[OSM-talk] Map tag in Wikipedia

[Lars Aronsson]

These days I spend more time in Wikipedia than in OpenStreetMap, 
but I haven't lost my interest in geography. Among the many things 
that need improvement in Wikipedia is the geographic coordinates 
that indicate the location of places, buildings, cities, and such.

The OSM wiki has a <map> tag that looks like this:
<map lat=63 lon=16.5 z=5 w=360 h=720 />

In the page [[WikiProject Sweden]], this shows a 360x720 pixel 
image based on zoom 5 map tiles centered around 63° N 16.5° E.

Is this a user-friendly way to put a map in a wiki page?  Would 
normal users understand the z= parameter, or should the parameters 
be designed some other way?

Could the editing be made interactive, so that the user can see 
the map on the edit page and zoom and pan, and when pressing the 
"save" button the new coordinates are saved?  This would take out 
the hard work for "numerically challenged" contributors.

Should we try to introduce the map tag in Wikipedia?  Has it 
already been tried, and what was the reaction?  Do we have any bad 
experience from its use in the OSM, to learn and improve from?

It's not easy to convince the tech staff of Wikipedia to introduce 
new features. They probably receive such requests daily. The code 
must run, it must scale very well, and be very stable. If we 
really want to introduce the <map> tag (or something similar) in 
Wikipedia, we must provide really good arguments.

Fortunately, there is a Wikipedia developer meeting on April 3-5,
where I could bring this forward.

In Wikipedia, map coordinates are typically placed in an infobox,
as seen on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden
or at the right top corner of the page,
as seen on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B6k_Runestone

In either case, the coordinates form a link to a switchboard page 
titled GeoHack where you can chose your favorite map site, 
including Google Maps or OpenStreetMap.

Next to the coordinates is also a little blue marble. If you click 
on this, you bring up a pop-up map called WikiMiniAtlas.  This 
little map can be panned and zoomed and features links to other 
articles.  But it uses primitive VMAP-0 data as background and has 
no proper projection, just the naive x=lon, y=lat.

In Wikipedia, the coordinates are given like this:

{{coord|58|17|42|N|14|46|32|E|display=title|type:landmark}}

Even though decimal degrees can also be used, most articles use 
degrees-minutes-seconds.  The display=title parameter puts the 
coordinate in the upper right corner.  The type:landmark parameter 
(yes, a colon is used here, not equal sign) sets the scale for the 
resulting map. Of course, zoom=5 is specific to OpenStreetMap.  
Other map sites use different definition of zoom or scale.  The 
GeoHack switchboard page converts type:landmark to the appropriate 
zoom for each target map site.

I think WikiMiniAtlas is fine, despite some flaws. But when I 
explain this to others, even experienced wikipedians, many say 
they didn't figure they could click on the blue marble to show the 
pop-up map.  That's why I think an inline presentation (like the 
map tag) would be a necessary improvement.  More visible maps will 
lead to more eyeballs, finding more errors in incorrect data.



-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se