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Latest comment: 26 minutes ago by MediaWiki message delivery in topic Wikidata weekly summary #752
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Exhibition participants from museum open data: asking before I start

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Latest comment: 3 days ago7 comments3 people in discussion

Wikidata knows that exhibitions happened; it rarely knows who was in them. Measured with SPARQL: 54,304 exhibition items, 40,415 of them dated, and 14,147 P710 statements across the whole project. MoMA has 2,546 exhibition items here, 4 of which name a participant. Tate Modern: 107 items, 1. Whitney: 11 items, 1.

MoMA publishes its exhibition history as open data under CC0, carrying the Wikidata identifiers the museum assigned itself. Matching on P7778 gives 1,716 matches out of 1,723 exhibitions, which yields roughly 21,000 participation statements. That single contribution would more than double P710 across Wikidata, which is exactly why I would rather hear objections before doing anything at that scale.

Why I care about this particular gap: I am building a public map of how art institutions actually work — which venues open careers, which open calls charge artists nothing — aimed at artists outside the usual centres, who have no way to read that landscape today. Exhibition participation is the backbone of such a map, and it belongs in Wikidata rather than in one private database.

Three questions:

1. Is P710 the right property for "this person took part in this exhibition"? Should the statement sit on the exhibition item, on the person, or on both? 2. What reference is expected? I plan P854 pointing at the museum's own record plus P813 with the snapshot date. Would a P248 item for the dataset be preferred instead, or in addition? 3. Preferred route for loading: QuickStatements, or a bot request first?

What I will not import: anything that is not CC0, and anything where the matching key was not assigned by the museum itself. Labels and names: nothing at all. Our own snapshot claimed 21,256 artists were missing labels; checking 300 of them live, all 300 had labels — the fault was ours, the query asked for a language list that omitted mul. Where a licence forbids reuse, the data stays out even when the matching is good.

While I learn the ground I have been adding P6379 statements for Metropolitan Museum artists from that museum's CC0 dataset, about twenty at a time, each with a link to the specific object and each re-read after the edit. My user page lists the acceptance rules, including three traps in the museum's own data that cost me the first attempt: role columns that also list sitters and printers, attribution prefixes such as After, and catalogue rows where a poet is recorded as the artist.

If this model holds up, I intend to keep going with other CC0 collections on the same rules. Suggestions for which ones are worth doing next are very welcome — particularly outside Europe and North America, where the gaps are widest.

Happy to stop, slow down or change the model on request.

Victorketom (talk) 05:30, 20 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Solo exhibitions are an important part of an artist's career, but I'm not sure whether participation in general exhibitions is notable enough for us, would recording the information in a separate spreadsheet linked from WD be more appropriate? Do enough institutions release the information to give us good coverage? The level of detail you want to record is laudable, but there is a danger that if you use WD for your personal research into unusual channels it becomes a lopsided dataset. Have you considered setting up your own wikibase? Hopefully there are others who want to do the same so you can establish a broad community here. Vicarage (talk) 07:15, 20 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Good points, thank you.
The main thing: I hadn't seen your project's page on exhibition item structure when I posted. It already has both a register of sources and a section on notable exhibitions — so I'm late to this conversation, not starting a new one. I'll work through that register by licence.
It also had what I was asking for: sources outside Europe and North America. DAAO for Australia, nearly twenty thousand exhibitions, and museums.gov.il for Israel. I'll start where the licence is unambiguous.
One correction to my own figures above: the 14,147 I quoted is participation in exhibitions specifically, not P710 across the whole project — that number is around 2.6 million, mostly sporting and conference events. The exhibition gap stands: 54,304 exhibition items here, participants on 5,666 of them.
On lopsidedness — my rule is that a dataset goes in whole or not at all. All 1,716 matched MoMA exhibitions, not the ones that suit me. That can be checked against the source file in a minute.
You're right about solo versus group, and it's countable: MoMA has 571 solo exhibitions against 937 group ones, by artist count. The dump also carries the role — artist, curator, installer. Only artists would go in as participants, and I'll record the exhibition type so the two can be separated by query.
I did consider my own Wikibase, but it solves the wrong problem for me: the value here is that people who know more can correct the data. Though for anything that doesn't pass notability here, it's the right home.
Nothing goes in at scale until I file a bot request and hear back. I'll post at WikiProject Visual arts as you suggest. Victorketom (talk) 13:54, 20 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
also Wikidata:WikiProject_sum_of_all_paintings Vicarage (talk) 12:32, 21 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think it's fine to add information about exhibition participation for any case where both exhibition and artist is notable by our criteria. If we are already including data, it must be properly connected to be useful. Group exhibitions are less important when considering artist's notability, but they might be actually more important from larger art history view. Famous historical exhibitions, like first impressionists exhibitions, were group ones. We just need to make sure we are not mass importing non-notable items, for example, some exhibitions might be periodic rotation of drawings not permanently on display in museum collection. These should probably not be included, as this happens very often. Same for artists, if the artist is only participated in a sinlge group exhibition, probably they should not be included. Statements should be properly sourced, either via reference URL to a museum website, or via stated in for print catalogs or other publications. Looking at quality and scalability issues of existing mass imports (articles, people databases) i'd say quality is more important then including complete dataset. MSDN.WhiteKnight (talk) 07:12, 27 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thank you, that's a clear rule, and I'll work within it. Applied to MoMA, it looks like this:
  • Existing items only. Exhibitions are matched through P7778, which holds MoMA's own exhibition ID; artists through the Wikidata ID that MoMA itself publishes for each person. No new items, neither exhibitions nor people.
  • People only. A live check of all 3,050 artist IDs found 3,003 people and one artist group; 33 are organisations (companies, a federal agency, an observatory, credited for photographs in some shows) and stay out; 13 are redirects, which I will resolve to the current item before any edit.
  • Artists only. Curators, installers, judges and designers stay out, and each P710 statement is qualified with P3831 = artist.
  • Acquisition displays and collection rotations stay out: 178 exhibitions titled "Recent Acquisitions", "New Acquisitions", "Selections from the Collection", "Art Lending Service" and the like.
  • Reference: P854 to the exhibition's page on moma.org, plus P813.
That takes the roughly 21,000 statements from my first post down to about 16,000, on 1,236 exhibitions and 3,004 artists; 500 of them are solo shows. On quality over completeness, I take the point: "whole dataset" now means whole within these criteria, not everything the file contains.
Two questions before I file the bot request, which will start with a test batch of 50 edits for review:
  1. My rotation filter goes by title, so it also drops themed shows drawn from the collection, such as "Latin-American Art, 1931-1966, from the Museum Collection". Should those come back in?
  2. 1,154 of these artists would get a single statement, from one MoMA group show, although each already has an item. In or out?
Victorketom (talk) 06:58, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
If artist already has an item, i think it's fine to add data, even if the artist is potentially non-notable. One more statement is not obstacle if we'd want to delete them in the future. For filtering rotations/themed shows, i currently have no certain opinion how it should be done. MSDN.WhiteKnight (talk) 06:10, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

