[Wiki Loves Monuments] Fwd: Moving monuments database to Wikidata

Fri Jul 31 01:25:21 UTC 2015

Hi all,

In this discussion I see multiple things being suggested, or maybe only
thought of.
* Moving the monument database to Wikidata: for the 2015 edition it will
not be possible because of the amount of workload. If it is possible for
the 2016 edition I do not know, but keep in mind that there is more needed
then only moving some data from location A to location B. There is a
complete infrastructure behind it that needs to work. Let's not think too
light hearted about this, the infrastructure is vital and crucial.

* Lists of monuments maintained in one place: sorry to say, but to get this
completely maintained only in Wikidata is a fairytale. Not because it is
not possible, but because there are people involved and there are
requirements set for articles/lists by communities. From the Wikidata
perspective it sounds perhaps ideal to maintain it in one place, but then
the (whole) Wikipedia perspective is missing. Then you can say that you
edit Wikipedia a lot, but then you missed the point. There is a big clash
between some users who have the Wikidata perspective who think a lot of
codes in Wikipedia articles is okay, and users from the Wikipedia
perspective who think all those codes in articles are not okay. Wikipedia
is strongly built from the perspective that anyone can edit articles, and
this is something that made Wikipedia big and is often considered an
important characteristic of Wikipedia. Of course you can say that users can
edit Wikidata when there are codes in Wikipedia, but that is thought too
simple for multiple reasons. There will be communities that want to choose
themselves which photo they want to show in their monument list (instead
the photo from Wikidata), many descriptions of monuments in the list are
altered and have footnotes and internal links, many descriptions and other
fields are edited/expanded/updated, while Wikidata shows a different text
or Wikidata has not the possibility to contain certain complex data. And
the majority of users on Wikipedia experience Wikidata as too difficult to
easily work with (seeing the Dutch community). (These are just a few issues
of a lot more. And this is of course not specifically WLM, but generic.)

I think that the ability to edit the lists in ways Wikidata can't handle,
is especially wanted on Wikipedias of the local language. At the same time
I think that we need to work to the situation that for example monuments
from the Netherlands can be shown on a list in the Japanese Wikipedia and
many others. Maintaining lists in 200+ Wikipedias is not possible I think,
so the idea of a centralised database is needed, but needs more thinking
about how this can work in practise.
Another issue there is, is that Wikipedia is built on being able to click
on top of the page and edit it without having to struggle with codes. Their
are and will be a lot of Wikipedias where it is not acceptable to put a
large amount of codes in the main namespace. A solution for that is simple,
like categories, lua, portals, etc automated lists need their own
namespace, like a list namespace. Then the article namespace remains freely
editable and at the same time the information of automated lists is
available in the local Wikipedia in the local language.

* Having all monuments in Wikidata: I am not sure if anyone mentioned this,
but this should be the first step and only when this is completed we can
think of further steps. And then I assume all the data of the database can
be added to Wikidata, I am not sure if this is possible. Nevertheless I
think all the monuments should have an item in Wikidata. For some countries
this is the case already, for most countries this seems not the case. For
these monuments in Wikidata we need to set some criteria. There are
multiple criteria to be set, but one of them is at least to have **every**
monument in Wikidata having a unique identifier.
Also all monuments in Wikidata need additional information to be able to
identify a monument in Wikidata as a monument on location. These include
address, coordinates, municipality or other administrative territorial
entity (this should be the lowest level possible), type of monument, and
more. And there are more criteria that need to be set before it can be used
worldwide.

If it is not possible to set for every monument a unique ID, Wikidata is
not suitable for usage in Wiki Loves Monuments. A unique identifier for
each monument is crucial throughout the whole infrastructure, the
infrastructure has been built on this.

* Lists, rows in lists, articles about an individual monument on Wikipedia,
categories on Commons and Wikidata items all need to be connected with each
other. I think it is already possible for a part in Wikidata. However, this
is far from ready to be used. Adding information to Wikidata is great, and
that is what many people do, but there is a high need for connecting
Wikidata items with for example categories on Commons. For any future
tooling, scripts, gadgets, etc, this is needed in general, but specific for
WLM too. The importance of this part is so much underestimated.

Greetings,
Romaine

2015-07-30 15:43 GMT+02:00 Jane Darnell <jane023 at gmail.com>:

> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_WLM
>
> On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 2:45 PM, Nicolas VIGNERON <
> vigneron.nicolas at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> 2015-07-30 14:36 GMT+02:00 Jane Darnell <jane023 at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> Nicolas,
>>> Your mail makes my Wikidatan heart beat with delight! Yes, this is
>>> definitely the direction we need to go, but sadly, not all Wikipedias will
>>> adjust their policies at the same rate.
>>>
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>> I believe/hope it's just a matter of time.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> I think we should start by getting this conversation off this mailing
>>> list and start to work on some project pages on Wikidata. Right now we only
>>> have these:
>>> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Category:Cultural_WikiProjects
>>>
>>
>> True.
>>
>> Probably on
>> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Cultural_heritage
>>
>> We started a
>> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_France/Monuments_historiques
>> for France, maybe other countries should start one too since every country
>> is different.
>>
>>>
>>> There is no "Wiki Loves Monuments"  page yet but there should be a whole
>>> category, like what we have for SoaP here:
>>> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Category:WikiProject_sum_of_all_paintings
>>>
>>
>> This porject is mad (in a good way).
>> I lack time but that could be a great idea to do the same for monuments !
>>
>> My original mail in this thread is about moving the monuments db which is
>>> currently here:
>>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database
>>>
>>
>> Sadly this project seems a bit dead...
>>
>> Plus, for France, as we started the import semi-automatically and
>> semi-manually, it's now harder for the bots to import the last half of
>> french monuments :s
>>
>> We need to split that up and move it to Wikidata in all its bits and bobs.
>>> Jane
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 2:26 PM, Nicolas VIGNERON <
>>> vigneron.nicolas at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> Just an example how Wikipédia and Wikidata can work together.
>>>>
>>>> On the french Wikipédia, the template:Infobox_Monument already use
>>>> Wikidata date. For example, on
>>>> https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manoir_de_Saint-Armel on the infobox,
>>>> you can see a little +/- sign after the patrimonial status, the country and
>>>> the coordinates that redirect to the Wikidata corresponding properties to
>>>> make edition easier.
>>>>
>>>> It's a bit early but in the end, all the Wikipédia lists will come from
>>>> Wikidata (and not from lists on Wikidata, from separate items for each
>>>> lines of the lists).
>>>> We have to wait until 1. the data are all imported in Wikidata (in
>>>> progress, done for some countries and not started for others ; roughly 50 %
>>>> done for France but we started with the easy ones so we're kind of stuck
>>>> right now...) then 2. the templates, tools and modules in the Wikipédias to
>>>> be adapted.
>>>>
>>>> Cdlt, ~nicolas
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list
>>>> WikiLovesMonuments at lists.wikimedia.org
>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments
>>>> http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org
>>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>> http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org
>>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
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