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User:Jlerner/Aude

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Talk given at Wiki-Conference NY at NYU Law School, July 25, 2009.

User:Aude - OpenStreetMap integration with Wikipedia

[edit]
  • Recently got involved to integrate maps into Wikipedia (part of a team)
  • ~25% of articles on Wikipedia have or could use a map
    • Place articles need location maps 20% (of Wikipedia articles)
    • Biography 29%
    • Places 20%
    • Culture 19%
    • Species 6%
    • Sports 5%
    • Science 3%
    • Politics 3%
    • Military 3%
    • Other

Use cases

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  • Locator maps
  • WikiMiniAtlas (little globe icon, upper left corner, on the toolserver now, who even knows about it?, needs better infrastructure and development)
  • Northern Bald Ibis listed as featured, but included only a primitive thematic map
    • Wouldn't it be great to provide a user like this with tools to generate nicer maps? Make it easy for the non-technical
  • March: German Wikipedia chapter started "automated map" initiative
    • Database server for OSM data
    • Rendering server to generate tiles and maps
    • Map toolserver for development and experimentation

OpenStreetMap

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  • Using GPS unit, walking around, taking GPS traces; relatively simply to upload to computer
  • Then in OpenStreetMap, can view and edit (when logged in at http://www.openstreetmap.org/)
  • Takes some time for cached tiles etc. to expire
  • Idea is that all data used is free of restrictive copyright
  • OSM project uploaded Tiger, then maps looked fairly complete
    • But if you look closely, you can find many errors, plenty of room for folks to improve upon it with own GPS units
    • In Europe, not such data in the public domain, has to be created from scratch (did I hear that correctly?)
  • OSM is customizable, however you want to use it

Back-end

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  • OSM -> Wikimedia-OSM dataabse server (postgres) -> rendering server -> SlippyMap extension -> endusers (possibly via squid)
  • Easy to localize maps

Front-end

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  • SlippyMap extension
  • Embed maps in wiki pages, where <slippymap> tag isused
    • Static maps by default
  • Interactive maps if requrested
  • Pop-up maps available for pages with coordinates
  • Caching: cache static map images, map tile images
  • Special pages: Make a map (guide users to initializing variables)

Future

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  • Each set of maps styles or layers with full global coverage and zoom levels requires substantial disk storage for all the map tiles
  • We are limited in the number of custom styles that we can provide with full global coverage and zoom levels
  • But, it may be possible to provide custom map making tools for maps with limited spatial coverage and zoom levels. With PostgreSQL ...
  • More at Wikimania
  • OpenStreetMap usability improving (but still harder than editing Wikipedia)