Wikipedia:WikiProject Andhra Pradesh/Notes/Arjunaraoc/Updates for a sub-district transfer to adjacent district

Author: Arjunaraoc

Version:Final

Date: 2024-04-25

Districts impacted by Ganapavaram mandal transfer (shape with red border is mandal)

Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons and OpenStreetMap are interlinked to provide diverse knowledge of geographic entities such as districts. When a sub district of one district is transferred to adjacent district, all the affected articles, geometric shapes need revision. This note details lessons learnt for the instance of Ganapavaram mandal transfer from Eluru district to West Godavari district.

Background

Andhra Pradesh was reorganised into 26 districts from 13 districts on 4th April 2022. A systematic effort was mounted by Telugu Wikipedians to implement necessary changes across Wikidata and Telugu Wikipedia. English Wikipedians helped to update the locator maps for all the districts, which was utilised on Telugu Wikipedia. Ganapavaram mandal was transferred from Eluru district to West Godavari district on 16 Feb 2023. This was noticed only on 24 April 2024, when synchronisation of wikidata with LGdirectory info was done. (For the latest sync reports see https://ramseraph.github.io/opendata/lgd/wikidata) This required editing across the platforms to reflect the change.

Wikidata edits

Telugu Wikipedia uses Wikidata to render infoboxes for mandals. The short description for mandals, revenue villages is fetched from Wikidata. So for the entity that is transferred requires update of 'description' in both English and Telugu languages and 'located in the administrative territorial entity'. For Wikidata queries to fetch the latest information, the districts associated with this change also need editing for the attribute 'contains the administrative territorial entity'.

The villages that are located in the sub-district also need editing for 'description' attribute.

OSM edits

The district relations need updating to reflect the changes. JOSM tool is used to download the relations for the mandal, affected districts. After edits are made the data is updated.

Wikimedia Commons

QGIS is used to update the Andhra Pradesh districts map. As only two districts require update, the districts levels are fetched from OSM using QuickOSM plugin. Geometry paster plugin is used to update the affected districts on the existing layer. Map layout is checked for proper placement of labels and then exported as SVG. Using Inkscape tool, plain SVG to the extent of map is produced and updated on Wikimedia Commons. Both English and Telugu maps are prepared. Telugu map text is prepared as object path to ensure proper rendering without depending on availability of fonts. QGIS labelling changes between editing mode and layout mode and settings have to be used to ensure permanent display of labels and labels have to be manually placed and rotated for visual clarity.

As locator maps of the affected districts have become obsolete, discussion is started on commons pages requesting revision of maps. (c:File talk:West Godavari in Andhra Pradesh (India).svg , c:File talk:Eluru in Andhra Pradesh (India).svg)

Telugu Wikipedia articles

The affected articles include mandal, affected districts, and revenue villages of the mandal and higher level articles such as state page and List of districts pages. As revenue village pages are using infobox settlement with explicit mention of the district, pywikipedia bot is used to update the district change. As the change resulted in change in area, population of districts, the revised values are updated in the districts, List of districts pages. As locator maps of districts are yet to be revised, the current maps usage is hidden with wiki markup.

English Wikipedia articles

English Wikipedia did not have extensive village articles, so the changes required are limited. The changes are similar to those done on Telugu Wikipedia.

Quality check

As OpenStreetMap changes are reflected in Wikipedia articles after a one day delay, verification is done after a day.

Summary

Production of revised maps was found to be tricky, as the placement of labels changes between editing and map layout mode. The QGIS data for production of maps is archived on Github to enable easier updates in future. The whole work required two person days of effort. It was not surprising to see none of the official websites of districts and mapsite (Bharatmaps) reflected the change even after 1 year and two months.