… and wait 1 or 2 days

Posted by rphyrin on 1 December 2024 in English.

On the first day of every month, I run a manual monthly statistics script to calculate which Wikipedia article is the most active.

Today, while analyzing this month’s statistics logs, I came across an interesting article.

That article discusses the efforts to integrate public transportation in the Jakarta metropolitan area.

This article also included a map that displays the current extent of the integration effort.

But I noticed something was missing, and now I’m itching to fix it.

So, I immediately hit the ‘edit source’ button.

Later, I found out that this map is generated using the MediaWiki Maplink extension.

But I don’t see any line coordinates here. All I see is just the Wikidata item ID.

So, I checked that Wikidata item.

Still, no line coordinates.

Where are the line coordinates?

I need to find them if I want to add a new one!

The next few minutes turned into a hide-and-seek game with these elusive line coordinates.

There’s nothing left to uncover on Wikidata. They could be stored on Commons (but linked through Wikidata), or as template data on the local Wikipedia (also linked through Wikidata). I checked all the possibilities, but still, no luck.

So, I turned to the Maplink extension documentation.

That’s when I had some revelations.

The line coordinates are extracted directly from OpenStreetMap.

So, all we need to do is link the Wikidata item to its corresponding OSM node, way, or relation.

Alright, let’s do this.

Create a new Wikidata item, link it to the OSM relation, and use that Wikidata item ID in the Maplink syntax.

Then, submit and refresh the page.

But… nothing happened.

Oh no.

I did everything right, but still, nothing happened!

So, I started over from the very beginning. Maybe I missed something at the start? Maybe it’s not on OSM? Maybe it’s stored on Commons or in the template data? Oh, no no no.

…..

While re-reading the Maplink extension documentation, I came across something shocking.