On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 10:24:43AM -0700, Christopher Mahan wrote:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski taw@users.sf.net wrote:
On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 09:02:59AM -0700, Christopher Mahan wrote:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski taw@users.sf.net wrote:
Do it now, convert later.
I agree.
There are serious obstacles to developing real map system, most important being limited free geographical data of decent quality.
I say forget mapping. Just put in coordinates into physical
location
pages, and let the mapping software companies do their magic.
What do the world need the mapping companies for ? Most of the mapping is being done by the governments, for taxpayers' money, so the data should be available for free. Unfortunately, except for the US, it isn't.
Once we have the data, the software itself isn't that difficult.
The mapping companies have the maps with the elevation with not much interesting on them. We add the stuff on the map that makes the map come alive. It's an overlay.
Imagine walking around in israel and you bump your head in the wall. Oh, sorry. Imagine you have a wireless gps device and you're walking on a road and the devices announces: "According to Wikipedia, you are on the same road Roman General Vespasian marched on in 69AD with 9000 roman soldiers on the way to the fortress of Masada." A few minutes later: "This village hosts a regional olive competition that will last till Friday. Also, famed guitarist SomeMadeUp Name grew up here until he was 19."
Would that not be fun?
Pretty fun, yeah, but we need mapping support in Wikipedia for that to happen: * People need some feedback or they won't work on geographical data. Numbers are boring. * Feedback is needed to see if the data is correct. It's very easy to make a typo when typing numbers and if the result isn't presented on some kind of map, it's highly unlikely that somebody would correct it.
I don't remember the URL, but Lars's paper about wiki contains some more thoughts on maps.