New subject: Wikidata Atlas: a geographic view of Wikidata entities [feedback welcome!]

19 Dec 2022

      Dear Tassos,
thanks for the example - that map is interesting but still arranged in
terms of geocoordinates, and based on Wikipedia data.
What I had in mind is a map that positions Wikidata items generically
(i.e. without the need for geolocation statements via P625) but
somewhat reliably (for a given query and reasonably stable data) in a
2D or 3D space (perhaps even as a function of some additional
parameters) and then allows the user to zoom around inside this system
to explore spatial relationships just as they can explore geospatial
relationships in your gelocated wiki atlases.
The closest thing to this that I have at hand right now is
https://galaxy.opensyllabus.org/ , which clusters syllabi by topic and
allows zooming but is not based on Wikidata.
The Wikidata Query Service has some visualizations that do part of
that but these (i) do not provide zooming, (ii) often time out and
have other problems, e.g. (iii) no reliable position of a given node
or (iv) little to no meaning in adjacency.
Another thing relevant here are Wikidata maps as per
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata_map
with their bright and dark areas and in particular their evolution over time
All of these provide for fertile ground to engage relevant
communities, and It would be very helpful to have similar
visualizations (e.g. change as a function of some parameter) for any
part of Wikidata, including but not limited to geodata.
Best,
Daniel
On Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 10:57 PM Tassos Noulas tnoulas@gmail.com wrote:
...
Hi Daniel,
The project described here may be in line with what you are suggesting:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/29/23283701/wikipediate-notable-people-ranki...
But could I be asking: what use case you had in mind? Why would I want to see a bunch of non geo entities on a map and what value would I extract from this aside from pure fun? I am not saying that fun is not worth it btw :), but one of the challenges we have been having with the tool is narrowing down to specific use cases that empower users and hopefully the Wikipedia ecosystem (you can imagine users crowdsourcing info through a cartographic/mobile platform in the future).
The idea of parameterized url has been somewhat developed:
https://wiki-atlas.org/?wikipage=Stuyvesant_Town%E2%80%93Peter_Cooper_Villag...
But it is not serving all purposes in its current form and I think connecting entities based on QIDs as you suggest is a great idea. In addition to linking better the wiki entities with a map, and vice versa, we could exploit Wikidata’s querying functionality to allow for way more complex filtering approaches to those the tool currently offers (based on popularity, categories, keywords).
Best,
Tassos
On Sat, 17 Dec 2022 at 19:43, Daniel Mietchen daniel.mietchen@googlemail.com wrote:
...
Dear Diego, Aidan and Benjamin,
thanks for working on such functionality - both tools seem to be quite
useful already.
One way to abstract things out further would be to facilitate a
mapping (e.g. heatmaps) of non-geo things - for example basketball
players by number of points, perhaps with filters per season or club.
Is anyone here thinking in such directions?
Another request would be to have parametrized URLs based on QID and
perhaps type or language, e.g.
http://www.wiki-atlas.org/English/museums/Q7877613 or some such.
Best,
Daniel
On Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 2:36 AM Aidan Hogan aidhog@gmail.com wrote:
...
Hi Diego,
Thanks for the pointer; this is very cool! We would be happy to share
experiences. (It's very impressive how many points you are able to
render, and how these resize at different scales!)
Indeed it seems we were not so original with the name. :)
It seems both systems offer two different functionalities: one focuses
on the "what's close to here" functionality, while the other focuses on
the "where in the world are there X" functionality, like "where in the
world are there lighthouses [1]", but generalised to all the types in
Wikidata. It would be interesting to see how these two modalities could
be combined in future maybe?
Best,
Aidan
[1] https://www.lightphotos.net/photos/map_all.php
On 2022-12-16 21:45, Diego Saez-Trumper wrote:
...
Hi Aidan,
With Tassos and Rossano, we have a similar project (same name in fact).
You can check-it out here: www.wiki-atlas.org
http://www.wiki-atlas.org, maybe we could exchange some experiences
about it.
Best,
Diego

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Re: Wikidata Atlas: a geographic view of Wikidata entities [feedback welcome!]