[Wikimedia-l] The failure of Google, looking for open source alternatives

[Andy Mabbett]

On 24 August 2013 23:21, Romaine Wiki <romaine_wiki at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Google is throwing the Wikipedia layer out of Google Maps under the guise of "improvement"

If true, that's very sad. I was involved in liason with Google to get
that set up to use {{Coord}}, some years ago, and people I've showed
it to have always found it useful. The problem is, Google kept it
hidden away, so I wouldn't be surprised if stats showed that people
didn't use it much - at least not as much as they might have done.

> Considering this for finding a Wikipedia layer on maps, I do not know any. But I do know there is an open source alternative, just like Wikipedia, but then for maps, OpenStreetMap.

OSM won't do something like that, but invite others (which might be
WMF or our community) to use their data to create such services.

In fact, Kolossos has done so:

   http://toolserver.org/~kolossos/openlayers/kml-on-ol.php?lat=51.52214&lon=-0.06012&zoom=10&lang=de&layers=B00TT

but that seems to be using an out-of-date or otherwise in complete
data set - even so, switch (under "Optionen") to English (for greatest
coverage) or your language of choice.


Incidentally, when mapping on OSM, it's always a good idea to include
a Wikipedia (or Wikidata) link for eligible objects.

-- 
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk