[Wikimediauk-l] A mapping issue of possible more general interest
An innocent-enough question on the demographics of WMUK's membership has led me a merry dance so far. I'm sharing it with this list since it seems interesting in its own right, and (judging by chat at Sunday's meetup) someone may well know more than I do about it. The idea is to start with postcodes, rounded off like CB2, for each member, and then do a graphical plot. Since the so-called postcode centroids are well known data, that part isn't hard. But the big urban areas will not be clearly represented. The key word here seems to be cartogram: see WP article. What I really would like is a population cartogram, of area type, so a smoothing out of population density to be more even in a distorted map. There are examples as Figure 9 and Figure 10 in http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_population/SMPS58.pdf Those, though, are not based on postcode areas, but on census data done by wards. Anyone (I'm sure we have some experts) on the list who understands the point here? Locating the postcode centroids within their census ward, once an for all, (i.e. just some matching that may have been done already) looks to be enough for the basic purpose of displaying membership data to find clusters. Alternatively some sort of population cartogram based on postcode areas could do it. Doesn't look like rocket science. Locating the postcode centroid by district so that the Figure 10 map of the PDF could be used as a basis could be done with the list on the next page (p. 24 of document). Comments, please. Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] A mapping issue of possible more general interest
I have done a lot of geostatistics over the lasts three years so I could look into doing something although I wouldn't look at the distorted cartogram since I despise them with a passion :) Also doing it by Postcode centroids would be far too small for our purpose but looking at it at a council boundary level would be better and cuts the amount of work needed to get something useful :) Seddon On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 8:01 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: An innocent-enough question on the demographics of WMUK's membership has led me a merry dance so far. I'm sharing it with this list since it seems interesting in its own right, and (judging by chat at Sunday's meetup) someone may well know more than I do about it. The idea is to start with postcodes, rounded off like CB2, for each member, and then do a graphical plot. Since the so-called postcode centroids are well known data, that part isn't hard. But the big urban areas will not be clearly represented. The key word here seems to be cartogram: see WP article. What I really would like is a population cartogram, of area type, so a smoothing out of population density to be more even in a distorted map. There are examples as Figure 9 and Figure 10 in http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_population/SMPS58.pdf Those, though, are not based on postcode areas, but on census data done by wards. Anyone (I'm sure we have some experts) on the list who understands the point here? Locating the postcode centroids within their census ward, once an for all, (i.e. just some matching that may have been done already) looks to be enough for the basic purpose of displaying membership data to find clusters. Alternatively some sort of population cartogram based on postcode areas could do it. Doesn't look like rocket science. Locating the postcode centroid by district so that the Figure 10 map of the PDF could be used as a basis could be done with the list on the next page (p. 24 of document). Comments, please. Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Fwd: [Internal-l] Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 - Europe?
On 17/12/2010 04:05, geni wrote: On 15 December 2010 20:03, Michael Peelem...@mikepeel.net wrote: Forwarding with permission of the sender. I'm very eager to see the UK and Ireland participate in this if possible, but from my experience of running Britain Loves Wikipedia I'm very aware that this needs a team of people running it rather than just one person. So: is anyone interested in leading/helping with this project? I assume the UK equiv would be listed buildings. Perhaps we could interest geograph and piggy back on that? Geograph would be a good place to start. As would English Heritage, which absorbed the old (1908) Royal Commission on Historical Monuments: I have their stonking volumes surveying Cambridge. Geograph goes by grid square, which is a sensible enough system. We know this would take collaboration. Also the UK is very rich in the basic material. Wishlists sorted by grid square looks like the first structure to set up. Browsing what is already on Geograph is a good idea, to prevent duplication of effort. (Geograph images are already being uploaded to Commons; progress report on that would help. But searching Geograph is probably easier than searching Commons categories?) Starting with lists: obviously it would not be that hard for the UK wiki to host tables logging what had been done. This kind of progress check is likely the key to getting large-scale collaboration. So I'd suggest pages on the UK wiki set up in parallel with the subcategories of [[Category:Wikipedians in England]], [[Category:Wikipedians in Scotland]] etc. on WP. E.g. circulate [[Category:Wikipedians in Tyne and Wear]] (26 of them) with details of a page set up for Tyne and Wear. The messages on User talk pages can be done by AWB, I believe. Anyway, enough to think about. Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] A mapping issue of possible more general interest
