Constructing a query on pieces of public art in Scotland using Wikidata and WikimediaCommons encounters Freedom of Panorama limitations. Sculptures are ok to depict but not painted murals, such as on Read more
Beeching and South Lanarkshire
Seeing in this OTD post the range of stations in South Lanarkshire which were closed on 4 January 1965, it was striking how much impact this must have made on the isolation of these communities. Read more
Multi-lingual use of Wikidata
For several weeks I have been experimenting with a Gaidhlig version of the Scotland's Lost Places bot, hoping to exploit the multi-lingual labels on Wikidata. The results on the dummy run haven't Read more
Microblog migrations
At the start of 2024 I went looking for Scottish organisations with Mastodon accounts which already were or could be stored on their Wikidata record and found only 14: Surgeons' Hall Museum, Read more
Labelling Gaidhlig
Although currently experimenting with a Gaidhlig version of the Scottish history bot, it was chance that I noticed that Wikidata for various locations which were originally loaded from HES/Canmore Read more
Mastodon migration
The migration of the Bot from botsin.space to mastodon.scot has gone without mishap, confirming the Fediverse portability principle. After doing a Create Account and email confirmation on the target Read more
Expanding Bot across languages
Reviewing the Bot that presents items from Scottish History using Wikidata, it occurs to me that a relatively simple extension could exploit the inter-language labels in Wikidata to generate a Read more
Relocating Bot
The impending closure of botsin.space forces me to rethink what kind of service is appropriate for posting the daily Scottish Lost Places items. These posts are the outcome of a program which queries Read more
Towns and their trades
After a conversation about the decline in Scotland's fishing industry, I posted to Mastodon about the lack of Wikidata to support analysis of places by current or former industry. I am suggesting Read more
Hydro-electric and wind power stations
I began looking at the Wikidata information on hydro-electric power stations, whose development was a feature of 20th century Scotland. Some of the date information is scant, and some is Read more