I've been playing a bit with maps recently and identified a set of low
hanging fruit, that are currently lacking, prohibitive and/or need
improvement. These are great opportunities for those enthusiastic about
maps. Most are rather small, but not enough of a priority for the
foundation to work on.
1. Create a directory of tile providers services that are
opensource/opendata etc..
We seem to have a lot of different tile providers and services
integrated, but we don't really keep track of who does and uses what. There
is a nice https://leaflet-extras.github.io/leaflet-providers/preview/ that
would be awesome to have as toolforge focused for wikimedia. This can
improve our mutual knowledge of such tile providers. It took me a long time
to get a decent understanding of all the tiles that we have/can use in the
bazillion other tools.
2. Because http://tools.wmflabs.org/locator/coordinates.php incorporates
google maps and was somewhat broken to begin with, I started experimenting
with a new version: http://tools.wmflabs.org/locator/coordinates2.php just
for fun. This tool is mostly used by the Dutch Wikimedia community to add
coordinates to their wiki and they really want to keep their satellite
view. It can also be used for en.wikipedia and commons.
There is another tool called https://tools.wmflabs.org/locator-tool/, which
is specific to Commons. It would be interesting to see if we can generalise
that tool to be more wiki agnostic, using the abstractions that the locator
tool has.
3. I'm working on running an experiment with a gadget on the mobile
website, to see if there can be made a case for stronger mobile web
integration with our new map service
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T174538
4: The JS modules in Kartographer need some love. More support for JS hooks
and promises, will make them much easier to reuse them. For instance, it's
impossible to use the map link or mapframe modules and provide slight
enhancements or integrations, because you can't tell when they have
finished opening etc.
5: Split off Special:NearBy of MobileFrontend and enhance it with
maps.wikimedia.org
6: The list of sidebar services cannot be easily changed right now and is
hardcoded in the extension.
Moving it into a MediaWiki: json file would greatly improve this.
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T152971
Ergo, many opportunities, hope this inspires people !!!
DJ
Seen many of you here at Wikimania (👋 Susannah, Deb, Andy, Katie) and at
6:30pm after the group photo, OpenStreetMap Montreal is organizing a
mapping party -- let's gather outside to talk maps and create maps.
-Mikel
ps tomorrow at 2pm in Joyce/Jarry, holding a Mapathon!
Hello and thanks for writing :)
Norwegian Wikipedia already has mapframe enabled—have you had a chance to
play with the code yet? If not, learning how to use mapframe is fairly easy
for basic things and help can be found here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps/how_to:_embedded_maps.
More information about the map project and service can be found here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps. Also, for general discussion and
questions, please send an email to: Maps-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org for great
knowledge sharing opportunities.
Let me know if you have further questions after taking a look at the
documentation. As Guillaume mentioned in his email, our engineering
resources are quite small right now, but I think everything you're wanting
to do can be done right now.
Cheers,
Deb
--
deb tankersley
irc: debt
Product Manager, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation
On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 3:31 PM, Guillaume Lederrey <glederrey(a)wikimedia.org
> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> Great to see that you have interesting projects around maps! At this
> point, the maps team is very reduced, and we are not in a position
> where we can offer much support. That being said, we'll do what we
> can! There is already some limited integration between maps and
> wikidata, which might be sufficient to do some of what you want to do.
> But honestly, I'm very much not familiar with that part.
>
> I added Deb in CC to this mail. She's our product owner and she is
> probably the best person to orient you in the right direction, or at
> least make sure your idea are captured somewhere...
>
> I hope we can find a way to move that forward!
>
> Have fun!
>
> Guillaume
>
> On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 8:18 PM, Hans A. Rosbach
> <hans.a.rosbach(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi.
> >
> > I saw you posted to Maps-l about usage of Kartographer. It seems to me
> you
> > have come quite far with that on fr-wiki, and I'm interested in such a
> > solution for no-wiki.
> >
> > I would like to get in contact with someone who has both knowledge in the
> > topic and is willing to discuss this with me. If that is you, fine,
> > otherwise perhaps you could introduce me to someone.
> >
> > I would like to get to the point where it is sufficient to add something
> > like {{kart}} (map in Norwegian) into an article, getting sufficient
> > information from Wikidata to display the mapframe. Another case is
> replacing
> > the position maps in infoboxes with an interactive mapframe. A geogroup
> > usage like you discussed in may is obviously also of interest.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Hans A: Rosbach
> >
> > User haros on wikipedia.
> >
> > I also have e-mail haros.at.wikipedia(a)gemil.com
>
>
>
> --
> Guillaume Lederrey
> Operations Engineer, Discovery
> Wikimedia Foundation
> UTC+2 / CEST
>