Using

There are three primary uses for Ottgaz at present.

Reference and disambiguation

Ottgaz provides persistent unique identifiers for Ottoman places. This is especially helpful when placenames are ambiguous, for instance when the same name is used for several places. For example, there are dozens of Ottoman and Turkish places named Yenice. Although we possess various lists of these places (English wikipedia, Turkish wikipedia), we have no consistent system for disambiguating them. By adding an Ottgaz Qid to a written text, you can specify exactly which place you are discussing. "He was sent to Yenice, south of Bursa (Q7472)."

How to

Openrefine reconciliation

I used Openrefine to prepare most of the data I've added to Ottgaz. I will not describe parsing lists (such as Sezen) into Openrefine here, though I have limited documentation of this process elsewhere. This section assumes that you know how to use Openrefine and Docker, and describes the tools and process for reconciling and uploading data.

Run a local reconciliation interface

Download the OpenRefine Wikibase package, which you can run on Docker. The documentation provided with the package is useful.

Add Wikibase instance

Use this manifest to add Ottgaz to OpenRefine.

{
    "version": "2.0",
    "mediawiki": {
      "name": "Ottgaz",
      "root": "https://ottgaz.org/wiki/",
      "main_page": "https://ottgaz.org/wiki/Main_Page",
      "api": "https://ottgaz.org/w/api.php"
    },
    "wikibase": {
      "site_iri": "https://ottgaz.org/entity/",
      "maxlag": 5,
      "max_edits_per_minute": 60,
      "tag": "openrefine-${version}",
      "properties": {
        "instance_of": "P1",
        "subclass_of": "P2"
      },
      "constraints": {
        "property_constraint_pid": "P2302",
        "exception_to_constraint_pid": "P2303",
        "constraint_status_pid": "P2316",
        "mandatory_constraint_qid": "Q21502408",
        "suggestion_constraint_qid": "Q62026391",
        "distinct_values_constraint_qid": "Q21502410"
      }
    },
    "oauth": {
      "registration_page": "https://ottgaz.org/wiki/Special:OAuthConsumerRegistration/propose"
    },
    "entity_types": {
      "item": {
         "site_iri": "https://ottgaz.org/entity/",
         "reconciliation_endpoint": "http://localhost:8000/${lang}/api",
         "mediawiki_api": "https://ottgaz.org/w/api.php"
      },
      "property": {
         "site_iri": "https://ottgaz.org/entity/",
         "mediawiki_api": "https://ottgaz.org/w/api.php"
      },
      "mediainfo": {
         "site_iri": "https://ottgaz.org/entity/",
         "reconciliation_endpoint": "http://localhost:8000/${lang}/api"
      }
    },
    "editgroups": {
      "url_schema": "([[:toollabs:editgroups-commons/b/OR/${batch_id}|details]])"
    }
  }