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]])"
    }
  }

Begin reconciling

I used the head placenames in Sezen as the key index to create new items in Ottgaz. (You will have to "add standard service" using the http://localhost:8000/en/api URL.)

Organize schema

This is the most complicated step. In order to proceed, first I had to create an item for every status that Sezen used, and an item for every hierarchy that Sezen used. I did this without doing any clustering or organizing of redundancy; I will merge these later from within wikibase, once the whole dataset is in wikibase.

I needed to do a lot of parsing as I moved items into wikibase. The biggest distinction was between seat and region. Mostly, this distinction was obvious. In many cases, however, Sezen's classification is ambiguous--and this probably reflects the ambiguity of Ottoman space itself.

Dealing with dates

Wikidata distinguishes Julian and Gregorian dates, and defaults to Julian for earlier periods. It's not clear which calendar Sezen used. My uploading of data has not been absolutely consistent. This is an area for future revision. Other calendars could and should be used in order to convey the information in its native format.