On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 7:32 PM, Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org> wrote:

restarting the thread with a correct title now :)

2012/5/22 Platonides <platonides@gmail.com>

On 22/05/12 01:11, Kilian Kluge wrote:
> So what do I suggest you do instead?
>
> As I said, we're facing a similar (if not worse) situation in Germany.
> We have literally more than one thousand institutions and authorities
> that issue monument lists for areas ranging from single municipalities
> to whole states (in total, there are about 1 million monuments). Many
> of them do assign numbers, but they all start with 1, so we have the
> issue that the IDs are not unique.
>
> What we're going to do now that we have enough lists on Wikipedia: We
> will use an already existing numbering scheme called the
> Gemeindekennziffer which assings a unique code to each municipality as
> a prefix to the official IDs. (The actual system is a little more
> difficult, in fact, the Gemeindekennziffer is structured into
> different parts, for example the first to numbers tell you what state
> the municipality is in and so on. Therefore we'll just use the first
> two numbers of the code as the prefix for states that have unique IDs
> already.) This way, the IDs on Wikipedia and on Commons stay the
> official ones, only inside the database we add a prefix which is not
> OR but based on an official numbering scheme. I'm sure that you can
> find a similar numbering system for Italy!

What identifier is used by people when uploading the images?
If the unprefixed one, how do you find out automatically the municipality?

This thread is really interesting because it is important to define some key points:

a) the structure of the data is *not" an original research as the creation of the templates is not considered original. The identifier is mainly a problem of the organization of data.
b) the unique identifier is becoming to be an important question mainly if there are some tools which will help the uploading and the identification of the monuments
c) the local identifiers cannot be lost in order to keep the links wth other "official lists"

These preamble would demonstrate that the definition of an unique identifier for all monuments of all countries is important and that the list of monuments is basically a "database".

The structure of the database is not an original research but it is part of the "infrastructure". The local identifiers cannot be primary key because there is the problem of redundancy (mainly if we have a unique repository for all countries), so to have a progress we have to define our own *primary key* and connect it with the local identifiers in a way that can assure a continuity and a long life of the new structure of the list of the monuments.

These "new system of identifiers" may help some projects like that of the monuments of the Portuguese Empire which is basically a *view* of a database.

The problem faced by Germany and by Poland and by Italy with the regional lists of monuments is only a partial vision of a biggest problem to have a unique repository.

The use of an identifier for municipality is not a good candidate for a primary key because in some countries the municipalities may be aggregated or may be split year by year. Probably an identifier connected with the geographical coordinates may be a better candidate... but the real question is that the identifier is a good point to be discussed and can become urgent in the near future.

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Ilario Valdelli
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