#AfricaGap - The #notability of Chemba, the district and the eponymous ward

Chemba is a ward in the eponymous district of Tanzania. Chemba had 16047 inhabitants at the 2012 census. Lately a lot of additional information has been added to the existing articles (in Swahili or English) to Wikidata.

There are plenty of practical reasons why Chemba is notable. In 2010 I blogged about the "Geograph" project in the UK. Britain was divided by a raster in order to have representative pictures for the whole of the country. Obviously we could do the same for any and all countries in Africa. They do have digital cameras in Africa, maybe not everyone but that is not the point.

Africa is notable and, we want to close the gap in coverage of Africa. So we want to know about all the wards of Tanzania, not just Chemba. We need coordinates, maps and photos. There is census data for 2012 and all this, including maps and photos, can be shared in any language once the data is available in Wikidata.

The point of all this; make obvious what we do know and what we know is missing. In the end, the devil is in the details but Africa is a continent full of bright people who can make the difference.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikidata - Elcot, Swydd #Berkshire

Elcot, is a hamlet in Berkshire. According to the English article, its claim to fame is the four star Elcot Park Hotel.

When you search for Elcot, you find the hotel, the hamlet twice and a disambiguation page. The other item in the list is called "Elcot, Swydd Berkshire". swydd probably means "county" and, when you search for swydd, the result is interesting. It is not that there are 1721 results, it is the impression that you get that so many of them because items for Welsh articles co-exist with items for English articles.

PS there is no picture for the Elcot Park Hotel. Thanks to Geograph there is a picture for the Halfway Inn.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikimedia #Netherlands #NewYear reception

The Dutch chapter organised its start of the New Year again in a Museum. What was not clear was that you had to register because there is a limit to how many people can have a tour at the same time. It was SO popular, that it was oversubscribed before this registered on most of us. The Teylers museum prepared a spectacular tour for us; it included a look at the first print of the Diderot and  d’Alembert encyclopaedia.

For the Wikipedians this is obviously a treat: seeing the first Western encyclopaedia and knowing that Wikipedia is just the latest incarnation of what started in the Enlightenment is quite awesome.

At the reception it became clear how many of the regular Wikimedians were absent. However, when several of the people present participate in the Teyler's writing challenge,  it will be proven well worth it.

Other subjects that were discussed were quite diverse as well;

• a Geograph project for the Netherlands and combining this with the Wikimedia smartphone apps
• statistics and whether the API data use is included
• having pictures of persons on the Internet with or without names
• ...

All in all a magnificent start of the year for Wikimedia Nederland.

Thanks,

      GerardM

One million #Geograph pictures on #Commons

After technical delays, the upload of Geograph pictures has resumed. As the bot is uploading the pictures that give a wonderful overview of Great Britain and Ireland, the millionth picture finds its way to Commons.

One way of experiencing the flood of new pictures is a Toolserver tool that shows the latest files that have been uploaded.

Multichil hopes in two weeks to have uploaded all the 1,8 million pictures that we received from the Geograph community. Many of these pictures are exquisite and come with elaborate annotations.

Field on slopes of Cosdon Hill

The annotation for this random picture is wonderful:

Field on slopes of Cosdon Hill A view from the same spot as 989690, looking more to the left across a scarcely-improved field with rocks and gorse. The remains of a copper mine on the lower edge of Ramsley Hill is across the junction of four squares; the bracken-covered slopes on its right are in SX6592 and SX6593, while South Zeal village is largely in the latter square. The church tower is in South Tawton, in SX6594.

 Thanks,
      GerardM

Sharing pictures

You go on a holiday, you take a camera and some you upload to #Commons. Well actually, the numbers say you share them on Flickr or Facebook. In a blog Facebook boasts "more than 3 billion photos are being uploaded every month". To appreciate those numbers, Commons has at this moment 7,256,633 freely usable media files or the number of pictures uploaded in its entire existence.

This is a crop from the only picture of the "la Tomatina" festival in Buñol, Spain. There are not that many pictures of Buñol either .. I am sure that many Wikimedians have been to all kinds of weird and wonderful places, festivals, occasions and went their with their camera. We need them more then Facebook because we actually use them, for instance as illustrations.

A bee sharing its meal

The good news is that the Commons usability improvements are something like a month away. This will make it easy to upload. But Facebook is correct when they separate the uploading from the sharing; "5 billion web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc are shared each week as of earlier this month".

Geograph picture of the day; Glandford Ford

We made our GLAM's happy when we shared with them how many of the material they shared with us are used and where. I would be happy to know how many of my Commons contributions are shared and where. I am sure that Geograph would be happy to see the material that we have included in their repository.

We could even start projecting points on a map for the pictures we have in that location. We could show that we "like" pictures. When we start to celebrate what we have, we have a party and I am sure that many more people will join the fun.
Thanks,
     GerardM

More #Geograph pictures will be uploaded to #Commons

Every part of the United Kingdom and Ireland is being photographed by the Geograph project. The first 250,000 pictures have been uploaded to Commons at the end of 2009.

Multichil announced that he has received a hard drive with 1,8 million images. He is preparing the upload and welcomes feedback on the batch uploading page. As you may know, a Geograph project has started for Germany and it would be really cool when such a project is set up for other countries as well.

Personally I would really like such a project set up to run in a country like India, Indonesia, Tanzania and have the best of them as featured pictures.
Thanks,
     GerardM

The whole #wikimedia domain is blocked in #Iran

Not only #Commons but the whole Wikimedia domain is blocked in Iran. Consequently websites like Meta, Strategy and Usability are no longer available. Our Iranian community can no longer influence the road that is ahead of us.

This saddens us because they are part of us, they are part of our world. We could propose a Geograph project for Iran. In this way we would learn more about Iran in the same way we learn about the United Kingdom and Germany. In the end you can only demonise another people and an other culture when you do not know them.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Mündung der Lauchert in den Lauchertsee

I was happily surprised when I learned that Geograph has a German sister project. The British project covers some 76.3%, the new German project already 1%.

Both projects advertise their CC-by-sa credentials and, both projects inform the world that their material is available for use in Wikipedia. The British images can be found on Commons, and the German images as well.

© Copyright Hansjörg Lipp and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

All the Geograph pictures come with geo-tagging. They are another large collection that provides provenance to this type of data.. Another example that the existing absolute lack of discussion with OpenStreetMap is plain silly.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Commons has 6,000,000 media files

One of the #geograph pictures became the 6 millionth file on Commons.

Geograph is a British organisation that aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland. They do a splendid job and they make their material available under the CC-by-sa licentie.

The picture is called Sailing on Ullswater and was created by James Hearton.

The Geograph contains really nice pictures and, it is a great concept. It would be a great concept for the WMF chapters to adopt. Adopting it on a global scale would be a great way of stimulating local interest for our projects.
Thanks,
GerardM

Geograph

Geograph.org.uk has a cool million images about the British countryside. Some of them are dull, some of them are not so dull but what do you expect the panorama is not everywhere like this..

All these images are available under a free license and it makes sense for us to have them. These pictures have added value because all of them come with geo tagging. With the integration of the maps of OpenStreetMap, it will be great to integrate our services in there as well and show the beauty of Britain.

We can and we may take all these pictures. The reasons in favour to take them all are really strong; we do not want to make a selection..But even when we can and may take those pictures, it makes sense to reach out to the people at Geograph because together we are likely to do an even greater job.
Thanks,
GerardM