
Wikimedia Maps Beta - chippy
https://maps.wikimedia.org
======
philipn
In case you're wondering what this is about: the scale of Wikipedia makes it
difficult to just drop in a third-party OSM tiling service, so they're rolling
their own map rendering process using OSM data. This is a beta of the rendered
tiles, displayed inside Leaflet.

If you're into maps and this kind of thing, I highly recommend checking out
LocalWiki ([https://localwiki.org](https://localwiki.org)) too!

~~~
voltagex_
Is their rendering process documented anywhere?

~~~
emw
Yes. From
[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps#Production_maps_cluster](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps#Production_maps_cluster):

The implementation [1] has various components including:

* Kartotherian [2]: a server capable of providing map tiles in vector (pbf) or raster (png) formats, as well as static map snapshots of any size for a given location.

* Tilerator [3]: a distributed backend tile generation service with a jobque

* A flexible sources [4] system to set up the needed storage and processing pipeline

1\.
[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps/Tile_server_implementati...](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps/Tile_server_implementation)

2\.
[https://github.com/kartotherian/kartotherian/](https://github.com/kartotherian/kartotherian/)

3\.
[https://github.com/kartotherian/tilerator/](https://github.com/kartotherian/tilerator/)

4\. [https://github.com/kartotherian/kartotherian-
core/](https://github.com/kartotherian/kartotherian-core/)

------
Flux159
Cool! It looks like they're using leaflet and hosting their own tile server
from Open Street Map data. I really like that they opened up how to connect to
their tile server (thanks to chippy for the link:
[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps) ).
When I was looking at options for creating a side project with open street map
data earlier I ended up using Mapquest's open data api because Google maps had
API restrictions after a number of calls and it was easy to integrate with
leaflet, but if I was making it again I would consider using wikimedia's
option. (Fyi, the sideproject is a static site hosted at
[http://newsatlas.io](http://newsatlas.io) \- it takes a news/rss feed &
attempts to parse the location client side by parsing the news article's
summary text and displaying the location on a map - it was written in JS with
angular and leaflet as dependencies - hosted on S3).

------
nyuriks
Thanks for all your support! Means a lot. Clipped labels is a big issue,
working on it. Any help is welcome with bugs and styling. Info is at
[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps) .
Will post updates on twitter @nyuriks. Thanks!

------
snogglethorpe
One thing I found neat about this was that (at least by default) it seems
language-neutral: scrolling around the world, labels over the U.S. are in
English, labels in Japan are in Japanese, Korea, in Korean, China, in
simplified Chinese, etc. Not even any romanized (or otherwise
translated/transliterated) labels in parentheses. Just the native
presentation.

Granted that for practicality, you probably _also_ want a mode that makes the
labels more useful for a reader that may not understand every writing system,
but as a default (when the user doesn't express a language preference),
there's something very satisfying about this method of presentation...

In my mind it reflects Wikipedia's aspirations of being a useful tool for the
whole world....

~~~
thomasfoster96
This is probably not intentional - the data is from OpenStreetMap, and if you
have a look at [http://www.openstreetmap.org/](http://www.openstreetmap.org/)
you'll see that there isn't an attempt to make all labels the same language.

~~~
mjn
OSM has a policy that the base 'name' tag should be the name used on-the-
ground locally, i.e. what appears in real life on street signs, building
nameplates, and so on. Plus some special considerations for multilingual areas
[1]. Items can also have additional language-specific tags (name:ja, name:en,
etc.), which can in principle be used by renderers to display names in the
language preference of the user, e.g. to produce an all-German-label or all-
English-label map, to the extent the data is present [2].

[1]
[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Multilingual_names](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Multilingual_names)

[2]
[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_internationalization](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_internationalization)

~~~
thomasfoster96
I wasn't aware of that policy - thanks for noting it.

------
emw
I am pumped about this, especially the Wikimedia Commons use cases described
at
[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps/Future_Plans#Commons](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps/Future_Plans#Commons).

There are actually already ways to browse Commons images on a map, but they
need significant work. For example, the tile at [1] depicts an area with
easily 20 geotagged Commons images, but, inexplicably, none of them are shown
until you zoom in another level. Or, zoom out to see the entire state, only to
see Massachusetts shown as completely lacking any geotagged Commons images
[2].

There is a ton of potential for awesome applications involving geotagged
images and geographic maps. I'm glad to see the Wikimedia Foundation stepping
up its investment here.

1\. [https://tools.wmflabs.org/wiwosm/osm-on-ol/commons-on-
osm.ph...](https://tools.wmflabs.org/wiwosm/osm-on-ol/commons-on-
osm.php?zoom=16&lat=42.64225&lon=-71.30984&layers=B00TFT)

2\. [https://tools.wmflabs.org/wiwosm/osm-on-ol/commons-on-
osm.ph...](https://tools.wmflabs.org/wiwosm/osm-on-ol/commons-on-
osm.php?zoom=8&lat=42.64225&lon=-71.30435&layers=B00TFT)

------
cead_ite
Projected use-cases:
[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps/Future_Plans](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps/Future_Plans)

------
chippy
More documentation here:
[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps)

Including the development setup

------
MichaelGG
Wow, it's so refreshing after using Google Maps. Wikimedia Maps are just
_fast_. Reminds me of how I remember Google Maps being. (My machine is much
faster now, but GMaps just _lags_.)

The data quality is a bit weird, as if it doesn't know what things to
highlight. But I'm sure this will improve over time.

~~~
pmontra
I was about to comment that it is so slow to be unusable (seconds before tiles
appear after zooming in) but apparently it's not the same for everybody. Or HN
or some other site are slashdotting the tile server rigth now?

------
lifeisstillgood
I have tried one or two Google Maps mashups, but never bothered seriously
because its ... Well not worth the effort learning on my free time how to use
something that is not free. But openstreetmap and Wikipedia - how can I
resist.

Ok folks, let's look at this properly - you are going to get my donation this
time round, and in five years google will look worried and in ten the goto
mapping solution will be a free Wikipedia service.

Open always wins in the end.

~~~
voltagex_
I wonder if they're going to funnel contributions back to OSM.

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
They're not inviting separate contributions. There's no edit tab. If you want
to edit these maps, you need to edit OSM.

------
buro9
I really like the colour selections.

But it seems to me that the designation of green space is off.

Kew Gardens comes out as a built-up area:
[https://maps.wikimedia.org/#16/51.4778/-0.2975](https://maps.wikimedia.org/#16/51.4778/-0.2975)

------
estefan
The colour scheme is far more legible than open street map. I wish they'd
change their styling...

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
OSM's default road colouring is actually about to change:
[https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-
carto/pull/173...](https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-
carto/pull/1736)

------
chrisbroadfoot
Not bad.

There are some pretty bad errors on tile boundaries, though:
[http://i.imgur.com/ifSXs2H.png](http://i.imgur.com/ifSXs2H.png)

[https://maps.wikimedia.org/#9/21.8526/103.5901](https://maps.wikimedia.org/#9/21.8526/103.5901)

~~~
giancarlostoro
I also noticed if you zoom out all the way the map disappears.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Also, zoom isn't 'idempotent', which can be annoying.

~~~
qntty
can you explain what you mean by this?

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Sorry for the late reply. I suspected my description might have been on the
cryptic side. I was referring to the fact that zooming in one direction,
followed by the exact same amount in the other, should return you to exactly
the same state; these maps don't quite (i.e. they'll sometimes put you in a
different location).

------
jpatokal
Nice effort, but still needs a lot of work. This view of the western US picks
out four coastal cities worthy of mention: "Tijuana" (fine), "Los Angele"
(sic!), "San Jose" (err..) and "Calgary" (wat). No San Francisco, no Seattle,
no Vancouver...

[https://maps.wikimedia.org/#4/40.15/-93.38](https://maps.wikimedia.org/#4/40.15/-93.38)

Scripts are also all over the place. Japan is Japanese only, China is Chinese
only, India is English, Bangladesh is Bengali, Pakistan is partly Urdu and
English, the Arab countries are totally inconsistent...

~~~
haldean
If you're going on population, San Jose is the biggest city in the Bay Area;
in that sense, it makes sense to pick it as the "one that wins" in a very
dense area. Calgary is around 1M people and Tijuana is 1.3M, while Seattle and
Vancouver are each around 600k. Those choices seem pretty reasonable to me.

~~~
robbrown451
San Jose is bigger than San Francisco only because its city limits occupy far
more area. San Francisco is a bigger population center.

~~~
bla2
…do you live in San Francisco?

~~~
zbraniecki
I do. How can I help you? :)

------
guard-of-terra
Nice color gamma - less like OSM's rainbow and more like Yandex or Naver maps.
I wonder why Google insist on indecipherable shades of gray.

Some things would benefit from more contrast, but as it happens, almost all
map services would.

------
okasaki
This is going to be a great enhancement. The maps in Wikipedia articles always
seemed very lacking to me.

------
conductor
Is the rendering process open, and what are they using for rendering the
tiles? Mapnik?

~~~
nyuriks
Everything is completely open. We use
[https://github.com/kartotherian/kartotherian](https://github.com/kartotherian/kartotherian)
which is Mapbox+Mapnik based.

------
mixmastamyk
Would be nice if the farthest zoom out wasn't Mercator.

~~~
ris
There are many good reasons for choosing mercator, the best one being that it
is mostly conformal.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Yes, while zoomed in that property is useful, zoomed out less so.

~~~
jpatokal
You can't really switch projections mid-zoom, because the tile coordinates
wouldn't match and you'd find yourself in entirely the wrong place.

~~~
kuschku
Eh, you can. You can even do actual 3D rendering in browser.

------
infinity0
This is incredible, it's about 2x as fast as OSM over tor and about 10x as
fast as Google Maps.

------
unicornporn
Funny thing, the other day I was looking for a good map of all Wikipedia
articles with geo positional data. I didn't really find one.

Looking at the title of this submission, I hoped that it would offer this.
However, it seems it does not. Does anybody know if it ever will?

~~~
teddyh
I would imagine that DBpedia would have something like that:
[http://wiki.dbpedia.org/](http://wiki.dbpedia.org/)

------
niedzielski
This will be available in the Android app too[0]. It'll debut on beta[1]
first.

[0]
[https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/212922/](https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/212922/)
[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia.beta)

------
dogma1138
Whats the difference between this and wikimapia? Aside from wikimapia having
complete maps and orthographic layers ofc...

~~~
UserRights

      * Under what license is the data published at wikimapia?
      * Where can I download the data?
      * [How] can I use it for my own website?

~~~
dogma1138
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiMapia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiMapia)

Creative Commons, they have an API if you want to consume the data.

------
jevgeni
Crimean names are in Russian. :/

~~~
guard-of-terra
Whatever you may think of Crimea status, people in Crimea use Russian language
dominantly. Why would you expect names not be in it?

This sort of behavior you're demonstrating is exactly what contributed to
recent Ukraine troubles.

P. S. In Italy, cities in Sudtirol - Alto Adige marked in both German and
Italian. That's responsible behavior if you want examples.

~~~
jevgeni
Recent Ukrainian troubles were mostly caused by, oh I dunno, a foreign army
invading?

> marked in both German and Italian.

 _both_

~~~
scott_karana
> Recent Ukrainian troubles were mostly caused by, oh I dunno, a foreign army
> invading?

It's not as simple as "they just now got attacked and now their signs have all
been changed".

Crimea and its people have had linguistic/social/cultural/economic ties to
Russia/USSR for a lot longer than merely the recent conflict....

~~~
jevgeni
Well, China has _very_ old ties with Outer Manchuria (also known as Priamursk
is Russia [1]), so would it be OK for China to invade?

There is a lot of shared history around the world, like Alsace-Lorraine, for
example. Strangely enough Germany doesn't invade France for some reason...

[1] - [https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Russia-Soviet-Union-
in...](https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Russia-Soviet-Union-
invaded-1-500-000-square-kilometers-of-Chinas-territory-and-is-never-going-to-
return-it)

~~~
scott_karana
Eh? I'm not saying it's okay for Russia to invade. Quite the reverse. I'm
saying that the mere presence of Russian language signs in Crimea doesn't mean
it was caused by the recent events.

Your example shows the exact same property. :-)

~~~
jevgeni
Oh, I understand. Good point, actually. :)

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jarboot
Seems extremely fast, and actually has a lot more information about my
university than google maps!

------
electricblue
Looks like they are having some problems with caching. Many labels in major
cities are cut off. Caching is hard, especially when you aren't using an out-
of-the-box product like ESRI

