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Wikidata weekly summary #718
[edit]
week leading up to 2026-02-09. Missed the previous one? See issue #717.
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
- Blogs: Numishare Blog: Improving searchability using Natural language Processing + Wikidata - How NLP-based search improvements for numismatic collections for the American Numismatic Society. Python NLP tools and Wikidata add a semantic layer that links equivalent terms (e.g. “serpent” and “snake”) to improve discovery across coin databases such as OCRE and MANTIS. Author: Ethan Gruber.
- Videos:
- Art+Feminism Conversations / Intro to Wikidata + Archives: Led by User:Epìdosis and User:Alan Ang (WMDE), this recording covers tools that support collaborative Wikidata editing, and includes with brief updates on mobile editing, Wikibase software, and work at the intersection of AI and Wikidata. Find more info and tools covered on Meta:Art+Feminism
- Custom Upload Funnel Creation on Wikimedia Commons: Wiki Loves Africa 2026 - User:Kambai Akau and the Tyap User Group demonstrate how to contribute to the Wiki Loves Africa 2026 contest, incl. how to add a Wikidata Infobox to your contributions, and how to create Wikidata Items if they are missing.
- (Papiamento) Add a different language Label to a Wikidata Item Wikipedia Above Aruba|Ep. 9 - it's not always obvious how to add labels, descriptions and aliases of different languages to Wikidata items, this short video demonstrates how.
- Hands-on Exercise: Data Cleaning & Preparation with OpenRefine - Daniel Garjio guides through exercises to cluster and merge duplicate values, standardise formats, reconcile data with external authority sources such as Wikidata.
- (Spanish) Mapeo colaborativo, plataformas libres y autonomía local, part of the Conference on Climate Justice, Indigenous Voices, and Wikimedia Platforms (2024) - speaker: Túllio Morais Franca shows how to integrate mapping tools suchas OpenStreetMap and Mapillary with Wikidata, Commons and Wikipedia.
Tool of the week
- Wiki Clarity Tool: Clarity Tool is a lightweight web application built to empower editors across Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons. It helps contributors identify missing information in articles and suggests structured data from Wikidata to fill those gaps.
- Name Suggestion Index : Submit a Brand - A tool that links Wikidata brand items to the Name Suggestion Index project on OpenStreetMap.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Mobile editors can now edit String and External ID datatypes directly in the mobile view. To help improve this new interface, Wikimedia Deutschland is looking for volunteers for UX testing sessions. Participants will be compensated for their time. Sign up here (greatquestion) and learn more on the project page: Mobile editing of statements
Newest properties and property proposals to review
- Newest General datatypes:
- braille transcription (transcription in Braille)
- location collected (geographic location where a specimen or sample was collected in the field)
- Newest External identifiers: Rappels theatrical production ID, Berlin School ID
- New General datatypes property proposals to review:
- Siège occupé ({{TranslateThis | fr = siège occupé par une personne au sein d'une académie ou autre société à ''numerus clausus'' }})
- Standard Number (A standard serial number)
- New External identifier property proposals to review: MusicaPopular.cl ID, JMRC person id (en), Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography ID, CAMEO page ID, TeamNL athlete ID (new), World Flora Online Plant List, radeberger-stadtgeschichte.de Objekt Identifikator, Master Ideographs Seeker Character ID, Flohic ID, Oricon News person ID, radiko person ID, Xcity actress ID, TV Drama Database Program ID, Van Dale Rijmwoordenboek sentences ID, Van Dale Rijmwoordenboek word ID, BISMaL taxon ID, Vlaams Woordenboek ID, Kotobank Japanese ID, Nişanyan Adlar ID
You can comment on all open property proposals!
Did you know?
- Query examples:
- Items with two or more Olympedia people ID (source) - find duplicate external identifier.
- Music roll releases with recordings of works performed by composer (source)
- Newest WikiProjects:
- Newest database reports: 'Template' items with only one sitelink - per Wikidata:Notability, "If a link is a template, the item must contain at least two such sitelinks..."
