Tag Archives: OpenStreetMap

Remembering War Memorials

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Today is in the UK, when we remember our war dead.

In a discussion on Bluesky of AI slop in FindMyPast’s new database I have just been answering a question about how to record war memorials and the identities and stories of those listed on them, using free-to-write and free-to-read services, as open content and open, linked, data. It would perhaps be useful to record those answers here. Without using AI.

1. Photographs

A 'sea of poppies' on a stone memorial as big as a house, with banners to commemorate the memorial's centenary.
Take lots of photos—the whole memorial; each side; each panel or set of names (see the picture of my local Hamstead War Memorial, below); each sculptural element; the memorial from a distance, in its setting (like the picture of Brierley Hill memorial, above). A modern mobile phone is OK for this, if you don’t have a good camera. You may need to go back for a second visit, if one side is badly backlit and in deep shade.

Upload those photos to Wikimedia Commons, and create a category for the memorial if one does not already exist.

Transcribe the names as part of the description on Commons—this makes them searchable. If there are multiple shots in which a set of names are visible, you can transcribe for one and put a link to that from the others.

If the memorial is outside the UK, check the local law on Freedom of Panorama, in case the memorial is still in copyright, in which case skip this step.

Examples: Brierley Hill memorial on Commons; Hamstead memorial on Commons

2. WikiTree

Create a “space” page on WikiTree, the excellent free genealogy site (“space” is what they call any non-biographical page about a topic such as a memorial or cemetery; again, check first that one does not already exist).

The individual WikiTree pages of the people commemorated can then be linked to this, and vice versa, and you can create biographical pages for those commemorated, where none already exist.

Examples: Eyam memorial on WikiTree; Marsden memorial on WikiTree

Unlike most of the other sites mentioned here, WikiTree is not a Wikimedia Foundation project, but is run on similar lines, by its community of contributors.

3. Wikidata

Hamstead Memorial; follow link for transcription

After once again checking for an existing entry, create an new item on Wikidata for the memorial.

If any of the people on the memorial are notable in Wikidata terms, check for existing items (pages) and if none exist, create and populate them, and add them to the memorial’s item. Please try to include coordinates.

Examples: ; ;

4. OpenStreetMap

Check that the memorial is in OpenStreetMap (OSM), and if not, add it there. A simple node, or point, will usually suffice.

Examples: Brierley Hill memorial on OSM; Eyam memorial on OSM; Hamsted memorial on OSM

OSM is also not a Wikimedia Foundation project, but it too is run on similar lines by its community.

5. Join them together

Add the ID of the OSM node or way, the WikiTree “space” ID, and the Wikimedia Commons category name to the Wikidata item.

Add the Wikidata ID to the OSM object

Add the Wikidata ID to the WikiTree entry.

Add an image to the Wikidata item and WikiTree page.

Examples: see above.

6. Wikipedia

If the memorial is , consider writing an article about it there.

Example:

Conclusion

Not all of the examples above have all of the features I describe; they are works-in-progress.

If you can’t do all of the things I suggest, you can at least do some of them. All of the above sites are built by ordinary people like you, making modest but important contributions.

There is a modest learning curve involved in each of the sites listed, but if you can use a word processor, or email software, you can quickly pick up what’s involved.

If you need help, or support, please ask—I’m happy to assist where I can, or to signpost you to local or online groups who will. You can leave a comment below, or find me on Bluesky or leave me a message on Wikipedia.

In memoriam

Remembering my relatives who fought in two world wars, especially and , who lost their lives.

Developer needed to make Wikidata’s geographical data compatible with GPS tools

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Wikidata needs an open-source developer to make its geographical query results compatible with GPS devices and other geo-spatial tools. Here’s why…

If you query Wikidata (the database sibling project of Wikipedia) for geographically locatable subjects (say, a list of accredited museums in the UK) the results are returned in a table.

When the data has coordinates, with a single click (on the left-hand menu, in desktop view) the results can also be displayed on a map.

The tabular data can be downloaded (via the right-hand menu) in a number of formats, such as CSV, HTML or JSON.

The Wikidata community would like users to be able also to export the data in one or more GPS-friendly formats. These are not only useful for GPS devices, but are compatible with other mapping and visualisation tools. I opened a ticket for this feature request—in 2019!

A patch to do this, supporting GPX, GeoJSON and KML, has been coded. However, it relies on a number of libraries, which in turn introduce numerous dependencies on other libraries. Because these libraries all need to be security-checked, and maintained, using the patch would be cost-prohibitive. As a result, it has been declined.

