as a speaker of Arabic or one of its Eastern dialects to learn conversational Moroccan. That's around the same amount of time it takes semi-educated Romanian workers in Italy to pick up conversational Italian. Some even claim it takes them only a few weeks. It's normal for speakers of different languages that are similar enough, but also different enough. But learning a language deeply can take a lifetime. A lot of Darija words for objects, plants, animals, practices, etc are very different from Arabic ones, and even a native speaker may not know them if they don't have direct or daily exposure to those words. An outsider doesn't even stand a chance.

This is the view at the popular, everyday level. At the scholarly level, if you were to ask the distinguished academies of the Arabic language in Damascus, Cairo, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, or even in Turkey and Western institutions that teach Arabic, whether “Moroccan Arabic” (for example) constitutes a separate language, they would readily provide numerous arguments as to why it is not. This was precisely what I asked the colleague mentioned above to demonstrate, but he refused.

I answered above with a quote from a known Moroccan linguist. Moroccan Darija differs from Arabic in some fundamental aspects in terms of phonology (e.g. vowel system, a few extra consonants and a few missing ones compared to Arabic, etc), morphology and syntax (e.g. the lack of the dual form in all verb conjugations and most nouns, several other aspects of verb conjugation, the passive form of verbs which has a completely different rule compared to Arabic, some derivation templates which don't exist in Arabic, etc), and vocabulary (a lot of Amazigh/Berber, French, and Spanish loanwords). No sane linguist would agree with what you stated, so I have no idea where you came up with that.

We have also reiterated many times that Arabic dialects have not historically been used for serious scholarly or literary works, nor is it appropriate to write in them for reasons too lengthy to enumerate here. Those who have written in dialects, such as the aforementioned figures, had specific nationalistic or ideological motivations. They represented only a small subset of society, and such individuals cannot be counted among the ranks of mainstream scholars and writers. If they did so at some point, it was, in the eyes of many, a “misstep”.

You claim that those who write in dialects had "nationalistic or ideological motivations", but that you don't have similar motivations? The persistance in suppressing the expression of a fact (that there are people who speak or write in Moroccan Darija or some other dialect) betrays the opposite. Furthermore, intellectuals and academics are always a small subset of society, and the fact that Moroccan Darija (the topic at hand) has not been as commonly written as established languages, is simply the consequence of government policies, just like it suppressed Berber and its dialects for decades until it was finally recognized as an official language in 2011.

I apologize for this lengthy preface, but it was necessary in order to convey the following point: The Arabic Wikipedia relies heavily on Wikidata to display information in various templates. When someone’s language is presented as “X dialect,” it exposes us—and our encyclopedia—to ridicule from readers, including Moroccans themselves. Some even go so far as to claim that we are an unreliable encyclopedia, or that we harbor agendas aimed at fragmenting the Arab identity of one nation or another, or that we are “anti-Arab.” Such accusations are both offensive and disheartening.

That's easy to fix with a bot. You just have to fill the "spoken or written language" field in "infobox person" with whatever information you consider "appropriate", whenever Wikidata has the value "Moroccan Arabic". I'm sure there are many competent developers on arwiki who can do that.

Most importantly, however, the Arabic Wikipedia community has felt insulted, disregarded, and demeaned since 2008, as I have noted, and the appeals of those who objected with solid arguments and evidence have gone unheard. I admit there has been significant and regrettable negligence on the part of Arabic Wikipedia editors. Many object but remain passive, leaving only a small group to act. When these few become discouraged by the lack of response, we are left with nothing but individual efforts to defend the encyclopedia against these injustices.

The Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia constitutes, in principle, a different community. I'm not sure how your statement is relevant.

I sincerely hope that the administrators of all sister projects—including Meta and the Incubator—recognize that this matter is offensive to the peoples of the region and to their language.

It may be offensive to some people in Morocco, but it's refreshing and desirable to others. The opinion of people outside of Morocco such as yourself, is not relevant to this matter. Nor does the Moroccan Darija community, as far as I know, care if other Arabic dialects have their own Wikipedia or not. It is only the concern of their native speakers and their respective communities.

One final note: these words do not stem from any ideological bias, as I have been accused of in the past.

Yeah, right. Ideophagous (talk) 21:43, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

All humans have ideological bias. I'm fairly confident that you, باسم, are a human. DS (talk) 13:32, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

The Arabian Wikipedia community is separate from Wikidata and even if you think that the Arabic Wikipedia holds an opinion that Morrocon Arabic is not a valid language, that doesn't make it Wikidata policy. We did find a consensus on this issue three years ago as Bovlb correctly points out.

If the Arabic Wikipedia doesn't want to Morrocon Arabic to appear in infoboxes driven by templates, they are free to edit the module that creates the infoboxes to either ignore Morrocon Arabic or replace it with Arabic (and do the same for any other Arabic dialects that might have a similar dynamic). The module lives in the Wikipedia namespace, so there's no reason to involve Wikidata here if your prime concern is how information displays in infoboxes at the Arabian Wikipedia.

