Talk:Wikimedia Maps

Wishlist

 * Proposed Bot to add Wikipedia/Wikidata tags to OSM features.
 * Local and regional bridges between both projects in order to collaborate in activities and events.
 * Wikimedia CH plans.
 * Log in to OSM with Wikimedia credentials.
 * Clarify licensing situation of OSM data used in Wikimedia. (T105090 -- seems to be ok)
 * Open-Wikidata-map.
 * A page to jot down use cases for historical maps and geodata (Susannaanas)
 * It would be awesome if it's possible to make an interactive map with all the changes in Wikipedia. --CortexA9 (talk) 17:14, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hey CortexA9! Have you seen http://rcmap.hatnote.com/#en ? Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:43, 21 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Using Wikimedia credentials on an external site would be best done by Wikimedia being an openid provider, or as a distant second option, supporting it in omniauth Pnorman (talk) 03:36, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

WM IT

 * I brought this to the attention of WM IT, which at some point will also become the Italian chapter for OSM, thanks to the efforts of User:Cortesi and others. HTH, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Controversial borders
Hi,

I noticed some controversial borders at https://maps.wikimedia.org :
 * The border between Crimea and Kherson is shown as international, which is the Russian Federation POV.
 * South Ossetia and Abkhazia are shown as countries, which is the Russian Federation POV.
 * The border of Kosovo looks like a border of an independent country (Kosovan POV), but it doesn't have a country name (weird POV ;) ).
 * As a technically opposite example, there's no border in the middle of Cyprus (Greek POV), but there is a label for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (Turkish POV).
 * The border between Israel and Syria is shown according to the Israeli POV.

There are possibly more issues of this kind.

Wikipedias usually show maps of disputed territories quite well. For example, maps of Russia and Ukraine usually show Crimea in a special color - even in the Russian Wikipedia.

I understand that at the moment Wikimedia's maps service probably just takes whatever OSM provides, but ideally it should do something similar to what the Wikipedias do and be as neutral as possible.

(I tried to be as neutral as I could in this post ;) ) --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 19:39, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There is no neutral way to display map borders. Not making a choice is inherently taking a side --Guerillero (talk) 01:10, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Exactly - indicating a border is disputed is taking a point of view, just like representing a border as not disputed is. Countries often do not agree on if an area is disputed or not. Pnorman (talk) 08:17, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks ! Filed as T113008. Indeed this does not look very NPOV. The data comes directly from OSM, so we should ultimately work with the OSM community to solve this (unless it is already present in the data with some extra flags that we should look at and draw accordingly). Also, if OSM community chooses to follow a different route, we might have to introduce a separate database of such cases and allow community to edit it. Obviously I would much rather have it fixed in OSM (if it is indeed broken there).  --Yurik (talk) 01:14, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you Yurik. Sounds sensible. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 08:19, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * OSM usually follows an "on the ground" POV about borders. Areas are not shown in the countries they "should" be or they rightfully belong -according to any given criteria- but they show which state de facto governs the territory. It's a simple approach that fits initial OSM goal -to provide road maps to travel using a GPS- but it couldn't be the better approach for an encyclopedia.--Pere prlpz (talk) 18:48, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The OSMF policy on disputed territories is best explained at http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/images/d/d8/DisputedTerritoriesInformation.pdf. Crimea is a bit of a unique case as it is mapped as being in both Ukraine and Russia, as per http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes/DWG_2014-06-05_Special_Crimea. Pnorman (talk) 08:17, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

How to submit patches?
It's a bit unclear from the page, but it looks like https://maps.wikimedia.org/ is run by kartotherian? I've whipped up a provisional patch for hi-dpi/retina display support T112952 but can't submit it via 'git review' as there's no .gitreview in the repo T112958. --Brion Vibber (WMF) (talk) 20:31, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It's all in GitHub. Also, the index.html you're probably trying to edit is just an example, we're not intending it to ever be a full-featured map:) Max Semenik (talk) 20:35, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Missing fonts
It seems the map server is missing some fonts to render characters of place names in what I think is Georgia: https://maps.wikimedia.org/#9/41.8297/44.2474 —Galaktos (talk) 21:39, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Its a Unicode bug in Mapnik, tracked by T108846. --Yurik (talk) 21:52, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Alright, thanks. —Galaktos (talk) 22:09, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Other case here If you zoom out, the entire name of the city is shown. Sturm (talk) 11:00, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Geopedia
(HTML 5 / mobile and desktop)

I developed a tool called Geopedia (http://www.geopedia.de), where I could add your map too. Currently I use leaflet and the DE open street map, as I use it primarly for travelling and wanted to have latin city names... I could also add your maps through a layer selection in the settings. Let me know what you think - also very open for further ideas and improvments..

