first published week of: 02/11/2013
he Pop-Up City is always interested in mobile apps that create new experiences of the city. So when Wikipedia, the most popular source for all things information announced its spatial-debut, we paid attention. Wikipedia recently introduced its GeoData extension. This streamlined, centralized source for geographic information means that ‘mapping Wikipedia’ is about to explode.
There have been past attempts to map Wikipedia, but they fell short in their reliance on a static source for data. As you can see with this map showing word counts of articles geo-tagged in Amsterdam, it is based on a fixed source, relying on the mere 5% of Wikipedia articles that had spatial coordinates then. The other maps of Europe are similarly static.
With Wikipedia’s new and easily accessible source for geographic data, articles and images can be quickly geo-tagged. The number of Wikipedia articles with spatial coordinates are bound to increase hugely. The new initiative will also enable developers to mine and map the data, and create new apps quickly and easily: the possibilities are endless!