Wikidata Map in 2024
Another year on from the last generation of the Wikidata map, @tarrow and @outdooracorn spent some time in preparation for the Wikidata birthday to prepare a new map (see git commits).
The latest images have already been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, and appear in the Wikidata map commons gallery.
In this post, I’ll have a look at what has changed in the past year that is visible from the map!
Previously I have generated diffs that highlight areas that have changed, overlaid on the map in pink.
This year, we have a version which only highlights the changed areas on a white canvas, making the intensity of change easier to spot.
Getting a trusty world map up alongside, we can see that:
- Lots of growth in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Easter Australia, Some areas of India
- The USA sees growth primarily on the east coast
- Europe sees growth, very notably in France, Spain and Italy
- The continent of Africa has a particular set of north western regions that see growth. At a guess, Nigeria and Cameroon
- Much harder to see, but I think Northern Peru? Iceland! South Korea
Indonesia and the area surrounding looks rather impressive.
The map isn’t all about item locations, but also their relations. In order to see these you’ll have to go and have a look at the tool online at https://wmde.github.io/wikidata-map/dist/index.html
The comparison view below shows you relations between items that use “shares border with” P47. You can see that someone has spent a lot of time adding all of the relations for Australia.
I look forward to this map being generated yearly for the birthday.
Maybe at some point I need to generate a few new animations!