Wikimedia Maps/2015-2017/Conversation about interactive map use

The Maps team of the Discovery department is working to figure out how to create tools for using interactive maps in Wikipedia articles. There are many things we want to include in this feature, and plan to develop the quality of interactive maps over time. For this initial work, we'd like to keep the focus on how maps can be used for articles where a map would show general geographic location information.

Here we provide an overview of interactive maps, and are asking interested individuals to participate in a discussion around three major (open discussion outside these questions is welcomed too).

Rational
Maps provide a way to discover and learn about a place or an event. Making these maps interactive, where people can zoom, pan, and interact with points of interest, can further enrich the way we learn about the world. Other goals, are simplifying the tools used to add a map to an article, and reducing the need for complex image editing or geographic information system (GIS) tools.

Inspiration and ideas for discussing these conventions, come from earlier work within our communities. Particularly, from the English Wikipedia's WikiProject Maps/Conventions, French Wikipedia's Projet:Cartographie, German Wikipedia's Kartenwerkstatt/Hilfe, and others.

Current Focus

 * What types of articles will use interactive maps?
 * How do these articles differ in their requirements?
 * Are there any classes of articles whose map styling requirement is fundamentally in conflict with other article classes, thus requiring multiple styles?

Use cases

 * See Maps/Future Plans for an existing list of possible use cases


 * Showing a city within a region
 * Showing a region within a country
 * Showing points-of-interest in a specific area (like say all the buildings surrounding a castle or monuments in a given area)

Examples
Here are a few selected wiki articles that could potentially benefit from interactive maps. Included are the first two static maps that appear in the article currently, and an example interactive map.

Lyon, France
The first two static maps (one is collapsed by default) in the English article for Lyon, France. Both show current boundaries, at different 'zoom levels'. The last map is dynamic that may replace them.

St. Louis, MO
Again, the first tow maps are existing maps on the English article for St. Louis, Missouri USA. The third is an interactive map of the same region.

Glossary
When talking about interactive maps (and maps in general) we use words to describe features of the mapping tools.
 * Style: how to draw the map - colors, line thickness, fonts, etc.
 * Tiles: square image that represents a portion of a map at a given zoom level
 * Tile data: the data contained within a set of tiles (park benches, tree locations, house numbers, park names, building type (churches, government, etc.))
 * Zoom level: At what level of detail are we looking at a particular area on a map? Imagine this as "How high above the map am I looking?" Often measured as a number (e.g.  - where 0=world view, and 18=highest zoom).

How interactive maps work

 * Wikimedia map servers download the full OSM database.
 * Tilerator service converts OSM data into vector tiles (mini databases), one for each tile location and for each zoom level, and saves them to a database. This takes a long time, and gets done right after downloading because it cannot be done on-demand.
 * Kartotherian web server creates PNG tiles, by applying styling to the vector tiles. The image generation is very fast, so it gets done on-demand, when a browser asks for it.
 * Wiki editors insert a map with either  (a link to a new window) or   (embedded in the page).
 * Both map tags may contain additional geojson overlays data. Geojson could include markers, lines, and polygons. Geojson may draw these elements in different styles and with popups. At this point, geojson may only be located inside the map tags.

Future
These are features and map types we're aware of, but don't have a solution for.
 * Historical (how borders have changed over time as an example)
 * Multilingual (one interactive map of a region, with labels shown in the visitors preferred language).
 * See more at: Maps/Future Plans

Pros and Cons of interactive maps
Where, and when, should they be used? Where/when should they not be used?

Pros
 * less work to create for people who are not knowledgeable with GIS and mapping technology
 * scalable to more folks creating maps!
 * less work to update (map tiles are updated when data is updated)
 * interactive - gain further context by panning and zooming within a map
 * zoom - visibility and legibility of small labels

Cons
 * data is optimized for street maps, not territorial maps (in many cases OpenStreetMap's territorial borders are bad or outdated)
 * This could pose difficulty in disputes over borders
 * more limited in what you can create
 * may not translate well to non-digital formats, e.g. printing (you only get the default view which may be too limited or too cluttered)
 * may change in unexpected ways (not static)
 * takes longer for changes to go live

Benefits of interactive maps

 * More interesting maps in our articles
 * Make it easy to add and modify these maps
 * Make it easier to update maps

Questions
Here is the focus for this discussion about interactive maps. Please respond on the talk page in the corresponding section.


 * 1) What types of articles would use interactive maps?
 * DIscussion
 * 1) How do these articles differ in their requirements?
 * 2) * e.g. an article about a city or a disaster location may have very different requirements than the article about deforestation in Amazon forests or articles about animals and their habitats.
 * Discussion
 * 1) Are there any classes of articles whose map styling requirement is fundamentally in conflict with other article classes, thus requiring multiple styles?
 * Discussion

More example articles with maps

 * Manchester, California - static method of indicating location (pin) with CSS 'absolute' positioning on unlabeled map
 * Ashland, Oregon - two maps to show state location and county location
 * Assens Municipality - a different map style of a municipality
 * Delos - a differently styled map (green location map)
 * Weissach - German municipality with country-wide map and district-level detail

Other Maps Services

 * OpenStreetMap - a large open-source map community and the source of our data tiles
 * Mapbox - a gallery of styles using Mapbox (on top of OSM tile data)