Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates/Archive 18

Geocoding Wikipedians?

What about adding coordinates to your user page so that people can see where you are (e.g. for taking photos and other locality specific tasks), and where other Wikipedians around them are too? It seems like a neat idea, though I'm thinking there might be concerns, e.g. concerns about younger Wikipedians adding their address and pedophiles stalking them, or something like that. I suppose it is also a bit different from geocoding articles and media files. Richard001 (talk) 08:25, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

One can if one chooses to, I suppose one can either give less precise coordinates (i.e. "rounding") of "fudge" them to be a "comfortable" distance away, like giving those of a nearby very public establishment (airport, library, restaurant, bus or train station, store, ...) "nearby". For very rough estimates, one degree is approximately 60 miles (97 km), one minute is 1 mile (1.6 km), and one second is about 100 feet (30 m). For the "real" numbers: one minute of latitude is 1 nautical mile about 6,076.1 feet (1,852.0 m). So you could fudge coordinates so that someone knows about where you are but not exactly.

• To do so, one would put:

{{Coord |latitude_degrees |latitude_minutes |latitude_seconds |latitude_direction |longitude_degrees |longitude_minutes |longitude_seconds |longitude_direction
|region:XX-YY_type:landmark |display=inline,title |format=dms |name=map_marker_label}}

on one's User: page, where:

• I formatted it with the '|' pipe/vertical bar next to the parameter_name which it goes with for readability, actually all of the spaces can be omitted.
• the latitude_ and longitude_ fields would be the appropriate values, seconds can be omitted, or minutes can be omitted along with seconds
• latitude_ or longitude_ 's last field can be a decimal value.
• XX in region specifies an ISO 3166 2-character country code ("US" for United States) and YY an ISO 3166-2 2-character region within (i.e. U.S. state)
• type can be one of the other types above (depending on what makes sense based on the coordinates you supply)
• display defaults to "inline", "title" causes the coordinates to be display in the Wiki title bar (top right corner), inline,title does both
• format can be dec or dms (abbreviations for decimal and degrees_minutes_seconds) and specifies how to display the coordinates
• name supplies a map_marker_label/title for some map services (so that the "pushpin" marker can be labeled)

Mapping Wikipedians? Sounds like a good idea (so long as we a have enough fudge to avoid address location); but the dots created by this could allow the production of some fascinating maps of Wiki activity. Sarah777 (talk) 10:30, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Note the guideline Wikipedia:User categories and the existing Category:Wikipedians by location. I also point out there already are categories by location for requested images and maps which are using categorization and coordinate mapping. -- SEWilco (talk) 23:17, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I suggest that it would be useful to encourage users to specify approximate coordinate of interest (Wikipedia focus might not even be a home or work area), a "Wikipedians by" category name, and a radius of interest around the coordinate. This would allow indication of approximate locations of interest, even if not all the information is being used well yet. Eventually this could help people find requested items in their "zone" or point out to them if a new location category has been created which more closely matches their zone (maybe they used the coordinate for Springfield, NY, and someone has now defined Category "Wikipedians in Springfield, New York"). -- SEWilco (talk) 23:17, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I think this idea is great. I would allow us to create a World map displaying the concentration of wikipedians similar to this. Eklipse (talk) 15:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Geobox

Most geoboxes include coordinates.

• Is there a way to have them displayed in the upper right corner of the articles as {{coor title d}} or {{coord|display=title}} would do?
• If yes, should this option be used or should would generally still use the normal coordinates templates?

-- User:Docu

With Geoboxes and Infoboxes, it depends whether they will accept a Coor(d) template or whether they have separate lat and long fields and "build" up the coordinates. Where they accept a template, {{Coord}} can be used with the "display=title" or "display=inline,title" template parameter, or the "Coor title" or "Coor at" family of templates to display the coordinates in the article's title bar. There are a few Geoboxes and Infoboxes where they accept coordinates, but there is no way to force them into the title bar (from the separate lat and long fields); when that happens, the options are either to put the coordinates in a "free-form text" field in the Geo/Infobox or to put them elsewhere in the article with the title parameters. If they were to display by default, their needs to be a way to "turn it off" in cases where there are more than one set of coordinates or where they do not want to be displayed for some other reason. LeheckaG (talk) 14:20, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Infoboxes with "coordinates = {{coord}}" are quite straight forward (e.g. Template:Infobox Airport) and infoboxes providing specific fields for coordinates do use them several times.

Geoboxes using Template:Geobox coor, e.g. Template:Infobox Settlement, don't seem to offer a possibility to put the coordinates to use. Regrettable.

