Shortcut: WD:EEWikidata:Entity Explosion
Entity Explosion (Q98398855) is a Chrome and Firefox browser extension by Toby Hudson (99of9) which uses API calls to the Wikidata Query Service to match the URL you are browsing on to a Wikidata item, and then display Wikidata data and links.
Links and Other Resources
[edit]- Available in the Chrome Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/entity-explosion/bbcffeclligkmfiocanodamdjclgejcn (1,000+ users as of late '23; seems to work also for Opera)
- Available as a Firefox Browser Add-On: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/entity-explosion/ (90 users as of April '21)
- Open-source code: https://github.com/99of9/Entity-Explosion
- Introduction videos: short long Wikimania21
- Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/EntityExplosion
- Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/EntityExplosion
- Phabricator task: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T253201
The Discussion page can be used for a centralised on-Wiki discussion of this tool.
Use
[edit]The extension icon toggles between the following images, depending on the status of the URL:
- no potential match to this URL (default icon status)
- a potential match according to the URL matching a formatter/regex pair
- a query has been sent by clicking the button, but no match was found - perhaps the identifier for this item hasn't been added to Wikidata yet, or there is no item for it yet
- a query has been sent by clicking the button, and (at least one) matching Wikidata item was found
When a match is found, a dropdown is shown with a list of data from Wikidata.
Frequently asked questions
[edit]- Q. It's not showing many links in my language, what can I do?
- A. This will improve as Wikidata is updated. In particular, make sure that all Wikidata Properties have a label in your language.
- Q. It's showing duplicate links in the list, is that a bug?
- A. Sort of. The multiple links are actually to multiple different formatter URLs and third-party formatter URLs. Sometimes these are in different languages or at different sites. Future efforts will go into filtering these.
- Q. It's not matching any entries for particular property, even though the formatter URL remains unredirected, so it should work.
- A. Check if format as a regular expression (P1793) is specified on the property.
How it works
[edit]SPARQL queries
[edit]If you improve on any of these queries, please post on the Discussion page, your query may be incorporated.
- Formatter/Regex query done at the time of (re)installation and saved to prevent too much load on the WDQS. This data is used for the offline tests that turn the icon red without actually sending your browsing history out.
- Language translation query done at the time of (re)installation and saved to prevent too much load on the WDQS.
- If your language is not even on the dropdown list of languages, you should make sure:
- Your language item is an instance of (a subclass of) language (Q34770)
- Your language item has a value for Wikimedia language code (P424)
- Wikipedia (Q52) has a label in your language
- If your language is not even on the dropdown list of languages, you should make sure:
- The Dropdown URL matcher query works something like this (but has a URL and language fed in as parameters).
- Data is then grabbed in categories: [1] 2, 3
- If your language does not show much data, you should first make sure every identifier property has a label in your language. For example, here is a search that shows all properties without a "de" (German) label.
Properties used
[edit]- official website (P856)
- formatter URL (P1630)
- third-party formatter URL (P3303) – usually requires a operator (P137), which these are missing: https://w.wiki/4J7r
- format as a regular expression (P1793)
Plans for development
[edit]
Done Expand the matching ability for sites that use a mixture of http, https, www in their formatter URLs.- Done
Speed up regex matching checks - Done
Filter "duplicate" links in the dropdown, usually caused by having multiple formatter URLs on record. Sometimes need to pick best according to qualifiers. - Done
Direct matching of URL properties (e.g. official website). - Deal better with sites that redirect to different URL patterns. includes doi (look for citation_doi metatags in the html) and formatters with wildcard _
- Add units to quantities in the dropdown.
- Link to 1st-order connected entities in the same database.
- Port to other browsers:
- Done Firefox
- Done Edge
- Safari
- Opera; for the time being the Chrome version works...
- Provide a user option to always send queries, every time the pre-format works, send a query to test green/black.
- Expand dropdown matching if regex is specified in constraints only
- Support right-to-left scripts
Unexpected behaviour
[edit]User testing around which properties/sites it is not properly detecting is appreciated. Sometimes this can be fixed by amending the formatter URL statements on our property pages (sometimes adding multiple formatters to match those of the site example). In other cases the sites do some internal conversion and redirection which changes the URL, so there are different categories of how challenging this will be to detect.
Examples of documentation of testing:
