Jump to content

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maps

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Related WikiProjects

The parent of this WikiProject is the Geography WikiProject. WikiProject Maps also is a management type WikiProject for pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia. The following illustrates the position of WikiProject Maps within the Wikipedia WikiProject lineage:

Lineage of WikiProject Maps
  • Creation/improvement of pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia
  • Acquisition of pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia
  • Distribution of pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia
  • Monitoring of pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia

WikiProjects that have made use of geographical maps include:

Conventions for visa policy maps

[edit]

Hello, WP:MAPS. I am currently working on the visa policy of Nauru, and I was wondering if there was any conventions on the colors would be? It seems like the other visa policy articles have a lot of different colors, and I just wanted to be correct. Thanks in advance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Michael Jester (talk • contribs) 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Shetland islands

[edit]

just dropping a quick note here as I was asked to look at this Talk:Shetland#Need_better_map_image - looks like it ought to get a combination of File:Wfm_shetland_map.png and File:Shetland_UK_location_map.svg — Preceding unsigned comment added by EdwardLane (talk • contribs) 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Please assess

[edit]

Please assess Fictitious entry. Thanks! 11:32, 3 October 2018 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Asianflavoure (talk • contribs) 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Registration is open for WCNA 2022 and Mapping USA

[edit]
 WikiConference North America 2022 will be virtual, November 11-13. We will hold it jointly with OpenStreetMap US's Mapping USA. Our theme this year is open knowledge allies.

Registration is now open here! Please register by the 10th so that we can set everyone up online on our platform. Like last year, we are planning on using Hopin.

Our schedule is will be finalized and available in the next few days. We have an exciting line-up of sessions related to Wikimedia, OpenStreetMap, and the intersection of the two. Stay tuned!

Local meet-ups will occur in Indianapolis and New York City - if you are available and interested in attending either of these, you can find more details here.

If you want to connect with other participants or have questions, please join our Telegram channel here.

MaggieMaps CC-By-SA
MaggieMaps CC-By-SA

Article for each meridian?

[edit]