KML
Will we be able to overlay KML layers onto the map? i.e. will we be able to include links in w:en:Template:Attached KML and w:en:Template:GeoGroup (and similar templates on other language wikipedias or other projects)? Current uses are, for example: - Evad37 (talk) 04:01, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Interstate 96: Route map links at top-right of page, and in box at bottom of page, from
 * Circle line (London Underground): Map all coordinates links in box at bottom of page, from )


 * Overlaying a KML layer would generally be done by the map library, (e.g. leaflet), and there would be no problems doing so with these tiles. Pnorman (talk) 23:38, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

/style/z/x/y.png format doesn't work!
says
 * https://maps.wikimedia.org/{style}/{z}/{x}/{y}.{format}

but this doesn't work and returns 404 "Cannot GET /osm-intl/7/43.66/4.719.png ", e.g.
 * https://maps.wikimedia.org/osm-intl/7/43.66/4.719.png

If I go to maps.wikimedia.org and pan around, it only updates the URL fragment without any  or path at all, e.g.
 * https://maps.wikimedia.org/#7/43.66/4.719

?? -- SPage (WMF) (talk) 02:04, 23 September 2015 (UTC)


 * {z}, {x}, and {y} are the standard slippy map tilenames, not latitude and longitude. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Slippy_map_tilenames has more information, including example code for converting.
 * The page at https://maps.wikimedia.org/ is a preview page to display the map, not the map tiles themselves Pnorman (talk) 23:36, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The page at https://maps.wikimedia.org/ is a preview page to display the map, not the map tiles themselves Pnorman (talk) 23:36, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Isometric projection
When I went to last Wikimania I could talk to some WMF developers, specially to Yuri, about this question (during the OSM workshops), and sorry if this not the proper place to discuss / ask for it. But, here we go! ;) Despite the main OSM visualization, there is also a isometric projection (take a look here also) implemented by the OSM Buildings website. How difficult is to offer such visualization on Maps Wikimedia? Sturm (talk) 11:09, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Another very interesting "3D OSM data converter" is the OSM2World, a converter that creates three-dimensional models of the world from OpenStreetMap data. It is published as open source (LGPL). Sturm (talk) 18:27, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Marble KDE
I find that Marble, a virtual globe application (totally open source, years of development under KDE Educational programs) which allows the user to display many planets and satellites as a 3-D model, could be a great joint venture to the Maps Wikimedia project. They have a large list of public domain and CC maps applied to it, as you may see here and they also have an app running beta, take a look here. Sturm (talk) 11:20, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * During last Summer of Code (GSoC), they made significant improvements in OpenStreetMap vector rendering, for example. Sturm (talk) 11:23, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Documentation
I know that Maps Wikimedia is still a very starting project, but it would be very useful to see some version informations, release dates, changelogs, roadmaps etc. It helps a lot to understand about the project and help it. Regards, Sturm (talk) 13:08, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Style improvements
The map style is already nice for an basemap :-) I noticed some small issues that might be worth to get fixed: Maybe somebody can see if this makes sense --MyRobotron (talk) 16:18, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Area highways missing https://maps.wikimedia.org/#18/54.08876/12.13958
 * Streetnames placement repitive https://maps.wikimedia.org/#17/54.07921/12.10772
 * Streetref placement repitive https://maps.wikimedia.org/#17/53.63696/11.41197
 * more landuse features for non-urban areas https://maps.wikimedia.org/#16/54.1178/12.0449
 * All styling issues are now in phabricator. --Yurik (talk) 17:46, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Requested feedback
User Feedback for UK looking for details in. Using Firefox on Linux

1. Map opens on the wrong continent- not on the location of the last article I saved.

2. Zoom level 7- the town names given are weird. Liverpool- but not Manchester, Sunderland but not Newcastle-upon-Tyne which is a factor of 10 bigger

3. Zoom level 8- the town names seem to relate to cathedrals not centres of administration or population. Canterbury (55,000)but not Maidstone (113,137). Greenwich Bromley Ipswich all missing. But we have St Asaphs with a population of 3,355. (no that isn't a typo!)

