Hello!

Our (Latvian) monuments list includes a lot of ancient burial grounds which are not well suited for WLM as usually there is nothing visible above the ground. Initially, our heritage board was also concerned about publishing the coordinates of these locations as there is a problem with illegal digging to find the artefacts there.
We would appreciate a well-documented option to filter out these from the results even if there is some manual work needed.

 Mārtiņš


On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 2:06 PM Rebecca O'Neill <rebeccanineil@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Jean-Frédéric,

We adopted them in the "post" Wikidata era, as there are many National Monuments in Ireland that have different numbering systems that are just numeric and thus are not a unique identifier in any reliable sense. Being able to curate what sites are offered to participants keeps them safe, and most importantly demonstrates to the government department that we are not being reckless in how we disseminate the information about what sites are safe and legal to visit. Using the P2186 identifier is central to maintaining trust with that government department which may allow us to build on this partnership in the future. I would strongly object to any deprecation of P2186.

As Josephinehas also just pointed out, P1435 is too broad a designation to use, as it draws in too many sites that are not eligible for WLM. We have had issues with this in the 2020 WLM competition with "Tentative World Heritage Sites" (Q64414898 and Q917858) appearing on Monumental, which is not a designation we can stand over for WLM, and that is just 2 sites out of about 6500 that caused us a problem. Local organisers having control over what is and isn't offered to participants is central to being able to run WLM without additional work filtering out non-eligible submissions that were made in good faith.

Kind Regards,
Rebecca

On Wed, 5 May 2021 at 16:51, Jean-Frédéric <jeanfrederic.wiki@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Rebecca,

Just to say I strongly disagree on your characterisation of the use of this ID as a "hack" and that it should be actively discouraged. Not all countries are as fortunate as others, and having comprehensive coverage of all the relevant sites on Wikipedia with unique identifiers from state bodies is a massive hurdle to overcome for many of us. Assuming that the whole world can meet you at the standard you are accustomed to is incredibly unfair, and dismisses the difficulties many countries face in this regard.

In the Irish context we have found the P2186 a very neat solution to a systemic issue we face regarding data on Irish monuments and other listed buildings, and in the 4 years since we started using those IDs with Monumental, it has not only facilitated a huge amount of participation, but the Irish system has not been updated to a point that we have another system of unique IDs to fall back on. And this is an EU country with supposedly all the benefits that that entails. An alternative "scalable solution" has yet to otherwise manifest.

Fair enough if you don't like a particular system of IDs, but I don't think completely writing it off is fair on those for whom it has been incredibly useful.

I think that what Maarten meant to say is that, in the pre-Wikidata era, the requirement to have a unique ID for monuments (in the Wikipedia lists, in the UploadWizard and in all the rest of the tooling) led to the creation of the "WLM ID" for such countries that indeed did not have an ID system.

But now, any monument with a Wikidata item, whether or not it is part of a national ID system, will have an identifier: the Q-ID itself − hence why (at first glance at least) there is no need anymore for the legacy custom ID. As I understand it, P2186 was only ever meant as a transitional measure, so that whatever was relying on the previously assigned WLM-ID could have a path to get to the Qids.

I would also like to point out that just using "heritage designation" is potentially quite problematic. For example, here in Ireland a huge number of national monuments and listed structures are private property (in the case of the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, private homes, hospitals, care homes) which may have Wikidata items, but for the purposes of Wiki Loves Monuments we cannot be seen to encourage people to trespass or infringe on people's property or privacy by including them on a map or other upload platform. Having the WLM ID allows for greater control over what structures are within the remit of the competition, and protects not only us as the organisers, but our participants as well.

Ah, I see! You are effectively using P2186 as a way to curate a subset of P1435. That’s a neat trick ; before deprecating P2186 we should indeed find a suitable way to achieve the same result.


@Josephine: Rebecca mentioned Monumental − indeed Monumental already had to solve the same problem (querying Wikidata for monuments, displaying them on a map, allowing upload with the right templates/etc.). Was there ever an issue with the way monumental does it? If not, I’d suggest using that methodology as starting point.

I believe the relevant source code for it is:
 
--
Jean-Frédéric
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PhD in Digital Media
Project Coordinator Wikimedia Community Ireland
Secretary of the National Committee for Commemorative Plaques in Science and Technology
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