WDQS is 4 hours behind!

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Latest comment: 5 days ago4 comments2 people in discussion

From grafana the lag in indexing Wikidata seems to be between 13 minutes and over 4 hours right now - that's for the wdqs10* servers. The wdqs20* servers are just a few seconds behind. It looks like this has been regularly happening recently. Do we have any idea what the cause is, and is there any way to access the "20*" servers that seem to be up to date? ArthurPSmith (talk) 13:00, 24 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Actually it looks like early yesterday (2026-09-23) the 20* servers were behind and the 10* ones were ok, then they all caught up, then it switched during the day yesterday and overnight. ArthurPSmith (talk) 13:04, 24 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Hi @ArthurPSmith, we experienced a WDQS outage on September 21st. We were able to resolve the issue within a day by blocking the malicious traffic responsible for increasing service lag. We apologize for interruption to your work flows. BTracy-WMF (talk) 20:46, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
@BTracy-WMF: - thanks for the follow-up. However the problem I was seeing was 3 days after September 21 - is there somewhere where the timing of the issue/resolution is documented that I can see?
Also - I think we've been communicating by email about the QLever replacement - did you see my email last week about getting a "Forbidden" response even with the User-Agent string you provided (I even tried the exact curl command you sent). I really was hoping to try it out last weekend, but no luck. ArthurPSmith (talk) 01:27, 30 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Announcing a new tool: Mergers & Acquisitions, a web app for finding and merging duplicate Wikidata items

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Latest comment: 3 days ago12 comments3 people in discussion

Hello all! I've been a Wikidata editor for almost a decade and have always wanted a good tool for finding duplicate items. Since nothing existed and as an early birthday present for Wikidata, I've been building it for the last few weeks.

It matches based on a variety of heuristics (same external IDs, same release/creation date, same/similar name, alias matching the label of the other item, no "different from" statement, etc.) and ranks them based on those patterns. I've been tweaking it based on feedback and adding more functionality to it, and I think it's now very useful. It's not perfect (partially because our data isn't perfect!), but hopefully you'll find it useful as well.

You can use it on Toolforge here, it's called M&A: A Wikidata Merge Assistant.

Main features:

  • Matches have been discovered for you, your job is to evaluate whether they should be merged or not.
  • Detailed display of item statements for every pair so you can quickly compare potential duplicates against one another.
  • Merging items.
    • When merging items, the app automatically handles redirecting the item and removing any already-redirected sitelinks for you.
    • It will force you to make manual changes if it can't handle everything automatically for you, I'll try to improve this in some cases but I want to make sure the edits are always safe!
  • You can add different from (P1889) if the pair of items is distinct.
  • You can "dismiss" a pair, and the app won't bring it back again in the future. This is mainly intended for items where it doesn't necessarily make sense for it to marked with P1889, but it also shouldn't be merged together.
  • Various filters:
    • by item type or WikiProject (e.g. video games, music, film/tv, anime/manga, companies, comics, etc).
    • by the user which created either side of the pair, if you want to look for your own dupes.
    • by the languages available for the item labels, so you can filter out items you can't evaluate effectively because you don't speak that other language.
  • Desktop and mobile support, so you can use it from your phone if you prefer.
  • Leaderboard, for bragging rights :P
  • Automatically refreshes with data from Wikidata dumps every Wednesday, and automatically finds any new dupes.
  • Fast load times, I've tried to optimize things whenever I've noticed any slowdown and so far it seems to be working pretty well.

