Hi,
*** Before I begin: I've never been a major
OpenStreetMap contributor, so forgive me if I misunderstand
something basic about it. ***
Lately, some work has been done on improving the
integration of OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Wikimedia projects, in
the Kartographer extension.
In particular, I'm curious about this task:
It's about showing place names in the wiki
language. It may get resolved soon (yay!!)
But it raises an important question: What happens
if the place name was not translated into the wiki language?
As a not-so-extreme example, what happens if a place name is
only available in the OSM database in Chinese? Unfortunately,
it will be not very useful to readers of the English
Wikipedia.
The desirable solution is to give Wikipedia
editors who know the relevant languages an easy way to
translate the labels.
* find it on the map
* edit it
* type "name:LANGUAGE_CODE" in the properties
list (for example "name:ru" for Russian)
* write the name
* save
* wait for it to get published (I'm not sure how
long does it take; maybe it's instant, but I made a test edit,
and I still don't see it.)
This is not super-efficient for several reasons:
* Finding each place on the map may be
time-consuming for practical considerations.
* Sending each change manually is also
time-consuming.
* Typing the property name manually is slowish
and error-prone.
A lot of this data is already available on
Wikidata. In fact, OpenStreetMap already has a Wikidata item
property for each place. (It can also have a property for
Wikipedia link, one for each language. It looks redundant to
me: A link to the Wikidata item page would be enough.)
Did anybody ever suggest importing the place
names available on Wikidata to OSM, or to synchronize them
regularly?
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore