WikiShootMe

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WikiShootMe V3 (WSM) is a tool to show Wikidata items, Wikipedia articles, and Commons images with coordinates, all on the same map. Also see the original blog post announcement.

Video demonstration of how to use WikiShootMe on a mobile device, 2022-06-20

This page is about the WikiShootMe V3 tool. Earlier versions are not covered here.

Please add bug reports and feature requests to the issue tracker, not to this page or the talk page!

User interface

Buttons

⌖ Centers map on your position, if available
🔍 Lets you search Wikidata to find a place to look at

What you see

Screenshot of WSM V3.

WikiShootMe shows a map with objects on it. By default, it will try and center on your coordinates, if you allow this in your browser. There are four types of objects, by source, and represented by a layer each:

larger, green circles represent Wikidata items with an image
larger, red circles represent Wikidata items without an image
smaller, blue circles represent Commons images
smaller, yellow circles represent Wikipedia articles, in the current language edition (see the language selector in the upper-right corner)

Each of these layers can be toggled individually. Each object can be clicked to reveal a pop-up with further information. All pop-ups include

the name of the object (label, title, file name),
the object coordinates (the 🏠 icon leads to a "Street View" at that position, which may help you find the right image if none is set),
an image (for Commons images and Wikidata items with image)

For Wikidata items without image (red circle), there can be several options to add a new image.

Image addition and upload

The "add/upload image" pop-up.

You can add an image to a Wikidata item that doesn't already have one (remember, each item should ideally only have one image). Wikidata items with no image have their own layer, and are shown as large red circles. The first time you click on one, it shows you a pop-up asking you to authorise uploads via the OAuth mechanism, Click on the button to follow the instructions, and you will land back on the WSM site.

After that, the pop-up for "red" items will have changed, showing one "Upload image" button, and one "Add to item" button. Click on upload to upload a new image to Commons. When on mobile, you can also select your devices' camera and take a new picture. A new, unique file name will be chosen automatically, based on the item label, and the item's coordinates will be used for the image. Also, you are automatically entered as the copyright holder, and the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license is chosen. Once uploaded, the image is added to the item automatically. All these edits happen under your user name.

In older browsers (e.g. IE<10), a new tab opens when you start uploading, and will eventually show the uploaded image, so you can make changes and additions to the image description page. In modern browsers, the image will be added to an upload queue, which will periodically retry the upload if it fails, e.g. due to connection loss on mobile. The uploaded/total count will appear in the toolbar; you can click on it to see details. Once all uploads have gone through, there will be a link to clear/hide the count. If you want to abort all uploads in the queue, just reload the page.

Add an image

The "Add to item" button in the red dot pop-up will add an image that already exists on Commons, with the file name you enter. It checks if the file actually exists on Commons, then add it as a statement to the Wikidata item.

Click the nearest blue dot- a pop-up opens, showing the title, a thumbnail of the image, the truncated file name on commons missing out prefix "File:". This is in incredibly small type.
Copy the filename by copying the incredibly small type, or click on the image to see its page on common. If you copy its full file name from there you must omit the prefix.
Click on the red dot. A pop-up opens. Paste the file name in the box provided- check it for accuracy and 'Add to item'.

(You can use any truncated Commons file name if the required image hasn't been geotagged.)

Create new items

If you know about a location that should have an item but doesn't, you can right-click (mobile: long-press) on the map to create one (OAuth required, see above). You will be asked for a label (in your current language). A new item with that label and location will be created on Wikidata, and show up immediately on the map. If possible, the administrative unit will be inferred from nearby items.

Integration

Link to WikiShootMe

By default, WSM will try to open a view around your current location. You can use URL parameters to open WSM with a specific view:

https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/#lat=52.208055555&lng=0.1225 to open with the given latitude/longitude information in the center.
https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/#q=Q350 to open the location of the item (here: Cambridge). If the item itself has no coordinate information, but its direct P131 (administrative entity) has coordinates, those will be used instead.

Both variant can be combined with a "&zoom=X" parameter, to set the initial zoom (18=max zoom).

Filter items to show

You might want to filter the items to show, for instance only religious buildings, or everything except schools. Here is how to do so:

Prepare a SPARQL request that shows the objects you want, with a column "q" for the Wikidata identifiers and a column "location" containing the points. Do not use "GROUP BY" nor "SAMPLE" clauses. Make sure it is returning correct results. There are several ways to prepare a SPARQL request, a popular tool for this is https://query.wikidata.org.
Take the part between the "WHERE{" and the final "}".
Encode it using an URLEncode implementation such as https://urldecode.org
Concatenate that string at the end of https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/#lat=0&lng=0&zoom=1&layers=wikidata_no_image&worldwide=1&sparql_filter=
Launch that URL in your browser

Examples

Graves on the Norra Begravningsplatsen cemetery, using bespoke, qualifier-based locations.
Embassies and consulates
Everything except roads and embassies.

For some systematic examples, see artwork examples.

Development

Source code

Here.

Previous versions

This is the third version of WikiShootMe. Previous versions are still available: version 1, version 2.