Thursday, February 20, 2014

United we stand strong, divided we still are


This is a #map of Elburg, a municipality in the Netherlands. It shows its monuments and when available it will show a picture for them thanks to Wiki loves Monuments. There is a pop up for every individual monument and it shows a wealth of information.


According to the Wikipedia article, there are 293 monuments in Elburg alone. The information is rich; it includes descriptions, geo-locations, external sources and a link to Google Maps. This is a great choice because it allows you to see all the monuments while virtually travelling through this small town.

When this information becomes available in Wikidata, it becomes possible to find translations for many of the data items in use. The monuments in the Elburg can be found with a query like this one. The existing list article can be defined like this. For all the 293 items a new Wikidata has to be created and populated with the existing data.

This blog post indicates that it can be done. The problem is that it requires a retooling of Wikimedia loves Monuments. To the people who worked so hard to build the existing tooling the message is: it is the work you did that makes it possible to have quick results in Wikidata in the first place.
Thanks,
       GerardM

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