Talk:Wikidata Bridge

This is the talk page about the Wikidata Bridge project. Feel free to give feedback or ask questions. Some threads are dedicated to specific questions or feedback loops.

Dies ist die Diskussionsseite über das Wikidata Bridge-Projekt (Verknüpfung mit Wikidata). Gerne kannst Du ein Feedback geben oder Fragen stellen. Einige Themen sind bestimmten Fragen oder Feedback-Schleifen gewidmet.

There seems to be no status update since 2020, are there any results from the Catalan wiki test? Or should I look in the Wikidata Weekly newsletter?

This Wikiproject only implemented a basic layout for string type of data. The test ran well in cawiki, but this kind of data are really low used.

After a year without expansion to other more used data types, we informed @Lea Lacroix (WMDE) that we reverted the code to link to Bridge.

I think Lea would respond better about status.

Thanks.

I wasn't aware of this when posting my feedback to Wikidata's federation input discussion, but if we are using data from (and potentially donating data to) Wikidata on federated projects, it stands to reason that we may want to use a bridge to edit Wikidata within our UI (as well as any data items in our own Wikibase instance), just as you forsee it being done on your own sister projects. While I appreciate this isn't the focus at this time, perhaps it could be a possibility that you consider for the future?

Hello and thanks for your feedback!

Although we're developing the tool with the usecase of editing Wikidata from Wikipedia for now, we have in mind that this extension could be used on any Wikibase instance in the future. This could be used to edit the content of a Wikibase instance from one of its client wikis.

The usecase of being able to edit Wikidata's data from a external wiki (not part of the Wikimedia projects) is not part of our short-term roadmap, but it could definitely be considered in a more or less distant future :)

Thank you, Lea. As outlined in our policies, we have no wish to duplicate Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects; rather, our goal is to complement them, and such a feature may assist in that.

The timeline seems to be quite outdated. Can it be updated to reflect future development?

Hello,

Unfortunately, we cannot give any updates on future development :( The project is currently stalled as it is supposed to be taken over by WMF teams, but it is unclear at this point if they will be able to provide resources for the Bridge in the near future.

As soon as there's more clarity on this, I'll be happy to provide updates and more information about the takeover.

That seems like a good update: "[Date]: Transfer development to [team name] in Wikimedia Foundation"

Hello,

I was at a meeting with editors of a LocalWiki called FürthWiki and they use SemanticMediaWiki and then I saw how they edit the data with forms. I think that a form is a helpful thing for editing data. In Wikidata it is currently possible to use it for creating new items with WikidataCradle. Do you plan to offer forms for creating items in a further version. For example a mayor of a city is a example where a item about it does usually not exist in a little village before the election. So this is something what has to be created when editing the value in the Infobox. Have you plans how you want to solve this.

Yes, we will have to offer a way to create new items through the Bridge in the future. This is quite a complex topic and we are not fully decided on how we want to tackle this.

Hello all,

On August 18th, we will deploy the first version of the Wikidata Bridge on Catalan Wikipedia. Thanks again to the CAWP community for your enthusiasm and constructive feedback!

You will find the announcement here (in Catalan). As a reminder, here is the list of the features that will be included in the v1, and the ones that are not there yet. The test page is still available here (may occasionally contain bugs or new features in development).

If you’re willing to support the future integration of Wikidata Bridge, here’s how you can help:

• Translate the infobox update documentation page in your language
• Start a discussion and/or a documentation with your Wikipedia community to raise awareness about the feature
• Ask any questions you may have on this talk page

After many months designing and developing the v1 of the Bridge, we’re really excited to see it tested live! Cheers, Léa

Seems like nowiki has passed critical mass of users voting “for” in our poll for consensus. The poll is still on-going, but I doubt the outcome will be much different. The group of usual no-sayers at nowiki is to small to change the outcome substantially. The poll is finished 14:41 (UTC) 1. July 2019.

At nowiki we have various solutions to the edit infobox problem, but among the more common ones is a link with a pencil symbol to the correct section in the Wikidata item. I guess it should be pretty easy to tweak.

Thanks! Can you give a link to the poll?

Sorry, forgot! My bad. The poll is at w:no:Wikipedia:Tinget#Rediger Wikidata rett fra infoboksen. I'll add a permalink/archivelink when it is closed.

Final outcome is 18 for joining the betatest, and none against. [Later increased to 20 for and none against.] Jeblad (talk) 15:52, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Added a notice at Tinget (w:no:Wikipedia:Tinget#Rediger Wikidata rett fra infoboksen (2)) because of the discussion about references, so the community can decide whether to go forward or not with the betatesting. I doubt it will be any change, this is just to make sure everyone knows about the implications.