4. Level 9. Names are truncated- Barnoldwick has become Barnoldswi moving south we have Whitworth|Whitwor, then Bollington|Bolling and Macclesfield|sfield. b 5 Level 12 appears OK but level 13 its back again. In level 13 we have a new set of names- that seem

6. The one thing we need from a map is the ability to place a cursor over a spot and see its lat/long geotag- like [.[Co-ord|53.7028|-2.3806|display= title, inline]] Then to copy this to the clip board with a right click- sadly this shows https://maps.wikimedia.org/osm-intl/10/504/329.png not 53.7028/-2.3806. Extracting this from the url doesn't help as there is no indication whether this centre, top left or what

7. How do I turn off selected layers?

8. How do I access the layer showing location of Wikipedia articles? ...commons images? ...wikidata?

I look forward to watching this project develop--ClemRutter (talk) 23:36, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Project goals?
Longtime Wikipedian and OpenStreetMap contributor (and data reuser) here. It would be great to have a summary on this page about the actual project goals. Is it really just to produce another source of OSM-derived map tiles? Presumably there is some reason that OSM's own tiles, or another provider like MapBox or CartoDB could not be used - could this be explained? Is there something special that WMF wants to bring to the cartography? Novel sources of data? Different hosting requirements?

I'm probably not the only wondering why exactly WMF needs its own tile server, and how this helps "our knowledge engine ... to be powered by multiple entry points". Stevage (talk) 13:54, 27 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Stevage, I am not a member of the Discovery team, so I cannot speak on behalf of it, but I think the immediate needs were to integrate OSM easily with Wikimedia sites without creating a huge tax on OpenStreetMap servers. I do not know if that is the case anymore, but I remember at some point OSM administrators asking to ease the load from some Wikipedia functionality. Having our own tile and static image servers will allow, with enough resources, support both the huge traffic that Wikimedia sites have, and -at the same time-, not sending traffic from our users to 3rd party sites, some of them commercially driven and with privacy rules potentially not so strict than ours (anonymous, not sharing, short data rentention).
 * I know that there is a desire to also bring additional features not present on simple image tile servers (I heard about vector tiles). But you should ask about those directly to Yurik. But if it would only help to have an OSM map on every wikipedia page (not possible before), it will be positive for both Wikimedia content and OSM visibility. --JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 14:58, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Regarding OSM's own tiles, see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile.openstreetmap.org/Usage_policy and https://switch2osm.org/using-tiles/ - they make it quite clear that they don't want people to use their tiles directly. - Nikki (talk) 15:45, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The privacy policy is perhaps the most important reason, but also scaling and being able to do some of our own things like eventually support custom map styles and other stuff that users want to do. (e.g. we had/have the hike & bike map style on labs and toolserver)  Also better multilingual maps support is probably something we want and doesn't work so nicely with the default OSM style. Aude (talk) 21:25, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Proposed IEG project
I've proposed an Individual Engagement Grant project to do some work on the maps style: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Wikimedia_Maps_Rendering_Improvements

I'm proposing working on road labels and borders. I'm not proposing to work on place labels as part of the IEG, because I had trouble defining good acceptance criteria. I didn't want an open-ended project where I'd have a hard time calling it done. Pnorman (talk) 19:34, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Coordinate tagging
I think one of the simplest easiest things that we could do with the new server is tagging coordinates of photos in Commons, and tagging coordinates of articles in wikipedia. We could have a coordinate TemplateData field and hook up a dedicated editor to that. Would be awesome, relatively simple to do, and not put too much load at once on the servers. —Th e DJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 09:28, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I think this is a good example on where the Map service could work. No promises, but I created a task in Phabricator and will discuss the idea with the team to determine it's viability. Sorry for the late reply, I just joined the foundation and am getting familiar with the corners of our work. :) CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:34, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Uniform coordinates across projects
This has very little with tiles to do, but I think this is essential. There should be a recommended, documented and tooled way of creating geodata that will be reflected in all Wikimedia projects. In my humble opinion the point or line or area for the topic of a Wikipedia article should be expressed in OSM, the data should be reflected in Wikidata (through tagging in OSM), from where the data should be displayed in all Wikipedias. A related topic is where to store the geodata that is not current street map data: historical street map (for which OpenHistoricalMap project is targeted) or thematic data (for which there is no solution). --Susannaanas (talk) 18:32, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Map preferences
I'm trying to do more for myself with location maps, having found the page "location map many" and think that having a way to change existing location maps would help. For eg I revamped Operation Sonnenblume and managed to add red dots and place names but really needed a way to isolate Cyrenaica so that it was on a bigger scale than the existing Libya location map. I think it would help a lot to publicise the pages which describe adding red dots and place names and also to revise the advice pages so they cater for neophytes like me as well as adepts like you. Keith-264 (talk) 07:57, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
 * we are working on making it very easy to change the map using Visual Editor. Take a look at the demo at http://vem3.wmflabs.org --Yurik (talk) 21:02, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Much need enhancement
When it is planned to be rolled out in english wikipedia ? --Naveenpf (talk) 06:14, 18 February 2016 (UTC)


 * T125126 is the blocker. You are welcome to comment there. Basically we are waiting for the next year's budget to allocate hardware money to the maps project. --Yurik (talk) 06:17, 18 February 2016 (UTC)


 * This is ridiculous. WMF has not changed. They had millions to spend to for some stupid projects. Anyway now they are not experimenting with people for godsake.   -Naveenpf (talk) 09:00, 18 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi Yurik, few queries in en:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Highways --Naveenpf (talk) 15:09, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Do you have a specific query that you could mention here, or is spending time to read a complete talk page required? --Malyacko (talk) 17:21, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for supporting maps. My plan at this point (could change of course) is to first deploy maps on wikivoyage, and once we have enough servers, start moving towards wikipedia. The maps will support geojson from the start, something like this example. For now, GeoJson will be stored directly inside the &lt;map*> tags. Eventually, I we will support KML and other data stored outside of the page, but I don't know what site it should be on - see site to store our data discussion. I will also need to build a "snapshot service" - a way to draw the map on the server and convert it to an image, with all the extra layers from geojson/kml/etc. Without this, we might not survive the wikipedia traffic. Comments, as well as any organizational and development help is always welcome of course :) --Yurik (talk) 17:37, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Discussion from WikiVoyage NL
''Moved from WikiVoyage NL. --Yurik (talk)''

 First impressions by FredTC 

To the right a screenprint of Missing features I experienced after a first inspection. Red arrows, counter clock wise, starting at the top:
 * 1) An available switch to Mapnik is very important because Mapnik gives very important reference points. Also the switches like "Points of interest", "Cycling", "Hiking", etc. are very usefull.
 * 2) Showing the current zoom level is a great help when defining the "zoom=" with mapframe.
 * 3) The POIs button shows destination pages of other destinations in/near the area of the map. Gives the answer to "is there a described destination not far from here?"
 * 4) This button shows all markers defined on the page. Very helpfull if some makers are relatively far away.
 * 5) The missing of the right-click feature is needed very much in order to make new markers.

Clicking the button in the upper right corner brings you to a full screen, but does not allow you to open it on a separate tab. If you use the right-click on this button, it is not the map, but the whole page containing that map appearing in the new tab. This is not practical, because the and  are not close together, you have to scroll the text and you cannot switch to another tab to see the map.

With the mobile version of this page on a Full HD phone screen in portrait orientation, the map takes more than the 1080 pixels the screen is wide, but is defined with "  width="400"  ". Because of this width, it is not easy to scroll down past the map. --FredTC (talk) 9 mrt 2016 14:16 (CET)

Map layers button
''An available switch to Mapnik is very important because Mapnik gives very important reference points. Also the switches like "Points of interest", "Cycling", "Hiking", etc. are very usefull.''
 * I don't think we will be able to provide all the great capabilities offered by other mapping services at first, so this is a good feature to have. I think it should be controlled by each WV community, e.g. via the wikivoyage:MediaWiki:Common.js - where the community will decide which additional map layers to include. As long as there is a clear warning that this data is not covered by the privacy policy, I don't think there is any problem. --Yurik (talk) 15:05, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
 * i agree, this should be community managed, and can be, if the hooks are available. —Th e DJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 12:34, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * , i'm not an expert in JS, could you propose how to code this in the phab ticket? (or a patch :)) Thanks! --Yurik (talk) 17:49, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * we could have a mw.hook, fired when we configure our leaflet views, that a MediaWiki:common.js page could use to add their own layers during the configuration phase. It could then do (code was moved to T129355 by Yurik (talk)) —Th e DJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 21:30, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * , thanks! I moved your code to phab so that this page is a bit more readable. --Yurik (talk) 23:16, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Show current zoom level
Showing the current zoom level is a great help when defining the "zoom=" with mapframe.
 * I don't think the vast majority of readers will ever care about this information, so adding it crowds the interface without much benefit. This is a very editor-oriented feature, and as such, I think we should only add it during the editing, but not during reading. I could add it for Visual Editor interface, and also possibly for the edit preview. --Yurik (talk) 15:40, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I also heavily rely on the zoom indication, but only when previewing an edit. Syced (talk) 06:26, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Can we think off alternative ways to make this detectable ? an info page or something perhaps, where we can present some gritty details ? —Th e DJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 12:35, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * An alternative could be showing the info at the "mouse over" event for the +/- buttons. However, right now the function of the buttons is shown on "mouse over". --FredTC (talk) 14:08, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Right-click to show map coordinates
The missing of the right-click feature is needed very much in order to make new markers.
 * Just like zoom level, this is an editor, not reader-oriented feature. If you edit the map in the visual editor, you usually won't need to know the coordinates - you simply place the marker or draw the polygon where you need it. I agree that you may need it for other cases, e.g. filling out a location template.  How about I enable it only for page-preview and possibly in VE? Also, should this be right click or alt-click/shift-click/control-click? --Yurik (talk) 15:40, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I use to add a description of something to see at a destination. With it I specify the map location. The "lat= | long=" can be direct copied/pasted from the right-click info. Using Visual Editor to change a  entry is very complicated. --FredTC (talk) 15:06, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Full-screen as a separate page
''Clicking the button in the upper right corner brings you to a full screen, but does not allow you to open it on a separate tab. If you use the right-click on this button, it is not the map, but the whole page containing that map appearing in the new tab. This is not practical, because the and  are not close together, you have to scroll the text and you cannot switch to another tab to see the map.''
 * FredTC, not exactly sure of the goal here - are you proposing that editors should be able to easily open the map in a separate window? E.g. control+click on the "maximize" button should open a map as a separate tab instead? Would that be any different from opening the same page in two tabs, and clicking map-maximize in one of them? --Yurik (talk) 15:40, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Show destination pages of other destinations in the area
''The POIs button shows destination pages of other destinations in/near the area of the map. Gives the answer to "is there a described destination not far from here?"''

