Submissions/Histropedia 1 year on – How our increasing use of Wikidata is allowing us to build a timeline of everything in History

After careful consideration, the Programme Committee has decided not to accept the below submission at this time. Thank you to the author(s) for participating in the Wikimania 2015 programme submission, we hope to still see you at Wikimania this July.

Submission no.
5012
Title of the submission

How our increasing use of Wikidata is allowing us to build a timeline of everything in History

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop)

Presentation

Author of the submission
  • Navino Evans
  • Sean McBirnie
E-mail address
  • navino@histropedia.com
  • sean@histropedia.com
Username
  • NavinoEvans
  • Seantime
Country of origin

United Kingdom

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)

Histropedia

Personal homepage or blog

histropedia.com

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

Last year at Wikimania we presented Histropedia and demonstrated how we are using Wikipedia and Wikidata to build a tool that will allow all of history to be explored, compared and analysed on interactive timelines. This year we would like to return to give an update on the progress we have made and talk about our plans for continuing to use Wikidata to further develop the project.

Last year’s presentation focused on we how are able to use Wikipedia categories and Wikidata queries to create instant timelines based on Wikipedia articles, we also gave a preview of how we would use these features to create an editable timeline directory. The first version of the timeline directory, which was created by converting Wikipedia categories into timelines, went live earlier this year and by the time Wikimania arrives we will have launched the fully editable version of the directory and plan to have started linking the timelines to Wikidata queries. Once linked, the timelines can remain synchronised with the query so they will be automatically updated as Wikidata improves.

During our presentation, we will discuss the vital role Wikidata takes in our goal of creating a detailed and accurate resource for visually exploring history, why its continued improvement is so important, and how the open data movement in general has the potential to benefit so many people around the world. As with last year, we will demonstrate the ways in which Histropedia can benefit Wikidata and other Wikimedia projects. By the time of Wikimania, there will be a data export feature in place that will allow timeline data to be exported and used for any purpose, including importing the data back into Wikidata. We also plan to have released a set of tools for visualising mistakes in the Wikidata database so they can be more easily identified and fixed by the community

Making the ‘sum of all human knowledge’ freely accessible to all is a truly exceptional goal, and we believe this knowledge should also be accessible in as many diverse and interesting ways as possible. Because Histropedia is free to use and our data is published under an open license, we hope that the project can help demonstrate the benefits of this goal to other organisations, and ultimately encourage more data to be donated into the Wikimedia ecosystem for the whole world to use and enjoy.

Track

GLAM Outreach or maybe Open Data

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)
30 minutes
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

Very likely (definitely if scholarship is accepted)

Slides or further information (optional)
Special requests


Interested attendees

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  1. Addshore (talk) 16:57, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Daniel Mietchen (talk) 12:47, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Sadads (talk) 17:20, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  4. A very exciting project from the start. CT Cooper · talk 21:16, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Ocaasi (talk) 18:06, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 06:30, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Add your username here.