Wikidata

Wikidata:WikiProject Mountains

This project aims to maintain and complete the data about mountains in Wikidata.

Scope and Classification edit

Scope of the project edit

With WikiProjects being platforms for a group of contributors, who work together focused on a specific topic area, the scope of a WikiProject should be clear defined. While it might seem obvious what a mountain is, in fact things are a bit more complicated.

The problem starts with the fact, that there are a couple of geographic terms referring to landforms someone might consider as a mountain aswell, such as hill (Q54050) or summit (Q207326). All these landforms have in common, that their highest point is of a greater elevation then any other point immediately adjacent to it. It is suggested to call this landform elevation (Q106589819).

Considering the aim of this WikiProject to cover all of these landforms seems advisable. In this context, saying this WikiProject deals with mountains is maybe not wrong, but imprecise or at least incomplete. This is reflected in Wikidata Queries, where when running queries allegedly comprehensive of what somebody might consider a mountain, constructs like that had to be used; the usage of elevation (Q106589819) as superordinate solves issues like that.

Classification issues edit

That the Matterhorn (Q1374) is a mountain is probably a fact that anyone would agree on. Schwellenburg (Q2256785) is what probably most of the people would call a hill, even in its german Wikipedia article it is classified as such in the first sentence, but here on Wikidata it is somehow instance of (P31) mountain (Q8502). This example is one of probably tens of thousands of items, where it was arbitrarily defined by some contributor as what to consider a specific landform.

With public sources lacking any consistent definition on how to keep apart mountains, summits and hills and Wikimedia projects agreed on Wikipedia:No original research (Q4656524), the only thing dedicated contributors can do is to agree on a standardization scheme and propose guidelines to bring order into the way elevated landforms are presented here on Wikidata.

Proposed axioms edit

Landforms where it is doubtful that they are elevated places at all, are not supposed to be classified as elevation (Q106589819) or one of its subclasses.

  • The most widely available terrain dataset is the SRTM data, which provides a resolution of about 30 m. Hence for elevated places showing less than 30 m of prominence according to the SRTM data, it can not be assumed that they actually are elevated places in the sense of the definition above unless this is evident from more precise available terrain data.
  • The UIAA also uses 30 m of prominence as a classification of a summit (Q207326).

An elevated place with more than 150 m (492 ft) of prominence can always be considered as a mountain (Q8502).
Its summit, if labeled different, is considered as main peak (Q111177881).

  • For the definition of a mountain, prominence cutoffs between 100 m and 300 m are popular, with 150 m being somewhat in the middle of that range.
  • Popular peak bagging classifications, such as Marilyn (Q285562), use 150 m (492 ft) prominence cutoff.

An elevated place with more than 600 m (1969 ft) of elevation and a rugged appearance is to be considered as mountain (Q8502); a place with less than 600 m (1969 ft) of elevation and a soft-rounded top is to be considered as hill (Q54050).

  • Hill definition either is solely based on appearance or on quantifiable parameters aswell. This suggested axiom violates neither of them, whilst of course being ambiguous if the criteria does not match.
  • In terms of numbers, the threshold of 600 m or 2000 ft is widely used throughout Europe (especially the UK) and the US aswell.

Hierarchy of mountain related class items edit

Mountain ranges edit

The main mountain range item is: mountain range (Q46831). Mountain ranges should be defined as instance of (P31) mountain range (Q46831) or one of its subclasses:

The relationship between mountain ranges can be described as a hierarchical tree, using the property mountain range (P4552) : a small mountain range is part of a larger mountain range, like for example :

Mountains edit

The main mountain item is mountain (Q8502). Mountains should be defined as instance of (P31) mountain (Q8502) or one of its subclasses, like for example:

Mountains should use mountain range (P4552) to link to a mountain range, the most precise possible.

Summits edit

Some mountains contain several summits that are not considered as distinct mountains due to their small prominence. In that case, each summit item is described as instance of (P31) summit (Q207326) and located in/on physical feature (P706) the main mountain item.

Not every summit is a mountain, but every mountain has a summit. Since this is inherent to any mountain, there is no need for mountains to be instance of (P31) summit (Q207326) aswell.

Prominence and Isolation should be applied only to the most specific item according to this hierarchy.

Properties edit

Mountains-related properties edit

External IDs edit

Mountain ranges-related properties edit

However, the mountain range items should not have coordinate location (P625) as they cannot be represented by a single point. It is better to map all the mountains part of the range to know the true position and extent of the range. Similarly they should not use elevation above sea level (P2044). (disputed, see talk page)


External IDs edit

Mountain passes-related properties edit

External IDs edit

Volcanoes-related properties edit

External IDs edit

Statistics edit

2018-07-07 ... Objective
Mountains 504835 Millions? At least 445 000 on OpenStreetMap.
... with coordinate location (P625) 437168 same as above
... with elevation above sea level (P2044) 327729 same as above
... with topographic prominence (P2660) 8842 same as above
... with Peakbagger mountain ID (P3109) 4014 more than 50 000 peaks, 67 591 according to data uploaded to Mix'n'Match.
... with SummitPost ID (P3309) 930 14426 peaks
... with peakware mountain ID (P3513) 1798 4205 peaks
... with Bivouac.com mountain ID (P3507) 902 33768 peaks


And here is the query to update the table.

Link to Openstreetmap edit

All mountains in Wikidata should be linked to Openstreetmap. The link is done from the Openstreetmap side, using the "wikidata" tag.

Currently (2017-02-18), there are 445370 entities with a tag "natural=peak" in Openstreetmap, of which only 2380 have a wikidata tag.

It is possible to find all the peaks with a wikidata tag in a given area by running the following Overpass command: 

[out:json][timeout:250];
// gather results
(
  node["wikidata"]["natural"="peak"]({{bbox}});
);
// print results
out body;
>;
out skel qt;

TODO edit

  • Include volcanos inside the mountain entities hierarchy, remembering that volcanoes are not always mountains

Maintenance queries edit

Participants edit

The participants listed below can be notified using the following template in discussions:
{{Ping project|Mountains}}

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