I'm combing through articles with no sources, and came across 169th meridian east. It looks like @Bazonka went through the process of creating an article for each and every meridian years ago. I doubt that any of them are notable, but wanted to flag these for WP:Maps as I am unaware if there are any guidelines about this that might supercede notability. Delectopierre (talk) 07:19, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Does not seem like a useful endeavor — especially since there are infinite meridians. There is nothing special about the arbitrary whole-degree ones measured from an arbitrary prime meridian. Strebe (talk) 09:13, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I happen to agree. I’m also not sure how these articles got published in the main space given their lack of notability. But 🤷🏼‍♂️ Delectopierre (talk) 19:04, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The bar was rather lower in 2009. Strebe (talk) 19:47, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Admittedly 169°E is one of the less notable meridians, but taken as a set they provide a useful gazeteer of information. Feel free to nominate them at AFD yet again - they've been there multiple times before and always closed as Keep. Amongst other reasons, N:GEO applies here. And in terms of sources, I agree that there are no traditional references, but click on any of the co-ordinates in the table and you'll be taken to a map service which is WP:RS. Bazonka (talk) 21:12, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's WP:NGEO. fgnievinski (talk) 22:47, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for letting us know. Can you link to the previous discussions and a summary of the reason for the KEEP decision? It sounds like this has happened multiple times. Whatever the decision, it would be good to find a way to prevent it from repeatedly coming up. Delectopierre (talk) 23:04, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Strebe it looks like your note below N:GEO is empty of content…? went unsigned. @Fgnievinski provided the correct link above. Delectopierre (talk) 23:07, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I re-read NGEO and I see no inherent notability in integer-degree meridians. Quite on the contrary:
A feature cannot be notable, under either WP:GNG or any SNG, if the only significant coverage of the feature is in maps
Where "maps" include digital maps and web maps.
I think it'd be best to merge stubs into a List of meridians. fgnievinski (talk) 00:35, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that would be better than the status quo, but are there really any “notable” meridians other than the prime meridian and possibly the 180° “antimeridian”? What could make a meridian notable? Strebe (talk) 01:46, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe the Paris meridian? –jacobolus (t) 05:55, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
True. And the Canaries or Cape Verdes or whatever Fortunate Isles was intended to be — not that the position was accurate enough to be meaningful. But these are already covered in Prime Meridian. Strebe (talk) 17:58, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a sketch: Draft:List_of_meridians. The notable meridians would remain as a stand-alone article and may be excerpted in the list. All the other meridians would be merged and redirect to the corresponding section. fgnievinski (talk) 17:32, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This doesn't seem encyclopedic to me (cf. WP:NOTDB). Why do we want lists of places precisely falling on each integer-degree meridian? (51°0′ or whatever is not inherently more special than 51°20′ or 51°33′22″.) Would be better to organize the geographical coordinates of places in a database (at some other site) and then readers could navigate by whatever query criteria they are interested in. –jacobolus (t) 19:22, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The set of integer-degree meridians is arguably more notable than each such an instance; my impression it might even pass WP:NLIST -- many countries have monuments at such locations. The merger proposal is the surest way to get rid of the nearly 360 stub articles. I'm afraid a massive AfD would attract much drama. fgnievinski (talk) 19:53, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But the monuments are often outdated, having been erected on an earlier datum and no longer falling on the even degree location on whatever the current official datum is. Strebe (talk) 00:41, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One big unsourced unencyclopedic list is not any better than 360 unencyclopedic list stubs. Taking a big pile of stuff that should be deleted and consolidating it is a total waste of time and attention.
Those monuments can be mentioned in the individual articles about a particular town. If you can find enough reliable sources about the monuments, you could make an article or list called something like geographic monuments for integer meridians and parallels, or list of geographical monuments. –jacobolus (t) 20:11, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
N:GEO is empty of content…?
Apologies, I did mean WP:NGEO. Some previous discussions about this can be found at: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2009 January 2 (several articles discussed), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/104th meridian east, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/139th meridian west, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/37th parallel north, Talk:49th meridian east. I'm sure there are others, but I can't find them right now. As I said, feel free to nominate for deletion again if you like. Bazonka (talk) 08:55, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for providing the conversations, @Bazonka. I'm interested to hear what your perspective on the articles notability is. Delectopierre (talk) 20:51, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Reading over the prior AFDs, I find the arguments for keeping to be weak, and in some cases, wrong. I prefer to respect people’s efforts rather than stretch pedantry to its limits, so I tend to leniency in judging whether an article ought to be kept. In this case, however, the sheer arbitrariness of degrees as a measurement, the arbitrariness of whole numbers, the arbitrariness of the prime meridian they are measured from, as well as the lack of utility and notability overwhelm my leniency. Had I been part of the AFDs, I would have argued forcefully for deletion. Strebe (talk) 18:12, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you, but I also hope we hear from Bazonka on their position as to whether or not they should exist.
Either way, should these go the AFD route, is there a way to propose a mass deletion of them? Or would it require manually tagging each article? Delectopierre (talk) 23:47, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to include the parallels in this discussion, as it would seem to me that whatever is decided ought to apply to both. Pinging thread participants to ensure they see the update.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Circles_of_latitude
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Meridians_(geography)
@Strebe@Bazonka@Jacobolus@Fgnievinski Delectopierre (talk) 23:51, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be opposed to the deletion of these as this is gazetteer type information you'd possibly expect to find in some sort of almanac, but it seems as if they're either all notable or all not notable, with some possible exceptions if any of them pass GNG. So the best thing to do is either come to a consensus on their notability per an RfD or go through and tag all of the ones which clearly do not pass GNG (which may be all of them, but the 37th parallel AfD brings pause) which would require checking all of them for a possible GNG first. SportingFlyer T·C 23:55, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You're never going to find a gazetteer which contains only places falling at exact integer coordinates and excludes all other places; that's an absurd criterion. We already have plenty of lists of places, e.g. List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits or List of cities in Africa by population. If someone wants to add latitude and longitude columns for every such article so that the lists can be sorted by geographical position that would be fine with me, but these meridian and parallel lists are completely arbitrary. –jacobolus (t) 19:45, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Merge them into a List of parallels as well. If you insist on deletions, we might be stuck with the stubs for a longer time. fgnievinski (talk) 02:33, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't insist on anything. I'm trying to figure out the best course of action based in policy, as I...well...vaguely know what a parallel and meridian each are. Delectopierre (talk) 03:17, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I just realized there's already a List of circles of latitude. fgnievinski (talk) 00:35, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This list also seems useless, and should probably go. The content at Circle of latitude § Other notable parallels seems overall sufficient; we can just take the wikilinks out of the left column and redirect the corresponding articles to this section. –jacobolus (t) 01:42, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The fundamental difference between parallels and meridians is that parallels are absolute in position, whereas meridians are relative to an arbitrarily chosen prime meridian. Latitude is critical to climate and climate zones. The equator, tropics, and arctic/antarctic circles have astronomical meaning. The degree measurement is still arbitrary and I certainly see no point in the numerological exercise of listing all round-degrees anything, including meridians and parallels. The 37th parallel is a singular case: it has notability for just one (rather small) region of great geopolitical significance. That’s not the whole parallel, though. Strebe (talk) 17:13, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The page 37th parallel north should be moved to 37th parallel to preserve its edit history and the section at 37th parallel north § United States should be moved to top level, with the other non-encyclopedic content removed. Then 37th parallel north should be turned into a redirect and 37th parallel south should be deleted. –jacobolus (t) 19:29, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
After considering this for a few days, I don’t see how these articles could survive a motion for deletion based on lack of notability as long as a sufficiently diverse editor population gets involved. There is no WP:RELIABLE source for these (with a few exceptions), and just listing information from primary sources is WP:OR. They fall so far below the bar that I’m puzzled the earlier referenda failed. Strebe (talk) 17:29, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Another serious problem with this enterprise is that the delineation of meridians and parallels depends on which datum you use. On one datum, the n° meridian may be more than a kilometer away from its delineation on another. While that rarely affects the places in list, sometimes it does because many boundaries were specified to run along a particular parallel or meridian on a particular regional datum which, when assessed via WGS 84 or some other earth-centric datum, does not. Strebe (talk) 18:04, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This was my initial perspective, and learning of WP:NGEO further solidified that for me. If there are notable parallels and meridians, then someone ought to write of their notability in said article. Some already have notability included, however, and should obviously remain.
I also find @Bazonka's lack of KEEP rationale to be telling, however we all have a WP:BUSYLIFE. As they haven't edited much in the last few days, it would be good to give them at least a few more days to chime in with a KEEP rationale before taking any action. Delectopierre (talk) 22:57, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well...@Bazonka seems to have been editing, but we have not heard from them here.
I suppose it's time to start an AFD discussion? Does anyone have ideas about how to not have to do so manually, and which articles ought to be excluded from that discussion because of their notability? Delectopierre (talk) 09:50, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I will put my arguments to AFD where there is a wider audience. Bazonka (talk) 10:45, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you nominate the first one and mention the nomination extends to other articles in the same category (with a few exceptions), a kind soul with the right tools may eventually volunteer to formally extend the nomination. fgnievinski (talk) 15:09, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have listed at AFD here.
@Bazonka@Fgnievinski@Jacobolus@SportingFlyer@Strebe Delectopierre (talk) 22:15, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Note that there was a discussion about this in January 2024 at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 189#Latitude and longitude articles that may be of interest. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 04:51, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Import error for Wikimaps Warper