Only some types of items (around 2 million items total right now) are available to match, but I intend to increase the coverage further over the next few weeks. I wanted to keep it scoped to start with so I could tweak things without needing to run hours-long imports whenever I changed the logic.

Please tell me if you have any feedback or suggestions! If you find anything where the app made an obvious mistake with a duplicate candidate, definitely send it to me!

Thanks, and sorry for the wall of text :P I hope it's helpful to other editors! Nicereddy (talk) 01:07, 27 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Looks a very good tool. I suggest you display both label and description on the initial page, as often its the latter that makes the situation clear, and allow the flipping of the merge order by tapping on the arrow. Obvious areas of expansion are ships, buildings and places, and properties initial date (start, inception, publication, launch date etc) and coodinates within a mile. Vicarage (talk) 05:17, 27 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Also, I'm not sure you have your session data separated, I clicked on "Back to candidates" and got filters I'd not set up. Vicarage (talk) 06:27, 27 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Hmm, are you certain? I'll investigate to make sure, but the filters are stored entirely in the user's browser and never stored in any way in the database. They're persisted across reloads/page changes, which might be why you saw that behavior, but they definitely shouldn't be having any sort of session state issue. Regardless, I'll double-check. Nicereddy (talk) 13:12, 27 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
This looks like a great project.
I do agree with Vicarage, that you do want to show the property labels instead of having P-numbers on the initial page.
Currently, you label English (Q1860) and American English (Q7976) as distinct. Given that there's a subclass relationship (2-level deep) that should probably go under "similar" not "distinct".
Given that you do provide the option to mark them as different from (P1889) I think it would be good if you offer the user to specify criterion used (P1013). ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 10:16, 27 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'll update the P-numbers to show names on the list view and I'll see about adding a picker for criterion used (P1013). I'm not sure how best to handle the sub-class relationships without needing to store the entire subclass structure of everything on Wikidata, which might slow things down considerably / require a much larger database. I could just hardcode a few common subclasses, but that feels like cheating. I'll think on it some more. Thanks for the feedback! Nicereddy (talk) 13:19, 27 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
I've added the criterion used (P1013) selector with a few common options, and also updated the list view to display Property names instead of just PIDs, that you and Vicarage suggested. Nicereddy (talk) 13:42, 27 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
When it comes to subclass relationships a merged item where both have unreferenced statements where one is English (Q1860) and the other is different from (P1889) also doesn't need the English (Q1860) claim, so it's not just UI.
Intuitively, maybe it can be okay to have them distinct for the initial scoring but then when the user loads the page for a given match make the queries live? ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 07:36, 28 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Why not allow users to write a custom SPARQL query to get a pool of items to work on? Vicarage (talk) 10:52, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
I guess I could consider that, but at least right now we only have a chunk of Wikidata's database in the app. So you'd be limited in how much you can actually filter down to. Do you have anything specific you wanted to filter by? Nicereddy (talk) 22:42, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
I would want to filter by anatomic structure. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 12:23, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
I have little desire to fix all the books in WD (for one thing, lots of the titles are in other languages, and I have no competence there), but would want to fix say the military history books, but that would require me providing a query for the subset. Other than the WD gamification people, I suspect many would want to work on an area of interest. Vicarage (talk) 12:56, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Spiritual Canticle

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Latest comment: 4 hours ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Spiritual Canticle (Q3071431) is a book length commentary on the poem with the same title, by John of the Cross (Q190388). Spiritual Canticle (Q23894939) is the poem by the same author. The articles in French Wikipedia are fr:Le Cantique spirituel (livre) and fr:Le Cantique spirituel. How should the two be linked?

I found these using Nicereddy's tool. TSventon (talk) 13:09, 27 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Looks like a pretty straightforward use case for main subject (P921) to me... Circeus (talk) 22:24, 28 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
And, conversely, described by source (P1343). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:04, 5 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi Need Assistance

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Latest comment: 7 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Sorry I have no clue how this site works but I need help finding a english translation of {Q12397781} I made a comment on the page for it in the discussion section but I don't know if that's where it's supposed to go... anyways Please be nice I have never used this Molten3 (talk) 13:55, 28 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Answered at Talk:Q12397781. Bovlb (talk) 16:19, 28 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
If you want a translation of the Code of Hammurabi (Q93304) then Wikidata is not the place such a translation would be hosted - this is for metadata about entities in the world, not their content. Wikisource has several translations here. ArthurPSmith (talk) 16:20, 28 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
which I see Bovlb also provided on the talk page! ArthurPSmith (talk) 16:21, 28 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

How should online calculation tools be represented in Wikidata?

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Latest comment: 6 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Hi everyone,

I’m exploring how different types of online calculation tools could be represented using structured data. There are many tools that perform specific mathematical tasks, such as percentage calculations, percentage increase and decrease, unit conversions, averages, and other common calculations.

I’m particularly interested in the best way to model these resources without creating unnecessary or overly specific items. For example, should a collection of related calculation tools generally be represented by one item with appropriate properties, or can individual tools qualify for separate items when they have distinct functions and reliable references?

Another question is how Wikidata editors usually approach the distinction between a website, a web-based tool, and a specific calculator/function offered by that website.

I’d be interested in hearing how experienced editors approach this type of structured-data modeling and which properties or existing WikiProjects would be useful for this kind of case. JunaidTech12 (talk) 19:15, 28 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Not by spamming links to your app site, as you did on Wikispecies. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:43, 28 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
The general idea is that you start by gathering the data and try to understand the domain you want to model. What Wikidata properties are there to deal with it? For what users would the data be valuable? What do they want to do with it? How does the data structure affect what they want to do with it?
Generally, if your goal is to have a lot of links to your own website, that's probably not something that's very compatible with Wikidata's ethos. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 21:36, 28 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Reference to the discussion on the prominent positioning of the Property P2559

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Latest comment: 5 days ago9 comments5 people in discussion

Some may have already noticed that, for a few days now, the property Wikidata usage instructions has been listed before all other properties. This decision was reached during a discussion on the page MediaWiki talk:Wikibase-SortedProperties. I consider both the decision itself and given the matter's significance the choice of venue for the discussion to be wrong. To reverse this decision, however, I have reopened the discussion on that page and called for the change to be undone. Everyone is welcome to participate in the discussion, regardless of their opinion. You can access the discussion via the following link: MediaWiki talk:Wikibase-SortedProperties#prominently displaying Wikidata usage instructions (P2559) --Gymnicus (talk) 19:29, 28 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

I agree. A note to the puzzled, it has only appeared on a few pages so far due to caching. Vicarage (talk) 19:51, 28 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Do you have an example showing the problem? Secretlondon (talk) 21:06, 28 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
performance hall (Q112688641) is an item where it is visible at the top though it has only one language.
Generally the UI is already fairly bad in term so of having to scroll for days to actually view and manage an item, so not sure this makes it significantly worse. The instructions were there before as well and on items they are extremely rare. Usually on items that were misunderstood / misused in the past so I think it makes sense to have these banners at the top. For example Various (Q92774440), would be somewhere it is useful to have it at the top, though also not technically necessary as the item is almost empty anyway.
I agree that a feature to collapse all but the interface language if available or at least one instruction would be very beneficial. I assume a Phabricator ticket would be necessary for that?
And I do agree that changes to the order of the Wikidata usage instruction and Classification categories of the properties should be discussed via RfC in the future. Kordishal (talk) 06:23, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
But do you have an example where it's a problem? You have only given an example with one language. None of this is "scrolling for days" Secretlondon (talk) 11:14, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
The property Wikidata usage instructions is currently not yet widely used for data objects, but rather for properties. For example, the property noble title has 26 statements using this property. Among data objects, the data object name with nine statements is so far the data object with the most statements of this type, which is not – what I would call – a “Wikimedia-internal” data object. Of course, nine statements do not sound like a huge number. Nevertheless, the resulting list is not exactly short. Moreover, such prominent usage would naturally encourage further translation into additional languages, thereby making the lists even longer. --Gymnicus (talk) 11:31, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
The biggest problem with name is the awful stock-art style image.Secretlondon (talk) 11:57, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
This is off-topic, admittedly: I don't really see a connection between the image and the concept described in the data object either. So, I wouldn't object to its deletion. In fact, I’d support it. --Gymnicus (talk) 12:35, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
The instructions for RfCs at Wikidata:Requests_for_comment say that RfCs should only be opened "after a long discussion". It appears to me that the correct place for this discussion is MediaWiki_talk:Wikibase-SortedProperties which did happen and was resolved. So it appears to me that the correct process was followed. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 17:12, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

A question about a field I'm filled in

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Latest comment: 6 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion

I was creating the item for Milk, a character in the Maimai series. I added a statement saying that her first appearance is in Maimai ORANGE, along with a qualifier using the field 'quotation' specifying that she first appeared in the song, "Oshama Schramble!" by t+pazolite, which is first collected in that version.

But I'm still unsure whether the field I chose is correct. Do you have a better suggestion for dealing with such running-text explanations like this? Thanks. Chernobox (talk) 06:54, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

That's not a quotation. I'm not sure what would be suitable. It really wants an external reference. Secretlondon (talk) 11:12, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
This is not a quotation.
Don't add running-text explanations, Wikidata has per design no property for that. Try to understand how to express what you want to say with the existing properties. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 14:59, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. Chernobox (talk) 15:10, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Wikidata weekly summary #751

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Latest comment: 6 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2026-09-28. Missed the previous one? See issue #750.

Discussions

  • New requests for permissions/Bot:
    • MamouriBot, Task/s: Add census demographics — population, male population, female population, and no. of households — to existing Iranian settlement items identified by Iran statistics ID (P1010), from the Statistical Center of Iran censuses of 1385 (2006) and 1395 (2016).

