Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates/Archive 7

Non readable text
I find articles hard to read when they have geographical coordinates in with the text. I think the co-ordinates should be in a info box on the right side of an article when possible but when this is not possible to put it in a box i think there needs to be a better solution. From a readability POV I can not understand coordinates and must skip over them disrupting the flow of the page. Could we have another template where the coordinates are replaced with a clickable superscripted small globe icon or something similar? --Clawed 11:23, 16 October 2005 (UTC)


 * For towns or similar, I tend to put the coordinates in parentheses just after the name of the town. It's fairly natural to skip over parenthetical text if it does not interest you. I consider it important that the coordinates are visible on the page for printing, screen-reading software etc, not just hidden in a link to another page such as the one with all the links to maps. Most of the time I don't read the coordinates and only use them as a link, but not always. --Scott Davis Talk 12:50, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

New Data from Wikipedia for Google Earth
Hi, I have create a new dataset with coordinates from Wikipedia for Google Earth. From the english Wikipedia I use 27894 coordinates and from the german Wikipedia I use 14852 coordinates. In the german Wikipedia we use very often "region" and "type" in the coordinates. In combination with the categorys I can create a very good file for Google Earth. In the english Wikipedia I have found not so much entries of "region" and "type" an so the structure of the file is not so good. Attention pleace! The folder "City" is very very big. Download the file on this website. Sorry the Website is today only in german available. Click on "27894 Punkte von en.wikipedia.org" and have fun. -- Stefan Kühn 19:20, 16 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I've noticed that website some time before. It's very nice! One little suggestion from me would be: can it be mentioned somewhere, how frequently is it updated. Anyway, it's the great work, thanks a lot! Cmapm 01:58, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi Cmapm, when I update my dataset then I write this here. I have not the time do make every week a update. My little script need one night to extract titel, coordinat and category of all articels. After this process I start an other programm to sort the data and create the kml. This need two hours. I need the most time to update my programm to the new templates. In the german wikipedia we have today a very stable template and not so many different templates, like in the english wikipedia. -- Stefan Kühn 07:14, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi, again! A new file is available Download. 33420 Points!!! :-) -- Stefan Kühn 19:12, 19 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi, again! The next new is available Download. 33801 Points -- Stefan Kühn 20:38, 18 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi, again! The new dataset is available Download. 38547 Points -- Stefan Kühn 17:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi, again! The new dataset is available Download. 48874 Points. Include a new structure! -- Stefan Kühn 18:42, 23 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Stefan, there seems to be a problem with this dataset for pages that used Geolinks-AUS-suburbscale - the longitude gets the wrong sign. Look around 33 degrees south. There's a gap at 150 degrees east, and a cluster of places at 150 degrees west that should fill it. Also one around 35 south, 135 east/west. These places ended up tagged as landmarks, where most should be populated places, but that may be outside your control. The location is definitely a problem with your data collation though. --Scott Davis Talk 13:33, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

ISO6709
Many kinds of latitude and longitude representation has already been described on WEB. Though uniform description based on ISO_8601 done for time. It might be desirable that the method of describing geographic coordinates of wiki spreads to other approachs of www. The specification that refers to other standard specifications might be more desirable than the description method of the original decision to achieve it. ISO_6709 might be a candidate when we analogize making W3CDTF referring to ISO_8601. ISO6709 is being revised now. The new revision will be able to add Coordinate Reference Systems (WGS84 etc.).

Lunar craters
Hi. I'm implementing the coor d template for the series of lunar crater articles using the type globe:Moon. (C.f. Lunar crater data.) The link works fine, but it doesn't appear to retain the decimal information. Also, the Lunar and Planetary Institute link doesn't always find matching crater pages for the coordinates, even though there are pages found under the name. I'm not sure whether this is an issue with the L&PI lookup or with the coordinates being transmitted.

Here's a couple of examples:


 * Abbe (crater);
 * Balmer (crater);

Is there anything that can be done to address this lookup problem? Thank you. &mdash; RJH 19:05, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I've submitted a bug at bugzilla
For longitude range check for planets/moons rather than the Earth. But it seems nobody cares/fixes it.

Bugzilla entry here

&mdash; Yaohua2000 19:08, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks. &mdash; RJH 23:39, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Don't just thanks, I hope someone could fix it... — Yaohua2000 01:22, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, alas, I'm not sure what I can do about that. Is there code somewhere that can be examined? &mdash; RJH 22:08, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * If you are the coder, please modify the longitude range check to -360&deg; to +360&deg;. &mdash; Yaohua2000 05:19, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * If anybody is interested in getting this fixed, could you to go in via your bugzilla account and vote on this bug? I added mine it. If it gets enough votes maybe somebody will notice... Thanks. &mdash; RJH 23:00, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

dynamical Datas from Wikipedia for Google Earth
Hey, for people with not so fast computers I have a database on Toolserver to show only the 80 most important entities in the field of vision:

http://tools.wikimedia.de/~kolossos/georef/Wikipedia-dyn-data.kmz

I work together with de:Benutzer:Stefan Kühn.

