Håkon Wium Lie wrote:

I've analyzed Wikipedia's HTML code for representing geographical coordinates. The current code is verbose and does not support the Geo microformat correctly. Three alternatives, differing on functionality and code size, are suggested as replacements:

http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/geo/

Alternative 1, which is comptible with Wikipedia's current syntax for personalized presentation, reduces the number of elements from 14 to 10. Alternative 2, which uses CSS generated content to achieve personalized presentations, reduces the number of elments from 14 to 5 and the code size from 798 to 248 bytes.

This fits in with other approaches to geographic information, and I suggest we all use the new maps-l mailing list for all of this.

1) More articles ought to have coordinates, in all languages of Wikipedia. Is this also relevant to Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikiquote?

2) We need some quality assurance, to make sure we have the right coordinates for each place. Making it easier for normal users to verify and update coordinates would be helpful. Usability project?

3) Coordinates can now be specified in many different ways, but we ought to have fewer, more standardized ways (templates).

4) The output of the templates should be as useful as possible: * link to the GeoHack page, * geo microformats, * <span class> markup that can be modified by personal CSS/Javascript, * in the future also inline maps from OpenStreetMap.

Could we write a specification for what a coordinate template should be able to handle? Could someone write a history of how Wikipedia's coordinate templates have evolved over the years?

Håkon, did you only look at the English Wikipedia? Different languages have different coordinate templates. When I ask around, the Germans are convinced that their new template is the best, but they can't give a short summary of why this is so.