Wikidata - WikiLovesMonuments

27 Jul 2015

Hi all,

I just subscribed to this list, after it was mentioned to me. I'd like to
give a brief overview of what I can offer in terms of WLM and Wikidata. I
skimmed the July mailing list archive about Wikidata, but please forgive me
if I repeat something already said.

Last year, I wrote the official WLM tool for the UK. As part of that
exercise, I also created Wikidata items for all grade I and II* monuments
in the UK on Wikidata.

As a "side effect", I also created a tool to browse any monument with an ID
number on Wikidata:
https://tools.wmflabs.org/wlmuk/index_wd.html

I do not consider this "production grade" at the moment, but it could be
seen as a prototype. And while it currently requires a country-specific
property (or multiple), it could be extended to also use anything with
P1435 ("heritage status") within a country. That would abolish the need for
unique, stable IDs, though it will make management of these objects a
little harder of Wikidata.

As for syncing with Wikipedia(s), I can offer a list-generating and
-updating bot already in in production on English Wikipedia and Wikidata,
as described here:
http://magnusmanske.de/wordpress/?p=301

This could be used as an automated to-do-list (e.g. a list of all monuments
in Lower Saxony without an image on Wikidata), or a total overview of these
items (with image where available). This will require an image to be set in
the Wikidata item, and it will only show one image, so it might not be
suited as a show-the-latest-image-of-X, and it will not search Commons on
its own.

For synchronizing a list of monuments with Wikidata, I can offer my trusty
mix'n'match tool:
https://tools.wmflabs.org/mix-n-match/

I can upload any list that consists of names and IDs (which can be fake),
optionally a brief description and a URL (pointing to an external catalog).
The tool offers various ways to match entries to existing Wikidata items,
or declare entries as "not on Wikidata yet", so they can be batch-created.

To find existing images for monuments, I can offer WD-FIST:
https://tools.wmflabs.org/fist/wdfist/index.html

For a set of items, it can scan Wikipedia (and other projects) for images,
and present them for one-click addition to Wikidata. It can even do Commons
free text search, though there tend to be quite a few false positives. At
the very least, this could be a "from home" activity for WLM enthusiasts.

A missing piece in this "ecosystem" appears to be a Commons-scanning bot
that looks at recent WLM uploads, and recognizes IDs of monuments, or maybe
just names, and generates a list of suggested matches between Commons and
Wikidata (and, optionally, Wikipedia). Such a bot could surely be arranged,
given detailed enough specifications.

While I can not promise to devote as much time as last year on this, I'll
help where I can. One point I would like to emphasize is that, whatever we
come up with, I would like it to be generic enough to work for all, or at
least most, sets of monuments, or even beyond that; every set of items with
coordinates and/or "in admin unit" property should work out-of-the-box, and
some parts (e.g. WD-FIST, Listeria) already work fine for biographies,
taxons, etc.

Cheers,
Magnus