RexxS

Cookie

MCEllis has given you a cookie! Cookies promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. You can spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a cookie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.

Thanks for staying up trying to fix the error I was getting with Module:Wikidata. I'm sure someone will figure it out tomorrow.

To spread the goodness of cookies, you can add {{subst:Cookie}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message, or eat this cookie on the giver's talk page with {{subst:munch}}!

Wikidata filled infoboxes for Biosphere Reserves

Hi Rexx

I wanted to ask you about using your Wikidata infoboxes on Biosphere Reserve articles. UNESCO has made the descriptions of the Biosphere Reserves available under CC-BY-SA and I'm encouraging editors to create the articles for the missing sites, the instructions are here. There are currently 291 reserves with English Wikipedia articles and 374 without, I'm hoping that number will go down quickly. I wanted to ask you if it would possible and what would be the process of creating Wikidata fed infoboxes for these pages. The data in Wikidata for the sites has varying degrees of information, however all sites have the minimum of:

• UNESCO Biosphere URL (the link to the inscription page on the UNESCO website
• Country
• Coordinates
• Commons Category
• Member of: Man and the Biosphere Programme

Some sites have a lot more information than this e.g Yellowstone National Park is a Biosphere Reserve.

Can you tell me what needs to happen to create the infoboxes? Also do you think this may be possible for Grade I and Grade 2* listed buildings in the UK? I know that there are items for all the sites on Wikidata because they were added for Wiki Loves Monuments, the same is true for all monuments in France.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 09:38, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi John. Existing articles like Yellowstone National Park make use of an infobox called Template:Infobox protected area. I've made a start at creating a Wikidata-enabled version of that template at Template:Infobox protected area/Wikidata. It is normal for us to modify existing templates in such a way that we do not alter the display of existing articles where they are to be used.

However, I'm running into problems because the current infobox does not display:

• UNESCO Biosphere URL
• Country
• Commons Category
• Member of: Man and the Biosphere Programme

The coordinates unfortunately don't return from Wikidata in a format that Template:Coord understands, so there's more work to do there.

Which doesn't leave much to fetch from Wikidata. I have tested fetching the IUCN category, which works ok for Yellowstone National Park. I'm stopping at that point to work out where you want to go.

You need to work out precisely how you want the Wikidata-enabled infoboxes to display and I can make them for you. But you will have a problem if they are not compatible with the infoboxes already in existence. I'll mock up an infobox that fetches the your suggested info so that you can try it out in preview or in a new article. I'll call it Template:Sandbox/Infobox biosphere reserve for now. --RexxS (talk) 17:10, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Update: You can paste {{Sandbox/Infobox biosphere reserve |fetchwikidata = ALL}} into a section of an article like Yellowstone National Park and preview it (please don't save!). You'll see some of the data available from Wikidata for that article. Let me know if you want more fields and how you want them displayed. --RexxS (talk) 17:43, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

@RexxS:, amazing, thanks so much, I'll have a think about the information to draw from Wikidata some more and get back to you, there are other fields I can add, Biosphere Reserves are a lot of kind of places including national park, islands and areas that include cities so not sure it will fit with an existing infobox. One question, is there a way for the URL field that it could hide the bare url and display as something else? Thanks again --John Cummings (talk) 18:29, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, John, it's dead easy to make a link display any text we want. But you have to tell me what text you want. I assume you don't want it to display "something else" :P --RexxS (talk) 18:57, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Update: John, I've gone ahead and guessed at "UNESCO Biosphere entry" but that can be changed. I've also solved (I think) the problems of fetching coordinates from Wikidata, so that's implemented now. You can preview {{Sandbox/Infobox biosphere reserve |fetchwikidata = ALL}} in Moor House-Upper Teesdale for example, and also in Braunton Burrows which doesn't have a UNESCO Biosphere URL in Wikidata. I imagine you'll most likely want the infobox for new articles to get them started, so have a think about which fields are likely to exist in Wikidata and I'll implement them for you. --RexxS (talk) 20:59, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

