Wikimedia Maps/2015-2017

OpenStreetMap and the Wikimedia Discovery Department have collaborated to launch a new trial map tile rendering service available at https://maps.wikimedia.org. With this service we hope to encourage our community to create tools and integrations to develop new ways for readers and editors to discover Wikimedia content. We strongly believe that our knowledge engine needs to be powered by multiple entry points and think that maps are a key discovery tool.

Current status
Live @ https://maps.wikimedia.org

The service is currently in a experimental mode meaning that at times it may be rapidly changing and unstable. Currently, we can only handle traffic from *.wmflabs.org and *.wikivoyage.org (referrer header must be either missing or set to these values) but we hope to open it up to Wikipedia traffic if we see enough use. Through late 2015 the Discovery department will be looking for your feedback and usage to determine further development.

Getting Started
maps.wikimedia.org serves standard Web Mercator raster tiles so it should be a drop-in replacement for other tileservers serving [Https://www.openstreetmap.org/ OpenStreetMap-based] imagery. To point a tool to our mapserver, use the following URL schema:
 *  https://maps.wikimedia.org/osm/{z}/{x}/{y}.png 
 *  https://maps.wikimedia.org/osm/{z}/{x}/{y}@{scale}x.png  - with the optional scaling factor

Adding a maps within Leaflet is as easy as

An example of a map that uses our tiles is at maps.beta.wmflabs.org, source.

Maps are also capable of serving tiles & static images. The scaling factor "@{scale}x" is optional.  https:/ /maps.wikimedia.org/img/osm_{z}_{lat}_{lon}_{width}x{height}@{scale}x.png

Use cases

 * An editor wants to easily add a map to a Wikipedia article without leaving the Wikipedia site.
 * A reader wants to zoom and pan a map in a Wikipedia article.
 * A reader wants to see a zoomable, pannable map immediately when they click geo-coordinates on an article.
 * An editor wants to add geographic information about the location where they currently are.
 * A reader wants to navigate articles with an atlas (instead of typing a page name or URL, zoom and pan a map, and click pins)
 * A reader wants to browse Wikimedia Commons images on a map.
 * A reader wants to visualize geospatial data (country and city outlines, river courses, habitats for animals etc.)
 * An article shows interactive historical maps for certain areas. The map can contain annotation layers, POIs, routes, data layers etc. to illustrate the article topic. An editor wants to create these maps. (Taking part: Susannaanas (talk))
 * A historical map file can be displayed overlaid on a slippy map in the file display (file page / media viewer). Wikimaps design doc. (Taking part: Susannaanas (talk))
 * A reader/Commons user/editor wants to find scanned maps by selecting the area on a slippy map. Wikimaps design doc. (Taking part: Susannaanas (talk))
 * A reader can explore complex shapes (highways, geographic borders etc.) inside the infoboxes much better by using a slippymap than a static image. (need support for: kml, geoJSON, topoJSON)
 * An editor wants to add and edit maps using VisualEditor. We already have some proof of concept code so we just need some API endpoints. ESanders (WMF)
 * User Mey2008's WikiVoyage dynamic maps, such as POI Map, Art Map, and Monument Map (RU).
 * Show Raster imagery of earth, e.g. from Natural Earth, and other planets/celestial bodies. Overlay them with useful info.
 * An editor want's to add coordinate information to a photo on Commons or wants to easily justify it.
 * An editor wants to specify a map on wikidata so it can be reused on any of the wikiarticles associated with that wikidata item. One wikidata item may have multiple associated maps - location map, current borders, historic borders (start date =?), etc. each with a specification stored on wikidata. These specifications specify what layers are to be used, from where (OSM or OHM or other) but probably don't include the map data.
 * An user of Wikivoyage want to have a strong combination of an article and a map as a travel guide.
 * An editor want to create a complex, individual map to show relations of objects that are mention in a article, see UMAP.
 * A user want to see the map in a language that he can read, see OSM:Multilingual_maps_Wikipedia_project.

Mobile app use cases

 * User is able to see the map of the nearby points of interests from the mobile app
 * User is able to explore points of interest next to the current article
 * User is able to view articles similar to the current one on the map (based on Wikidata class)
 * Mobile map is a complete replacement for the wikivoyage interface - layers for each type of element (eat, museum, sleep etc.) shown on the map with linking to element data on wikidata, localised by wikidata in your language. You will be able to access and edit wikivoyage info without ever going to the wikivoyage wikis.

Production maps cluster
The Production maps cluster is in development by the WMF Discovery team. The implementation has various components including:
 * Kartotherian Github /Gerrit - a server capable of providing map tiles in vector (pbf) or raster (png) formats, as well as static map snapshots of any size for a given location.
 * Tilerator Github/Gerrit - a distributed backend tile generation service with a jobque
 * A flexible sources system to set up the needed storage and processing pipeline

A version of the tile server is now in operation at maps.wikimedia.org.
 * It serves tiles at URLs such as https:// maps.wikimedia.org/osm/11/327/791.png (bitmap) or .../791.json (OSM data – waterways, roads, place labels, etc.).
 * It can scale images for the high-DPI devices - e.g. 1.5x, 2x, etc .../791@1.3x.png
 * It can provide static maps with a given size and scaling, e.g. https:// maps.wikimedia.org/img/osm_6_44.8247_4.9981_1000x600.png
 * For now, maps.wikimedia.org can only accepts requests from the domains in wmflabs.org or wikivoyage.org
 * http://maps.beta.wmflabs.org is a simple map server that serves the Leaflet JavaScript library and some static files to provide a pannable, zoomable map using the Production maps cluster.
 * Please adapt your own labs tools to use maps.wikimedia.org! Set your tool's domain to *.wmflabs.org.

Other projects

 * Set up vector tiles rendering.
 * http://a.tiles.wmflabs.org/osm/slippymap.html
 * this is based on non-vector legacy tile creation, sometimes called mod_tile
 * T35980 – Wikimedia-hosted OpenStreetMap (OSM) / mapnik tileservers wanted for mobile usage.
 * Wikimaps & OpenHistoricalMap
 * WikiMiniAtlas deployed on major Wikipedias for years now, supporting over 50 languages
 * to see WikiMiniAtlas, click the drop-down arrow next to coordinates on any Wikipedia article (if JavaScript is enabled)
 * OpenStreetMap embedded in MediaWiki (see de:WP:GEO/Anwendungen/OpenStreetMap/en) – used in many Wikipedias (Q11426484)
 * WIWOSM, linkage between Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap – shows geometric objects from OSM for a Wikipedia article

Additional

 * Maps KPI's
 * OpenStreetMap page in Meta (historical from 2009–2011)
 * Collaboration with Wikipedia page in OSM wiki.