An other little tool for searching a place is here: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~kolossos/ajax/place-search.php.

kolossos 20:07, 19 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Now, the program has also surroundings search.80.185.52.113 13:29, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Do you use coordinates in templates such as template:infobox Swiss town? There should be many more points available for Switzerland. -- User:Docu


 * I believe yes. I take the coordinates from Stefan Kühn. The english Version should be 1 Month old. de:Benutzer:kolossos13:31, 11 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Wald, Berne has coordinates since June 2005, but doesn't appear on the map. The few pages that do appear are those with coordinates directly in Template:Coor dm. To make it easier to identify them, I created a category for the templates: Category:Coordinates templates.  Great tool BTW ! -- User:Docu


 * Hi, I use only the standard templates "Coor ...", "Mapit..." and "geolinks..."! Important is, that this is part of the articel-dump. The template:infobox Swiss town create the Template:Coor dm at runtime. When I use the Dump, I only search the text "Coor ...", "Mapit..." and "geolinks..." and don´t parse the "template:infobox XY country". If someone can create the query online, then we can use also the "template:infobox...". But the problem is that you have a infobox per land or more. I think the better way is to make a standard of three types of coordinates (like in the german wikipedia) and to use this types. Next time I will test the using of infobox. -- Stefan Kühn 13:02, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, I'm looking forward to the new version. BTW the coordinates in the English municpality articles for Switzerland come from the German or French langugage wikipedias, although there they are just text (wasted?) and not formatted. -- User:Docu

To help your work, there is the Cat Scan-Tool, where you can scan whole categories with sub-categories and looking for templates. kolossos12:07, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Now we have also a own surrounding map. Please test it. de:Benutzer:kolossos13:31, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Wrong coordinates
Everyone else here wants to talk about high tech, but has anyone else noticed how many coordinates are simply miscopied? I keep finding areas like Greek towns (excluding the beginning of the alphabet, which I have fixed), where about 30% of the longitude/latitudes are wrong. It's usually wrong by one or more degrees (I seldom need to change the minutes and seconds), or by confusing N/S/E/W or longitude with latitude, or often the article has two sets of coordinates that disagree. I think the problem occurs most places throughout Eastern and Southern Europe. Art LaPella 19:14, 2 January 2006 (UTC)


 * There was a similar problem with articles about Italian cities. I fixed a few coordinates someone had pumped from the German wikipedia. Once the coordinates feature gets activate on Wikipedia (if ever), it may be easier to check them. -- User:Docu

Simple How to for noobs and non-programmers
I just finished creating a simple "how to" article for people who simply want the basics on adding georeferenced link templates to wikipedia articles. It is called Coordinate-referenced map templates. Feel free to change the name of it or edit it to death, but I didn't see any other place where a noob could get basic instruction on the different template options that are out there. Please message use the discussion page on this article if you have any major beefs with the article MPS 05:14, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Geographic naming
Would it make sense to add geographic names to the template, or is intended to key only to the Wikipedia article title? If, say, a city article has co-ordinates for several prominent buildings in it, how can the co-ordinates be harvested and linked to the correct entities.

Furthermore, lots of places have multiple names (historical, native, multiple local languages, multiple alphabets, transliteration, English, etc.). The Persondata project is creating a metadata format which allows alternate names and other data to be entered in a metadata block for biographical articles. It may be natural to extend coor in this direction for other geo-related metadata.

Any thoughts? —Michael Z. 2006-02-08 00:31 Z 


 * I Agree - If there are multiple coordinate locations in one article, each one should have a name parameter. That way when they are harvested for Google Earth or other map tools, the captions will be correct. --Ozhiker 15:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Please sign the petition for PUBLIC GEODATA
http://petition.publicgeodata.org/ --Historiograf 23:31, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Converting among coordinate systems?
Hi everyone - I have to confess that I am a novice to this field, so please forgive me if my questions are basic or confusing. I'm trying to incorporate coordinates of summits in the article List of Norwegian peaks over 2000 meters into the table, and I've found a source that has all these coordinates listed. Here's the problem: the source lists it in either EUREF89 or ED50 (the webmaster isn't sure which, I asked him), which takes the format 463550 East and 6833850 North for a mountain called Galdhøpiggen, when the longitude and latitude for the same mountain is 61°38′11″N, 8°18′45″E. Apparently, the former is in meters. I have no idea how to convert from one to the other, but would like to. Any suggestions? --Leifern 19:54, 23 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The difference between EUREF89 and ED50 is not large. See ED50: the differences between the two coordinate systems are not more than a few hundred meters at most. The meter values you mention seem to be UTM values. You can do conversions at http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/utm_getgp.prl (for example; unfortunately no EUREF/ETRS89 or ED50, as it's an American site). Apart from easting and northing, you also need the UTM zone of the location; see e.g. the map on the UTM article. Locations in Norway are in zone 32 to 36. Eugene van der Pijll 20:28, 23 February 2006 (UTC)