- Showcase Items: It Was Just an Accident (Q133866932) - a 2025 thriller film, winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival
- Showcase Lexemes:
Development
- Dumps: We published the report from our research into the user experience with Wikidata's dumps.
- Mobile editing: We are finalizing the support for quantity, monolingual text, mathematical expression and musical notation statements as well as a first version for coordinate statements.
- Wikidata integration in the Wikimedia projects: We have continued our investigation into existing Lua modules in order to find more ways in which we can reduce unwanted entries from Wikidata in Recent changes and watchlists on Wikipedia and co. We found a number of options that we are looking into now. (phab:T416822, phab:T416825, phab:T416826, phab:T416827)
- Wikidata Vector embedding: We added German to the embedding (next to English, French and Arabic)
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!
Tech News: 2026-07
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Logged-in contributors who manage large or complex watchlists can now organise and filter watched pages in ways that improve their workflows with the new Watchlist labels feature. By adding custom labels (for example: pages you created, pages being monitored for vandalism, or discussion pages) users can more quickly identify what needs attention, reduce cognitive load, and respond more efficiently. This improves watchlist usability, especially for highly active editors.- A new feature available on Special:Contributions shows temporary accounts that are likely operated by the same person, and so makes patrolling less time-consuming. Upon checking contributions of a temporary account, users with access to temporary account IP addresses can now see a view of contributions from the related temporary accounts. The feature looks up all the IPs associated with a given temporary account within the data retention period and shows all the contributions of all temporary accounts that have used these IPs. Learn more. [1]
- When editors preview a wikitext edit, the reminder box that they are only seeing a preview (which is shown at the top), now has a grey/neutral background instead of a yellow/warning background. This makes it easier to distinguish preview notes from actual warnings (for example, edit conflicts or problematic redirect targets), which will now be shown in separate warning or error boxes. [2]
- The Global Watchlist lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on one page. The extension continues to improve — it now properly supports more than one Wikibase site, for example both Wikidata and testwikidata. In addition, issues regarding text direction have been fixed for users who prefer Wikidata or other Wikibase sites in right-to-left (RTL) languages. [3][4]
- The automatic "magic links" for ISBN, RFC, and PMID numbers have been deprecated in wikitext since 2021 due to inflexibility and difficulties with localization. Several wikis have successfully replaced RFC and PMID magic links with equivalent external links, but a template was often required to replace the functionality of the ISBN magic link. There is now a new built-in parser function
{{#isbn}}available to replace the basic functionality of the ISBN magic link. This makes it easier for wikis who wish to migrate off of the deprecated magic link functionality to do so. [5] - Two new wikis have been created:
View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- A new global user group has been created: Local bots. It will be used internally by the software to allow community bots to bypass rate limits that are applied to abusive web scrapers. Accounts that are approved as bots on at least one Wikimedia wiki will be automatically added to this group. It will not change what user permissions the bot has. [8]
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- The MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, Spring 2026 will be held March 25–27 in Salt Lake City, USA. This event is organized by and for the third-party MediaWiki community. You can propose sessions and register to attend. [9]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:28, 9 February 2026 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – February 2026
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2026).
- Due to the result of a recent motion, a rough consensus of administrators at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard may impose an expanded topic ban on Israel, Israelis, Jews, Judaism, Palestine, Palestinians, Islam, and/or Arabs, if an editor's Arab-Israeli conflict topic ban is determined to be insufficient to prevent disruption. At least one diff per area expanded into should be cited.
- Voting in the 2026 Steward elections started on 06 February 2026 at 14:00 (UTC) and will end on 27 February 2026 at 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process for current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
This Month in GLAM: January 2026
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[edit]@Mike PeelComputer code ~2026-96853-9 (talk) 19:08, 12 February 2026 (UTC)
Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #235 is out: Finishing each other sentences: Starting things; Offsite in Istanbul
[edit]There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we share the results of our recent team offsite (meeting in person) in Istanbul, Türkiye, especially on creating sentence fragments in several languages.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 16:31, 13 February 2026 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #719
[edit]
week leading up to 2026-02-16. Missed the previous one? See issue #718.
