Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments in the United States/States Project

In the United States, our NRHP sites are well-cataloged on both Wikipedia and Wikidata. This enables easy discovery of sites for photographers through tools such as Wiki Loves Monuments Maps. NRHP sites in general are also well-photographed across the U.S. (with some pocket areas missing).

Wiki Loves Monuments in the U.S. also accept sites recognized as historic by state and local organizations (namely historical societies). The purpose of this is to enable visual preservation of locally recognized historic sites that haven't yet been recognized nationally; this also allows for participants in areas with well-photographed NRHP sites to capture sites that have yet to be photographed.

Unfortunately the vast majority of data regarding state and local sites is not cataloged in neither Wikipedia nor Wikidata. This limits our ability to provide discover tools to photographers; the best we can provide is state guides that provide links to external resources to find non-NRHP historic sites. This can be cumbersome and cause potential contributors to lose interest in monument discovery.

The goal of this project is to plan and catalog the the import of historical site data into Wikipedia and Wikidata.

Worklists

Commons template

The easiest (yet high-impact) contribution to create a structured template to mark the ID of state historic sites. The one required parameter is the ID of the monument in the respective system.

The template should also link to the profile of the monument in the respective organization's directory. This may require an additional parameter.

Examples:

• Template:US-CHL for California Historical Landmarks
• Template:US-OHM for Ohio Historical Markers

Wikidata

The importing of historic site data into Wikidata involves multiple steps:

• Create a Q-item designating the recognition of a site on a list (e.g. Q19558910 (place listed on the National Register of Historic Places)) and metadata properties (e.g. P649 (NRHP reference number))
  • Note that the creation of properties requires getting approval through Wikidata:Property proposal
• Retrieve or create historic site metadata and format it in a manner that enables import into Wikidata.
  • Important metadata:
    • Site's name
    • Identifier
    • Coordinates (important to enable mapping)
  • This may often include writing a script to parse data from a historic society's website, or reaching out to a historical society and see if they can provide data in a structured form.
  • This includes recognizing when a site already exists (i.e. a decent number of state historic sites are also NRHP sites and thus already have a Q-item).
• Utilize a tool to import data into Wikidata.

Wikidata import tools

To do

Wikipedia lists

As an example, refer to the List of California Historical Landmarks.

Previously, these lists would be created straight from monument metadata. With Wikidata however, these lists could be automatically generated from Wikidata data (e.g. ListeriaBot). It is desirable to import data into Wikidata first, as ultimately we want all metadata in Wikidata to enable easy access through APIs, for mapping tools, etc.

State tracking

California

• State historic society: California Historical Markers
• Commons template: Template:US-CHL
• Wikidata Q-item:  Not done
• Wikipedia list: List of California Historical Landmarks

Point of contact: None

Ohio

• State historic society: Remarkable Ohio
• Commons template: Template:US-OHM
• Wikidata Q-item:  Not done
• Wikipedia list:  Not done

Point of contact: Kevin Payravi