Platonides wrote:
Plan the contest to start by the time next dump is
finished.
Then run the contest until next dump. You don't even need the
old dump to decide which geotags were added. But wikipedians
will like a more-or-less up to date list of articles without
geotags :)
OK, let's go into detail on the maps.
The problem with adding geo coordinates now is that you're doing
it in the blind. To verify that a coordinate is correct, you need
to go to the right article, click on the coordinate, and then pick
the map provider and see if the pin lands in the right place.
My very first look at WikiMiniAtlas, starting at the small town
Grängesberg in central Sweden, revealed that (a) Grängesberg was
not shown on that map, because the WikiMiniAtlas database is not
up-to-date, and (b) next to it was shown a Norwegian town, which
should be 6 degrees west but just happened to have the wrong
coordinate -- in the Dutch Wikipedia. I would never have found
and corrected that error without WikiMiniAtlas. And you can
immediately see if the next town is missing from the map, and go
to that article and add the coordinate. This sort of application
is extremely useful. That's why I need it to work.
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%A4ngesberg
http://nl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rollag&diff=15400179
Now, I fixed that coordinate in the Dutch Wikipedia a month ago,
but the WikiMiniAtlas still shows Rollag next to where Grängesberg
should be. That's not useful.
Stefan Kühn wrote that he digs out coordinates from database
dumps. I know a lot about digging things out of database dumps
and I doubt this is the best way for WikiMiniAtlas, since there
are so many different ways that the coord template can be called.
Just consider all the lat/lat_min parameters to infobox templates.
Shouldn't you just dig out from the external links table, all the
links to the
stable.toolserver.org/geohack/ and parse the
coordinates from those URLs?
And when WikiMiniAtlas is invoked from an article, such as
Grängesberg, the call to the toolserver (that fetches the map
tiles) could perhaps be used for updating the coordinate for that
article. We can be pretty sure that those who update a coordinate
will pop up the WikiMiniAtlas to see they made no mistake.
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik -
http://aronsson.se