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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by The Land (talk | contribs) at 13:23, 14 March 2011 (some photos to play with!). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

File:United Kingdom - England - London - Greenwich - National Maritime Museum.jpg
The National Maritime Museum

Wikimedia UK is currently in talks with the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich (near London) regarding a substantial donation of information on British warships. The NMM is one of the world's leading institutions about the history of the sea, with massive collections and archives, particularly focused on Britain. The NMM is interested in releasing data from its Warship Histories project for use in Wikimedia projects. This is an exciting opportunity for the Wikimedia community as much of this information is not currently used in Wikimedia projects. Talks are going very well and it seems likely there will be movement on this in the next few weeks, fingers crossed.

The NMM has also previously released a number of photos on Flickr Commons and we can transfer a number of these on Wikimedia Commons.

If you're in taking part (most obviously by helping integrate the data when released) please add your name to the list of participants below. If you have any questions or views please do add them to the talk page.

What information is on offer?

The NMM's staff has assembled records of British warships from about 1500 to 1950 based on documentary evidence in the NMM's own collection. This information is currently available to the public - but only if they make an appointment to go and see it in the NMM archives. The information has been digitised in recent years and the NMM are keen to see it being used in Wikipedia articles. Wikimedia UK is currently negotiating the release of this information under a CC-BY-SA license.

The data includes the name, type and launch date of (almost) every British warship in the time period concerned. For many ships there is also data on the yard which built a ship, and details of the service history and captains of the ship concerned. For some ships further technical details (for instance, construction materials or dimensions) are available.

The data would be made available in two formats: a flat data file (approx 60,000 rows by 25 columns) and as PDF documents summarising each ship. Exactly where the information would be hosted (the NMM's website, Wikisource, or elsewhere) is not entirely clear yet.

A sample of the data is available here: Wikipedia:GLAM/NMM/Sample data

What use can we make of this information?

The data the NMM hold can add substantially to our coverage of British warships. A sandbox exercise using the data on ships called "Dragon" yielded basic information three ships which were entirely absent from en.wikipedia, a substantial expansion of one ship's article, and minor (but useful) contributions towards 5 more.

Some examples:

  • The changes that could be made to HMS Dragon, showing 3 extra ships: [1]
  • HMS Dragon (1647) currently has an infobox only, but would gain a service history, expanding the article by some 1500B: [2]
  • HMS Dragon (1798) gains about a paragraph: [3]
  • HMS Dragon (1917) has a very mature (though poorly referenced) article already, and gains only a couple of facts: [4] More could probably be done here as the NMM's data could be used to reference some currently unreferenced information on service histories, and could also add a complete list of captains.

There were 13 ships called "Dragon", while the estimate of the total number of RN ships through history is some is 13,000. Extrapolating, we might expect integrating this data in its entirety to give us basic data on 3,000 new ships while improving 6,000 articles, 1,000 of which would expanding substantially.

We are not going to see any articles promoted to FA status just by the incorporation of the NMM's Warship Histories information but it is still a very exciting source of information.

Would the NMM's information be a reliable source?

There doesn't seem to be a clear precedent for using material of precisely this nature, and this is a matter for the community. However, points in favour of this being a reliable source include:

  • This is information that is already available to the public. In theory Wikipedians could take their laptops along to the NMM and sit in front of microfiche readers and card files to make exactly the same changes to articles based on exactly the same information.
  • The NMM's data represents a secondary source. The information has been produced by the NMM's curatorial staff based on their interpretation of the primary documentation. If the NMM printed the same material in a book, it would pretty certainly be a reliable source.
  • The NMM itself is a respected academic institution.

If the community decided this information didn't count as a reliable source, then obviously we would have to go back to the NMM and tell them their information wasn't up to our standards.

What do we need to do?

Assuming this goes ahead (as seems likely) we would need to work out a structure on-wiki to incorporate this information. There are two relevant Wikiprojects, WP:SHIPS and WP:MILHIST which might like to be involved. We would need to work out things like...

  1. Do we set up a taskforce of either the Ships or Milhist Wikiprojects (or both) tasked with incorporating this information? Or a separate project? Or how would it work?
  2. What templates/categories etc do we use to tag articles which this data is relevant to?
  3. We would need a template along the lines of {{DANFS}} and {{Cite_DANFS}} to acknowledge use of the NMM's info.
  4. Probably lots of other things as well...

The NMM's Flickr Commons photos

The NMM has uploaded a number of historic photos to Flickr Commons. These photos are marked "no known copyright restrictions", which accords with the copyright statement on the NMM website. Where this appears to be the case, these photos can be transferred to Wikimedia Commons and used in appropriate Wikipedia articles. An example is here.

This is another way of using the NMM's material productively and you're encouraged to check some of the photos, move them to Commons and incorporate them in appropriate articles!

(For the avoidance of doubt, the NMM put those photos on Flickr Commons entirely independently of our collaboration - so we can't take credit for it but we can make use of it...)

Participants

If you are interested in taking part in this project as it develops, please sign up here....

  1. The Land (talk) 19:39, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:02, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. NtheP (talk) 22:30, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Thurgate (talk) 22:49, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Nick-D (talk) 22:52, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Parsecboy (talk) 14:48, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:37, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Sadads (talk) 01:54, 28 February 2011 (UTC) - I also have some contacts in the field that might be useful in helping[reply]
  9. --Toddy1 (talk) 11:07, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Corneredmouse (talk) 13:01, 1 March 2011 (UTC) - National Maritime Museum is a ten minute train ride. I could, time and work permitting, collect and catalogue information.[reply]
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