[edit]

Trying to import into Wikimaps Warper the map File:48 of 'The Western Pilot; containing charts of the Ohio River, and of the Mississippi, from the mouth of the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico, accompanied with directions for navigating the same, and a gazetteer, etc' (11008237095).jpg returns an error"If you are the application owner check the logs for more information."

Can someone with administrative access have a look for me? DutchTreat (talk) 18:12, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination of 113th meridian east as proxy for meridians and parallels for deletion

[edit]
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article 113th meridian east, as well as articles that follow the pattern "xxnd/xxth meridian east/west" and "xxnd/xxth parallel south/north" are suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The articles will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/113th meridian east until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the articles during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the articles until the discussion has finished.

Delectopierre (talk) 22:20, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This debate has been restarted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/43rd parallel south. @jacobolus@fgnievinski Strebe (talk) 17:00, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently the first nomination getting lambasted was not enough to convince you guys a merger into a List of circles of latitude (a la Draft:List of meridians) is realistically a more feasible compromise solution. fgnievinski (talk) 17:26, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's a non-"compromise" the result of which is just as much in violation of Wikipedia's core policies as the existing large collection. Fighting to push a pile of nonsense into a heap doesn't actually accomplish any practical purpose. I agree big piles of crap are a "realistic" common outcome for Wikipedia processes, but that's hardly something to celebrate. –jacobolus (t) 18:25, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's no violation - the gazetteer function (geographical index) part of Wikipedia means these are completely within our core values. SportingFlyer T·C 19:21, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's called de-escalating. If we had reached a majority consensus about merging here, the contentious AfD could have been avoided entirely. Then the list contents could have been trimmed and discussed in its talk page. Instead, dozens of previous editors have been notified, a nonrandom sample likely biased in favor of keeping their darlings. The most efficient way of getting things done on Wikipedia is not rocking the boat. fgnievinski (talk) 20:43, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]


Requested article Airy spheroid

[edit]

Or Airy ellipsoid, at the community's discretion. There seems no coverage of this, let alone the modifications. If I'm wrong redirects to a suitable location would be fine.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough 00:18, 13 March 2025 (UTC).[reply]

 Done. fgnievinski (talk) 00:53, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks so much! All the best: Rich Farmbrough 20:36, 25 March 2025 (UTC).[reply]

New RfC on Geography page: Should US Government Maps be used in the Geography and similar articles

[edit]

Just thought I'd post here so interested editors might see. Discussion on the political world maps used on the Geography page that will probably have implications for other pages, like Map that uses the same map as the disputed one on geography. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 14:31, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

First map

[edit]

I created my first svg map file today for Townsendia eximia. Have I done everything correctly with it?