Places using Infobox Settlement have the coordinates displayed four times and specified three or more times, e.g. from Cambridge, Massachusetts (rev. 229231575, August 1, 2008):

1. In the infobox as "Coordinates: 42°22′25″N 71°06′38″W" through Infobox Settlement
2. In article title as "Coordinates: 42°22′25″N 71°06′38″W " through {{Geolinks-US-cityscale|42.373611|-71.110556}}
3. In the external links section as "Cambridge, Massachusetts is at coordinates 42°22′25″N 71°06′38″W" through {{Geolinks-US-cityscale|42.373611|-71.110556}}
4. In the geography section as "Cambridge is located at 42°22′25″N 71°6′38″W." through {{coord|42|22|25|N|71|6|38|W|type:city}}

If we adapt Infobox Settlement or the link in the geography section to display the coordinates also in the article title, we could reduce the number of times the coordinates are specified by at least one. -- User:Docu

In both Geobox|Settlement and {{Infobox Settlement}} there appear to be several poorly documented or undocumented coordinate-related fields. Not sure if it would work:

• Geobox several _coordinates_ fields are passed to {{Geobox2 coor}} as positional parameters, if supplied - the 4th or 3rd positional parameter is the "title=" parameter, if one of them contained a named parameter instead? not sure how it would behave, It transcludes {{Coord}}. Likewise,
• Infobox Settlement transcludes {{Geobox coor}} and accepts an undocumented coordinates_type field (the coordinate parameters as opposed to the template parameters), title= is a named parameter, and it transcludes {{Coord}}.

So I am guessing it might be possible to do something non-standard/undocumented with the current template codes:

• Geobox=>Geobox2 coor=>Coord or
• Infobox Settlement=>Geobox coor=>Coord

but might "break" with subsequent template changes unless it is documented. A better way would be to put in a request for a change to the templates, but not sure how many hoops are involved in that process? LeheckaG (talk) 19:00, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Template:Coordinate

Following the discussion above (WT:GEO#Coor3d), I imported de:Template:Coordinate. I'd be glad if you could help me test it. -- User:Docu

Lakes (2)

Since I posted WT:GEO#Lakes_needing_coordinates above, the number of articles in Category:Wikipedia infobox lake articles without coordinates, has remained stable (1047 on August 1, 2008, compared to 1200-150=1050 on May 20).

As the number of articles with {{Infobox lake}} has increased by 300 in the meantime, the number of lakes with coordinates has increased as well. Thank you to all contributors! -- User:Docu

(Subsequent to your post) I updated Goose Lake (Anchorage, Alaska) and Walker Lake (Northwest Arctic, Alaska) from USGS GNIS information (coordinates, elevation, whatever other details they had). Your list is rather huge, I am willing to update Alaska lakes, possibly some British Columbia, Washington state, Yukon, Ohio, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut. Is there any way you can break up your huge list into smaller regional pieces (which people might take more of a personal interest in)? LeheckaG (talk) 13:00, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I use catscan for this. You may want to try the following links: Alaska (just 5 left), British Columbia (32), Washington (4), Ohio (6), etc. Thank you for your help. -- User:Docu

I did the "5" Alaska ones, including renaming Miles and Walker to disambiguate them from others. "5" because Togiak is really (4) separate lakes: Togiak Lake, Little Togiak Lake, Upper Togiak Lake and West Togiak Lake - I updated them all as different sections on (1) Togiak Lake article page. I also updated the List of lakes of Alaska, Miles Lake and Walker Lake disambiguation pages. I have a few things to work on for other projects and then I will do either the Ohio or Washington state ones. LeheckaG (talk) 18:18, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I updated the (4) Washington ones: Chopaka Lake, Lake Marcel, Potholes Reservoir, and Beaver Lake (King County, Washington) including disambiguating related articles. LeheckaG (talk) 09:22, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

kmlexport updated to use live category data

I thought how it would be much more rewarding to work through a category if you could see the results of your work growing somewhere. The "map of all coordinates" links on category pages work through dumps, so having to wait months for the visualization doesn't make it a very good incentive. So I modified the kmlexport tool a bit to show live data instead. The old one is still available as kmlexport-old for comparison. Please test with some categories and report any problems here. --Para (talk) 20:38, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

It's great! It works. It displays coordinates added 10 months, coordinates that never had shown up before.

-- User:Docu

Possible bug, see Category:Bays of Alaska, "Map of all coordinates" produces a "Three Saints Bay, Alaska" apparently plotted at Latitude 0N, Longitude 0W. I updated the Three Saints Bay, Alaska article's coordinates from USGS GNIS - (2) sets: Infobox and inline text, and still received the same result. So I removed the 2nd. set of coordinates from the inline text, and still received the same result.

Guessing that it is a "bug" between the {{GeoGroupTemplate}} and {{Infobox nrhp}} code? Where {{GeoGroupTemplate}} is extracting something generated by {{Infobox nrhp}} which "appears" to be coordinates, but are really not? I noticed similar odd behavior on a few other Alaska geographic categories (just guessing that the commonality is Infobox nrhp?).

