RMIT University Wikidata hackathon

Participants in the RMIT Wikidata hack working to compile Wikidata on public art in Melbourne. Left to right: Leigh Blackall, Alex Lum, Cathy Leahy, Zaina Indira Nehme and Jane McGlashan.

Following on from the Wikidata with Andy Mabbett talk, RMIT University hosted a Hackathon over 24-25 October 2016. The open conference project setting in the morning of the first day resolved to work on the question:

Can we create Wikidata around environmental public art and use that data to create layers in Openstreetmap and augmented reality applications?

— Hackathon planning document

On this page you will find details of what we did and how we did it.

Participants

1. Leigh Blackall: Facilitator of the Hackathon. Works with RMIT as an educational designer in the College of Design and Social Context. Has facilitated several open conferences, namely RecentChangesCamps at Uni of Canberra 2009-2012. Datahacks and hackathons are new, but work is increasingly interested in data and visualisation, so is keen to join or establish a movement toward open, user controlled data. Leigh.Blackall@rmit.edu.au 0404561009
2. Alex Lum: Leading the Hackathon's Wikidata project. Currently working in online and print publishing at VTAC/Monash University. Background in computer science and database administration. Prolific contributor to Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap and Wikidata since 2005. Working on a project to establish a clear ontology for geographic entities in Australia in Wikidata.
3. Joseph - Java developer at RMIT in ITS - Learning, Teaching and Research. Admin for a wide range of systems including BlackBoard, Echo360.
4. Cathy Leahy - Educational Designer in the College of Design and Social Context, RMIT. Background in computer science. New to the world of WikiData, WikiMedia Commons, Wikipedia and DataHacks but excited at the possibility of what can be done with structured data. How it can be created with many voices, tagged and described by passion areas, then displayed and interrogated in multiple formats.

Outcomes

1. Ongoing notes on Wikidata work published at the DLDSC blog
2. A collaboratively authored planning document published on Google Docs
3. A new category on Wikimedia Commons: Public art in Melbourne, Victoria with several new image contributions]
4. Several new Wikidata entries, picked up in this Wikidata query
5. Move documentation into Wikiversity

• 
  File:Glass Facade Artwork, Ngarara Place.jpg
• 
  File:Standing by Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener.jpg
• 
  File:Standing by Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener 3.jpg
• 
  File:Ngarara Place.jpg
• 
  File:Ngarara Place 2.jpg

How

Based on the sequenced outcomes listed above, here are detailed notes on how each outcome was achieved.

The Hackathon

1. The hackathon was proposed as a parallel event to the annual RMIT Teaching and Learning Conference, thereby securing a room at RMIT, promotion of the hackathon, and catering for the hackathon.
2. The hackathon was listed on EventBrite and promoted on the DLDSC blog as well as the RMIT Learning and Teaching Conference website.
3. A planning document was created on Google Docs and used to plan and document the hackathon
4. The hackathon began with an open conference style workshop where the format of the event was explained, projects nominated, and project groups formed to preferred projects. Owing to the small number of participants, only one project group was formed - this Wikidata hack. From their the project group moved to a smaller project room, and worked together for the rest of the first day and over the second day

Contributions to Wikimedia Commons

1. After deciding what would be the focus for the Wikidata hack, our small group went around the RMIT city campus to take photos of public art featuring indigenous Australians or subject matter. We used the Wikimedia Commons mobile application to upload our photos.
2. We decided to create a new category for our images in Wikimedia Commons, consistent with other similar categories. Public art in Melbourne, Victoria.
3. We added parent and sub categories to this new category, and set about incorporating existing images to the new category.

Entries to Wikidata

1. We created new Wikidata entries for each instance of public art in Melbourne that we photographed.
2. We ensured that each data instance included a Genre property of "Public art", as well as a geo-coordinate property and Commons image filename property. These properties would be critical for working into the Wikidata query

Querying Wikidata

1. Refined query to display table items with “genre=public art” with image optional (to find items without images)
2. Resources

• Wikidata Query Service
• QuickStatements (bulk import tool for Wikidata - must be logged in with WIDAR)
• Overpass Turbo (Query API for OpenStreetMap)
• Wikipedia article on Resource Description Framework (RDF) - data model used by Wikidata
• Querying SPARQL from Java
• Querying SPARQL from R
• MediaWiki - includes information on markup, API and data structure
• Help:Gadget-GallerySlideshow
• Help:Gallery tag
• Help:Images and other uploaded files
• Help: Wikidata query service/User Manual
• Help:Wikidata query service/User Manual - Default View
• Use JOSM to download large ranges Open Street Maps data to edit or add data, and then upload it back to Open Street Maps]
• OSM XML format
• KML (Keyhole Markup Language), i.e. Google Maps format
• Crotos - visual art search tool using Wikidata

Documentation into Wikiversity

For consistency in the open data, open standard formats, we moved our Google Docs documentation here into Wikiversity, in an effort to support a knowledge base in Wikiversity around Wikidata.