We are told that it should be possible to code the conversions directly, so that the libraries are not needed. Or to look at removing what we do not need from those libraries. This “requires a developer with a bit more understanding of the formats to look into it”.

I’m not a developer, and the nuts-and-bolts of this are mysterious to me.

We need someone with the relevant knowledge and experience, willing to work on an open-source fix, for the common good.

Who will step up and take on this pro-bono work?

Update: 18 June 2025—WDQS now offers GeoJSON downloads for results that include coordinates. KML & GPX should follow. See the ticket link, above, or try it for yourself here (works best on desktop; mouse over right-hand edge to get menu with download link).

Update2: 23 April 2026—Data can also be downloaded as GPX or KML (using the first column for name values).

A reply from the UK government to my request for road gritting open data

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The government website data.gov.uk, to quote its about page, hosts datasets — as open data — ”from all central government departments and a number of other public sector bodies and local authorities” (my emphasis). This is a good thing.

The site’s FAQ says “If there are particular datasets that you believe should be made available more quickly, please use the data request process” (link in original). This is also good.

Accordingly, in September 2012 (that’s sixteen months ago) I submitted a request asking for:

Lists of roads gritted by councils and other bodies, in times of freezing temperatures, with priorities and criteria if applicable.

I specified that those “other bodies” included the Highways Agency, which is “an Exec­u­tive Agency of the Depart­ment for Trans­port (DfT), and is respon­si­ble for oper­at­ing, main­tain­ing and improv­ing the strate­gic road net­work in Eng­land on behalf of the Sec­re­tary of State for Transport” (again, quoting the HA’s about page) and thus an agency of the UK government. They grit most motorways and certain trunk (“A”) roads.

Highways Agency 1995 Foden Telstar gritter truck, 4 February 2009

A highways Agency gritting vehicle at work

The data would allow my fellow volunteers and I to label (“tag”) gritting routes in OpenStreetMap, improving Satnav routing. Here’s a map of some we’ve already done.

I have, today, received a reply from the Cabinet Office, which I reproduce here in full and verbatim:

Hi Andy,

I am getting in touch with you about your data request. I sincerely apologise for the length of time it has taken to get you a response to your request. Local Authorities are responsible for winter gritting within their boundaries. Local Authorities are data owners and they are responsible for the format, access and cost of their data. This means that you will need to get in touch with the Local Authority’s [sic] who’s [sic] data you are seeking directly for access to their data. Some Local Authorities do publish information about gritting on data.gov.uk, but they do not have a reporting requirement. You may find the following links helpful.

http://data.gov.uk/data/search?q=gritting – Data.gov.uk Local Authorities gritting data
http://www.local.gov.uk/community-safety/-/journal_content/56/10180/3510492/ARTICLE – Local Government Association information on how Local Authorities gritting responsibilities.
https://www.gov.uk/roads-council-will-grit – Access to each local Authority page on gritting
http://www.highways.gov.uk/our-road-network/managing-our-roads/operating-our-network/how-we-manage-our-roads/area-teams/area-9/area-9-our-winter-work/ – Highways Agency information
http://www.highways.gov.uk/about-us/contact-us/ – Contacting the Highways Agency
http://www.highways.gov.uk/freedom-of-information-2/ – information on submitting an Freedom of Information request to the Highways Agency

I am very sorry for the amount of time it has taken us to get back to you. I hope this helps.

Kind Regards,

[name redacted]
Transparency Team
4th Floor
1 Horse Guards Road, London, SW1A 2HQ
Email: [redacted]@cabinet-office.gsi.gov.uk
Find out more about Open Data @ Data.gov.uk

I note the following:

  • Although an apology for the — inordinate — delay in replying is given, no reason for that is offered.
  • It should — surely? — be possible to make one centralised request rather than having to make the same request to every local authority (at the relevant tier) in the country?
  • No mention is made of Highways Agency data, other than links to their web pages, including their FoI page.
  • The reply was sent to me by email, but is not in the Comments section of the page for the request, so is not available to other interested people, including the person who commented in support of it. (I’ll post a link to this post there.)

What do you think?

I hope my recent request, for The National Heritage List for England, receives more prompt consideration and achieves a more positive outcome.

What have I been up to, lately?

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I really ought to blog more often (cobbler’s children’s shoes and all that…), but in the style of a back-to-school, what-I-did-on-my-holidays essay, here’s a round-up of some of my recent activity. And inactivity.

In June, I suffered a detached retina, and had to undergo emergency eye surgery. This happened again, in the same eye, a couple of weeks later. My eye is recovering well, but I’m likely to need a further operation for the resultant cataract, at some point in the future. Thanks to everyone who expressed good wishes.

