Support for language code "mul" (multilingual) ?

[tfrancart]

That page https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Monolingual_text_languages, as well as the list of supported languages at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Wikimedia_language_codes/lists/all clearly state that mul is a valid language code to state that a value is multilingual.

However when I try to send a MonolingualTextValue with mul as a language code, I get an error stating the language code is not recognized. Below the error, with the statementsToAdd printed (see the "mul" language code)

15:20:44.295 DEBUG o.i.i.IssnBot - Added Statements [[ID ] http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q84025820 (item): http://www.wikidata.org/entity/P1476 :: "Medicina subacquea e iperbarica" (mul)
  Reference:
      http://www.wikidata.org/entity/P248 :: http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q70460099 (item)
      http://www.wikidata.org/entity/P236 :: "2037-1136"
, [ID ] http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q84025820 (item): http://www.wikidata.org/entity/P407 :: http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q20923490 (item)
  Reference:
      http://www.wikidata.org/entity/P248 :: http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q70460099 (item)
      http://www.wikidata.org/entity/P236 :: "2037-1136"
]...
15:20:45.018 ERROR o.i.i.IssnBot - [not-recognized-language] The supplied language code was not recognized.
org.wikidata.wdtk.wikibaseapi.apierrors.MediaWikiApiErrorException: [not-recognized-language] The supplied language code was not recognized.
	at org.wikidata.wdtk.wikibaseapi.apierrors.MediaWikiApiErrorHandler.throwMediaWikiApiErrorException(MediaWikiApiErrorHandler.java:68)
	at org.wikidata.wdtk.wikibaseapi.ApiConnection.checkErrors(ApiConnection.java:524)
	at org.wikidata.wdtk.wikibaseapi.ApiConnection.sendJsonRequest(ApiConnection.java:464)
	at org.wikidata.wdtk.wikibaseapi.WbEditingAction.performAPIAction(WbEditingAction.java:747)
	at org.wikidata.wdtk.wikibaseapi.WbEditingAction.wbEditEntity(WbEditingAction.java:308)
	at org.wikidata.wdtk.wikibaseapi.TermStatementUpdate.performEdit(TermStatementUpdate.java:454)
	at org.wikidata.wdtk.wikibaseapi.WikibaseDataEditor.updateTermsStatements(WikibaseDataEditor.java:738)
	at org.wikidata.wdtk.wikibaseapi.WikibaseDataEditor.updateTermsStatements(WikibaseDataEditor.java:578)
	at org.issn.issnbot.IssnBot.processSerial(IssnBot.java:290)
	at org.issn.issnbot.IssnBot.main(IssnBot.java:437)

I see that "multilingual" at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20923490 has a bunch of issues because it is a subclass of Languoid and not an instance of Languoid. Could that be related ?

[wetneb]

Looking at the trace, it seems that the error is thrown not by Wikidata-Toolkit itself, but rather by the Wikibase instance. Are you editing Wikidata or another Wikibase instance?

Note that there is a difference between language codes allowed for terms (labels, descriptions and aliases) and those allowed for monolingual text values in statements. And I suspect there are Wikimedia language codes which are not allowed in any of those locations (they might be useful somewhere else in Wikimedia projects) - perhaps mul is one of these?

Can you add this language code manually via Wikidata's UI by the way?

[tfrancart]

Looking at the trace, it seems that the error is thrown not by Wikidata-Toolkit itself, but rather by the Wikibase instance. Are you editing Wikidata or another Wikibase instance?

Wikidata

Can you add this language code manually via Wikidata's UI by the way?

Oups, no !

I went ahead and made "multilingual" at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20923490 instance of languoide, let's see.

[tfrancart]

As listed here https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Database_reports/monolingual_text/multiple_languages a bunch of items do have labels with language code "mul" but strangely enough I cannot use it as a language code when entering a value.

[tfrancart]

Solved on the mailing list : https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata/2020-June/014105.html