Thanks! We're currently working on a way to view and edit references, so it can be part of the first testable version.

Seems like later polls have made the current consensus quite muddy, and I don't believe it would be wise to do betatesting at nowiki. Some users seem to have misunderstood what Wikidata Bridge is all about and any clarifications are reputed. Some users even openly refuse to cooperate at all. It is a bit weird.

A few modules and templates are prepared for use of WB, but I removed and/or turned off the actual code. Should be pretty easy to turn back on though.

In short, drop betatesting at nowiki.

Hello Jeblad,

Thanks for letting us know. There's no problem from our side. We understand that communities need time and it may be a bit too early at that stage. We will keep experimenting with other wikis who are ready to test the early phases of the Bridge, and hopefully in the future, when the feature is more advanced and people can see the benefit of it more clearly, we can start a discussion on nowiki again.

Thanks for your communication efforts!

Hello all,

I just wanted to let you know that the documentation page about how to update the infoboxes code once the Bridge extension is enabled is complete and ready to translate.

If you have any questions, or if you feel like something is missing on this page, let me know.

More information about the upcoming deployment of the first version of the Bridge on Catalan Wikipedia will follow next week.

Is there any templates in frwiki already using the bridge ?

The Bridge has not been enabled anywhere for now. We will start in July this year with Catalan Wikipedia, in the future a few more small Wikipedias where the community is actively willing to test it. French Wikipedia will hopefully come later, of course after a proper discussion with the community and once some extra features will be added.

At nowiki there are some users that complain loudly about the pencil icon. I tried to do some changes to see how it would turn out in full use, and there will be way to many such icons. It will probably not be acceptable for the users that complain about a few links today.

So, how can it be changed to become acceptable. One option would be adding an edit-link above the infobox to turn them all on, and to replace that with a reload-link when the pencil icons are visible. After reload the edit-link will be back. That would make the links less annoying, but I don't know if it is enough to stop the users from complaining.

On desktop it’s possible to use the hover css property to show them only if the mouse is on them. The equivalent on mobile device may be possible as a tap on the data.

There has been a lot of debate on this on frwiki, it turns out we kept them at least on some infoboxes even if people complained because there was also a requirement by community decision to highlight the data that come from Wikidata as opposed as data present in the article code as an infobox parameter (external project signaling), and the pencils do that job. This usually settled the discussion, and mostly now complains have stopped.

Yes, I proposed to use hover or doubleclick (doubletap – scary name for those into action movies) to turn the pencil icons on through an additional gadget. It just adds a class that overrides <code>display:none</code> for the links. It is pretty straightforward to do.

Interesting argument that use of the pencil shows use of Wikidata, thus it is what the community wants.

The people who complain, finally agree when discover how usefull is. Use hover css may have collisions with link to value (article or item).

In cawiki we had a debate and change size and a soft gray and editors agreed:

Models: english , french , catalan , smaller catalan .

In addition we have also an icon label () to link to label of the value when is not in catalan.

Using gray icons is not wise, as it don't signal interaction. That is they signal “disabled”.

we finally use the smaller catalan. It's black, but not solid color.

After my last explanation, my colleague @Vriullop added some features in our Module:Wikidades in order to use/don't at invoke, template o installation level with editicon parameter (may see doc in English). It also allows aligning pencils at right side in order to have a more "ordered view" of infobox.

Last new, for those people who don't like pencils and are not willing to update WD (not very interesting for our goals, btw!) it's possible to hide pencil at user level adding a sort code in the user/vector.css.

We hope it may be useful for other WD_Bridge users.

CC.@Lea Lacroix (WMDE)

Just under the section heading - 'the need', a statement is given: “I want the information that appears on Wikipedia to be editable on Wikipedia”. My doubt is: should the last word 'Wikipedia' be replaced by Wikidata? Because Wikipedia can be edited on Wikipedia itself.

'Wikipedia' is correct here. If the information comes from Wikidata then it's not directly editable in Wikipedia itself and this is exactly why the Wikidata Bridge is needed.

phrasing changed, see T252996 for details

Minor feedback,

but could you please change the text string "I corrected a wrong value" to "I corrected an incorrect value", in the english version?

I'm not a linguist so I can't tell you grammatically-speaking why "a wrong value" seems too vague and odd, especially when paired with the quite scientific and precise alternative option of "I updated an outdated value". The word "wrong" also has a secondary meaning of morality - that something is wrong because it is bad; whereas "incorrect" can only mean not-true. Thanks :-)

I believe Wittylama is pretty much an expert in English compare to the WMDE team! :D And yes, I do agree with him on this.

Hello @Wittylama and thanks for your feedback. This totally make sense. We will consider changing the word - I created a Phabricator task for further discussions and work.