Discussions
- Open request for adminship: Sjö - RfP scheduled to end after 17 February 2026 10:02 (UTC)
- New requests for permissions/Bot: SEEKCommonsBot - Task: Synchronize Wikidata records created by the SEEKCommons project with OpenAlex
- Closed request for permissions/Bot:
- AmeisenBot 3 - Task: Adding descriptions (and possibly labels and aliases as well) to items based on their statements. Request closed as approved.
- Che-W-bot - Request withdrawn.
Events
- Upcoming events: Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group session 17 February, 2026: We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Session on Tuesday, February 17 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET (Time zone converter). Wikiproject P244 maintenance uses SPARQL queries to identify and resolve two types of constraint violations in Wikidata: instances of Wikidata items with more than one LCNAF identifier and instances of the same LCNAF identifier existing on more than one Wikidata item. The February 17th session will walk participants through how to resolve the former issue, while the March 3rd session will focus on the latter. Event page: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_LD4_Wikidata_Affinity_Group/Project_Series/LCNAF_Duplicate_Detection_P244_Maintenance
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
- Blogs:
- Wiki for Botanists, why thematic engagement matters: WMNZ/Aotearoa on how sustained outreach with botanists via Wikidata workshops, edit-a-thons, and conferences is improving plant-related knowledge on the Wikimedia projects and building strong collaborative relationships with scientific communities.
- Tech News Week 7 / Global Watchlists extension: now supports multiple Wikibase instance (i.e. Wikidata + Test Wikidata) and fixes right-to-left (RTL) text directionality issues.
- The Spark of Linked Data and Libraries: OCLC Passage Project White Paper Translation Report
- Papers: Federating Open Knowledge through Wikibase: the case of the Finno-Ugric data sharing space: Antal et al. (2026) present a community-driven, federated prototype to link multilingual cultural heritage data, open ontologies and preserve local epistemologies.
- Videos:
- How to Unlock Knowledge Graph Data for LLMs with AI Retrieval - User:Philippe Saade (WMDE), AI/ML Project Manager talks to Chad Jennings of Beyond the Blueprints (IBM Product Hub) on making Wikidata more accessible for AI developers, replacing SPARQL-heavy workflows with vector search and hybrid retrieval.
- (French) Créer une carte uMap à partir de données géolocalisées extraites de Wikidata - video presentation of 2026 Digital Encounters "Mapping territorial data in uMap"
- Africa Wiki Women 2026 On Wiki Skills Mentorship Program - Introduction to Wikidata
- Africa Wiki Women 2026 On Wiki Skills Mentorship Program - Major and Minor edits on Wikidata
- EMCO Wikidata CoP meeting (2026-01-28) - participants discuss progress on the early adopter phase, incl. how to categorise and track contributions, what statistics to measure and progress on MCO application profiles (persons + corporate bodies)
Tool of the week
- Queer Memory multilingual web app that explores global queer history through live Wikidata timelines, places, rights, culture, and activism. Currently available in English, French, and Spanish.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Etherpad cleanup, save your pads now. All pads after 1st March 2026 willbe deleted so if you need any of your pads, please make a local backup.
- The Wikibase REST API search endpoints are now available on v1 and considered stable! It's important to note that the older v0, which has been live on Wikidata since July 2025, will remain available for a two month transition period until mid-April 2026. We encourage all users to migrate to the new v1 endpoints during this time to ensure that their applications can continue to work seamlessly.
- The WMF Wikidata Platform team has published its February 2026 newsletter. It includes result of an initial evaluation of open-source triple store candidates as part of the migration away from Blazegraph, the next Blazegraph migration office hour, and more. To have new issues of the WDP monthly newsletter delivered to your user talk page, Subscribe to WDP newsletter!