@RexxS:, amazing, I guess that means you fixed the issue for all coordinates in infoboxes? I am still importing information so I'll get back to you once I've done that about the fields. I've also been looking at Grade I and Grade II* listed buildings in the UK, there is a lot more information about many of them on Wikidata than Wikipedia (all the data was imported by Magnus last year). However I can't work out which infobox would work, they are all sorts of buildings, many of which have specific infoboxes e.g churches. The reason I'm asking is I'm working on this project which plans to import a lot of monument data into Wikidata from different countries around the world, it would be really cool to get something working to show how the data would be used on Wikipedia. What do you think would be the best approach to get the Wikidata fed infoboxes working for them? This page was helpful in seeing the difference in the amount of data on Wikipedia compared to Wikidata. --John Cummings (talk) 08:46, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Until somebody finds a set of coordinates that don't work, I think I have it sorted. I created a "tool" to look at what Wikidata is available for an article by pasting and previewing {{#invoke:Sandbox/RexxS/WdRefs|seeRefs}} in an article. I can always add more fields to {{Sandbox/Infobox biosphere reserve}} if you find ones that are commonly available in Wikidata. Just do some sampling and let me know. The best way to get started with Wikidata-enabled infoboxes is to select a few WikiProjects who are likely to be sympathetic and post at their talk page to arrange with them to conduct a trial. Say for example, that you get Wikipedia:WikiProject Religious Buildings, Architecture and Monasticism interested; I'll make a modified version of {{Infobox church}} and you/they can try it out on a few pages as a proof-of-concept. How does that sound? --RexxS (talk) 20:52, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

@RexxS:, @John Cummings: Hi all, just stumbled across this chat from a search. I've been adding Protected area infoboxes to biosphere reserve articles as I create them, but as you've noted there's no place for the UNESCO link. Here's an example of one of mine: Jornada Biosphere Reserve. A wiki-data created infobox would be fabulous, especially as we add more data to wikidata. A place for "located on terrain feature" property would be useful in the long term. - PKM (talk)

@RexxS:, amazing, thanks I will contact one of the wikiprojects you have suggested. @PKM: thanks for finding us :) in case you are not aware UNESCO have made all their Biopshere descriptions available under CC-BY-SA which will help a lot in producing the missing articles, here is more information. Regarding infoboxes for Biosphere Reserves they don't fix exactly into infobox:protected area because only the core are is protected, however I don't think matters too much. PKM I think you know more about the fields in the protected areas infobox than me, the data we have imported into Wikidata for all the sites are:

• Name
• Country
• Member of: Man and the Biosphere Programme
• Reserve URL on the UNESCO website
• Date the site was designated a Biosphere Reserve
• Date the site was withdrawn (if applicable)

How do you think this would fit best within infobox protected areas?

Thanks again

John Cummings (talk) 09:42, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

@RexxS:, @John Cummings::

Thanks, I did see the Open Source announcement via a couple of the mailing lists - that's what got me started building these. I don't think the Protected area Infobox is a perfect fit, and I agree with RexxS that we should consider a separate Infobox for UNESCO biosphere reserves. I do think we should allow for fields that users will add to WD.

So in addition to having fields for all of the data you listed above that you are importing, I think we should add:

• Image
• Official website URL
• Governing body
• Encompasses (this would pick up the "has part" property from WD; people are adding these - not just me!)(these would need to link to the EN wiki article for the Q ID - don't know how tricky that is)
• Area
• Terrain
• Map (this would be P1943 location map or P1944 Relief location map). @RexxS:, if WD has P1943 filled in can we use the same relief=yes logic that Infobox protected area uses to display the related relief map? So the logic would be P1944 if exists, else P1943 with relief=yes flag)

(John, my thought is that a relief map is preferable since the biospheres are often based on geographic features.)

Maybe we should pose the question of what should be in a UNESCO BR Infobox on the project Talk page at Meta to get perspectives from some other folks working to complete these articles.