The county level distribution of Townsendia eximia in New Mexico and Colorado

I cut it down from a MapChart.net file using Inkscape. I copied the colors from other range maps for plants #cccccc for areas outside the range and #90ee90 for the range because I saw that being used on the Kentucky coffeetree range map. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 00:48, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Request for assistance with uploading a historic map for use

[edit]

Hello,

So, I'll be getting five Survey Maps of Hamburg for 1880-1925 in GeoTIFF format, likely in DL-DE->BY-2.0 (which AFAICT is a Wikipedia-compatible license, though I understand now that maps are likely public domain anyways).

I'm interested in uploading these map to Wikimedia Commons (or wherever is appropriate) and doing the necessary work so it can be easily used in articles as maps.

The information I've found so far is not too clear though: Would I need to re-draw it (or ask someone to do so) before it can be used in Wikipedia? If not, would I need to cut it into relevant pieces (one per district, etc), as looking at survey maps from a zoomed out view is hardly useful? If yes, are there any guidelines on what are good points to cut from, what are good sizes for maps, etc? I'd generally appreciate assistance with the whole process if someone is willing to mentor a Wikipedia mapping newcomer.

Background (feel free to skip): During a 2 month stretch of unemployment I got pretty bored and started writing an article on a mostly forgotten pond (Diebsteich) that apparently is related to a former grain mill in Altona, Hamburg that had historic importance (but is hardly known to anyone but historians anyways). It also has an S-Bahn stop named after it (Diebsteich station), which is how I found out about it. While writing this article, using the maps published on the state's Geoportal was highly useful and I wanted to add them to the article, but as the license was unclear I requested it under a transparency request. They're now working on making it available for download freely, but billing me 50EUR for it. I've since found a job so I don't mind paying, but that gives me extra motivation to get it used in Wikipedia and not just sit idly on FragDenStaat. Aveaoz (talk) 08:55, 3 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If these maps are out of copyright then you should be able to upload them to Commons. You do not need to redraw a historical map to use it in Wikipedia, a scan is great. –jacobolus (t) 16:22, 3 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

USA East map

[edit]

How come there is no correlating USA East map that matches the USA West one? The module exists for it but the SVG seems to have been never created or deleted. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 20:13, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean “corresponding” or “analogous”? I can’t think of any way “correlating” could work there, but maybe I misunderstand what you are asking. In any case, I think you already have all the answer you will get: Either it never happened or it got deleted for some reason. To be a good set, there would have to be a central map as well; nobody thinks Texas, Nebraska, or the Dakotas are “east“. Strebe (talk) 20:31, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Bad word choice I suppose but the gist is that one would expect an general East Coast map if we already have city/state and regional ones like the Chesapeake Bay. I have no experience in creating maps or I'd do it myself, so I thought to ask here in case there was simply a typo in the SVG and I overlooked it. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 20:57, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Unusual artifact in Atlanta article

[edit]

I'm seeing a strange map-related visual artifact in Atlanta article. May be visible only on certain devices/browsers? Details at: Talk:Atlanta#Weird_map_in_lower_right_corner,_at_very_bottom,_over_categories Noleander (talk) 01:52, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Satelite images and creative commons

[edit]

Hello all, I previously posted this question on the wikipedia help desk, but they could not find a conclusive answer. I'm just curious if open-street map or google satellite view images are considered open-access under creative commons licensing, and can thus be screenshotted or saved to be uploaded for image reference on the site. I've searched elsewhere but couldn't find a definitive answer. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance! CSGinger14 (talk) 07:12, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@CSGinger14 OpenStreetMap tiles and data can, as they are licensed under the Open Database License. On Commons, you can use {{ODbL OpenStreetMap}} as a template for the licensing fields to be filled out automatically.
Most commercial satellite providers do not license their images freely, including those that Google is supplied by (Maxar, Airbus, etc.). The best alternative is the Copernicus program's "Sentinel" imagery, but this is of too low a resolution for many purposes.
Should you wish to request a map using OSM data, you are welcome to request one at Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Map workshop. Do note that there are already maps for most cities, etc. – Isochrone (talk) 10:41, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:List of street view services#Requested move 20 May 2025

[edit]

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:List of street view services#Requested move 20 May 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 14:53, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

[edit]

Hello,
Please note that Remote sensing, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing!
Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 2 June 2025 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team[reply]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Maps&oldid=1293483209"