Talk:Wikimedia Engineering/Maps & Geo Team

Focusing discussion here

only productive members ...
IMO it would be a real benefit if WMF would only take in persons who proved that they deliver "billable contributions", i.e. something donors would click on and give money: for _all_ roles. we have too many examples recently where it is really painful to interact with persons detached from the community, and anyway getting 5 or 6 digit dollar numbers out of the movement funds donated for free contents. as this is engineering, my suggestion would be to only take open source developers, especially for the community liaison and product management. --ThurnerRupert (talk) 05:51, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
 * one who contributes to wikipedia, wikisource, wikiversity, ... not talk page or meta, real contents
 * one who contributes to openstreetmap, either code, or data, not talk pages, mailing lists.
 * one who contributes code to one of the open technologies used, mediawiki, linux kernel, git, gerrit, mailman, postgres, mysql. not talk pages, mailing lists, bugzillas.


 * It would be great to have existing OSM community members be part of this team if they are a fit. Do broadcast this to let them know Tfinc (talk) 22:23, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Synergy of OpenSeaMap, Wikipedia, Wikidata, Commons
Since years there is a aim to build an integrative Water-Sport-Wiki, using OpenSeaMap as geo visualisation and Mediawiki together with content of Wikipedia, Wikidata and Commons. The challenge is to integrate all this branches into a synergetic toolchain and application. Untl now we did not find a volounteer with all tis skills.

What we have:
 * Wikipedia integration
 * Port Pilot Book
 * Diving spots
 * Canoeing

What we need:
 * a specialist who can build the tool chain and the interfaces

Then we will get an impressive Watersport-Wiki and a formidable prototype how to make synergy between the Wikimedia projects :-)

--Markus Bärlocher (talk) 08:23, 5 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for a really interesting use case Tfinc (talk) 22:23, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Great
This is good news. This is the kind of functionality where maps will benefit everyone. I was already so pleased with the (running) project where a grant was given to work on maps. When you analyse the need for maps within the WMF there are several distinct areas that deserve attention. There is:
 * serving the data from servers
 * internationalising maps
 * link into existing data and maps to overlay them in what will become our standard maps

Maps are used in many places. When Reasonator has a location, either through GPS data or throught the "is in the administrative entity" property, maps are shown. Three maps are shown with increasing detail. There are however many more maps that have their place. Maps of battle fields, historic maps for historic data.

If there is one thing I truly hope for is that the maps functionality will slowly but surely be rolled out. If there is one thing I truly believe it is that perfection will be the enemy of the good. Being able to serve maps is where it starts, supporting and extending the current project is the next most obvious one. Talking with GLAMS is also so very obvious.

In short, thank you for the suggestion to work on maps. I hope it will get its moment under the sun. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 09:21, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Very good news
From the point of view of the Wikimaps project, this will be a needed addition for the development of the Wikimedia environment for the years to come.

The Wikimaps project has set out to enhance the tools for working with historical maps in the Wikimedia family
 * including old maps in Wikimedia Commons
 * georeferencing them to make them available as geographically positioned layers
 * utilizing these maps for extracting geographic features into OpenHistoricalMap
 * connecting the geometries and place names back to Wikidata
 * creating amazing things with this data

We had a kickoff event for a regional initiative within the Wikimaps context - the Wikimaps Nordic - in Helsinki last Friday. We are starting projects within the overall context emphasizing technological development and the regional Nordic context focusing on content. In Wikimaps Nordic there is collaboration with GLAMs: national archives and libraries, land survey organizations, municipalities and cultural organizations in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Estonia.

The support for OpenStreetMap is especially welcomed by us, as we are already teaming up with OpenHistoricalMap, mentoring a project in Google Summer of Code together under the umbrella of the Wikimedia Foundation.

We also hope to bridge views about historical place name gazetteers between academic research on the topic and the creation of geographic properties in Wikidata

I am hoping the proposal will be successful, and hope to enjoy the benefits of the infrastructure soon. I would be happy if there would be interaction while developing the resources.

Looking forward to the fun and joy!


 * This could be a great community partnership. Thank you for sharing. Do you have any office hours or discussion time to find out more? Tfinc (talk) 22:23, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

--Susannaanas (talk) 11:47, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

More info

 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikimaps
 * https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikimaps/
 * http://lanyrd.com/2014/wikimaps/

More focus on user needs and business goals
Wikimedia is an organization that needs to tightly focus based on resource constraints. Money and energy placed on a new four-person team is time and money not spent on hiring for other positions, and also requires managerial effort to recruit/onboard/guide people.

With that in mind, I think the document needs a much clearer focus on two items:


 * 1) What exactly would this team be doing?
 * 2) How does that meet critical user needs?

For the latter, user stories would be helpful. But not just "I'd like to" user stories, but user needs that are critical to our success in engaging readers and editors of Wikimedia projects. What are we blocked from doing that we want to do? Is it build maps in to the Android/iOS apps? Maps on mobile web? Fix geodata for users across platforms to make it performant to use widely and edit?

TL;DR: I think everyone likes the idea of having better maps and geodata. But is it a "must have" in order to accomplish our strategic goals for the next year or two? Let's make that clearer if we think that's true. If it's not true, and this is more of a "wouldn't it be great?" initiative, I'm skeptical that it is worth the resources. Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   13:59, 5 March 2014 (UTC)


 * When the WMF has a need for money, its track record shows that it can find all the money it needs. So the question is more about energy and ability to manage. When you consider other positions, the question is very much about how do you measure the value of the work done in comparison to other things that are ongoing. There are no objective criteria and several projects just happened.


