User:Jlerner/Aude

Talk given at Wiki-Conference NY at NYU Law School, July 25, 2009.

User:Aude - OpenStreetMap integration with Wikipedia

 * Recently got involved to integrate maps into Wikipedia (part of a team)
 * ~25% of articles on Wikipedia have or could use a map
 * Place articles need location maps 20% (of Wikipedia articles)
 * Biography 29%
 * Places 20%
 * Culture 19%
 * Species 6%
 * Sports 5%
 * Science 3%
 * Politics 3%
 * Military 3%
 * Other

Use cases

 * Locator maps
 * WikiMiniAtlas (little globe icon, upper left corner, on the toolserver now, who even knows about it?, needs better infrastructure and development)
 * Northern Bald Ibis listed as featured, but included only a primitive thematic map
 * Wouldn't it be great to provide a user like this with tools to generate nicer maps? Make it easy for the non-technical
 * March: German Wikipedia chapter started "automated map" initiative
 * Database server for OSM data
 * Rendering server to generate tiles and maps
 * Map toolserver for development and experimentation

OpenStreetMap

 * Using GPS unit, walking around, taking GPS traces; relatively simply to upload to computer
 * Then in OpenStreetMap, can view and edit (when logged in at http://www.openstreetmap.org/)
 * Takes some time for cached tiles etc. to expire
 * Idea is that all data used is free of restrictive copyright
 * OSM project uploaded Tiger, then maps looked fairly complete
 * But if you look closely, you can find many errors, plenty of room for folks to improve upon it with own GPS units
 * In Europe, not such data in the public domain, has to be created from scratch (did I hear that correctly?)
 * OSM is customizable, however you want to use it
 * UMD built this: http://seamster.cs.umd.edu:8090/map/ - TerpNav Pedestrian Maps

Back-end

 * OSM -> Wikimedia-OSM dataabse server (postgres) -> rendering server -> SlippyMap extension -> endusers (possibly via squid)
 * Easy to localize maps

Front-end

 * SlippyMap extension
 * Embed maps in wiki pages, where tag isused
 * Static maps by default
 * Interactive maps if requrested
 * Pop-up maps available for pages with coordinates
 * Caching: cache static map images, map tile images
 * Special pages: Make a map (guide users to initializing variables)

Future

 * Each set of maps styles or layers with full global coverage and zoom levels requires substantial disk storage for all the map tiles
 * We are limited in the number of custom styles that we can provide with full global coverage and zoom levels
 * But, it may be possible to provide custom map making tools for maps with limited spatial coverage and zoom levels. With PostgreSQL ...
 * More at Wikimania


 * OpenStreetMap usability improving (but still harder than editing Wikipedia)


 * More at OpenStreetMap