[Wikimedia-l] Geolocalization improvement proposal

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Birgitte_sb at yahoo.com, 23/07/2012 19:27:
> On Jul 23, 2012, at 7:42 AM, "Federico Leva (Nemo)" wrote:
>
>> Birgitte_sb at yahoo.com, 23/07/2012 14:28:
>>> I am unaware of what the shortcomings of the current system are and where any improvements would be felt. This makes it a bit hard to have a firm opinion of the trade-offs involved with changing the system. So what exactly are the problems people are having with the current geolocation system?
>>
>> As the page tries to prove, looks like the current system is completely unreliable and therefore useless for most geonotices in Italy and probably other places.
>
> I think it would be useful to have a wider study of the accuracy of the current system. Privacy issues are always a concern.  I am not certain I could support gathering more exact information on users who are well-served by the current system. It would be more supportable, I think, if there were a way to turn on the browser-based system only for those who are in areas that are known to be poorly served by the current system. Or if you were to ask those who geolocate to known ambiguous areas to opt-in to browser-based geolocation. There is obviously a benefit for some people, but a cost to everyone if we were to switch wholesale. Further study to determine exactly how widespread and how significant the benefit would be is something that I think might be useful.

What if the new system happened e.g. to be needed for geonotices (to 
distinguish regions within a country) but not fundraising (which so far 
cares only about country, for currency/language/payment/legal purposes)?

Nemo