[Wikinews-l] Weather bot

[bawolff]

I havn't been really keeping track, but could this somehow be
integrated with the openstreetmap stuff that is supposedly going to be
intergrated with wikimedia at some point?
--
- bawolff
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On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 9:07 AM, Brian
McNeil<brian.mcneil at wikinewsie.org> wrote:
> If you go up a page from Milos’ detailed list there’s a world map with
> temperatures. This looks very like the old WeatherChecker output but I think
> it’s really overlaid temp. numbers. The whole thing looks really good, but
> pictorial form is what most people are used to digesting weather data in.
>
>
>
> How hard is it to convert these detailed figures into a map system that uses
> image maps and can be drilled down into a more local form?
>
>
>
> I’d expect to be able to go from World to one of our defined geographical
> regions (eg Oceania or Europe) and from there down to a country level (eg
> UK).
>
>
>
> Part of doing this would be altering the maps in some way to roughly mark
> out the areas that can be drilled to. Take a look at the BBC news page’s
> regional map for how they’ve done this. At regional level you’d want maps
> with country outlines, hover text would then be good to see where the final
> drill-down would go.
>
>
>
> Is this do-able? Are these sources as free as we need? Is there scope for
> cross-project collaboration? For the latter, it’d seem reasonable that
> Wikipedia have the ability to look up temperature history and say which day
> in a year was the hottest/coldest. For Wikiversity the data is a historical
> record for any research purpose they can come up with, and we have a need
> for it as news – if we do build a long-term record then there’s our ability
> to analyse it for trends and such. Wikipedia with weather data is one
> feature of Wolfram Alpha knocked off. Instead of fancy algorithms that
> aren’t very good at parsing English queries you’d have lots of curious geeks
> writing programs to query the data.
>
>
>
> There’s quite a few potential uses for Wikinews having this data available.
> If you have an earthquake or tsunami then the weather conditions are going
> to influence relief efforts. I’m sure people could come up with other
> examples.
>
>
>
> This sort of begs the question, where should the data be held? We’re going
> to want it cross-wikinews – do we need weather.wikinews.org? (Or even
> weather.wikimedia.org) If so, and we have a good bot for it, could a WMF
> server have the spare capacity to run the bot?
>
>
>
> Lastly, one of the things I always find useful in a weather map is isobars
> with front markings. Rarely seen on TV now, you can quickly tell what
> weather is going where and do your own half-day to day forecast. Do we have
> enough data to produce these at any particular level of detail?
>
>
>
>
>
> Brian.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikinews-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikinews-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Paul Williams
> Sent: 18 June 2009 15:36
> To: Wikinews mailing list
> Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] Weather bot
>
>
>
> Hi Milos,
>
>
>
> I have a toolserver account I am willing to run the bot on for the English
> Wikinews. We shall have a chat at some point over the weekend - can I try
> and catch you on IRC?
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Paul W
>
> User:Skenmy
>
> 2009/6/18 Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>
>
> I finally made a weather bot according to my wishes. Its characteristics
> are:
>
> * It gathers information from wund.com, but it is possible to make
> plugins for other sites and protocols.
> * It may gather data from all over the world.
> * It may be localized in any language.
>
> The only problem is that one iteration takes at least 5-7 minutes just
> for weather in Serbia and just for Wikinews in Serbian. Probably, I
> would be able to run enough of instances for covering weather in
> Serbia for all Wikinews editions (or, questionable, to run enough of
> instances to cover the whole world for sr.wn). That means that I'll
> need your help (people who are able to run bots as cron jobs), so we
> may cover the whole world for all Wikinews editions.
>
> My other ask is related to programming the bot. I prefer to make the
> bot as a collaborative work because it is not reasonable to expect
> maintenance of one relatively huge project by just one person. I may
> make subversion repository at SourceForge (or at one of the servers in
> the company where I am working). If anyone of you are willing to join
> me, let me know that. Also, all other ideas are welcome.
>
> You may see its output here [1] (in Serbian).
>
> [1] -
> http://sr.wikinews.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8:%D0%92%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%B5/%D0%95%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B0/%D0%A1%D1%80%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0
>
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