On 17/12/2010 08:28, Joseph Seddon wrote: I have done a lot of geostatistics over the lasts three years so I could look into doing something although I wouldn't look at the distorted cartogram since I despise them with a passion :) Also doing it by Postcode centroids would be far too small for our purpose but looking at it at a council boundary level would be better and cuts the amount of work needed to get something useful :) Whatever. But the point is we have the postcodes, and the idea is to have a tool set up to display from that data alone. In fact I'm somewhat surprised that at least some visualisation tool of this kind isn't included in the open-source contact relationship manager we use. Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] A mapping issue of possible more general interest
On 17/12/2010 09:45, Roger Bamkin wrote: Charles, I'm certainly interested. I would like to find out how may wikimedians there are in the midlands. I intend to launch an idea which is based here. At the momement I'm waiting for feedback from a number of leading wikimedians (hint yes you three), but I am unsure as to how many people are a small car ride away. So hope this idea works. It's a tricky counting exercise, though the answer may be 100 in round terms anyway. More to the point is how to contact people ... going by categories, userboxes and so on doesn't tell you activity level. Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] Public Domain Day - automated data
As many will know, last year on this list the idea came up of getting media coverage for authors whose works will fall out of copyright in 2011. WMUK is looking at the press release side of this in recent discussions. But there is a bigger issue (as always with Wikimedia!), namely how to research the authors using WP. I mentioned it to Magnus Manske, and he has whipped up a prototype tool: http://toolserver.org/~magnus/PDator.php The idea is roughly category intersection and then union: the UK has a 70 year rule (as do many other countries - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_length for detail). By intersecting [[Category:British writers]] with [[Category:1940 deaths]] one can get started (http://toolserver.org/~dschwen/intersection/, use second box down, depth=6 works for me). But what I posed Magnus as a challenge was the global problem: Germany also has a 70 year rule, so the right or at least better thing to do is to intersect the author category for German writers with the 1940 deaths category, on deWP (will be fuller than enWP almost surely). Then compile a long list. I'm not quite sure what Magnus has put into the prototype but it is proof-of-concept: brings up 138 names for me for 2011, and can be run for other years. Thorough use of interwiki is certainly kind of interesting here. Anyway it's complex: Cuba has a 50 year rule, esWP would be the place to start in on the categories, but you couldn't deny that looking in enWP might also give something fresh. This discussion is adjourned from a WMUK internal list, where the press part is in hand. I thought this issue would be of more general interest. (Magnus is currently a bit busy, he says. Don't expect any instant upgrades, therefore.) I started myself to tabulate writers round the world using plain intersection. There is stuff on a WMUK internal wiki that could easily be copied onto the UK wiki if others want to chip in. FYI our bold list of authors who might be newsworthy, who died in 1940, currently reads as *J. J. Thomson, physicist *E. F. Benson, Mapp and Lucia books *John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (novelist, 39 Steps) *W. H. Davies, poet and autobiographer *Victor Benjamin Neuburg, sidekick of Aleister Crowley *Eileen Power, important medieval historian *Marcus Garvey, prophet for Rastafarians *Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV, ruler of Mysore, friend of Gandhi *Herbert Guthrie-Smith, New Zealand conservationist *Leon Trotsky *Mikhail Bulgakov, novelist (cognoscenti say The White Guard), a new opera production in London with Simon Burney so topical *Isaak Babel. Do add others here if you have them. So there are really two things going on here: *long-list: address the problem of getting a comprehensive global list of _notable_ authors (i.e. writers notable as writers) who died in a year making their works fall out of copyright in 2011, in the terms of the relevant period (usually 70 or 50 years, other do occur) . So 1940 or 1960 deaths, typically. *short-list: suggestions as to people the media might like to cover. And that actually all excludes the American public domain position, which (as we found in 2009) makes for a much more complicated story. Hosting by the WMF on Wikisource (say) must go by US law. But there is Wikilivres, which is across the border in Canada. Any contacts there? Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Public Domain Day - automated data
On 17 December 2010 11:57, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: And that actually all excludes the American public domain position, which (as we found in 2009) makes for a much more complicated story. Hosting by the WMF on Wikisource (say) must go by US law. But there is Wikilivres, which is across the border in Canada. Any contacts there? Wikilivres is basically Yann Forget's personal project (yan...@gmail.com, cc'd). There's also gutenberg.org.au, for things that are PD under Australian law (all of Orwell, for example). - d. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Public Domain Day - automated data
On 17/12/2010 12:13, David Gerard wrote: There's also gutenberg.org.au, for things that are PD under Australian law (all of Orwell, for example). So what the WP list indicates is deaths before 1955, from the Australian POV, had copyrights lapsing in or before 2005; and otherwise nothing more until 2026 because 1956 deaths come under a 70 year rule? Damn tricky, in that case. Not to know what the current PD position in Australia, but to see what input needs to be placed in PDator to make it authoritative. You have issues of nationality by birth or naturalisation? The map of the world by jurisdictions has changed a great deal over the last 70 years. There is probably tricky stuff about translations and so on. What is needed is, not exactly an expert system on international copyright, but a tool that has the content of such a system encoded in its output. Which makes this quite an enterprise, for which we have a start from Magnus. Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] A mapping issue of possible more general interest