The first detachment happened around the time I was speaking, twice, at the WikimediaUK AGM in Lincoln. There’s a video of my talk on Wikipedians-in-Residence.

I subsequently received a grant from WikimediaUK for a digital recorder to assist with my project asking Wikipedia subjects to contribute recordings of their spoken voices.


Institution of Civil Engineers - One Great George Street - Library

My picture of the Institution of Civil Engineers’ library

Following my surgery, I was laid up for a few weeks, but managed to get out and help at a couple of local Social Media Surgeries (thanks to Si Whitehouse and Steph Clarke, who acted as my chauffeurs). As my recovery progressed, I also visited London, and ran a Wikipedia editathon at the prestigious and historic Institution of Civil Engineers.

Shortly after my first operation, the Museum Association published a series of case studies (some behind a paywall) of collaboration between Wikipedia and British GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums), including one about my work as Wikipedian-in-Residence at the New Art Gallery, Walsall, which is freely viewable.

I also took the train to Shrewsbury, to teach Shropshire County Archives staff there to edit Wikipedia. At the “Skill Share Jamboree“, where ‘hacktivists’ came together to share practical knowledge in a number of disciplines, I taught a session on recognising garden birds, and another on how to edit Wikipedia.

The BrewCamp meetings which I and a small group of friends run in and around Birmingham, to allow public sector activists to meet and discuss digital engagement topics, were successfully spun off by us and local collaborators into Dudley (as “BostinCamp“) and Stafford (as “OatCakeCamp“), and will no doubt both now develop independent lives there.

I helped launch the “Best by West Midlands” white paper and website, including case studies of social media use in local government. One of the case studies was about my work as Wikipedian-in-Residence with Staffordshire Archives and Heritage Service. At the launch, I ran a discussion session for the attendees, on “trust in social media”, with a subsequent on-line write-up.


Library of Birmingham - interior 2013-08-28 - 34

Inside the Library of Birmingham, in the week before opening

I was kindly invited to a preview of the new Library of Birmingham, where I took a lot of photographs, which are now available on Wikimedia Commons, under an open licence, and so freely available for reuse.

More recently, I attended State of the Map, the annual international OpenStreetMap conference. I volunteered to “captain” some of the sessions, acting as timekeeper, but was honoured to be asked to chair the main strand for all three days, introducing keynote and other speakers from Japan, the USA, Australia, Indonesia and across Europe. Not only was it a great opportunity to catch up with friends, and to learn, but I was able to find people to work collaboratively on a number of tasks, such as automating links from OSM to Wikipedia, which I’ll be writing about soon.

The very next day, I was back at the New Art Gallery, Walsall as the MC for “GalleryCamp13”, the inaugural unconference for people working at or with, or simply interested in, art galleries. I also spoke there, about my Wikipedian in Residence work. There’s a Storify post about the event.

I’m now working on a number of other projects, about which more in the future, and am available to help your organisation to understand Wikipedia and open content, or social media more widely, or to plan and host (un) conferences.

Teaching OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia editing, Tupperware Party style

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I’m writing (and posting — thank you Chiltern Railways’ free Wi-Fi!) this on the train home from High Wycombe. I’ve spent a fun day there with Louise Brown, her husband Simon, and three of their friends, teaching them to edit OpenStreetMap and, after a fab lunch cooked by Simon, how to edit Wikipedia.

This came about after I mentioned on Twitter some other Wikipedia training I’d delivered, and Louise said she wished I lived closer, so she could have attended. I said I’d be wiling to travel to her home to do so if she could get a few like-minded friends together, to justify me giving up a day of my time and making the journey. This she quickly did.

Though we didn’t add much to OpenStreetMap to start with, I’m confident that the attendees will soon fill in the gaps around their homes and work-places in High Wycombe, West Wycombe and Marlow. We certainly improved some Wikipedia articles though, and created some new articles, including:

St Lawrence, West Wycombe
Photo by amandabhslater, on Flickr, CC-BY-SA

I’ve previously taught Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap editing, separately, in a variety of situations including universities, council offices, at Social Media Surgeries, at hackdays, and elsewhere, but this is the first time I’ve done so in someone’s home, in an informal and social setting.

A bit like a Tupperware party in fact, but without the plastic kitchenware.

If you have skills in editing Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap, or using social media, or indeed anything else that can be done around a domestic dining table, why don’t you see if you can share them in a similar way. If you’ve not delivered training before, it’s a good way to get experience.

It’s also a great way to sign up new contributors to these worthwhile crowd-sourced projects, in a fun, friendly and supportive environment. There are no venue costs to worry about. And you’ll meet some lovely people!

So what are you waiting for?