On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 4:11 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan
<parakara.ghoda@gmail.com> wrote:
Arun, is it necessary that I have to use Google map for finding the
coordinates? The last few times, I added coordinates to Wikipedia, I
got the coordinates which were present on OSM and Twitter for
BlackBerry, nether of which rely on Google
Umm no, you could get coordinates however you want, but from what i've seen people tend to rely blindly on google because its the least effort.
Ultimately, users contributing coordinates need to make sure that the coords they are adding is accurate. The assumption that google maps is a trusted map source is highly problematic. I just randomly checked the coords for an article - Puzhal [1], a suburb of Chennai. The coordinates in the article exactly match the the location in gmaps. How did that happen?
Anyone trying to verify the accuracy of coordinates in wikipedia will find that gmaps shows the exact same position. Its a feedback loop which validates errors thrown into it. Not good.
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Regards,
Srikanth Ramakrishnan.