Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps/Conventions/Location maps

This page provides conventions for the creation of location maps.

Location maps are an extremely light and chartjunk-free style. They focus on the subject, most of the time a country, and its official borders and subdivisions borders. This style purposely uses soft and print-friendly colors to ease the superimposition of labels or dots, as well as non-CIA based colors.

Madrid

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Usage with {{Location map|Spain}}

Usage: These maps are used especially by Template:Location map which uses geolocalisations to add a location mark (like ) and/or a label onto the map in the browser. They are also used as background for locator maps to enlight the place and area of major subdivisions in a country, of a species range, etc. They may also be used as background for Exchanges maps, or as an administrative layer up on Topographic maps by keeping the borders only.

Where: these maps can be found on commons, in the category Location_maps_(2008_standard).

Convention

Convention for location maps.
Subject	Colorimetry (RGB/hex)
Toponymes (names)	#000000 R:0 G:0 B:0
Border. Labels (country/state/province's name)	#646464 R:100 G:100 B:100

Subject's area (country, province)	#FEFEE9 R:254 G:254 B:233
Other areas part of the same political unity	#F6E1B9 R:246 G:225 B:185
Outside area	#E0E0E0 R:224 G:224 B:224
Coasts of lakes, rivers, seas, and hydronyms (Temporary coastlines, color and ratio: opacity:0.6;dasharray:4, 4;stroke-width:1;)	#0978AB R:9 G:120 B:171
Ocean, sea, lake (Temporary body, color and ratio: opacity:0.6;stroke-dasharray:4, 4;stroke-width:1;)	#C6ECFF R:198 G:236 B:255
Naming (upload): File:{Country name in English} location map.svg File:{Country name in English} {Sub-division name in English} location map.svg and so on, but please focus your energy on countries first.
Further needs: Legend: not needed. Scale: not needed (since misleading), acceptable for <200km large/high maps. Projections: Equirectangular projection (except for extreme north or extreme south country.) {Location map}: use such {{Location map\|Spain\|label=Madrid\|mark=Green_pog.svg\|lat=40.5\|long=-3.7\|width=230\|float=center}}
SVG template: if you need some labels, please use Image:Maps_template-en.svg which provide further label conventions.

Purpose

This project focuses on making location maps for articles in the English Wikipedia, although map making is a cross-language effort coordinated across Wikipedias of various languages. A convention and set style is followed when constructing these maps.

Location maps are widely used with the {{Superimpose}} and {{Location map}} templates, to display the coordinates of a city, building, battle, etc. Accordingly, they are used in the infoboxes of many articles.

History and current work

History

This convention takes its style from the Public Domain CIA World Factbook's maps previously uploaded on Wikipedia, but has evolved toward a more web-friendly, screen friendly, and wiki-specific style. User:STyx (fr) made the first basic proposal. Dozens of discussions on several wikipedias have eventually lead to this current style, with User:Sting (fr), NNW (de) & co helping a lot to spread the decided conventions by producing a large number of such maps. In 2008 the French and German cartographic labs —the two most productive organized teams— synchronized their styles.

Interesting innovations

Traditionally, most atlases display borders, especially international ones, as bold lines, while neighboring countries' territories may be confusingly whitened and erased from the map. After discussions, the current consensus is to instead use doted lines for borders such —– – —– – —— or – – – (ex: Portugal_administrative_map-fr.svg), with the rationale that borders are not walls, people have always crossed them, and as an NGO and international community of volunteers, we do not support the nationalistic view that space stops at a country's border. Also, as a second consensus, neighboring countries or territories should NOT be “wiped off the map”. This is considered rude and doesn't make sense geographically.

Leaders

Currently, the German team has initiated a large project (Europe 96% done, etc.), and work continent after continent and country after country, to provide a complete set of SVG location maps, respecting these conventions. NNW, Chumwa, Sting, TUBS are the main contributors, several German and non-German users also contribute actively. These users work using GIS software and GIS databases such Gadm.org. Recently (2012), there has been a push on commons for derived locator maps (example: File:New_York_in_United_States.svg). Further help is welcome!

Examples

Location maps

English SVG Template to ease such map creation.
German SVG Template to ease such map creation.
1st: Portugal_location_map.svg
2th: France_location_map.svg
Another one, displaying a region (yellow), and another region of the same country (orange), and other countries (grey).

Location maps in use

Madrid

Madrid (Spain)

Map with up-to-date example of this style. > Madrid

Derivated usages

nd: Portugal administrative map-fr.svg , derivation from Location map, expansion, annotations, dashed border. No color change since all Portugal is the subject, and Spain is not the same entity.
rd: other example of a labelled Location map

Maperitive style files

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Nzeemin/Maperitive/WikiRegion
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Nzeemin/Maperitive/WikiRegion2