#WMhack - produce a list that shares a #Wikidata attribute

At the Amsterdam hackathon it became clear that Wikidata can be used as a powerful tool to improve Wikipedia. The idea of a hackathon is that you go home with new hacks and, I want to share a really nice one. It is a list. A list that indicates every known link within Wikidata from a given topic.

The cool thing is that it is the standard MediaWiki "what links here" functionality.

When you copy the "following pages" for this item, you can use the "text to columns" functionality to get something that you can use. With search and replace you can build a string that looks like this..
 {{#invoke:Available|link|Q48210}}
Many of such strings together produce a list when the Lua module Available is present on your Wiki.

When you see the Q numbers, there is no article about the subject. When you see a name in red, the label exists in Wikidata but there is no article registered for this subject. When you see a link in blue, there is a label and, there is an article.

This is a genuine hack that is really useful to complete articles on the same set of Wikidata items in any and all Wikipedias.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#WMhack - #SignWriting in #Wikimedia #Incubator

One visitor at the Amsterdam hackathon was Stephen E Slevinski Jr. He was a man with a mission. His mission was to get American Sign Language on the Incubator. As you can see in the picture below, he succeeded in his mission.

Several members of the language committee knew that it was possible for Stephen to succeed. We also knew that when this hurdle was taken, any and all sign languages can ask for their own Wikipedia. There have been requests for languages like Danish sign language in the past as well.

Now that we have the technical ability to show a sign language, the old reason not to express "eligibility" for these languages has gone. Any and all sign languages that have an ISO-639-3 code will find that there is nothing that will prevent them to work towards a Wikipedia or any other project in their language.

I want to thank a few people. First all the people at the Amsterdam Hackathon who helped Stephen make this dream come true. Secondly, I want to thank Stephen, Valerie and all the other people at the SignWriting Foundation for their continued belief that their languages and their culture deserve their own  Wikipedias.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#WMhack - Dates for #Wikidata

At a hackathon you may preview what is about to happen. Dates for Wikidata is something that has been eagerly awaited. Given that Wikipedia has articles on many events, it is obvious that Wikidata is one place where assertions on these events should end up.

The most obvious dates are the date of birth or death for a person or the date a ruler started his rule end, the date it ended.

There are many issues that I can think off about how dates are to be used. But the fact that dates are finally being tested and are likely to arrive in a weeks time is a reason to be happy.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#WMhack - About #Gerrit, #GIT and #SVN

When there is still so much noise about GIT and GERRIT more than a year after the transition from SVN, you can wonder if the move from SVN was the right one to make.

At the Amsterdam hackathon there was expert help available for everyone who wanted/needed to learn more about using GIT and Gerrit and as I was curious to the answer, I asked the question.

The most important reason to move was because of Git. Using Git many new functionalities became available that made the MediaWiki developers more productive. Gerrit is something of a pain but it is usable and it is improving. So much so that the conversation of dropping Gerrit has subsided.

When you wonder about the question "was it worth it", you also have to consider the TCO or, the total cost of ownership. I came up with the question if the increased productivity had to be offset with the cost of one person supporting Gerrit. I learned that SVN also required a lot of tweaking. The CodeReview extension was written by the Wikimedia  staff.

A hackathon isn't a hackathon if it is not for showing off things that are in the works.. GitBlit is as I understand it one tool that is intended to make things easy.. More about GitBlit here.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#WMhack - Building empires

One demonstration that impressed me a lot is this animated map with border fortifications along the border of the Roman empire.
Thanks,
     GerardM