A button to show all page markers
''This button shows all markers defined on the page. Very helpfull if some makers are relatively far away.''
 * I use this button often, both as a reader and as an editor. Most maps are zoomed to the town center, with theme parks/suburbs attractions/camping grounds/daytrips not visible. Syced (talk) 06:26, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Example showing the way I can do things now
Assume I want to add a mapframe to the Lewes page at en:Wikivoyage. I know London has a mapframe, so I go to the London page and open the map full screen, then zoom in, move the map, until Lewes is in the center at zoom level 16. Now I need to switch to the Mapnik layer, because there is no helpful info in the Wikimedia layer. Now I see Lewes Castle as potential center of the map, so I do the right-click, and select and copy "lat=50.87289 | long=0.00753" that appears. Now I go to the Lewes page and type " ", ending up with " ". Now I click "Show preview" zoom in until I see a map that shows what I want, I look at the zoom level and add a "zoom=16" to the mapframe, giving " ". After clicking "Save page" the mapframe is in the page.

So to do this, I needed the right-click [5], the zoom level [2] and the switch from Wikimedia to Mapnik [1] to perform this task. --FredTC (talk) 09:07, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * And you can do this easily at that was designed specifically for this purpose.  I very much agree with Yurik's concept of distinguishing between map interface for readers and map interface for editors. --Atsirlin (talk) 17:52, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Atsirlin, the link you give, brings a usefull screen, but how do you get it with a simple action from a Wikivoyage page? In the present situation I can right-click on the map that is on a page and copy the map position. Then in the edit screen of a "See" section of the page I add the info below with a single mouse click and I can paste the map position into it. During these actions I don't need to go to another website to obtain the map location. --FredTC (talk) 08:15, 11 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The main page of en:Wikivoyage opens with "the FREE worldwide travel guide that anyone can edit" (and a similar text on the Dutch site "Wikivoyage is de vrije, wereldwijde reisgids die iedereen kan bewerken."). To me that means there must be no distinguishing between editors and readers, every reader can edit and must be able to do this easily. --FredTC (talk) 08:15, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

What is your expectation of "FullScreen" button?
When the user clicks "Full Screen" button, would you like the map to stay at the same zoom level but show surrounding areas, or would you like the map to show the same area as original but in greater details (zoom in). --Yurik (talk) 19:45, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The first option is the way it works now, if I'm correct. I like it that way. But that is a personal opinion. So maybe the behavior could be controlled by some options on the Preferences screens. In that case there also could be one more option that says "open it in the extra screen layer that can be closed with the close button" (the present behaviour) or "open it on a new tab". --FredTC (talk) 08:23, 12 March 2016 (UTC)


 * There is one more way to go to full screen. You locate something on the small map in the page. Then you go to full screen. In the present situation the full screen version has the same center as the small version, so you must find the thing you were watching again on the full screen. A possible alternative is shown in the images. After clicking the full screen button the map expands to the left and towards the top of the screen, but what you were looking at is still at the same position, and you do not need to find it again. --FredTC (talk) 09:29, 12 March 2016 (UTC)