Thanks so much for getting these going! - PKM (talk) 17:39, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

It's always better with a picture. Here's a rough mockup of my idea. I can annotate it with WD fields if that would be helpful. - PKM (talk) 19:35, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

@PKM: Thanks very much, this looks really good, I'm very happy someone else understands the quirks of Biosphere Reserves. @RexxS: do you think this is possible to make?

PKM, do you know anyone else who writes about Biosphere Reserves who would be interested either using the CC licensed text? I'm also running Wiki Loves Earth Biosphere Reserves throughout June, if you know anyone or any groups who would be interested in taking part please let them know, this would include taking photos, encouraging Biosphere Reserves to upload photos and also sharing information about the project (details on the website).

Thanks again

John Cummings (talk) 12:40, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes, John, we can make that - and autopopulate some of the fields from Wikidata as required. I'm only just back from a Board meeting, so I'll take a good look at the job later. I'll let you know when I've got something to look at. --RexxS (talk) 19:01, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Oops, I forgot the date fields on my mockup. Added now!

@John Cummings:, the only folks I know of who would be interested are the people already posting about this on the discussion page in Meta. - PKM (talk) 19:43, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks @PKM: --John Cummings (talk) 09:19, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

@RexxS: I left a message on Wikipedia:WikiProject Religious Buildings, Architecture and Monasticism, however the Wikiproject has only two people in the list of participants who have not been active recently, many of the articles don't have infoboxes at all and the articles are often 2 sentences receiving 1 edit per year, in short there doesn't seem to be much of a community to ask. My feeling is that adding heritage status, coordinate location and national register number for the country it is in to Infobox:Church would probably be a sensible approach. John Cummings (talk) 13:15, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

@RexxS: One of the members of WikiProject Religious Buildings, Architecture and Monasticism got back to the message I left and agreed that Infobox:Church would be the best basis for a Wikidata fed infobox. --John Cummings (talk) 18:27, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others closed

An arbitration case regarding Gamaliel and others has now closed and the final decision is viewable at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

1. Gamaliel is admonished for multiple breaches of Wikipedia policies and guidelines including for disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, removing a speedy deletion notice from a page he created, casting aspersions, and perpetuating what other editors believed to be a BLP violation.
2. DHeyward and Gamaliel are indefinitely prohibited from interacting with or discussing each other anywhere on Wikipedia, subject to the usual exemptions.
3. DHeyward (talk · contribs) is admonished for engaging in incivility and personal attacks on other editors. He is reminded that all editors are expected to engage respectfully and civilly with each other and to avoid making personal attacks.
4. For conduct which was below the standard expected of an administrator — namely making an incivil and inflammatory close summary on ANI, in which he perpetuated the perceived BLP violation and failed to adequately summarise the discussion — JzG is admonished.
5. Arkon is reminded that edit warring, even if exempt, is rarely an alternative to discussing the dispute with involved editors, as suggested at WP:CLOSECHALLENGE.
6. The community is encouraged to hold an RfC to supplement the existing WP:BLPTALK policy by developing further guidance on managing disputes about material involving living persons when that material appears outside of article space and is not directly related to article-content decisions.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:39, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others closed

[1]

Template comparisons

Hi RexxS. If I wanted to do a comparison on a talk page between {{Infobox person/Wikidata}} and a non-Wikidata infobox, is there a way to make the Wikidata box display properly? It threw up an error message when I tried it on Talk:James Cuthbert Smith, so I ended up doing a test diff as a workaround, which doesn't allow for the same side-by-side view that I was hoping for. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:21, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi Nikki, unfortunately {{Infobox person/Wikidata}} was written before the developers enabled arbitrary access. That means that the infobox will only fetch information if it's on the article page itself (i.e. talk pages, etc. give an error). The messy work-around is to screen-shot the two infoboxes and create a side-by-side image to illustrate the point. I just put your diff view on another monitor and can see the comparison. For what it's worth, I agree entirely with your assessment on that talk page that the information supplied from Wikidata is generally poorer. In truth, for any well-developed article, editors will probably want to replace what comes from Wikidata with a locally supplied value. Wikidata-enabled infoboxes are more useful for new articles as a "starter".

