Topic on Talk:Wikimedia Maps/2015-2017/Conversation about interactive map use

Can the map support multiple points and if so how many?

5
John Cummings (talkcontribs)

Can these maps support multiple points? If so is there a maximum (either a technical maximum or makes the user's computer go really slow maximum). I can see maps like this would be amazing on articles like World Heritage Sites or others that describe a large amount of places that all have Wikipedia articles. Here is a map of all the World Heritage Sites generated using a Wikidata query.

https://query.wikidata.org/#%23defaultView%3AMap%0ASELECT%20distinct%20%3Fsite%20%3FsiteLabel%20%20%3Flocation%0A%0AWHERE%20%7B%20%0A%20%20%0A%20%20%3Fsite%20wdt%3AP1435%20wd%3AQ9259%20.%20%0A%20%20%3Fsite%20wdt%3AP625%20%3Flocation%20.%0A%20%20%0A%20%20%0ASERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%0A%09%09bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22en%22%20.%0A%09%7D%0A%7D

CKoerner (WMF) (talkcontribs)

That Wikidata query is using the wikimedia map tiles (https://maps.wikimedia.org), but I don't believe the same can be said for the points of interest. @Yurik can you confirm I'm right here?

As for the number of points, this might be a good step to test for as we move forward. A 'stress test' for interactive maps to see what the technical limits would be. If a upper ceiling could be identified, perhaps even presenting editors with some sort of notification as they approach that number in a map instance.

Looking at that Wikidata query has me thinking @Yurik, could we create a <mapframe> export from WDQS? So people could copy/paste a map like that into a wiki page?

Yurik (talkcontribs)

John_Cummings, CKoerner_(WMF), we can support many points, e.g. this page has about 10, but you can do many more by simply having a list of markers like so:

{
  "type": "Feature",
  "geometry": { "type":"Point", "coordinates":[37.8013, -122.3988] },
  "properties": {
    "title": "Exploratorium",
    "marker-color": "228b22",
    "marker-symbol": "museum"
  }
},
...

I have been thinking how we can integrate the result of a wikidata query directly, without doing any copy/pasting, but this is still an open discussion (see phab ticket). Also, at this point we have no way to draw just the points - we only support large markers. Lastly, we need to be certain that a large number of markers is going to be useful, and not just to look at it once and go "wow", and never use it again for anything actually useful.

John Cummings (talkcontribs)

This is very interesting, thanks. Is there any plan to support other kinds of of systems to show many points in a way that makes them easy to understand e.g clustering or heatmaps?

Yurik (talkcontribs)

I wish there was, but so far I only heard WMF is halting anything map, graphs, and interactive-related without any plans/goals/ideas for the future with regards to interactive content.

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