Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maps

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Maps Project‑class

This page is within the scope of WikiProject Maps, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Maps and Cartography on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MapsWikipedia:WikiProject MapsTemplate:WikiProject MapsMaps articles Project This page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

Geographical coordinates

WikiProject Maps is of interest to WikiProject Geographical coordinates, which encourages the use of geographical coordinates in Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.Geographical coordinatesWikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinatesTemplate:WikiProject Geographical coordinatesGeographical coordinates articles

WikiProject Maps was featured in a WikiProject Report in the Signpost on 30 April 2012.

To-do list for Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps: edit · history · watch · refresh · Updated 2021-05-04 Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Article requests : Make requests (ourself) on the Map Lab, to show how that work ; Answer the Map Lab requests ; Advertising: on the village pump, and by adding "A Map Lab host map's requests, pls add to your watchlist if interested." on {User:Scepia/maps} & {{User Wikiproject Maps}}. Cleanup : Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Resources/Maps ; Map workshop quality drive ; The talk page. Expand : 1. Historical map conventions, get user:MapMaster on it ; 2. Biogeographic maps (Round 2), Yug ; 3. Align the whole system (+), Yug. Infobox : Raise awareness about: http://gunn.co.nz/map/ ! Please clic & try this great map tool ! "Black square" bug solution Complex templates. OSM Conventions and Tutorials Cross teaching role ot the workshop sections Merge : Wikipedia:Distribution maps to the convention set. Stubs : Cartography — You want and can do an academic research and FA article ? this article is the most important one to rewrite : ) Other : Continue alignment, move world maps'grey to #E0E0E0 ; align Locator maps and Area maps ; find coherent list of conventional map samples (here: Scotland, France, Portugal, Italia, Tanzania, Québec, Haïti, Maurice).

Related WikiProjects

The parent of this WikiProject is the Geography WikiProject. WikiProject Maps also is a management type WikiProject for pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia. The following illustrates the position of WikiProject Maps within the Wikipedia WikiProject lineage:

Lineage of WikiProject Maps

This project may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this project if you can. Wikipedia maintenance WikiProject Graphics Creation/improvement of pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia WikiProject Photography - Create and improve photographs WikiProject Panorama Welding - stitching photos together to create a panorama Photo Matching Service Requested pictures WikiProject Maps - Create geographical maps WikiProject OpenStreetMap - Create maps using data from OpenStreetMap WikiProject Geographical coordinates - Create map coordinates WikiProject Indian maps - Create maps for India-related articles WikiProject Mathematics/Graphics - Create graphics for math-related articles Graphic Lab - Improve graphical content stored on Commons and Wikipedia WikiProject Illustration - Create and improve illustrations Philip Greenspun illustration project. Create and improve illustrations on Wikimedia Acquisition of pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia WikiProject Free book covers - Acquire covers about books in the public domain Distribution of pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia WikiProject Animated Wikipedia - Distribute Wikipedia stored animated video in Wikipedia WikiProject Free images - Distribute Wikipedia stored free images in Wikipedia. WikiProject Moving free images to Wikimedia Commons - Move Wikipedia stored free images to Commons. Commons:WikiProject Atlas - Organize maps included in commons as an atlas Monitoring of pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia WikiProject Graphics monitoring WikiProjects that have made use of geographical maps include: Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries Wikipedia:WikiProject Former countries Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Counties Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. States Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life and its subprojects (distribution maps for animals/plants/etc)

Archives

Archive 1 (2004) Archive 2 (2005) Archive 3 (2006) Archive 4 (2007) Archive 5 (2008) Archive 6 (2009) Archive 7 (2010) Archive 8 (2011) Archive 9 (2012) Archive 10 (2013) Archive 11 (2014) Archive 12 (2015) Archive 13 (2016) Archive 14 (2017) Archive 15 (2018) Archive 16 (2019) Archive 17 (2020) Archive 18 (2021) Archive 19 (2022) Archive 20 (2023) Archive 21 (2024)

This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 5 sections are present.

