[OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia (was: Map tag in Wikipedia)

[Lars Aronsson]

Tim 'avatar' Bartel wrote:

> Regarding the people interested in the map project: Because the 
> project just started, it won't be too useful to add more people 
> to the group before we have buyed the servers, brought them to 
> our data center in Amsterdam and set up a base system.

There's a lot more to be done, and a lot more going on with maps 
in Wikipedia than just the new map toolserver.  The 15,000 euro 
from WMDE is another step forward, but not the first and not the 
last.  The existing toolserver with the GeoHack and WikiMiniAtlas 
applications represents a series of previous steps forward.

The Berlin meetup is one chance for those interested in all of 
these little projects to see each other, learn about recent 
advances, and discuss how to continue from here.  Another such 
chance is the State of the Map conference in July.  The deadline 
for SOTM paper submissions is May 3. Enough time to get ideas in 
Berlin and write up a synopsis for SOTM.

Setting up the map toolserver will be important. But other people 
can do other things in the same time. For example, we will have to 
consider how the current coordinate links in Wikipedia articles 
should be changed to inline map presentations.  Should they fit in 
infoboxes?  We still have no system for interwiki synchronization 
of coordinates.  Different languages of Wikipedia can specify 
different coordinates for the same city, with different precision. 
To what extent does OSM link back to Wikipedia, and how should 
that be improved? I recently introduced WikiMiniAtlas in the 
Swedish Wikipedia, and initiated a translation of the GeoHack page 
into Norwegian (bokmål and nynorsk).  Yesterday, the page 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap was translated into 
Swedish and Russian. At the Berlin meet-up we can inspire someone 
to do such things for other languages of Wikipedia.

Last year, Inge Wallin and I applied for funds for a Swedish tile 
server. The hardware is being installed now. Our primary interest 
is to render OSM in the style of Swedish cartography. But we also 
need to know how this can best be coordinated with the German map 
toolserver and other resources.

So, "the map project" is a lot bigger than the map toolserver.


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