I tried refreshing the page as well as "resubmitting the toolserver link" on the Google Maps' page (in the past, I have noticed where they do not always update on their own and sometimes take one of those (2) refreshes to actually update), still same results.

Another example (of the Latitude 0 plot) was in one of the Aleutians categories? I will see if I can locate it...going to take some digging. I am fixing some bad Category:Aleutian Islands coordinates: "Toporkov" island coordinates in the Bering Island article which were also "off the map" ... LeheckaG (talk) 12:03, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Category:Bays of Alaska "Map of all coordinates" did finally update (guessing a replication lag between the English Wikipedia and Toolserver? As to the source of the other issue, possibilities: having multiple coordinates, (DM) coordinates (missing seconds), some Geobox/Infobox related issue. I am fixing some more of the "off of the map" coordinates and I will post more observations as I encounter them. LeheckaG (talk) 13:01, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

So far, it appears that they take a while from article coordinates being updated to a Category:, "Map of all coordinates" actually changing (within an hour, maybe a couple versus updating in "minutes" - at least with whatever replication delays are occuring as I have been updating.) So far, there seems to usually be one to three bad ("off the map") article coordinates in each category (at least of the Alaska categories I am going through). LeheckaG (talk) 15:28, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

It seems the mentioned outlier coordinates have been fixed already. Here's some possible reasons for lag, in descending order of likelihood:

1. Google caches the results to the requests it makes from Google Maps for a minute or so, and doesn't tell the client if it's showing cached results. Google also seems to restart the freshness counter of a cached result every time a client makes a request for the same result, ie. a case of a watched pot not boiling.
2. Replication of the English Wikipedia database on the toolserver may be lagged at times, though lately it has been only a couple of seconds. See http://toolserver.org/~bryan/stats/replag/ for graphs (en belongs to s1).
3. When Google doesn't get a response from the data source (here the toolserver, which has its apache clogged sometimes) within a couple of seconds and they have a previously cached result for the same URL, Google Maps shows the cached result without any additional messages to the client. If their request times out and they don't have a cached result, the client is shown a "file not found" message.

If in doubt, add some dummy parameters to the URL to make it different, or access the kml directly (show, export). As of writing this, someone's programs are making the toolserver unresponsive and we have a case 3. --Para (talk) 21:17, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

On Category talk:Bays of Alaska someone (else) is debating that {{GeoGroupTemplate}} should not be on a category. Originally, I was (mentally) debating with myself whether or not {{GeoGroupTemplate}} would be useful on a category. Subsequently, I have found it useful on the Alaska-related Categories.

For "list" articles (some/many of which do not contain coordinates), might there be a way to provide a "Map of all coordinates" link which points to a Category to retrieve the coordinates? i.e. Currently, {{GeoGroupTemplate}} relies on FULLPAGENAMEE, NAMESPACE, PAGENAMEE and SERVER to determine its behavior; Could {{GeoGroupTemplate}} be updated accept any named or positional parameters to point it to a different "starting point" (i.e. a Category, or in a "weird case" an alternative article or list to start from)? If so, the "infobox" should probably "echo" from where it is starting. (i.e. before a user clicks on it) LeheckaG (talk) 06:33, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

It would be technically possible to modify the template and allow a starting point that way, yes. GeoGroupTemplate is however an external link template and not just a navigation template of Wikipedia articles. Navigation templates in articles are separate from categories even if they share the same content; one doesn't replace the other. The same goes for list articles vs categories. Many article groups don't have navigation templates for the articles in its categories, and many categories don't have their contents in list articles. Should they? If there was an active project to mirror category contents in articles, then perhaps the starting point option could be used and the templates removed from categories, but categories are defined in ways more diverse than most articles have space for.

In GeoGroupTemplate's deletion nomination a year ago I argued that as an external link template for a single external service, it shouldn't be used in articles when the service can be chosen in the map service list among all the other services. I still think so, but back then it didn't have the category functionality yet and so that part wasn't discussed. I don't think anyone disagrees that it's useful, but in the category case I can't see any way to replace its uses in all categories. --Para (talk) 11:25, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I put in a request for a couple of optional parameters:

• article= (if specified, to replace the default of FULLPAGENAMEE), and
• namespace= (to deal with the "odd" case where article/pagenames are extracted by have the "wrong" namespace

for instance Category:Wikipedia request ... which contain "Talk:" pages and the corresponding articles in the normal article namespace actually have the coordinates, See:

