Tech present, past, and future: Data sets now available on Commons, wishes to be worked on in 2017, and a recap of the Wikimedia Developer Summit
 | Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org. |
See or edit source data.
Data sets, consisting of either tabular or map data, can now be stored on Commons, and accessed from any wiki. The data can even be localised, with different labels for different languages. The interactive map above, showing GDP by US state, is generated from the data table at Data:Bea.gov/GDP_by_state.tab on Commons.
Raw data can be accessed using Lua, filtered, converted, mixed, and formatted. Lists, or other wikimarkup, can be generated from the data. For example, the same monthly climate data for New York can be shown as either a typical weather box...
| Climate data for New York (Belvedere Castle, Central Park), 1981–2010 normals,[a] extremes 1869–present[b] | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Record high °F (°C) | 72.0 (22.2) |
78.1 (25.6) |
86 (30) |
96.1 (35.6) |
99.0 (37.2) |
100.9 (38.3) |
106.0 (41.1) |
104 (40) |
102.0 (38.9) |
93.9 (34.4) |
84.0 (28.9) |
75.0 (23.9) |
106.0 (41.1) |
| Mean maximum °F (°C) | 57.0 (13.9) |
57.7 (14.3) |
68.0 (20.0) |
80.6 (27.0) |
87.6 (30.9) |
92.5 (33.6) |
95.4 (35.2) |
93.0 (33.9) |
89.2 (31.8) |
79.7 (26.5) |
69.4 (20.8) |
60.3 (15.7) |
95.4 (35.2) |
| Mean daily maximum °F (°C) | 38.5 (3.6) |
39.7 (4.3) |
47.8 (8.8) |
59.5 (15.3) |
70.7 (21.5) |
79.5 (26.4) |
84.4 (29.1) |
82.4 (28.0) |
75.7 (24.3) |
64.6 (18.1) |
52.5 (11.4) |
42.1 (5.6) |
61.5 (16.4) |
| Mean daily minimum °F (°C) | 25.9 (−3.4) |
26.2 (−3.2) |
33.3 (0.7) |
43.2 (6.2) |
53.4 (11.9) |
62.8 (17.1) |
68.4 (20.2) |
67.1 (19.5) |
60.4 (15.8) |
49.8 (9.9) |
39.9 (4.4) |
30.2 (−1.0) |
46.7 (8.2) |
| Mean minimum °F (°C) | 8.2 (−13.2) |
9.0 (−12.8) |
17.6 (−8.0) |
30.7 (−0.7) |
42.3 (5.7) |
52.2 (11.2) |
59.7 (15.4) |
57.6 (14.2) |
47.5 (8.6) |
36.9 (2.7) |
25.3 (−3.7) |
13.3 (−10.4) |
8.2 (−13.2) |
| Record low °F (°C) | −6.0 (−21.1) |
−15.0 (−26.1) |
3.0 (−16.1) |
12.0 (−11.1) |
32 (0) |
44.1 (6.7) |
52.0 (11.1) |
50 (10) |
39.0 (3.9) |
28.0 (−2.2) |
5 (−15) |
−13 (−25) |
−15.0 (−26.1) |
| Average precipitation inches (mm) | 3.50 (88.9) |
3.32 (84.4) |
4.00 (101.6) |
3.74 (95.1) |
3.72 (94.6) |
3.63 (92.3) |
4.39 (111.6) |
4.45 (113.0) |
3.93 (99.7) |
3.72 (94.4) |
3.54 (89.8) |
3.69 (93.6) |
45.63 (1,159) |
| Average snowfall inches (mm) | 7.74 (196.7) |
8.85 (224.8) |
4.82 (122.5) |
0.78 (19.8) |
0.0 (0.0) |
0.0 (0.0) |
0.0 (0.0) |
0.0 (0.0) |
0.0 (0.0) |
0.03 (0.8) |
0.72 (18.3) |
5.39 (137.0) |
28.33 (719.9) |
| Average precipitation days | 11.0 | 9.7 | 11.3 | 10.8 | 11.1 | 10.3 | 10.5 | 9.8 | 8.4 | 8.5 | 9.2 | 10.5 | 121.1 |
| Average snowy days | 4.2 | 3.7 | 2.4 | 0.4 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.4 | 2.8 | 13.9 |
| Source: edit data NOAA (relative humidity and sun 1961–1990)[1][2][3] See Geography of New York City for additional climate information from the outer boroughs. | |||||||||||||
...or as an interactive graph:
| Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org. |
See or edit raw graph data.
