About Wikidata Walkabout

Welcome to Wikidata Walkabout, a site that provides a drill-down interface for exploring the data of Wikidata.

This site is maintained by Yaron Koren (yaron57@gmail.com), and runs on the open-source software Anvesha, which was created by Yaron Koren and Sahaj Khandelwal (though mostly Sahaj). The site, and software, were both first released in September 2020.

Wikidata is a fantastic resource - history may show that it was the most important website created in the 2010s. However, it is still difficult to navigate, and to query. "Navigating" Wikidata means simply clicking from one item to the next - there is no aggregation on the site, and no way to see an overview of anything. Querying Wikidata, meanwhile, requires going to the Wikidata Query Service page and typing in SPARQL. SPARQL, while a powerful query language, is not easy to learn; nor is it that easy to keep looking up the Q and P values of the entities that are needed for any specific query. We believe that this kind of direct SPARQL querying will always remain in the domain of a relatively few specialists, and not something available to the masses. That is where we hope Wikidata Walkabout can come in useful.

Wikidata Walkabout makes heavy use of three properties in Wikidata:

"instance of", which defines which items belong to which classes
"properties for this type", which defines the set of filters that are made available for each class
"sublass of", which defines subclass/superclass relationships.

There are various uses for this site:

To explore the data available on Wikidata. How many 18th century painters are recorded on Wikidata? What are the earliest romance novels with an entry? What is the breakdown in terms of height of the mountains that have a Wikidata entry? And so on.
To explore the nature of data in the real world. Presumably, as Wikidata becomes an ever-more-complete data set, more closely mapping the real world, this usage of Wikidata Walkabout will become more important, while the first use, of analyzing the data of Wikidata specifically, will become less important.
To find specific pieces of information. If you remember that there was a Japanese music critic who died in the 1980s, but can't remember their name, this site could potentially help with that. (In fact, unless you know SPARQL, this site may be the only place that could help you answer this specific question.)
To find gaps and incorrect data in Wikidata. If you are a Wikidata editor (and of course, anyone can become a Wikidata editor), it can be difficult to know where the gaps in the information are. The "No value" option for each filter may be especially helpful for this purpose.
To serve as a SPARQL query builder. At the bottom of every page, there is a link that reads "View SPARQL query", which links to the Wikidata Query Service. You can use Wikidata Walkabout as a way to generate SPARQL that is the same as, or similar to, some query that you want to run.
An API of sorts for Wikidata, using the CSV export format.

Some current limitations of the software, and thus of the site:

All filter values that have been selected get joined together with AND, never with OR; it would be good to allow OR queries as well.
The "Export as CSV" feature currently only works from the browser, not from an outside script.

We hope you enjoy using this site.

Yaron Koren
Sahaj Khandelwal