I'm developing a new "generation" of Wikidata-aware infoboxes to allow greater editor control over how Wikidata is fetched, and they are capable of being called from any page, so the problem of side-by-side comparisons will eventually be fixed for you. Sorry I don't have an {infobox person} version yet.

As an aside, I wanted to fix one of the problems at James Cuthbert Smith (Q19664103) by changing UCL to Middlesex Hospital Medical School, but annoyingly I can't find the reference that supports that (Internet Archive is offline right now), and I've made a rule for myself never to change Wikidata without supplying a reference, otherwise we never really improve the quality at WD. The EThOS reference shows UCL as the "current institution" - not terribly helpful :( --RexxS (talk) 21:32, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the info. There's a source for alma mater here; I tried changing that myself, but I couldn't get it to accept "Middlesex Hospital Medical School" with or without a source. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:08, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Middlesex Hospital Medical School is a redirect on en-wp, so doesn't have an entry on Wikidata. I'll fix that and use your reference. --RexxS (talk) 23:16, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

On a related note, what do you think of the French version of the template? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:16, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

It's quite new and I see that there's a move to suspend its use already. It's what would be called "opt-out" here, as you have to write |parameter = - to suppress Wikidata in each field you don't want. Personally I don't think it's a good idea to use that on infoboxes that will be used on large numbers of articles, because of the problem of 'silent' adding of fields when the upgrade is done. I mean, you don't want to make {{Infobox person}} into a Wikidata-aware template using "opt-in" because you'll end up with hundreds of irate editors complaining about fields showing up that they don't want and don't know how to get rid of. It's ok when the infobox isn't used much as the editors doing the infobox upgrade can be expected to check all the articles transcluding it. Your idea of having a whitelist is a much better solution for heavily used infoboxes where each article needs the whitelist to be added before it fetches anything from Wikidata. --RexxS (talk) 13:24, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Infobox Biographie2 is their version of Infobox person/Wikidata; they have Infobox Biographie still edited locally as the generic Infobox person. Obviously I completely agree with my own solution ;-) but I do like the way they've set up the pointer to edit Wikidata - linking each parameter to the specific property and with a uselang modification. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:45, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Well, I think {Infobox Biographie2} was obviously planned to complement and eventually replace {Infobox Biographie}, unlike {Infobox person/Wikidata} which was knocked up three years ago as a test-bed for the nascent Module:Wikidata, and later escaped from its sandbox. But I understand your point. I am very impressed with the edit icon - they can do that easily because they code the entire infobox in Lua, rather than using a call for each parameter, which was my preferred route as it allows the modification of existing templates by folks who don't code in Lua. I think I'll try that technique in Module:WikidataIB and see if it gains any traction. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 14:03, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Update: Implemented in Module:WikidataIB. You should be able to preview {{Infobox book/Wikidata/Sandbox |fetchwikidata=ALL }} in any book article to get a few fields as a demo (The infobox isn't finished yet!) --RexxS (talk) 15:36, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

• RexxS and Nikkimaria, I don't know whether this is the kind of thing you're looking for, or whether I'm several steps behind, but ManosHacker has created {{Infobox person ii}}. If you add that to a page, then preview, you'll see the Wikidata-enabled box next to the regular one. For example, go here, then preview. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:18, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

• That helps, though it's not quite the same parameters. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:34, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata & infoboxes