Events

  • Upcoming events:
    • The program for the Wikidata Query Service Days (October 17-23) is now published, covering the migration from Blazegraph to QLever with sessions for editors, reusers, and tool builders; see the event page for details and schedule.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

Tool of the week

  • HumansMap Gallery - The site offers various type of visualizations, and offers the possibility to navigate through connections between people and organizations, based on your interests, powered by Wikidata.
  • 📚 Wikidata Book Itemizer It is a simple tool to catalog books on Wikidata! Creating work and edition items manually on Wikidata with proper metadata and multilingual labels can often be tedious and error-prone. Wikidata Book Itemizer automates this entire process with a simple form!

Other Noteworthy Stuff

  • Wikimedia Deutschland is researching how to improve interoperability between Wikidata, Wikibase Cloud, and Wikibase Suite. If you've worked with data imports or staging, or even if you haven't, your input would be valuable. The survey takes 5 to 10 minutes and is anonymous. More information on the background of the questions: Wikidata:Requests for comment/Mass-editing policy#Context

Newest properties and property proposals to review

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

Development

  • Mobile statement editing: We are continuing with UX fixes. This is primarily visual polish and consistency as well as fixing bugs related to RTL display.
  • Wikibase REST API:
    • We are finishing the support for creating Lexemes and the statements on them.
    • We are continuing working on support for adding Forms to a Lexeme.
  • Wikidata integration in the other Wikimedia projects:
    • We are going to stop sending language link changes to the first few wikis. An initial deployment to group1 wikis is now planned for Monday, 05.10.2026. (Click group1 on this Toolforge page to see which Wikis are included.) This will help reduce noise in Watchlists and Recent changes and help reduce the size of the database table holding recent changes on these wikis.
    • Connecting a newly created Wiki to Wikidata is a manual task, we are automating that and optimising the SitesTable at the same time, making a 'single source of truth' that all wikis point to, rather than a table per Wiki that are all clones of each other.
    • We are experimenting with raising the entity usage limit on wikis. If this is feasible, we can reduce the amount of bundled changes. This would reduce the quantity of Wikidata-triggered Recent Changes rows being created.

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

Can I get help with one problem?

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Latest comment: 3 days ago6 comments2 people in discussion

Hello, I made a change to Azubu as the Korean Wiki article name has changed. So I made a merge between Q29097046 and Q12605412(Moving disambiguation page to the Corporation page), but the merge process went something wrong and the merge happened to the opppsite direction that I'd expected. I tried to fix that, but the restoration is failing. Do you mind me getting help with this problem?? Sorry for making the inconvenience. --YellowTurtle9 (talk) 19:07, 30 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

You merged two things that should not have been merged, a disambiguation page and a website. Merging doesn't move or redirect, it combines the items into one, and chooses the oldest. If you wanted to change the language link you could have done that. Now they will need un-merging. Secretlondon (talk) 10:53, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
I've reverted your changes so they are back separate again. Secretlondon (talk) 10:55, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
I see... Thanks for checking and fixing the problem.
I changed the Ko wiki article as the article page has been moved, so Q12605412 currently has no items inside in it. Then, if I want to remove that item, what kind of thing should I have to do? --YellowTurtle9 (talk) 15:21, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
It now really serves no purpose as its just lots of translations of 'disambiguation page'. Wikidata:Requests for deletions might be the best. Secretlondon (talk) 21:05, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oh I see... Thanks a lot for the kind help and advice. Have a nice day! --YellowTurtle9 (talk) 21:23, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

All Caps scholarly article titles

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Latest comment: 8 hours ago13 comments4 people in discussion