I've worked with commercial suppliers of this sort of data, but don't know how much is available as freeware. Council wards vary greatly in population, the boundary commission seeks to standardise them within individual authorities, but not nationally. Parliamentary constituencies are much more harmonised, though with anomalies especially where Islands are concerned. There are about a 100 Postcode areas - the leading alphabetic bit. But they vary radically in population size - BT has three times the average and two of the Scottish islands are titchy - I think less than a tenth of average size. Outward Postcodes (the first half of the Postcode) also vary widely in number of households. Postal Sectors (the first half of the Postcode and the number at the beginning of the second half) are my favourite, the residential ones usually have around 2,000 households WereSpielChequers On 17 December 2010 10:08, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: On 17/12/2010 09:45, Roger Bamkin wrote: Charles, I'm certainly interested. I would like to find out how may wikimedians there are in the midlands. I intend to launch an idea which is based here. At the momement I'm waiting for feedback from a number of leading wikimedians (hint yes you three), but I am unsure as to how many people are a small car ride away. So hope this idea works. It's a tricky counting exercise, though the answer may be 100 in round terms anyway. More to the point is how to contact people ... going by categories, userboxes and so on doesn't tell you activity level. Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] A mapping issue of possible more general interest
On 17/12/2010 18:47, WereSpielChequers wrote: I've worked with commercial suppliers of this sort of data, but don't know how much is available as freeware. Council wards vary greatly in population, the boundary commission seeks to standardise them within individual authorities, but not nationally. Parliamentary constituencies are much more harmonised, though with anomalies especially where Islands are concerned. There are about a 100 Postcode areas - the leading alphabetic bit. But they vary radically in population size - BT has three times the average and two of the Scottish islands are titchy - I think less than a tenth of average size. Outward Postcodes (the first half of the Postcode) also vary widely in number of households. Postal Sectors (the first half of the Postcode and the number at the beginning of the second half) are my favourite, the residential ones usually have around 2,000 households The interesting thing (if you could call it that) about this problem is that everyone I mention it to has a different take. It's the opposite of there being a solution known to everyone in the trade: suggestions are disparate. Which is not so good if all that is required is one solution fit for the basic purpose ... Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Fwd: [Internal-l] Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 - Europe?
On 17 December 2010 08:55, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Geograph would be a good place to start. As would English Heritage, which absorbed the old (1908) Royal Commission on Historical Monuments: I have their stonking volumes surveying Cambridge. Geograph goes by grid square, which is a sensible enough system. English Heritage would probably point out that from their POV it has already been done: http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/ Which will be the problem you face with dealing with any traditional organization. Thus geograph. -- geni ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Fwd: [Internal-l] Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 - Europe?
On 17/12/2010 20:54, geni wrote: On 17 December 2010 08:55, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Geograph would be a good place to start. As would English Heritage, which absorbed the old (1908) Royal Commission on Historical Monuments: I have their stonking volumes surveying Cambridge. Geograph goes by grid square, which is a sensible enough system. English Heritage would probably point out that from their POV it has already been done: http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/ Which will be the problem you face with dealing with any traditional organization. Thus geograph. Well, it's all pretty interesting. I have started some sort of page about it all, for my home county: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Loves_Cambridgeshire_Monuments Not knowing much about this, I went to the National Monuments Register download area (requires a nosy sort of registration, but that's all). They do six categories of monuments, for which Scheduled Monuments (about 18000) might be what some people meant. The data download is of size 15,706,462 kb. Do people really still think in bits? Even so, it's two gigabytes? And that's the zipped version Also on offer: Listed Buildings (350,000) at 27,735,218 kbm is even bigger. Others are noticeably smaller: Battlefields, Parks and Gardens; Scheduled Monuments; World Heritage Sites. The last of those might be relevant? But can anyone explain http://www.ukworldheritage.org.uk/? This all to get GIS data, to get a handle on the issue. Well, if someone knows how to handle such files and subdivide them, these might become a valuable resource. Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
