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Another year, another map, and another Birthday for Wikidata. Last generated in 2024 by @tarrow and @outdooracorn, this year I have put the work in just ahead of the 13th Wikidata birthday to have a look at what’s changed in terms of items with coordinates this past year on Wikidata.
And here it is!
But really you need to look at the diff between previous years to see what has changed!
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!
It’s been 2 years since the 2021 Wikidata map. Yesterday I was sitting in the WMDE office and Lydia raised the point that we hadn’t made a map in quite some time (T331124).
Maps used to try to generate in a somewhat automated fashion, but the process was rewritten in 2021 and still needs to be run by hand with someone with access to the WMF analytics platform.
Thankfully the documentation of the updates still works perfectly, and the whole process of the map generation only took a few minutes!
It’s been over a year since I last posted about the Wikidata Map, and my last blog only used coordinate data from the end of 2019. At WikidataCon 2021 we finally showed off the new map tool that we have been working on, and with that came some fresh 2021 data!
It’s time for another blog post in my Wikidata map series, this time comparing the item maps that were generated on the 13th May 2019 and 11th November 2019 (roughly 6 months). I’ll again be using Resemble.js to generate a difference image highlighting changed areas in pink, and breakdown the areas that have had the greatest change throughout the 6 month period. The full comparison image can be found here.
If you don’t know what Wikidata is, or what items are then give this page a read. This map shows all items that have a “coordinate location” as a light pixel on a black canvas. The more items with coordinates in a single pixel, the brighter that pixel. This map is generated using code that can be found here.
It’s been another 9 months since my last blog post covering the Wikidata generated geo location maps that I have been tending to for a few years now. Writing this from a hammock, lets see what has noticeably changed in the last 9 months using a visual diff and my pretty reasonable eyes.
It has been another 6 months since my last post in the Wikidata Map series. In that time Wikidata has gained 4 million items, 1 property with the globe-coordinate data type (coordinates of geographic centre) and 1 million items with coordinates [1]. Each Wikidata item with a coordinate is represented on the map with a single dim pixel. Below you can see the areas of change between this new map and the once generated in March. To see the equivalent change in the previous 4 months take a look at the previous post.
It’s time for the first 2018 installation of the Wikidata Map. It has been roughly 4 months since the last post, which compared July 2017 to November 2017. Here we will compare November 2017 to March 2018. For anyone new to this series of posts you can check back at the progression of these maps by looking at the posts on the series page.
Each Wikidata Item with a Coordinate Location(P625)will have a single pixel dot. The more Items present, the more pixel dots and the more the map will glow in that area. The pixel dots are plotted on a totally black canvas, so any land mass outline simply comes from the mass of dots. You can find the raw data for these maps and all historical maps on Wikimedia Tool Labs.
Looking at the two maps below (the more recent map being on the right) it is hard to see the differences by eye, which is why I’ll use ImageMagik to generate a comparison image. Previous comparisons have used Resemble.js.
It has only been 4 months since my last Wikidata map update post, but the difference on the map in these 4 months is much greater than the diff shown in my last post covering 9 months. The whole map is covered with pink (additions to the map). The main areas include Norway, Germany, Malaysia, South Korea, Vietnam and New Zealand to name just a few.
It’s been 9 months since my last Wikidata map update and once again we have many new noticable areas appearing, including Norway, South Africa, Peru and New Zealand to name but a few. As with the last map generation post I once again created a diff image so that the areas of change are easily identifiable comparing the data from July 2017 with that from my last post on October 2016.