I've been seeing more items on scientific articles rendered in ALL CAPS. (Example: CAREX RICHARDSONII IN NEW ENGLAND (Q100407425)) When I mentioned this some years ago, I was told steps were being taken to fix it permanently. Why is this still happening? Abductive (talk) 09:13, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Asking why something is still happening when it happened in 2020, is a bit mistaken. Probably, someone made a change to fix some tool to not repeat the error. But that doesn't automatically mean all previous items got processed. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 10:25, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oh, the example is from 2020, so you thought I was using that to pin down a timeframe. No, what I want is all the cases of All Cap titles fixed, and no more of them. Here's one from 2026: SUBSTANCE USE AND VIOLENCE IN ADOLESCENCE: EMOTIONAL AND RELATIONAL DYNAMICS (Q141448283). Abductive (talk) 17:25, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
The one from 2026 is from a QuickStatement batch by @MattArtzAnthro:. Fixing individuals tools from creating all-caps articles won't prevent someone to create a QuickStatement batch that does it. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 18:25, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
Many journals use all caps. for authors and/or titles so it matches the official source. MattArtzAnthro (talk) 18:36, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
It is a disgrace wherever it is found. Abductive (talk) 06:38, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
Generally if you want something done on an open knowledge platform, you do it yourself.
That being said, you can't just fix capitalization without errors, as to why people add items with all caps letters... who knows, you could ask that person, but I suspect thats just how the data came. Kordishal (talk) 18:25, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
How about topic-banning the erroneous bot(s) until they fix the problem? Abductive (talk) 06:37, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
The 2026 change you listed wasn't a bot but a user who used QuickStatements. In Wikidata, actually talking to people who do things you don't like is the way to go. Calling something a disgrace is not an effective way to convince other people.
Are you defending the use of all caps as somehow correct under any stylistic choice or database management scheme? Because "don't like" implies that somebody likes it. Abductive (talk) 07:52, 5 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
Also having clear policy written down somewhere (probably Wikidata:WikiCite), would help in cases where there are disagreement such as MattArtzAnthro thinking that just taking the data the way it can is reasonable. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 08:23, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
Its also just not that big of an issue, while libraries do remove the capitalization in their catalogs, plenty of publishers send out the data like that. So its not really about the bots, even if they were added by bots you can't just solve this automatically, since capitalization doesn't have 100% fixed rules. Alone in English you will run into issues with acronyms and proper nouns. Kordishal (talk) 18:52, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
"It's not a big issue" means that it should be dismissed and never brought up again because fixing it is hard. Why not admit that it is not best practice? Abductive (talk) 07:52, 5 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
I've said it before, you are free to try and fix the problem yourself.
Help:Label is a proposed guideline, but probably de-facto accepted at this point, so that supports your cause.
There just isn't a trivial way to stop people from adding them. We don't want too many review processes on item creation, so you'll have to patrol new creations of scholarly articles and remind people of the not quite policy that they should update capitalization. But they might argue against it as it would be a lot of extra work. Still I agree with you that it would be better if they did.
As for the existing ones, same issue, can't just fix all of them with a bot because that will make some of them wrong too. Not sure if you could do heuristics and then fix the ones you are sure and have the rest be reviewed in some toolforge tool. Kordishal (talk) 08:02, 5 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Wikidata Query Service Days: program is published

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Latest comment: 4 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello everyone,

We are excited to share the program for the upcoming Wikidata Query Service Days, taking place online from October 17 to 23.

This event is part of the migration of the Wikidata Query Service from Blazegraph to QLever. It is designed to present the next steps of the migration and help you prepare for the changes. Whether you are a Wikidata editor running maintenance queries or a reuser or tool builder who will need to update your tools, this event is for you.

The full schedule is now published. You can find it on the event page here:

Event:Query Service Days 2026

Or directly in the Sessions section:

Event:Query Service Days 2026#Session

The program includes:

  • Sessions about the migration, explaining what will happen and the timeline.
  • Sessions to discover what will change and how to adapt your queries.
  • Live sessions spread over the week, with recordings available afterwards.
  • Sessions at different times to cover multiple time zones.

The event is online and free to attend. Live sessions will be held on BigBlueButton, and replays will be available on YouTube and Commons.

For any questions, feel free to write on the event talk page or contact Sannita (WMF), Danny Benjafield (WMDE), or me directly.

We look forward to seeing you there. - Mohammed Abdulai (WMDE) (talk) 11:35, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

I want Article

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Latest comment: 3 days ago6 comments3 people in discussion
Alinationrecord (talk) 14:36, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
Wikidata does not host articles. Bovlb (talk) 15:44, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
how can I get posted by Wikipedia Alinationrecord (talk) 15:45, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
By becoming notable according to the relevant notability policy and then have someone write an article about you. You really can't force it. Kordishal (talk) 15:49, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
please can you write About my brand because my brand is famous Alinationrecord
Please I just want it to be on Wikipedia Alinationrecord (talk) 15:52, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
This is not Wikipedia. Wikipedia projects judge inclusion based on policies like en:Wikipedia:Notability and ha:Wikipedia:Shahara. Bovlb (talk) 16:46, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Properties ready for creation

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Latest comment: 4 hours ago2 comments1 person in discussion

Category:Properties ready for creation is backlogged again; Wikidata:Property proposal/Register of British Slave Traders person ID, for example, was marked as ready on 21 September. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:13, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

ben shappard

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Latest comment: 3 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

a barnarna fram owner in barboads who is a good spearfisher he also owns thye braboads mafia called the The Organized Crime Index. Georgesamson (talk) 11:29, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

instance of vs subclass for musical instruments

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Latest comment: 3 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I found some odd behaviour in a query and posted about it in question on the talk page for bodhrán Q244976. Can anyone help? I suspect some entries for musical instruments aren't set up properly. GoPlayerJuggler (talk) 15:13, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Imprisonment