Newest properties and property proposals to review
- Newest General datatypes: category for music in this language (link to category item that contains music in this language)
- Newest External identifiers: DOAB book ID, qamus.inoor.ir root ID, The Session tune ID, Parfumo fragrance note ID, KaraokeTexty.cz album ID, Biographical encyclopedia of Maros County, Alpine Linux Wiki article, Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Architects 1800-1950 person ID, Igromania author ID, French Trade Mark Number, Bane NOR location code, CardCow.com publisher ID, Lost Pubs Project ID, Handball Base ID, Handballnews.pl person ID, Center for Jewish History person ID, African Scientists Directory ID
- New General datatypes property proposals to review:
- Number of translations (Number of translations)
- Panoramax instance URL (the Panoramax instance of/about the subject)
- New External identifier property proposals to review: Hentaigana for Academic Information Exchange ID, Bach digital person ID, Bach digital work ID, YList ID, identificativo Antenati, Pesistulokset.fi player ID, Liiga.fi player ID, Letterboxd producer ID, Topplista artist ID, Apple Music Classical work ID, Fragplace brands ID, Fragplace fragrances ID, Fragplace notes ID, Fragplace perfumers ID, Sport Express person ID, ciss.org sportsperson ID (deaf sport)
You can comment on all open property proposals!
Did you know?
- Newest WikiProjects: Learned Societies
- WikiProject Highlights: a discussion regarding how to standardise the data model of the membership of learned societies
- Showcase Items: Super Moscato Show (Q3324704) - French radio program and audio podcast
- Showcase Lexemes: collection (L3941) - English noun (kəˈlɛkʃən) meaning "a group of gathered items", "money gathered for charity/church", or "the act of acquiring"
Development
- Mobile statement editing:
- We are putting finishing touches on editing support for external ID, URL, monolingual text, quantities and coordinate statements.
- We worked on visually highlighting preferred and deprecated statements on the mobile site similar to how it is done on desktop.
- We worked on showing more than one constraint violation when a statement violates multiple constraints.
- Ontology Federation: We continued working allowing other Wikibase instances to use Wikidata Items in their statements (and later from other Wikibase instances). You can see a demo video of the current development state at ontology federation demo.
- GraphQL: We worked on documentation to get get the GraphQL endpoint ready for a first release.
- Wikidata Query Service: The Wikidata Platform team published their report of the evaluation of Blazegraph alternatives. You can read it at File:WDQS Triple Store Evaluation - Benchmark Results Report.pdf.
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!
Tech News: 2026-08
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- The SRE Team will be performing a cleanup of Wikimedia's Etherpad instance, the web-based editor for real-time collaborative document editing. All pads will be permanently deleted after 30 April, 2026 – if there are still migration projects in progress at that point the team can revisit the date on a case by case basis. Please create local backups of any content you wish to keep, as deleted data cannot be recovered. This cleanup helps reduce database size and minimize infrastructure footprint. Etherpad will continue to support real-time collaboration, but long-term storage should not be expected. Additional cleanups may occur in the future without prior notice. [10]
Updates for editors
- The Information Retrieval team will be launching an Android mobile app experiment that tests hybrid search capabilities which can handle both semantic and keyword queries. The improvement of on-platform search will enable readers to find what they’re looking for directly on Wikipedia more easily. The experiment will first be launched on Greek Wikipedia in late February, followed by English, French, and Portuguese in March. Read more on Diff blog. [11]
- The Reader Growth team will run an experiment for mobile web users, that adds a table of contents and automatically expands all article sections, to learn more about navigation issues they face. The test will be available on Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
- Previously, site notices (MediaWiki:Sitenotice and MediaWiki:Anonnotice) would only render on the desktop site. Now, they will render on all platforms. Users on mobile web will now see these notices and be informed. Site administrators should be prepared to test and fix notices on mobile devices to avoid interference with articles. To opt out, interface admins can add
#siteNotice { display: none; }to MediaWiki:Minerva.css. [12][13]
View all 19 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue on Special:RecentChanges has been fixed. Previously, clicking hide in the active filters caused the "view new changes since…" button to disappear, though it should have remained visible. The button now behaves as expected. [14]
Updates for technical contributors
- New documentation is now available to help editors debug on-site search features. It supports troubleshooting when pages do not appear in results, when ranking seems unexpected, and when you need to inspect what content is being indexed, helping make search behavior easier to understand and analyze. Learn more. [15]
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