Map data, stored as GeoJSON, can be displayed over a map based on OpenStreetMap (OSM) data. This map of the endangered Jemez Mountains salamander habitat comes from the data at Data:ecos.fws.gov/Endangered habitat 58938/Plethodon neomexicanus.map on Commons. However, such data pages aren't needed for roads and other shapes already defined in OSM – for example, here's Interstate 696. And this is Alaska.
Data is stored as pages with a *.tab or *.map extension, in the Data: namespace on Commons. Pages are generally prefixed by their origin, such as commons:Data:Naturalearthdata.com/US states.map; sandboxes or test pages can be created with titles like Data:Sandbox/<user>.tab. The only licence currently allowed is the CC0 Public Domain Dedication. A thread on the Commons Village Pump, now archived, discussed whether more licences should be supported, and if database rights (which exits in some countries, but not the United States) should be respected.
Future plans include a spreadsheet-like editor for tabular data, tracking cross-wiki data usage through "What links here", data redirects, and supporting external data feeds. The original announcement was on the Wikitech-l mailing list. Documentation is available on MediaWiki.org for tabular data and map data. E
MediaWiki developers met in San Francisco earlier this week for the fourth annual Wikimedia Developer Summit. The first two days were filled with pre-planned sessions, and the third was a unconference-style “Get stuff done day” for hacking.
Ward Cunningham, inventor of the first wiki, delivered the first day’s keynote, titled “Has our success made it hard to see your own contribution”. He used one slide for the entire keynote, aiming for 10 minutes of speaking and 50 minutes of questions, though he was ultimately unsuccessful in that timing. The second day featured a Q&A with newly hired CTO, Victoria Coleman, and the VP of Product, Wes Moran, with questions coming from an All Our Ideas survey as well as those asked in person. Notes from other sessions are available on mediawiki.org, and videos should be posted shortly. L
The Community Tech team's 2016 Community Wishlist Survey was held last month, and the results are in! There were 265 proposals for tools, bots, and the other features to help the Wikimedia projects and their core contributors. The proposals were discussed and voted on by 1132 contributors, and 5037 support votes were cast in total. The top ten proposals, which the Community Tech team will investigate and address, are:
<ref></ref> tags and contents from surrounding text in a paragraph, or making sure the correct number of braces are present for code such as {{{a|{{{b|{{{c}}}}}}}}}. While syntax highlighting can be implemented through user scripts, this proposal is for integration into MediaWiki for faster loading and theme-friendly colours. (Phabricator task T101246)Some wishes that didn't make it into the top ten will also be worked on by the Community Tech team, to support smaller user groups without large voter numbers. Other wishes may be worked on by volunteer developers, the WMDE Technical Wishes team, or other Wikimedia Foundation product teams. E
New user scripts to customise your Wikipedia experience
Newly approved bot tasks
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community: 2016 #51 & 2017 #2. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available on Meta.
Wikis connected to Wikidata can now use the parser function {{#statements: }} to get formatted data. You can also use {{#property: }} to get raw data. You can see the difference between the two statements. There are also similar new functions in Lua. (Phabricator task T152780) The live option for the Tipsy notice tool has been removed. Gadgets and user scripts which use it need to be updated. (Phabricator task T85048)about:config in the address bar and set network.cookie.maxPerHost to 5000. Firefox 50 is the current version of the Firefox. (Phabricator task T151770)importScript( 'User:Lourdes/AfDclosing.js' ); // Backlink: User:Lourdes/AfDclosing.js
importScript( 'User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js' ); // Backlink: User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js
importScript( 'User:Lourdes/SpecialNewPages.js' ); // Backlink: User:Lourdes/SpecialNewPages.js
importScript( 'User:Lourdes/TFAhistorylink.js' ); // Backlink: User:Lourdes/TFAhistorylink.js
Discuss this story
An interesting question came in via Twitter: Yurik or Evad37, doesn't it make more sense for complex data to be stored at Wikidata, and referenced by media files? How does a new initiative to store data on Commons square with the emergence of Wikidata? Will it make sense to migrate the data files there in the future? -Pete Forsyth (talk) 01:50, 24 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]