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Latest comment: 2 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Differece between imprisonment (Q841236) and incarceration (Q853735) should be explained in these items. Items are connected with permanent duplicated item (P2959), but instances and subclasses seem to be almost identical. Moreover, I've got sensation, that definitions are rather vague across many other languages. Could anyone help with it? — Draceane talkcontrib. 16:25, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Not sure that is possible, imprisonment (Q841236) is also said to be the same as (P460) with its superclass captivity (Q28100974), because of the GND connection, which probably shouldn't be.
Then incarceration (Q853735) isn't a subclass of captivity (Q28100974) at all, but youth incarceration (Q107901012) is.
At the same time incarceration (Q853735) is apparently a type of written work (Q47461344) because of how it is classified, which seems weird to me, but the chain sort of makes sense.
When looking at the German, English and French articles linked, and the descriptions they all refer to different concepts in both items. And I doubt its gonna get better with the other dozen or so languages linked.
So the current solution is obviously terrible, but likely practically and historically grown. To do any kind of improvement you'd likely have to map out all the relevant classes below captivity (Q28100974) and figure out where to place incarceration (Q853735) in that tree and if it should be in its current place at all. A court decision (Q327000) can lead to a incarceration (Q853735), but currently incarceration (Q853735) is a type of court decision (Q327000) as it is modeled.
Relevant class hierarchies:
Captivity
Incarceration Kordishal (talk) 19:50, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
If I look at the German Wikipedia pages, they seem to distinguish whether or not it's the government is responsible or not. Probably, whether or not a court decision is responsible would be an additional criteria that someone might use to distinguish it.
Cleaning it up would need thinkin about the different concepts and them probably moving a lot of Wikilinks around. This kind of cross-lingual work is probably best done by having a conversation with an LLM about it. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 20:32, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

‎Register of British Slave Traders & M'n'M

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Latest comment: 2 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Would someone care to set up a Mix'n'Match scraper for ‎Register of British Slave Traders person ID (P14921)? Or, better, kindly walk me through me how to do so? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:47, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Help panel question on Q141625138

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Latest comment: 2 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Q141625138

Je peux trouver où l'option déclaration, je vais ajouter ma date de naissance, le lieu de naissance --Justinbaseme (talk) 20:55, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Jusqu'à maintenant vous n'avez pas répondu a ma question --Justinbaseme (talk) 21:01, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

You didn't ask a question; you made a comment.
If you do have a question, please state it more clearly. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:27, 3 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Property equivalent to section of a newspaper

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Latest comment: 1 day ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Is there a Wikidata property equivalent to the section or department of a newspaper, magazine or other periodical? For instance, the enwiki "Cite news" template has |department= which has values e.g. Sports, Obituaries, Lifestyle, Letters to the Editor, Classifieds, etc. When describing the same article item, Wikidata has section (P958) but this is for sections of a (legal) document. Am I missing something, or should I propose a property? — Jonathanischoice (talk) 01:01, 3 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

One example is 8-bit Nintendo legend fused into rock (Q139620316) which has section (P958) = "arts. life. leisure." which is the name of the weekend magazine supplement, folded separately inside the Daily Kent Stater newspaper. An obituary such as Celebrated sailor searched the sea for our sub (Q22061719) has genre (P136) = "obituary" but could have something like |department=Obituaries while the Wall Street Journal article Modell’s, Sports Direct Don’t Bid on Sports Authority (Q114385946) was published in the "Business" section (are there any other sections?). This would be useful for the "Cite Q" template, among other things. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 01:28, 3 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
Could you treat an issue of a periodical as a document and use the existing section property P958? Legal documents seem to be given as an example, not as a limitation of the scope of the property. JMMaok (talk) 23:06, 3 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
You wouldn't really use it for a citation though, would you? Secretlondon (talk) 19:25, 3 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Should Fagus sylvatica 'Atropunicea' (Q110765786) be merged with Fagus sylvatica f. purpurea (Q886511)?

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Latest comment: 1 day ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Fagus sylvatica f. purpurea (Q886511) has name of Fagus sylvatica 'Atropunicea' (Q110765786) as alt name, but these two taxons have different commons categories, so i'm not sure if they're describing the same tree type or not VlaDexa (talk) 23:00, 3 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

@VlaDexa: I would suggest asking whether the Commons categories should be merged first.
@MILEPRI:, I see that you created c:Category:Fagus 'Atropunicea' in 2017, do you know if and how Fagus sylvatica f. purpurea and Fagus sylvatica ‘Atropunicea’ are different? Or where to ask?
I looked online and Missouri Botanical Garden, https://plantfinder.mobot.org/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?taxonid=265856 , says they are "basically synonyms". TSventon (talk) 02:23, 4 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
In general, I think Wikidata:WikiProject Taxonomy can be helpful. Ainali (talk) 07:50, 4 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Scheduled Castes (Q71586722) and Scheduled Tribes (Q22813287) populations in gram panchayat

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Latest comment: 8 hours ago6 comments4 people in discussion

Current I am working on gram panchayat (Q2732840) of Tamil Nadu, India. Since 2011 census of India takes Scheduled Castes (Q71586722) and Scheduled Tribes (Q22813287) populations in gram panchayats. It is possible to add male population (P1540) and female population (P1539)? Document link for more understandingSriveenkat|talk/{PING ME} 01:59, 4 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Did you run into any problems with it? ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 09:05, 4 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
I don't know how to do that with qualifiers. So perhaps asking for suggestions or idea for inclusion in Wikidata. Sriveenkat|talk/{PING ME} 16:45, 4 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
Is it really necessary to track gendered populations separately? Commonly just the total is added, by adding two values and qualifiers you would add quite a few extra statements. And seems not very inclusive to me, and don't see any added benefit. Kordishal (talk) 18:01, 4 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
It shows if there is an imbalance due to female infanticide? Secretlondon (talk) 22:17, 4 October 2026 (UTC)Reply
There is a guide here that illustrates how to do it Help:Qualifiers.
So add the population (P1082) value and then click the +add qualifier button.
There you add female population (P1539) with value, male population (P1540) with value, then point in time (P585) with a year, then you could add determination method or standard (P459) to say how these statistics were made (like estimation (Q791801) or census (Q39825)), then add a stated in (P248) to reference the source. So first create an item for your source. Kordishal (talk) 07:37, 5 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Merging Shtokavian lexemes

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Latest comment: 19 hours ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Because I am not trying to give any credence to maintaining a split of lexemes based on some notion of standardized varieties, I will only indirectly refer to those varieties in terms of where they are used or who uses them.