 * The first thing that would be done is fulfil promises made in the past. Maps and at that OSM maps were promised to be hosted within the WMF domain. This never happened.


 * The second thing to consider is that maps transcend Wikipedia. It has the potential to help in many activities that we are known for. Projects like "Wiki loves Monuments". There are projects to ask people for pictures that are near to where they are. Good maps help. Good maps explain many things much better than a narrative. We have examples of maps of battle field over time. We have maps of the development of cities, the growth / waning of empires.


 * The list is endless. The good news is that it is language agnostic. Maps will help any project in any language. Maps can be combined with data from Wikidata, images from Commons.. Maps may be liberating us from the Wikipedia monomania and English at that. GerardM (talk) 11:42, 6 March 2014 (UTC)


 * While I also like the synergies and collaboration that will come out from proper maps/geo support very much and I believe that building a Free maps infrastructure will benefit the movement greatly, I have to strongly agree with Steven here. The list of items to do are fairly generic, almost nebulous. Where are the "4 engineers, 1 ops" figures coming from? Four/Five/Seven FTEs is a lot of manpower in our size; most teams/subteams are far less than that, including projects that are far larger and more complex.


 * I also don't see the rationale for implementing these functions in a separate team, at least immediately. Do we have existing engineers/PMs tasked with the infrastructure & product that have expressed that it's impossible to reach their goals with the resources they have in their existing functions?


 * Finally, I believe that most of the frustration arises from the lack of a Maps tileserver infrastructure, despite long-time promises to the contrary. This is entirely in the Operations department's charter and it should remain there, IMHO. This has not happened for various reasons that have to do with resource constraints, prioritization and bad management (and yes, we engineers share the blame for that) but I think this has finally started to take off recently and I don't think just throwing people into the problem will solve this immediate issue (mythical man-month). Faidon Liambotis (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Copyright compatibility
One of the ongoing problems between Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap is copyright compatibility. OSM uses a database license, Wikipedia does not. There are good technical reasons for that, but there they are. Also, Wikipedia has encouraged people to pull lat/lon information from Google aerial imagery. Some OSM users make the claim that that infringes Google's Terms of Service. It would be kinda awesome if Wikimedia could talk nicely, and on a high (executive) level, to Google and get an official statement that using Wikipedia editors using Google aerial imagery to determine a lat/lon point is not against Google's Terms of Use.

I agree with Steven's point above. What is the value-add? Is the goal for the WMF to serve up its own map tiles? For all comers or only for its own mobile client? Are the tiles rendered generically or with a special marker indicating the location of a Wikipedia entry? Some Wikipedia pages describe linear features which are already laid-out in OSM. Is a goal of this project to create greater cooperation between WP editing and OSM data? Specifically, will this map project create a way for a WP editor to make reference to an OSM way or relation and have that automatically be turned into a cross-reference? --RussNelson (talk) 15:51, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware of any copyright problems between Wikipedia and OSM. Could you elaborate? Also, why would we need to create a cross-reference if we could simply embed the maps within the Wikipedia articles? Wouldn't that be a better solution? Kaldari (talk) 18:42, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Go Big or Go Home
You know what we need for a real breakthrough? A technology that doesn't exist, but which we're >< close to being able to do. It's one thing to look at photos and maps and prose. But all of this exists in the real world. You can GO to these places and see things.

What's really needed is a way to georeference the pictures, maps, and prose, so that if you are out and about, and reading this document on a tablet with a GPS and compass, you get an indication of where you are. Everything that is georeferenced would have a little red arrow pointing at you (if you're outside the view of the photo or map), or pointing in the direction you're holding the tablet (if you are within the view of the photo or map). Or if it's a prose description of something, there would be an arrow pointing in the direction of the thing described.

Three things are needed that don't exist: 1) A document reader that will let you zoom in and scroll around on images (pictures and maps) whilst displaying your location and view, 2) a standard for how to write documents that the reader knows how to interpret, 3) content written to that standard, and 4) tools to help people write that content.

Can you imagine how AWESOME that would be?? Look at a picture of a building, and see which direction it's in. "Oh! This says it's right behind us!"

IMHO, that's what this team should be working on. Go big, kick ass, or go home. --RussNelson (talk) 19:15, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

...and a statement
I would like to say a word or two about the purpose of the Wikimaps project and why it is interesting to work within Wikimedia.

Wikimedia has a promise of being a maker space of digital knowledge. A place for collaborative enquiry, creating the sum of all human knowledge. Location is a key component of knowledge. Why would you decide not to support it?

We do GLAM work to persuade memory organizations to invest in Wikimedia, to offer their materials for this space for people to engage with. We ask people to invest their time and expertise. Engament follows opportunities and the promise of what Wikimedia has to offer the people. The enthusiasm of people working to rediscover their cultural heritage should not be left to the commercial actors. What is the goal if not enabling this?

We are working to collect use cases for the Wikimaps environment and will report back.

--Susannaanas (talk) 08:41, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

A specific proposal
Per the "More focus on user needs and business goals" discussion above, I would like to make a specific proposal. I would like to propose that MediaWiki implement a "Map" namespace. The actual content of the namespace would be JSON data specifying: The JSON data would not be edited directly, but through some sort of custom interface (similar to Wikidata) that allows interacting with the map. Once the map is defined, it could then be embedded in an article/page just like an image or video. Kaldari (talk) 19:14, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Either a tileset or local image file
 * A coordinate bounding box
 * Data for points (places) that should be highlighted