• Template talk:GeoGroupTemplate#Requested optional parameters

LeheckaG (talk) 15:13, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

In my enthusiasm for fresh data, I forgot to test what I think was the original use case for mapping categories: the requested photos categories. Sorry about that, it's fixed now. I'll look into adding a namespace parameter later if people are going to start putting coordinates on their user pages. --Para (talk) 18:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I tested it on the requested photos Category which had been pointed out to me and after several refreshes and retries it did work. So how does one now display a map of coordinates when they actually are on a category or namespace of talk pages and not on the corresponding articles? Which is why I recommended a namespace= parameter instead of always stripping off Talk: or other namespace:, so that namespaces can be selected or substituted rather than always stripped off. LeheckaG (talk) 19:29, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Are there cases where coordinates should be put on category or talk pages instead of or in addition to articles? Browsing through whatlinkshere for the coordinate templates shows that coordinates are scattered in lots of different namespaces, but I can't think of any meaningful use for mapping them. --Para (talk) 23:35, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Your whatlinks here query of the coordinates templates showing that coordinates are in different namespaces demonstrates why a namespace= parameter would be useful. There may be other ways of achieving similar results, but questions like:

• which Talk pages are discussing coordinates? and how to determine where those coordinates are? (the map tool provides a visual way to do so), wherease -
• In the Category: request ... case the "opposite" is desired where one wants to use a Category first, then switch namespaces on the targets. Providing optional namespace= and article= parameters generalizes the GeoGroupTemplate-KML export tool so that any potential combination of uses foreseen or unforeseen can be accomplished. For instance,
• the discussion above about Users placing geographic coordinates on their User or Talk pages ... then the question how to map them? With either users pages or their talk pages in some category, a namespace= parameter allows a cross-namespace map query to be performed. For instance,
• suppose WikiProject members have a WikiProject template on their User pages and one want to query whether a Wikiproject's members' User talk pages discuss coordinates on the User talk pages and where those coordinates are on a map?

Similarly, an article= parameter allows a more appropriate "target" to be chosen, for instance, the example previously cited - while most articles containing a Geo/Info-box contain coordinates, not all list of ... articles containing them do, whereas a category containing them would. So placing a GeoGroupTemplate on a list of ... article page (where that page does not contain coordinates) and providing for an article= parameter would give a GeoGroupTemplate on a list of ... article page the ability to point to the corresponding Category: to actually retrieve coordinates.

I have not throughly investigated, but I assume GeoGroupTemplate on a Category only processes pages directly on the Category and not Subcategories? I am not sure about the technical feasibility or value of a "depth=" parameter? Whether KML export could do a "tree walk" to a depth of "depth=" ? If so, the primary technical coding decision would be whether to use a depth of -1 or a depth of 0 to mean "do all", or whether to use a depth of 0 or a depth of to mean just do the pages which are directly on the category and not sub-categories. Then the next question would be how many subcategory levels deep to allow? or what is the practical limit to how many subcategories or pages can be queried for coordinates?

I had run across MW:Extension:Gis which apparently was a different attempt to enable Wiki for GIS functionality. LeheckaG (talk) 02:25, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

OOPS! Post I just moved was meant for the section above (about updating coords for User:Docu and WP:Lakes, who requested coord assistance). LeheckaG (talk) 20:09, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Those cases are a bit far fetched in my opinion and sites like the Keyhole Community seem better suited for random discussion about non-notable locations.

The kmlexport tool doesn't include subcategories because Google Maps would time out long before the tool reaches any depth. One solution would be to have the template link to a page that starts the database query and redirects the client to Google Maps with a cached result when the query is done. It's a much needed feature, and all it needs is someone to implement the framework.

Meanwhile, the GeoGroupTemplate is open for anyone to edit and add parameters to make the template use content outside the page it's transcluded on. I think, though, that it would be misleading to have a link in an article to map the contents of its category, instead of mapping the links in the article itself. The kmlexport tool has a mode to map the pages linked from the given page, see for example a map of Wikipedia:Requested pictures/Architecture. --Para (talk) 19:36, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Could you post a link to look at the source code for the KML export script(s)? I will take a look at GeoGroupTemplate (about updating it to accept and display an article= parameter other than pagename). I will also take a look at the "linksfrom" option. LeheckaG (talk) 20:09, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd rather keep the source for myself for now, until the needs and implementation have stabilised enough to consider cleaning up the code. That however doesn't stop people creating tools to combine the results from multiple queries; the MediaWiki API is available for implementing category recursion. --Para (talk) 21:11, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

My interest is that the interface between GeoGroupTemplate and KML export be appropriately documented, so that there are not undocumented parameters on either side. If there are future or proposed parameters on either side, they should be documented as "unimplemented" so that anyone maintaining either side is aware of what might "break" the interface and which modifications on either side need to be done in synchronization. LeheckaG (talk) 12:32, 8 August 2008 (UTC)