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
Great work, great intiative!
I will share the info on the Wikimaps group in FB (not many are tech-oriented). I am especially interested in gathering info on the tiles services, I have been thinking about that myself. It has been unclear whether they could ever be used (in Wikipedias), so it would be helpful if you could shed light on where they could be used and what remains restricted.
Cheers Susanna
2017-08-30 17:38 GMT+03:00 Derk-Jan Hartman d.j.hartman+wmf_ml@gmail.com:
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
Maps-l mailing list Maps-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/maps-l
Another great thing to hack on is support for geometries at query.wikidata.org, because geometries are now exposed through the API they should also be rendered in the map view.
Concerning lists of tile-services, the iD project has a great list of tile services and most of them are open. We also created a list of historical map tile services for the OpenHistoricalMap project. I'm not sure if replicating those list somewhere else would add anything of benefit for our community. Note that using external services such as tile services from Tool Server is problematic because it can easily violate the Privacy policy[1].
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/65/toolforge_provides_prox...
// Albin Abbe98
2017-08-30 17:39 GMT+02:00 Susanna Ånäs susanna.anas@gmail.com:
Great work, great intiative!
I will share the info on the Wikimaps group in FB (not many are tech-oriented). I am especially interested in gathering info on the tiles services, I have been thinking about that myself. It has been unclear whether they could ever be used (in Wikipedias), so it would be helpful if you could shed light on where they could be used and what remains restricted.
Cheers Susanna
2017-08-30 17:38 GMT+03:00 Derk-Jan Hartman d.j.hartman+wmf_ml@gmail.com :
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
Maps-l mailing list Maps-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/maps-l
Maps-l mailing list Maps-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/maps-l