One of the many WikiLabs tools that I use a lot is Wikishootme.
This application is designed to be used on a mobile phone. It allows you to call up a map of where you are at the moment and find missing images of listed building (as red dots). You can then authorise the app, using your Wikipedia / Wikidata credentials, and click on a red dot to upload a photo that you either take there and then or from your phone’s media. The image goes straight to Wiki Commons with a CC-BY-SA licence. And, once uploaded, the photos are automatically linked to the wikidata entry for that item! Should that be automagically?
I had a bunch of projects where I thought it would be useful to generate a custom map with missing images (for example of plaques, or boundary stones), then encourage people to photograph them and add them. Thankfully, Wikishootme allows you to do that.
It turns out it’s not too hard to do. Here is a walk through.
1. Create your wikidata query
I’m going to use the March Stones of Aberdeen as an example. I suggest that you copy exactly what I do, creating this query in full through all three steps. Then when you understand how it works, substitute your own query.
In Wikidata’s Query Service, create the query to retrieve the data you want. Wikishootme is quite particular about column names in the final output, so we need to make sure that our query has columns called ‘q‘ (for the wikidata identifiers) and ‘location‘ for the coordinate locations.
SELECT ?q ?location WHERE{
?q wdt:P31 wd:Q921099; wdt:P131 wd:Q62274582 .
?q wdt:P625 ?location .
}
(For the purposes of this tutorial it is not necessary to understand the syntax of a SPARQL query. If you are curious, in the above query P31 means an instance of; Q921099 is the identifier for a boundary marker; P131 means located in the administrative entity; and Q62274582 is Aberdeen City)
Test that your query runs ok and returns what you expect. The query above will generate a table with two columns – one labelled q with a list of Wikidata QID codes, and another, location with coordinate pairs for each item.
2. Grab the SPARQL
Next copy all of the code between the {} pair (i.e. all of the second and third lines of the query above, but without the curly braces.
Then head to https://urldecode.org, paste your query text into it, and click on encode.
This will create a stream of characters that can be passed as part of a URL to another service. Copy all of that text. When I encode the query above I get the following string:
%3Fq%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ921099%3B%20wdt%3AP131%20wd%3AQ62274582%20.%20%3Fq%20wdt%3AP625%20%3Flocation%20.
3. Generate the URL
We now need to append (or add) the encoded text to the end of the following URL.
This is best done in a text editor.
So, when I paste the encoded string to the end of that, I get this:
4. Try it out
Click on the link above. Did it work? It does for me. When I open it it defaults to a whole world map.
Scroll and zoom to where your red dots are.
Tip: when you get the map centred and at the scale you like, recopy the URL. This will capture the location and zoom level in your map for sharing.
Also, click on the layers symbol at the top right of the map. Choose to display where the data has images (green) as well as the red:
That will change your view to showing red (missing) and green (captured) images for your wikidata items. This will give the URL such as this which loads the map correctly centred. at the right scale, and showing the layers you want.
Now you can share your map. I suggest copying your URL (see the Tip above) into a link shortener such as bit.ly so as to make sharing easier.
Now, when someone clicks on your URL they can click on a red dot, and upload a missing photo to Wiki Commons, and automatically link it to Wikidata – and turn those red dots green!
Header Photo by Ravi Roshan on Unsplash
Code The City 