Hi everyone!
In this email I'd like to ask your attention for some maintenance. I know this sounds boring, but it should make your life easier down the line. I'll talk a bit about monument lists, and how to make sure that the infrastructure that helps in categorization and validity checks works smoothly in your country. Please make sure that for each country, at least one person takes a good deep look at this. I'll try to answer the most common situations. If you still have more questions, just hit 'reply' and ask! If you find yourself in one of the situations below where we ask you to get in touch with us then please file a task in Phabricator https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/edit/form/1/?project=wiki-loves-monuments-sources,wlm-2019 .
For our maintenance, we use the monuments database, where all lists of monuments are collected (whether they are on Wikipedia or in Wikidata).
The monuments database https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database serves two main functions. The first is that it allows our busy robot ErfgoedBot to do various tasks with the uploaded images such as categorising them and making reports that local organisers can use to get the most out of the images.
The second is that it allows other developers to build tools, such as maps (example 1 https://tools.wmflabs.org/wlm-maps/ , example 2 https://tools.wmflabs.org/map-of-monuments/) that can either be used to explore the monuments or can be of assistance during the competition itself.
The data in the monuments database is harvested from either a structured lists of monuments on a Wikimedia site or from monuments items on Wikidata. In either case the international team must first have been made aware of the lists/Wikidata items. I'm not sure if my country is in the monuments database. What do I do?
To find out if your country is in the database go to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database/Statistics or https://tools.wmflabs.org/heritage/api/ and look for your two letter country code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1#Current_codes and language code (i.e. language version of Wikipedia). If you find it then your country is in the monuments database! If you don’t, and you believe that it should, please get in touch.
Note that some countries may have multiple entries either for different types of monuments or for different parts of the country. We're transferring to Wikidata and didn't tell you yet. I thought it would be fine right away. What do I do?
If you switched from lists of monuments to Wikidata and didn’t tell us, the monuments database will still be based on those Wikipedia lists. Similarly if you never had lists but put the monuments directly into Wikidata without telling us, your data will not be in the monuments database.
For the monuments database to harvest the information from Wikidata you will have to get in touch with us and provide us with the necessary information to determine how to set up the harvesting. Please file a task on Phabricator (see this example https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T174333). Once the harvest is up and running most of the Reports (see below) will be generated as before.
If you have switched from lists to Wikidata, it is worth thinking about how you allow photographers to find the monuments. Will you keep your old lists in parallel? Can you make new lists automatically generated from Wikidata, like this Australia example https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2019_in_Australia/List_of_Australian_heritage_sites (careful, some wikis may not allow such lists in the mainspace!). Can you make use of Monumental https://maps.wikilovesmonuments.org/? Our monuments have new IDs after moving to Wikidata
Did your monument IDs changed after moving to Wikidata (even if they have just lost or gained a prefix)? Or do you now use only the Qid instead of the old identifier? Then there are multiple things which may have to be addressed.
The first is to ensure that your instructions for Photographers do not reference the old IDs this year.
The commons template used to tag the images with the monument it depicts will likely have to be updated to support the new IDs. This template is automatically added by the Upload Campaign https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2019/Upload_campaigns. If the template is already in heavy use, because of images from previous years, it might be easier to set up a new template and update the Upload campaign (and Monuments database settings). Get in touch with us if this is the case.
If you are allowing uploads using both the old lists and Wikidata you may need two separate Campaigns and two separate commons templates. Get in touch with us if this is the case. My country is in the monuments database, but I have no idea what to do with that information. What maintenance pages/reports should I check?
For each of these maintenance pages/Reports mentioned below the link goes to a page on Commons which has more detailed information and links to the individual page(s) for your country. Each type of page updates once per day.
If your country is not on the list but you think it should, then get in touch. Unused images https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database/Unused_images (lists and Wikidata)
This lists any images of monuments where that monument doesn't yet have an image on the list [or an image statement on the Wikidata item if Wikidata is used instead of lists].
The purpose of this list is to make sure the photographs taken for WLM actually get used.
Action item: Add the image to the list or wikidata item, and the next day it should disappear from the report. Unknown fields https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database/Unknown_fields (lists only)
Every day ErfgoedBot processes your lists of monuments. If it encounters an unexpected template parameter it make a report of it. While this page seldom changes it’s worth having it on your watchlist, just in case.
The purpose of this list is to give organisers a quick way of spotting when someone has accidentally broken one of the templates or to warn you about new fields which the monuments database has not yet been made aware of.
Action item: Fix the broken template instances Images without id https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database/Images_without_id (lists and Wikidata)
This lists any images which have been uploaded without providing an id linking it to a specific monument. The bot will try to guess the id when possible.
The purpose of this list is to make sure that each photograph taken makes it clear which monument it depicts. The earlier these are caught the bigger the chance that the photographer can add the missing information.
Action item: unidentified images could be disqualified. As national organizer, it's up to you to either fix the missing number, contact the uploader or to disqualify the image.
Hope this helps. Just reply if there are any questions.
Cheers,
André