Hello, WP:MAPS. I am currently working on the visa policy of Nauru, and I was wondering if there was any conventions on the colors would be? It seems like the other visa policy articles have a lot of different colors, and I just wanted to be correct. Thanks in advance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Michael Jester (talk • contribs) 21 August 2014 (UTC)

just dropping a quick note here as I was asked to look at this Talk:Shetland#Need_better_map_image - looks like it ought to get a combination of File:Wfm_shetland_map.png and File:Shetland_UK_location_map.svg — Preceding unsigned comment added by EdwardLane (talk • contribs) 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Please assess Fictitious entry. Thanks! 11:32, 3 October 2018 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Asianflavoure (talk • contribs) 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Hello, for research purposes I have been looking for an archive of all Maps used on historical articles on Wikipedia. They are enormously helpful however due to the scale of my research project it would be much faster if I could look through an archive of the maps used to demonstrate changing borders of nations over the millenniums! Thank you

Please sign your posts. Maps are found on the Commons. See Commons:Category:Maps for maps of all kinds. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:44, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WikiConference North America 2022 will be virtual, November 11-13. We will hold it jointly with OpenStreetMap US's Mapping USA. Our theme this year is open knowledge allies. Registration is now open here! Please register by the 10th so that we can set everyone up online on our platform. Like last year, we are planning on using Hopin. Our schedule is will be finalized and available in the next few days. We have an exciting line-up of sessions related to Wikimedia, OpenStreetMap, and the intersection of the two. Stay tuned! Local meet-ups will occur in Indianapolis and New York City - if you are available and interested in attending either of these, you can find more details here. If you want to connect with other participants or have questions, please join our Telegram channel here.

Please change the map of 2024 Indian general election in Assam.

There was a delimitation in which the constituency borders were changed. But the article still uses the old map with the old borders.

Search "CEO Assam Map" to get the new map. Webaddress of result will be "ceoassam.nic.in", this is the chief electoral office website. MrMkG (talk) 09:07, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Maps/Conventions

Hello all,
After collecting best and most popular cartographic practices into Wikipedia:WikiProject_Maps/Conventions about a decade ago, I plan to lightly refresh and update the page, with new best practices now widespread on Wikimedia projects. It would be also interesting to have a section about the emerging cloud technologies such as OSM-based wikimaps, a subject which I don't know much. Could someone with basic knowledge of this project contact me ? Yug (talk) 🐲 08:28, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Maps for Wikipedia and meta:WikiMiniAtlas seem to sum up current Wiki map tech. The Equalizer (talk) 12:39, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's more advanced that I knew. Thos /Conventions page needs to guide users toward those new tech / best practices. Yug (talk) 🐲 14:55, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I added NNW's new "N series" style to the conventions page and have been doing a little clean-up. I have some OSM experience so if you have some queries feel free to ask me, but I'm a little busy recently. – Isochrone (talk) 16:38, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I have made an innovation to data in infoboxes in some countries' articles. I don't know if it is going to be accepted by the community.

I thought it helpful to provide information on the neighboring places, including a map and wikilinks, per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images § Image quality,

A map of Moldova should show its frontiers with Romania and Ukraine, so people may know where the country is located in relation to its neighbors.

Also, according to Manual of Style/Linking § Overlinking and underlinking,

In general, links should be created for:

• Relevant connections to the subject of another article that will help readers understand the article more fully
• Articles with relevant information

[...] The purpose of linking is to clarify and to provide reasonable navigation opportunities

Quiché Department is an example of the work I did. Click on the infobox map option of "Quiché and its neighbors" to see the relevant map. If you click on the links to Chiapas and Petén, you can find more examples and experience the navigation improvement to find information on neighboring places and have a better illustration of the of the region. Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 06:57, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Sdkb, Yug, and SMcCandlish: Thinker78 (talk) 01:08, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a bit confused as all the location maps show parts of the neighbouring countries (when appropriate), so my question is: what does "Quiché and its neighbors" show that the location map doesn't? M.Bitton (talk) 01:18, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The difference is that the second map shows the names of the neighbors. Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 04:19, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And a helpfully zoomed-out view providing more geographical context.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:52, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The direction of this strikes me as definitely reader-helpful. As long as WP is going to stubbornly refuse to use Open Street Map, Google Maps, or any other modern map API (or implment one of its own) and overlay information on top of maps that are actually zoomable web apps, then WP is badly behind-the-times on map utility. It's intensely frustrating to click on a map in a WP article to get more information only to find that the map is a just a static SVG, PNG, JPG or GIF image and cannot be zoomed in and out to show a wider area. This problem could certainly be ameliorated to some extent by providing a switcheroo micro-app that provides multiple maps at different levels of global zoom. Some initial comments on this exact implementation:

• The list you tried to create in the infobox was basically mangled, with bare "*" characters. The proper way to do this is this, with {{hlist}} (something similar could be done with {{plainlist}}, but with more obtrusive markup that requires line-breaks and cannot be done inline). {{Hlist}} is even smart enough to auto-parenthesize (round-bracket) embedded inline lists. The result looks like this.
• While the additional map provides immediate utility, including a textual list of all contiguous areas may or may not. I lean toward the "provide more information than less" position on such matter, but I expect there will be differences of opinion. Add additional reason, beyond my own proclivities, to side with more-than-less in this sort of case is that maps are between poorly usable and totally useless for readers with visual disabilities, and of low utility on small mobile devices, while the text links are pertinent for all.
• When such a list is included, start with the continuous areas that are within the same parent jurisdiction (or general named region, if it's a geographical-region map that doesn't pertain to polities). In this case, that is Guatemala, and it was very confusing to have the list start with Mexico and a state thereof, then later switch to (non-Guatemala-labeled) departments of Guatemala. I think the initial idea was probably something like "start with the northernmost by default and work clockwise", and that might be reasonable for a map in which all the contiguous areas are "equal" conceptually, but it's not intuitive at all in a case like this, where everything is in Guatemala except one entry.
• Aside from the text stuff, this multi-map approach would be even better with a third map, showing this place's location in the Western Hemisphere. We have to remember that our site is heavily used by school children and by adults who do not have deep education (much less of the sort that focuses on the Western Hemisphere like most Americans and Canadians have), so just being told that something is "in Guatemala" is often not very conceptually useful for any given reader when it comes to individually understanding where in the world a place is. For a perhaps ideal test case, see Ural Mountains which provides a single map that makes some sense to people intimately familiar with Central Asia, but lacks sufficient information on both the mountains' relation to various polities, and where on the globe it is for people who understand the continental arrangement of the world but not exactly where on it are the exact extents of places like Russia and Pakistan and Uzbekistan and so on. (I was trying to cement in my own mind these mountains' exact geographic relationships to the Himalayas and others, and to other major Eurasian land features like the Pontic Steppe, Caspian Sea, Gobi Desert, etc., and I had to go to other sites to do that. Shouldn't've had to.)
• The underlying {{switcher}} template needs to be smart enough to output "show both" when there are only two, since "show all" is not grammatical (in the broad, vernacular sense of that word) when there are only two items. (However, providing three options in a case like this would be better in the first place).

Summary: With some tweaks in approach, this multi-map switcher is clearly a usability and educational and navigation boon. An argument can be made that a text-link list of the contiguous areas is also (especially for accessibility reasons, but also generally), though a counter-argument can be made about the latter (but probably not against the accessibility point).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:52, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the detailed feedback and will follow your advice. Regarding being able to zoom in or out, I have to point out the very feature that you may have missed. If you click the coordinates, you are transported to the Wikimedia Cloud Services hosting GeoHack, which provides links to a wide variety of mapping services, including a featured Wikimedia map, which you can conveniently zoom in and out to show a wider area.