There are plenty of cases, where you have one big group that has opinions that differ from a minority. Wikidata is designed to be pluralistic and include minority perspectives. We don't try to privilege the position of Spanish nationalists over those of Catalan nationalists nor privileging the position of Pan Arab nationalism over Moroccan Darija. The Arabian Wikipedia itself is free to have a Pan Arab nationalism stance but that does not mean that this is Wikidata policy. Just because most professors of the Arabian language are Pan Arab nationalists, that doesn't mean either that it's Wikidata policy to ignore the concerns of the minority. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 08:14, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

@باسم: It would be better to have wider input here, but I see no evidence of any change to the clear consensus that this use of admin tools is unacceptable.

Your defence, as I understand it, is that you were enforcing a “policy” imported from Arabic Wikipedia, but no-one has been able to point to where such a policy is documented, and even if it were, that would not justify enforcing it here on Wikidata.

You have also not addressed the fact that three years ago you were rebuked and reversed for this same misuse of tools, yet you chose to repeat it. This is not a matter of misunderstanding once, but of disregarding community feedback and continuing the same conduct.

You did not answer my earlier question about how you want to proceed. The constructive paths I can see are, in decreasing order of preference:

1. Clear and convincing assurances that this pattern of conduct will not be repeated
2. Voluntary resignation of adminship
3. Escalation to Wikidata:Requests for permissions/Removal

If you can propose a different path forward, I would love to hear it. If no assurances are forthcoming, the community may be left with no choice but to pursue the third option. Last time, we tried simple rebuke and reversal. Your silence left the matter unresolved, and the problem has since repeated. That approach cannot be relied on again. Bovlb (talk) 17:42, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

@Bovlb: Hello.

Frankly, I did not know what to say after reading the above—the mocking tone, followed by the belittling of what the scholars of the Arabic language and the professors of the mentioned language academies have said, and the prejudgment that they are driven by ideology and nationalism, discarding their knowledge, research, and expertise as if it were worthless! I believe that anything I could add afterwards would have no real value. (And I hope that anyone who mocks understands that those they are addressing are more than capable of responding in the same, if not harsher, tone. But I also believe that we are all adults and respectful individuals—are we not? If that is the case, then everyone should be mindful of their manner of discourse in any prior debate. After all, we are not bickering in a school cafeteria.)

I no longer know how to convince this community that what is happening is an insult to the Arabic Wikipedia community and has no scientific merit. Apparently, none of this matters as long as this so-called “language” has an ISO code. In any case, as I have mentioned, I will not take any action on Wikidata regarding this issue. I have done what I could, and it is clear that nothing further will help.

I have only one suggestion: if there is a technical way to restrict the appearance of this “language” to Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia alone, while excluding all other projects, this would at least prevent Wikidata from contributing to confusing readers and spreading misleading information. If this is not possible for any reason—or if someone considers it an act of “suppressing” free knowledge—then do as you wish.

I only hope some will realize that by doing so, they are offending everyone who understands Arabic, as well as the language itself. Thank you-- باسم (talk) 19:21, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your assurance. Unfortunately, you have not really engaged with the core issue here, which suggests that you may not fully understand it. This is not about a content dispute; it is about conduct, specifically misuse of administrative tools. You have twice blocked a user that you were in a content dispute with, having been reversed and rebuked the first time. With regard to that conduct issue, can you give the community a clear assurance that you recognize this as improper and that it will not happen again? Bovlb (talk) 19:51, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Yes. Like i said earlier: I will not take any action on Wikidata regarding this issue-- باسم (talk) 10:08, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

I appreciate that some assurances have now been offered, although I find them to be ambiguous and not clearly directed at the use of admin tools in a content dispute. At this point, I think it would be helpful to hear from other administrators and editors on whether the response given here is sufficient. I'm going to step back for now to leave space for wider community input. Bovlb (talk) 18:13, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

@Bovlb: I thank you for your circumspect handling of the matter and share your open questions about the propriety of this kind of admin conduct. --Emu (talk) 23:03, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

If I would ask a lot of scholars of the Russian language whether or not Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian and all the scholars of the Russian language would tell us that Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian that would not lead us at Wikidata to declare that Ukrainian is just a dialect of Russian. This is not an act of belittling scholars of Russian, it's just noticing that it's a case where different communities has different views.

Each Wikipedia has it's own modules and templates. There's no central module that handles the relevant templates and even if there was the same principle of Wikidata being a neutral party that publishes information from different perspectives would apply. You are free to lobby on individual Wikipedia's that have templates that use this information that they should configure their templates/modules to ignore certain languages like Morrocon Arabic. I would expect major Wikipedia's like EnWiki to share valuing minority rights, meaning that they wouldn't want to ignore Morrocon Arabic but you are free to plead your case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccan_Arabic for example is pretty clear about the EnWiki position being that it's a language). ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 10:51, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

