Portal talk:Atlas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Colors

Red borders on a blue table looks extremely ugly. I suggest changing the red to dark blue or black. ~iNVERTED | Rob (Talk) 18:35, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Atlas" vs. galleries

I am sorry but this project is somewhat mistaken. Galleries of image files belong on commons::

Yes, Wikipedia does aim at being an atlas, but the relevant articles are "Geography of X", "Demographics of X" etc., not galleries of "Maps of X". See Category:Demographics by country, Category:Geography by country (and ultimately, Category:Categories by country). Please help expanding these: Most of the "Geography of X" articles are mere stubs, and could do with a lot of work, including additional maps. dab (ᛏ) 11:15, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

This kind of articles have been created in the last period. I can imagine commons could be a better place. But not all the maps are included in Commons. With these pages Wikipedia has got - as many encyclopedia have - an atlas section. Please do not move to commons, since it doesn't give the same possibilities. BTW: a solution could be to add the galleries to the Geography of and the History of, but the interesting feature of these entries is the combination of maps of a country in one entry. Electionworld Talk? 21:41, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

A suggestion could be to make it clear that these are not normal entries, to move each of the Maps of XX articles to Portal:Atlas/XX. E.g. Maps of Belgium would become Portal:Atlas/Belgium or maybe even better Atlas/Belgium. This might fit better in the wiki-philosophy. Electionworld Talk? 06:44, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

well, but this is the entire reason why we have commons. Notable maps should in any case be moved to commons so that they are available to other wikis. It would be fair, of course, to write aritcles about Russian cartography, Swiss cartography, etc. covering the history of mapmaking and the associated institutes and persons in each country, but a collection of maps drawn and collected by random wikipedians to illustrate random articles is not in itself encyclopedic, sorry. I do not want to delete stuff you did, but what you are trying to achieve is exactly the scope of commons:Maps, commons:Category:Maps, commons:Category:Maps of countries, commons:Category:Cartography. dab (ᛏ) 18:30, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I like commons, but not all maps fit in the commons criteria and not all maps are included in Commons (fair use can be used in wikipedia, not in commons). Furthermore the categories in Commons don't allow for description of the maps. The present-day entries might not fit into all encyclopedic criteria, therefore I suggested to make it subpages of the portal, to separate them more clearly of the normal entries. Electionworld Talk? 08:11, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

If a file is fair use, then it wouldn't suffice to use it simply in a gallery to qualify as fair use anyway. Commons pages allow for descriptions and captions, just like in wikipedia, and galleries are welcome there. There's really no reason for these maps galleries to exist and they're blatantly against policy. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 05:34, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

If their is a large consensus that these pages should go to the commons, then I will move them. I see others edit these pages too, so there is no consensus yet. First I will further build the pages and wait for the development in the discussion. Be aware that a move is not a simple project, since many of the maps have to be uploaded to commons. Electionworld Talk? 07:06, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

it is fair to have "maps of X" articles on Wikipedia. Although they should be renamed to "cartography of X". These articles will treat cartographical institutes, mapping efforts, historical maps etc. of the respective countries. They should not just be galleries of whatever map images that happen to be on Wikipedia, we have categories for that. I am, thus, not disputing the right to exist of these articles, I am just saying they were started off completely on a wrong foot (gallery pages) and should be reworked for encyclopedicity. I will begin editing Maps of Switzerland to demostrate. dab (ᛏ) 11:41, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

See Cartography of Switzerland for an encyclopedic approach to the "Maps of $COUNTRY" topic. There is a link to commons at the bottom, and there can still be a beautiful and well-organised gallery of maps, on commons. dab (ᛏ) 12:12, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Off course a Cartography of Switzerland article is better than a Maps of Switzerland article. What I don't agree at is the deletion of the map galleries, which would fit well in this article. Commons doesn't have all the articles and the categories do not give the possibility of explaining the map. Both are not adequate alternatives for the present articles. What I would like is to have this Cartography article as it is with additional the maps gallery. I did this with the article Maps of Switzerland. We could make a general stub-like remark at the beginning of each of the articles to indicate that the articles are still missing a cartography section. I hope that there are enough editors to edit information like the information on the Cartography of Switzerland page. If we cannot agree on this, I prefer to either go back to the old situation or to move these pages to subpages of this portal. Electionworld Talk? 12:09, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

the point is that you should transwiki your galleries to commons. I have done that for you at commons:Maps of Switzerland. Im am sorry, but Wikipedia articles are not for image galleries, that is precisely the reason we have commons. dab (ᛏ) 16:35, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I know your position, but we do not agree. There were not many editors arguing against this specific form of articles. I am ready to make articles like Portal:Atlas/Belgium in stead of Maps of Belgium in an attempt to make a compromise. Electionworld Talk? 22:43, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Debate over at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) seems to have died, so I thought I'd repost my comments over here in case they're any help:

[Requiring the atlas to move to Commons] seems to assume that encyclopedic knowledge can exist only in plain-text form. I agree that Wikipedia is not an image gallery; but maps seem to be a (rare) example of genuinely encyclopedic content that is best presented as self-contained images. I would expect every map to also be used on the relevant country page, and probably also on a 'Geography of' page; but providing a full and accurate atlas of the world also seems to be, in itself, an encyclopedic purpose (in a way that, say, providing a collection of unannotated photos of capital cities isn't). I don't think we need to say that, just because something is not in plain-text form, it is automatically not encyclopedic so must be shipped either to commons or as an illustration to a text article. In most cases, a stand-alone image is not encyclopedic; in the case of a map, I think it can be. We need to apply the same standards as to text articles, though - so the Atlas needs to try to provide a single, consistent, best possible map of the world and each part of it; not an indiscriminate collection of all available maps. TSP 20:03, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Maps of former states

I'm working on improving entries for former countries and their subdivisions. At the moment, I am concentrating on Prussia and I have made a series of maps showing the locations of Prussia and its provinces. These maps have been placed in the Maps of Germany page, since Prussia no longer exists. At the moment this seems like a reasonable thing to do, but in time I will have lots of other maps for former states. Is it alright to continue placing them within the entry that corresponds to the modern country, or should separate pages be made for these now non-existant countries? - 52 Pickup 18:02, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I would think that is allright. Electionworld Talk? 20:36, 8 October 2006 (UTC)