Maybe it is an external link but it is only one extra click away but I get your point regarding static maps. Although the latter may have a value of their own, probably the future is headed towards incorporating the Wikimedia maps in the infobox of relevant articles. I have actually seen some countries' articles with maps that are dynamic and zoomable. Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 05:27, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Graham87: what do you think about this? Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 05:31, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Thinker78: Sounds potentially interesting. Maybe add some sort of directional indicator of where the neighbouring places are? If I'm understanding correctly, something similar is done in {{Infobox Australian place}}; see Carlisle, Western Australia, for example. Graham87 (talk) 07:28, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@SMcCandlish: Check out Guatemala City. Not only it has a zoomable map in the infobox but also the map scheme you advised regarding regionality. Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 19:41, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is all promising stuff!  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:16, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a discussion that may be of your interest that includes the topic proprietary map services, at Template talk:GeoTemplate#Splitting Global/Trans-national services. Your input is welcomed. Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 23:13, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I came here from Wikipedia:WikiProject Eurovision as we have been constantly finding issues, updating and changing our maps. I wanna see if there's anything missing or wrong with this map. Any input is appreciated — IмSтevan ^talk 15:05, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ImStevan: did anyone suggest that there is something wrong with it? M.Bitton (talk) 15:27, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We've been updating it for weeks, and whenever we thought we were done, something new would pop up. For example, we started by adding the missing Channel islands, then we added lakes, fixed Middle eastern borders, added Akrotiri and Dhekelia and so on. I wanna know if there's anything else we missed or that's inaccurate with it, and what better place to ask than the map project — IмSтevan ^talk 16:08, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone give me a pointer as to how red boundaries end up on interactive maps? What or who codes that? And where? I have two city park articles, where in one, the red boundary is missing, and another one where it is inaccurate. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 18:01, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For Shawnee, another OSM tag was missing - I have added it, but it will take some hours to pull the data to the Wiki map servers before it will show.

Seneca and others is slightly complicated, in OSM the park is classed as a separate location from the course, two ways to skin this:

Either you add the same Q number and missing tag to the course attributes and again wait for replication, it will draw two shapes.

If you want one large shape on OSM it will need to be drawn from scratch as a new relation and tags / number added.

The Q&A at the top of Template talk:Infobox mapframe explains the tag issue (Q4/A4), The MediaWiki link within it mw:Help:Extension:Kartographer/OSM#Create a new relation shows how to create a new OSM relation.

Regards, The Equalizer (talk) 20:20, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the assistance. I figured that some kind of server lag was involved with Shawnee, but it's good to have that confirmed. As for the parks with golf courses, I'll have to mull over what the best course of action will need to be. The Shawnee boundary includes the golf course but other Louisville area parks don't. Are you saying an existing boundary cannot be reshaped or that doing that is way too complicated? Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 20:59, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the missing type tag hadn't been added to Shawnee, it would not have shown at all.

The parks and courses have been drawn independently and unless you know what you are doing it's better left. Safer to draw a new overall shape as per the instructions given.

If happy to use two shapes (which isn't that bad), the real right way to do things is create Wikidatas specific to the courses which will be different Q nos from the parks, then add these to the code for the infobox, but if as you state the courses are integral to the parks simplest is to add the park Wikidatas and type to them in OSM, and wait. The Equalizer (talk) 21:31, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please understand I haven't looked at these things before today, so I'm struggling to wrap my head around it.

Re: server lag, I was wondering about that before and after the missing tag was added.

The city of Louisville treats the golf courses as features included in these parks, and that's how I've always known them.

I see that creating a new overall park shape would be least disruptive in case anyone is technically depending on the current shape, but on the other hand, I wonder if creating this might cause issues for general users of the area map, to see two different shapes saying they are the park.

I suppose that for the time being, to get something done with least resistance, using the existing separate park and golf course shapes will have to do. So, I will need to create WikiData pages for the golf courses and connect those to the golf courses in OSM. Then, somehow I have the infobox show both zones. I guess I'll work on doing this for one park until I can get it to work, and once it does, move on to the others.

Thank you again for your assistance. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 22:24, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see the boundary is showing on Shawnee when full screen, will need some time before the thumbnail also displays this (which might need a tweak to get it to show). The Equalizer (talk) 11:38, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

These SVG maps have user-editable sections (any text editor) to allow creation of more maps on more topics. Just paste in a list of states and values. See examples at Commons:Category:English-language SVG maps of the United States made with templates. Feel free to create map templates for other countries too. Cmglee may be able to help with that.

Version 2: Convert a US list/table to a state-by-state data map. With examples and step-by step instructions. Example:

Simple map below with state names and colored states. See its talk page.

--Timeshifter (talk) 18:01, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]