Today the Wikimedia Foundation is announcing the deprecation of the public API for Wikimedia map tiles. Around mid October the Foundation will end support for the Wikimedia Maps Service API [1]. This change affects people using Wikimedia maps on their own website or app. Maps on the Wikimedia sites, in Wikimedia-hosted tools and gadgets, and on maps.wikimedia.org won't be affected.
This decision was made based on recent outage incidents, primarily due to spikes in third party usage, along with an analysis showing that more than a third of maps provided are to non-Wikimedia services (including many to for-profit organizations).
After the most recent incident [2], the service was limited so that only cached maps tiles would be available. While this protected the servers, it made the service unpredictable and highlighted the unsustainability of our tile service. So, we have made the decision to discontinue the maps APIs for non-Wikimedia users.
This change will allow our teams working on Maps to focus on the sustainability of the maps used within Wikimedia projects.
You can follow the implementation of this change on Phabricator [3].
Best,
Erica Litrenta
[1] https://maps.wikimedia.org/osm-intl/
[2] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation/20200204-maps
[3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261424
Hi everyone,
here are a few clarifications about our prior announcement about the Maps API deprecation for 3rd parties [1].
As stated, our plan is *not* going to have any impact on any Wikimedia-hosted wikis. This means that nothing will change for maps, in any namespace, on Wikipedia and any sister projects. Tools that are hosted on Wikimedia services are also not going to be affected (i.e., Kartographer).
This said, we are aware that there may be map usage that doesn’t fit into such venues where deprecation would still affect our community members and their activities - for instance, the Wiki Loves Monuments website, and the Wikimedia Poland chapter website both rely on our maps API.
Hence, over the 45 day deprecation period which ends in mid October: *if you represent an affiliated free knowledge group that does regular work with our maps (any Wikimedia affiliates, or established wikiprojects), or if you are closely partnering with other entities who do, we welcome you to reach out, either here on this announcement thread or on the dedicated Phabricator ticket [2].*
We will work with you to understand your needs, and what alternatives exist. For further questions, I encourage you to contact me off-list to reduce noise.
Thank you.
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/maps-l/2020-August/001729.html
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261694
Hello Erica,
Erica Litrenta writes:
Hence, over the 45 day deprecation period which ends in mid October: *if you represent an affiliated free knowledge group that does regular work with our maps (any Wikimedia affiliates, or established wikiprojects), or if you are closely partnering with other entities who do, we welcome you to reach out, either here on this announcement thread or on the dedicated Phabricator ticket [2].*
The restriction of access did break the integration on OpenStreetMap wiki.
I am not certain whether OpenStreetMap counts here as a related project. At least it is related in the way that this community provides the data enabling you to render maps.
It would certainly be the least effort to all involved in maintaining the wiki if the access could simply be allowed again.
URL of OpenStreetMap wiki and a link to bugtracker below:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User_talk:Harry_Wood#Simple_image_MediaW iki_Extension_broken.3F
https://github.com/Firefishy/SimpleMap/issues/4
Would be great if you could leave a comment there whether allowing OpenStreetMap is an option for you.
Thank you,
Stephan
Dear Erica and everyone,
I must concur with Stephan Knauss's statement about OpenStreetMap:
At least it is related in the way that this community provides the data enabling you to render maps.
Although there are no terms that would force anyone to provide its tiles back to OpenStreetMap, I find it quite unpleasant that the FOSS communities don't back each other in their goals.
Anyway, we have already removed Wikimedia Maps from our local portal at openstreetmap.cz . Yet the announcement made us quite sad, as the Wikimedia Maps tiles were one of the few OSM-based tile services updated regularly and often.
Regards Jan
On Thu, 3 Sep 2020 at 10:49, Erica Litrenta elitrenta@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi everyone,
here are a few clarifications about our prior announcement about the Maps API deprecation for 3rd parties [1].
As stated, our plan is *not* going to have any impact on any Wikimedia-hosted wikis. This means that nothing will change for maps, in any namespace, on Wikipedia and any sister projects. Tools that are hosted on Wikimedia services are also not going to be affected (i.e., Kartographer).
This said, we are aware that there may be map usage that doesn’t fit into such venues where deprecation would still affect our community members and their activities - for instance, the Wiki Loves Monuments website, and the Wikimedia Poland chapter website both rely on our maps API.
Hence, over the 45 day deprecation period which ends in mid October: *if you represent an affiliated free knowledge group that does regular work with our maps (any Wikimedia affiliates, or established wikiprojects), or if you are closely partnering with other entities who do, we welcome you to reach out, either here on this announcement thread or on the dedicated Phabricator ticket [2].*
We will work with you to understand your needs, and what alternatives exist. For further questions, I encourage you to contact me off-list to reduce noise.
Thank you.
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/maps-l/2020-August/001729.html
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261694
-- Erica Litrenta Manager, Community Relations Specialists https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Elitre_(WMF)
Maps-l mailing list Maps-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/maps-l
Hi everyone,
Just a reminder that deprecation of the Maps API for third party referrers happens next week. If you are using that API on a non-Wikimedia hosted website for a Wikimedia affiliate or an established wikiproject, please comment as soon as possible on Phabricator [1] linking to your domain and providing an example of your usage of maps.
We appreciate your patience as this is our first step towards making maps a reliable and consistent experience for contributors and readers, and we'll share more about our plans in the next weeks.
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261694
Kind regards,