Hi -- I saw your comment to Curly Turkey about withdrawing from the discussion and from the development of the related infoboxes. Your decision, of course, but I would be very sorry if you do withdraw -- you and Izno have been extremely helpful in making the situation clearer, to me at least. The work you've done has been extremely valuable. People's minds can be changed by rational conversation; it doesn't happen all that often, but it does happen on Wikipedia. Sometimes. The two of you changed my mind, after all. Either way, thanks again for the work you've done so far. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:00, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Agreed; don't give up hope yet! It's good to have you around, since you both confirm and demonstrate some of the things that come out of fingers on the keyboard w.r.t. Wikidata (besides the occasional splat). --Izno (talk) 00:22, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

• RexxS, I agree that it would be a great pity if you were to withdraw from the discussion, though of course I'll respect your decision. But please know how helpful and informative your posts have been. I'm very grateful for the patience you showed toward me, and for the extra time you had to spend, explaining things to me several times and negotiating your way through my confused vocabulary. I've learned a lot from you. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:38, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
• Hi RexxS, some might be surprised with the fact that you and I are friends around here, given that we are on opposite sides when it comes to the dreaded infobox debate, but I won't ever forget your help here, and here - both of which, thanks to your advice, went together with this to make my first and only featured topic. I'm not familiar with the discussion you have been involved in, but your technical knowledge, as illustrated in my diffs above, is absolutley second to none. For you then not to share this kind of knowledge would be a loss to us all. Cassianto^Talk 09:48, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
• Hang in there! We need intelligent contributions from all sides. I'm still on the fence, but have been putting some work in at Wikidata on some communities from Anglesey, and just discovered QuickStatements, which has been a godsend. Robevans123 (talk) 13:31, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

File permission problem with File:Clark1974.svg

Thanks for uploading File:Clark1974.svg. I noticed that while you provided a valid copyright licensing tag, there is no proof that the creator of the file has agreed to release it under the given license.

If you are the copyright holder for this media entirely yourself but have previously published it elsewhere (especially online), please either

• make a note permitting reuse under the CC-BY-SA or another acceptable free license (see this list) at the site of the original publication; or
• Send an email from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-en@wikimedia.org, stating your ownership of the material and your intention to publish it under a free license. You can find a sample permission letter here. If you take this step, add {{OTRS pending}} to the file description page to prevent premature deletion.

If you did not create it entirely yourself, please ask the person who created the file to take one of the two steps listed above, or if the owner of the file has already given their permission to you via email, please forward that email to permissions-en@wikimedia.org.

If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Non-free content, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:File copyright tags#Fair use, and add a rationale justifying the file's use on the article or articles where it is included. See Wikipedia:File copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have provided evidence that their copyright owners have agreed to license their works under the tags you supplied, too. You can find a list of files you have created in your upload log. Files lacking evidence of permission may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. You may wish to read Wikipedia's image use policy. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Kelly ^hi! 12:14, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Just text and lines

As can be seen from the file histories of File:Clark1974.svg and File:Clark1974.png, I created these files in 2009 as a replacements for a similar file by Gene Hobbs, File:Clark1974.jpg. The image consists of text (the effects of Oxygen toxicity) and lines that associate these effects visually. I created the images from the text in Clark's 1974 "The Toxicity of Oxygen". Either this is insufficient "sweat of the brow" to create a copyright, in which case they are in the public domain; or the creative work in making that arrangement of the text and lines is mine alone, and I've already released the files into the public domain. Consequently, I've declined your inaccurate {{di-no permission}}, and suggest you do some basic WP:BEFORE before you mark valid files for deletion. If you disagree with my right to release my copyright into the public domain, you know where to find WP:FFD. --RexxS (talk) 17:11, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Template to produce a citation from Wikidata