@ChristianKl The POV that Moroccan Darija can be considered a language is certainly not a minority opinion among linguists, and in the worst case it represents a large and significant minority among laypeople in Morocco. The main controversy is over whether it should be introduced in schools and administration, which is irrelevant to this discussion. A few years ago there was a televized debate over this question in Morocco, between Abdallah Laroui (Q1753931) and Noureddine Ayouch (Q16666831). At no point in the discussion did either of the debaters claim that Darija was not a legitimate language, and the debate mainly centered around technicalities (e.g. which script would be used Arabic or Latin), whether it should be introduced in primary schools to ease the transition of young students, and the political implications of such an implementation. Ideophagous (talk) 06:56, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Without having read this whole discussion, for people interested in the discourse if "dialects like 'Moroccan Arabic' [are] a legitimate language" two literature recommendations: Sacred Language, Ordinary People. Dilemmas of Culture and Politics in Egypt (Q113865023) and Language and Identity in Modern Egypt (Q126897877). Both take Egypt or Egyptian Arabic as a case study, but the relevant thoughts apply to any Arabic "colloquial" variety or "dialect". If you'd like to have PDFs, but don't find them, let me know. --Marsupium (talk) 15:46, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Abu Obeida (Q12178106)

The item Abu Obeida (Q12178106) is fully-protected. Could someone add death date, death place, image and link to Commons Category:Abu Obaida (Hamas)? -- Vysotsky (talk) 23:09, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

If you want information about date of death/death place added it would make sense to provide sources. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 11:06, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm214r5rd29o.amp QwertyZ34 (talk) 10:01, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Also assassination of Abu Obaida (Q136030663). --Marsupium (talk) 17:00, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

@Mohammed Qays: can you explain why you created the admin only protection / solve these issues? ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 21:09, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

@ChristianKl The person has not been officially announced as deceased, and the item has experienced a lot of vandalism. I protected it for that reason, and it is proper that we wait for an official announcement from the organization they work with before confirming the death or that they are still alive. Mohammed Qays (talk) 07:33, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

@Mohammed Qays Generally, semiprotecting items helps preventing real vandalism. Vandalism is not a word for "views that you disagree with".

"Only a official annoucement from the organization someone works for" seems to be a sourcing standard that's not our usual sourcing standard on Wikidata, so it sounds to me like you are trying to use your moderator rights to enforce a personal content preference without seeking consensus for it. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 11:10, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

@ChristianKl Thank you for the comment. I would like to clarify that the action is not related to any personal preference, but is based on clear reasons concerning the protection of the item from repeated vandalism and unstable edits, including those occasionally made by users with advanced rights.

According to established practice, the usual procedure in such cases is to restore the stable version prior to the vandalism, and then apply temporary protection until a community consensus is reached.

This is due to the existing disagreement regarding the death of the individual, and therefore, the purpose of the action is to maintain content stability and ensure data accuracy, with any proposed additions or modifications to be discussed on the talk page for further review.

In addition, other encyclopedic projects — including the Arabic Wikipedia — use Wikidata in their infoboxes, which makes the accuracy of this data directly affect the reliability of the content in those projects. Mohammed Qays (talk) 11:39, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

The term vandalism means that a user intentionally crated a bad edit. It doesn't mean that the created an edit that you disagree with even if you would have good reasons for the disagreement. Which Wikidata users are you accusing of having created edits that they know to be bad in that item?

The way to handle disagreements in content is to have a discussion to find consensus about the disagreement. You seem didn't open any discussion on the talk page to find consensus on the question about how date of death should be modeled. Is there a discussion that you opened somewhere else to find consensus? ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 11:47, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

@ChristianKl Thank you for your clarification. I appreciate your note, and I will make sure to open discussions on the talk page in the future whenever there is disagreement about content, in order to reach community consensus.

For clarification, the protection on the item was temporary and expired on 1 October 2025.

I would also like to point out that your comment included a degree of personalization, implying that I have a particular interest or personal views about this individual. In my opinion, this is not an appropriate approach for discussion and does not help in reaching constructive understanding.

Therefore, I prefer not to continue this type of exchange. Thank you for your understanding. Mohammed Qays (talk) 11:56, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Regarding the underlying content question here, it appears that someone (indeed many people) definitely died, but there remains uncertainty about whether the person who died is the same individual using this pseudonym.

A quick survey of the 26 Wikipedia projects with an article shows that (today) 13 state that he is dead, 4 report claims of his death with careful attribution, and 9 make no mention of it. Many in the last category are stub articles. This makes Arabic Wikipedia something of an outlier in providing substantial coverage yet with no mention of either death claims or identity claims.

Wikidata has to serve all client projects, even when they are inconsistent with each other. The appropriate response here is to report claims of the death with careful sourcing and use of statement supported by (P3680) and statement disputed by (P1310). There might also be a case for using a non-default rank, depending on the strength of sources.

Regarding the administrative actions, it does seem unusual to have used full protection in this instance, especially as it effectively supported the editorial position of one project among many. Raising questions about this is a normal and healthy part of community oversight and should not be taken either as personal criticism or as offence. Bovlb (talk) 21:19, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

@Bovlb Thank you for your kind and precise reply. Best regards. Mohammed Qays (talk) 12:43, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

@Mohammed Qays With power comes responsibility. If you use your admin power to silence estabilished users, looking at reasons why you do so is important. If your position is that you don't want to be held accountable for using admin powers like full protection, then don't use them. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 12:34, 11 October 2025 (UTC)