There are currently a significant number of lexemes whose stated language is a separate standardized variety of a particular South Slavic dialect, either that used in Zagreb or that used in Belgrade and Banja Luka. (There aren't as many lexemes marked with the varieties used in West Sarajevo or in Podgorica, but those are also of concern here.) These are causing unnecessary, almost verbatim duplication of much semantic and morphological information, which will only increase as more lexemes so explicitly tied to those varieties are added.

I believe that three decades on from the brutal, senseless conflicts that have engulfed speakers of these standardized varieties, and nearly a decade on from the Declaration on the Common Language (Q29018604), there should be work at least in Wikidata lexemes to use the same lexical items for documenting terms used in these standardized varieties, with any actual distinctions in use or form based on ethnoreligious group or locale indicated just in those places where they are absolutely necessary. Once a merger is allowed to begin, I would be willing to make the initial necessary lexeme adjustments, for which an external property I proposed could assist in providing sourcing.

As prior art for such a merger, I note the following about other (Indo-European, admittedly) languages with a substantial portion of lexemes already:

  • New Persian (Q56356571) (Persian, Dari, Tajik) uses a single set of lexemes with multiple scripts in lemmata and forms, with indications such as language style (P6191) and location of sense usage (P6084) on their forms and senses as to the applicability of words in a given language community (in places where e.g. etymological origin in Arabic or Russian may not suffice to determine that applicability). The morphological distinctions internal to words between these varieties are not nearly significant enough, or difficult enough to handle, to warrant a split in this case.
  • Hindustani (Q11051) (Hindi, Urdu), as well as Punjabi (Q58635), Sindhi (Q33997), Kashmiri (Q33552), and other languages with communities split by the Radcliffe Line (Q1419358) and Line of Control (Q1366583), are set up similarly to New Persian (although with etymological origins in Perso-Arabic and Sanskrit instead), with the same relative lack of significance/difficulty in morphological distinctions.
  • Words and phrases in languages like English (Q1860), French (Q150), or Spanish (Q1321) are not split into completely different lexemes depending on whether they are used in, for example, Canada ("Canadian French"), the United States ("American English"), or Mexico ("Mexican Spanish"); the language is simply marked as one of the three general language items, and any location distinctions on senses and forms are indicated using the same properties used with New Persian or the South Asian languages. (The same note on morphological distinctions from the previous two bullet points applies here.)

(@Aca, Denny, Dungodung, Ivi104, Janjko, Vipz: as individuals whose (counter)arguments might be interesting to read.) Mahir256 (talk) 20:49, 4 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

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Latest comment: 2 hours ago1 comment1 person in discussion

When you hover over the short-form sitelink identifiers (like en), the full name appears in a tooltip (like English). This is broken for uk, which displays українська instead of an English-language label. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 14:13, 5 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Wikidata weekly summary #752

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Latest comment: 26 minutes ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2026-10-05. Missed the previous one? See issue #751.

Discussions

  • New requests for permissions/Bot:
    • SaadBot - Task/s: A read-only (no edits) entity lookups for an academic research project building a relation triplet extraction (RTE) dataset from web text.
    • OKA bot - Tasks: Improve Wikidata items using authoritative open datasets, e.g., national mapping data and reference works: add sources, fill gaps, create missing items and report conflicts from the Swisstopo dataset and its subsets.
    • FoxfindingBot - Task/s: Passively enrich existing Wikidata games with gog.com metadata
    • Wahl.de Bot - Task/s: Keep mandate data of German parliamentary members current. Edits to end date (P582), successor/replaced by (P1366), start time (P580), parliamentary term (P2937)retrieved and sourced from official sources.
  • New request for comments: Wikidata:Requests for comment/Split needed from Q4167836: Split Wikimedia category (Q4167836) into two items, because one is for MediaWiki non-main namespace (Q35252665) and the other is for Wikimedia project page (Q14204246)

Events

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

Tool of the week

Newest properties and property proposals to review

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

Development

  • REST API: Continuing the work on adding support for lexicographical data, specifically creating a statement, Form and Sense on a Lexeme
  • Wikidata integration in the Wikimedia projects: We are continuing to look into raising the entity usage limit. We are setting up monitoring to see how much it can reduce the amount of Recent Changes entries triggered from Wikidata.
  • Mobile editing of statements: We continued addressing the remaining UX issues, including RTL and Kartographer issues
  • hCaptcha: We are planning the support for it to Wikibase-specific pages like Special:New Item

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

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