RexxS, I'm not sure if this is the sort of thing you'd be interested in, but I know you have the necessary skills. Do you think it would be possible to write a template that takes a statement in Wikidata and turns it into a citation? For example, Weird Tales has a statement asserting that Farnsworth Wright was an editor. That statement is referenced by a book, and a page number. The two references between them have all the necessary information to reconstruct this string: "Ashley, Mike (2000). The Time Machines: The Story of the Science-Fiction Pulp Magazines from the beginning to 1950. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p. 42. ISBN 0-85323-865-0". I was thinking that something like {{WDcite|Q1136124|P98|Q280673}} would be how the call would look: first parameter is the object about which the statement is made; the second parameter is the property in the statement, and the third is the value of the property for which the reference should be retrieved and converted. Perhaps something like this exists already and I don't know about it, but if not, do you think it's feasible, and would you be interested in building something like this, or do you know where I might ask? I think something like this would make the natural integration between Wikidata and en-wiki much more apparent to many editors. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:28, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm tempted to suggest you ask Curley Turkey to take on the job, as he seems to have a lot to say about the issues. But that wouldn't be productive, so let me say this: the template that you suggest would not be difficult to create, and the code already exists for each part you're interested in. However, you can't use a template like that in an infobox; although the QID of the article is known (you don't need to supply it - it will work it out from the page it is on), and the property will be determined by the infobox field you're using it in; but there's no way you can supply the QID for the reference. The reference may be a book or a url or any number of other things, If you have to look them up on Wikidata first before you can fill in the infobox details, you've defeated the object of using Wikidata, and it's probably quicker to just fill in a reference by hand and forget about Wikidata.

What you need to do is supply just a property corresponding to the infobox field; retrieve the value for that field and while doing that, check if there are any valid references; if there are, retrieve them, whatever they are, and then figure out how to construct a citation that you can return along with the value. The code to do a lot of that is in the getSourcedValue code in Module:WikidataIB, where I've already fetched the raw references to use in debugging. What doesn't help is that each property may have multiple values (e.g. two or more editors of a book), and each value may have multiple references. The code for that is in place, but you need to recognise that you may get quite a few things returned from just one call, and you have to manage the space in an infobox. To adapt getSourcedValue to do the job you want just needs the bit that constructs a citation - but that's quite messy and is different for each type of reference.

Right now, I can't summon up any enthusiasm for solving any more problems to do with Wikidata in infoboxes. I'm very grateful for the kind words from yourself and the folks above, but I'd rather wait until the destructive forces have left the scene before I consider returning to the area. --RexxS (talk) 01:17, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I thought the new Infobox book was a splendid job—as I said, it was pretty much one of my proposals, and the direct links from each field was a nice touch. It's unfortunate that it's come to this. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:42, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Of course the QID of the article is available; hadn't even thought about that. However, I wasn't particularly thinking about using this in infoboxes; I was thinking of using it in prose, whereever a citation might be used. I can see that means that the property isn't available any more, since you have no infobox field to tie it to, so you'd have to specify both sides of the statement the ref supports. Even though this means you'd have to look up these items in Wikidata, I see two benefits from citing facts this way. First, work done by en-wiki directly benefits other language wikis, and vice versa, since now there is a central repository for cited information about the article; and second, if the same fact is cited in multiple places in en-wiki, and the reference is improved (e.g. to a more reliable source), then the improvement appears in all the articles using that citation immediately.

I'm glad to hear it's doable. If you don't mind, I'll stop by in a couple of months and see if this is something you're interesting in tackling at that time? Or do you know of another expert in templates who might be willing to try putting something like this together? Thanks -- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 08:04, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

The reason I talked about using it in an infobox is that the enabling RfC Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikidata Phase 2 showed community consensus for using Wikidata in infoboxes (but always subsidiary to local values), but also show consensus that explicitly forbids the use of Wikidata in article text. So until there emerges a new consensus, I'm afraid you can't use Wikidata in the way you want to. If you want to talk with other coders, I'm pretty sure Izkala (talk · contribs) and Izno (talk · contribs) have the skills and are familiar enough with the problems to find good solutions for you. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 10:44, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I should probably get around to muddling my way through Lua to build something like this (RexxS: No, I don't have the skills--a handful of in-person and online courses to my name--but I should :D). Probably the format it would take would be something like {{cite Wikidata |QID=N |type=journal}}, and in the programming of what would like be a module, supply the QID statements to Module:Citation/CS1 for subsequent output. (There would be a small issue of which I know already due to Wikidata's use of only a single "page" property rather than a split "page" and "pages" property, but that would be something to work on down the road.)

That said, I think there would need to be some strong consensus for it besides the conclusion of the phase 2 RFC that RexxS points out, due to the deletion of the cite doi templates, which used a similar, if not precisely the same, mechanism. --Izno (talk) 11:46, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

(ec)Well, yes, that does settle things, at least for now; I didn't participate in that RfC and wasn't aware of that limitation. I might start a conversation at the Village Pump asking for opinions on using Wikidata in article text but strictly for citations, to see if anyone else thinks this would be worthwhile. (post ec): I see from the cite doi RfC that the issue is at least partly that "templates should not contain article content". That doesn't quite make sense to me, since templates have always contained citation data. Izno, do you think a conversation at VPP is worth starting? Or do you think this is something that the community has already shown a strong disinclination for? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:52, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I think right now we should let the infobox stuff blow over before starting a discussion on citations, since there does already exist a consensus against having "separate" citations from the article content--there were other issues raised, which are just as pertinent for Wikidata as they are for cite doi, such as usability (how do you edit a Wikidata citation? how does a user know to go there?--this can be solved) and vandalism (which Wikidata doesn't have a good record at this time dealing with). --Izno (talk) 12:22, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Fair enough. Maybe in a few months it'll be a worthwhile question to ask. I was thinking about how one would edit a Wikidata citation; I think it would be fairly simple to have VE's citation menu expand to include the possibility. Having the menu go from Cite -> Cite Wikidata -> List of items linked to from this article -> list of statements for selected item in Wikidata -> list of references for selected statement would seem to be one way to do it. VE won't implement anything that's specific to one wiki, so there would have to be a handoff of the selected reference to local code to do the formatting. If the resulting text were to be inserted as a string (substed, essentially) then some of the objections would vanish, though so would some of the benefits. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:34, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Well, once you're at the point of substing it, might as well just use Citation bot... which actually might be a fair path as well to using the base data in a Wikidata citation. --Izno (talk) 12:41, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I've never tried Citation bot; just tried it and read some documentation. I see what you mean; if it already understands citation structure then why rewrite it?

The base functional requirement for what I'm describing above seems to be "allow an editor to see Wikidata when adding a citation, and pick up citation information from references on relevant statements". If so, and thinking about Citation bot, how about having a parameter or parameters in ordinary citations that record the selected statement/reference pair? E.g. "|QID=item|PID=property|RID=reference identifier" as part of the citation template text. This wouldn't output anything; it's just a record of how the citation was generated. So adding a citation by this method would create a completely ordinary citation, plus the Wikidata information necessary to rebuild it. (Denormalized data, I know, but bear with me.) If the Wikidata reference is updated -- say to substitute another source, or just to refine the page range -- then the next time you use Citation bot it would tell you that the Wikidata reference doesn't match, and ask you if you want to delete the WD data in the citation fields, or update the citation to match, or leave it inconsistent (which would probably do something like place the article in a tracking category). Ideally it would give a link to jump to the relevant WD page so you can fix the citation information there, if you want to. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:01, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I'll drop that in the category of "possible" and will not offer further opinion. :^) --Izno (talk) 14:33, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Wikipedia:Randy in space

Wikipedia:Randy in space, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Randy in space and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:Randy in space during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Maproom (talk) 14:05, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata Infobox Tutorial

Hey! I just started out working on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T76229 here: d:Wikidata:Infobox Tutorial. I am asking around for people to share their experience with migrating infoboxes to Wikidata. The goals is to make a really accessible guide for people that want to build a new infobox, but also for people to understand the benefits of these changes. --Tobias1984 (talk) 13:32, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Good luck with the tutorial! I've commented on Phabricator and added a section on d:Wikidata talk:Infobox Tutorial. Ping me here if you want to discuss any specifics. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 16:56, 30 June 2016 (UTC)