[crosspost from Maps-l]
Today the Wikimedia Foundation is announcing the deprecation of the public API for Wikimedia map tiles. Around mid October the Foundation will end support for the Wikimedia Maps Service API [1]. This change affects people using Wikimedia maps on their own website or app. Maps on the Wikimedia sites, in Wikimedia-hosted tools and gadgets, and on maps.wikimedia.org won't be affected.
This decision was made based on recent outage incidents, primarily due to spikes in third party usage, along with an analysis showing that more than a third of maps provided are to non-Wikimedia services (including many to for-profit organizations).
After the most recent incident [2], the service was limited so that only cached maps tiles would be available. While this protected the servers, it made the service unpredictable and highlighted the unsustainability of our tile service. So, we have made the decision to discontinue the maps APIs for non-Wikimedia users.
This change will allow our teams working on Maps to focus on the sustainability of the maps used within Wikimedia projects.
You can follow the implementation of this change on Phabricator [3].
Best,
Erica Litrenta
[1] https://maps.wikimedia.org/osm-intl/
[2] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation/20200204-maps
[3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261424
[crosspost from Maps-l]
Hi everyone,
here are a few clarifications about our prior announcement re: Maps API deprecation for 3rd parties [1].
As stated, our plan is *not* going to have any impact on any Wikimedia-hosted wikis. This means that nothing will change for maps, in any namespace, on Wikipedia and any sister projects. Tools that are hosted on Wikimedia services are also not going to be affected (i.e., Kartographer).
This said, we are aware that there may be map usage beyond such venues where deprecation would still affect our community members and their activities - for instance, the Wiki Loves Monuments website, and the Wikimedia Poland chapter website both rely on our maps API.
Hence, over the 45 day deprecation period which ends in mid October: *if you represent an affiliated free knowledge group that does regular work with our maps (any Wikimedia affiliates, or established wikiprojects), or if you are closely partnering with other entities who do, we welcome you to reach out, either here on this announcement thread or on the dedicated Phabricator ticket [2].*
We will work with you to understand your needs, and what alternatives exist. For further questions, I encourage you to contact me off-list to reduce noise.
Thank you.
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/maps-l/2020-August/001729.html
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261694
Hi everyone,
Just a reminder that deprecation of the Maps API for third party referrers happens next week. If you are using that API on a non-Wikimedia hosted website for a Wikimedia affiliate or an established wikiproject, please comment as soon as possible on Phabricator [1] linking to your domain and providing an example of your usage of maps.
We appreciate your patience as this is our first step towards making maps a reliable and consistent experience for contributors and readers, and we'll share more about our plans in the next weeks.
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261694
Kind regards,
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org