Template talk:Geolinks-US-streetscale

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

Contents

[edit] Generic geographical coordinates

Egil has worked up a nice prototype for incorporating coordinate translation and external linking into MediaWiki natively (similar to ISBN handling). Everyone should go check out his stuff; it is essentially a more elegant solution, redundant with our efforts here.

I think for the time being the best approach for combining our efforts is simply to keep tabs on each other; if he notices some problem with one of his templates and fixes it, the fix likely also applies to our stuff. And vice versa. Don't pull all his links over to here though; I think geolinks should not be too inclusive with its links; the current set seems pretty comprehensive for US locations. --Chinasaur 01:04, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Geolinks templates

[edit] Start templates

[edit] Basic templates

[edit] Macro templates

[edit] Color aerial templates

For many urban areas (notably not NYC or Boston) TerraServer-USA provides color aerial photos. Since this template links only to one resource, I am putting the zoom argument into the template as the third parameter. This argument can range from 8 for the most zoomed in, to 19 for most zoomed out.

[edit] Weather satellite templates

[edit] Specialized templates

[edit] Finding lat/long info

Here are some resources for figuring out the lat/long of the location you want:

  • USGS GNIS service is extremely extensive: almost any officially named place in the US is searchable. Provides coordinates in Degrees/Minutes/Seconds format. The easiest way to convert to decimal coordinates (if you don't want to do arithmetic yourself) is to choose the "Display feature in TopoZone" option. You can click around the map on the TopoZone page if you don't think it's centered quite right. Then in the sidebar of the TopoZone page change the "Coordinate Format" to "DD.DDD". The decimal coordinates are now displayed above the map.
  • Libre Map Project - As part of The Libre Map Project I've created a database with all the GNIS place names from the USGS. It displays the Latitude and Longitude in decimal format so you don't have to convert. To display a list of every town, county, villag, etc., select a state and set the Feature Type to "civil". All data and queries are Free. If the data could be formatted in a more convenient way, let me know. - Redjar 14:14, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • GeoCode Eagle will give you coordinates for up to 25 U.S. addresses free.
  • TopoZone can give you coordinates for a number of U.S. place names free. From the USGS, so biased towards natural/national landmarks.
  • Epodunk will give you coordinates for a number of U.S. place names free. Seems to be biased towards East Coast, historical community sites. Good for cemeteries.
  • TerraServer-USA gives lat/long for the U.S., and is clickable (you click on the map and it gives you the lat/long of the recentered map, to a certain degree of precision).
  • NASA World Wind has a limited database of U.S. and global placenames. Sorry, no street addresses. Press Ctrl-F, enter the official place name, click Search, you will probably find the place you're looking for. Click Go and press Ctrl-C to copy the decimal coordinates. Paste it into Wikipedia. Example: For Tucson International Airport → "worldwind://goto/world=Earth&lat=32.11611&lon=-110.94109&alt=24389"

Remember, North and East are positive, South and West negative.

end overview
begin discussion

[edit] Another metatemplate?

Would anyone oppose me making a meta-template without the "Maps and aerial photos", and linking this into it? Several templates including {{NYCS station footer}} use the links (see 125th Street (IRT Lexington Avenue Line station) for an example of usage), but I had to copy and paste to keep the heading out. I'd like to link the meta into that as well, so if it gets changed the subway stations will too. --SPUI (talk) 10:42, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think that's fine. Originally I wasn't going to build the header in, but I ended up putting the start template into all the basic templates for simplicity. In the long run I think it's better to keep things all together here so that if we decide to change one of the standard resources we can do it more efficiently (maps.google.com is looking promising now that someone has figured out their coordinate system once they put a coordinate system in rather than the Google local approach). Hopefully you don't need to duplicate every template, only one scale? Otherwise we should consider taking the start template out of the basic scale templates. --Chinasaur 13:45, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
And done. It was only for this one. --SPUI (talk) 14:06, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The new template is called Template:geolinks-US-streetscale-neutered. This should be fine for your purposes. However, I'm not sure it's worth plugging it into the normal streetscale template. Probably better for server load to leave the streetscale inline. It's not like you can use the same streetscale-neutered template as a plugin for every basic template; it's only right for streetscale. So I don't think there's much disadvantage to leaving it inline. I will revert streetscale for now. --Chinasaur 14:44, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Topozone coordinate system

I recently changed the set of basic templates to include a topozone directive to use nad83 coordinates. I believe this will help the topozone and terraserver coordinates to match up better, so that when you have a feature centered nicely in the topo it will also be properly centered in the aerial. If this is a problem for anyone we can talk about ways to fix it. It will only really affect quite zoomed in features though. It seemed to work well this way for Coit Tower. --Chinasaur 14:52, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, that's definitely the way it should be. We would like to change the default datum for incoming coordinates where the datum is not specified to NAD83, but it would break a lot of the incoming links that are still around. Comments/Suggestions welcome @ info@topozone.com -Scott, Topozone.com

[edit] Google maps

Leif clued me in to the coordinate system for the google maps beta. I was able to hack the scale arguments, although not very well. But it works, so I put it into all the templates. Problem is, I don't know how much of the US is covered by google's maps. If it turns out not all of it, we can take google out of the basic template and make a separate template for it. But for now see how you like it. --Chinasaur 14:57, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm just getting a blank page with a header at the top with I click the google link (for instance on Buena Vista Park). --SPUI (talk) 16:26, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Are you having this problem consistently? It's working in my IE6 and FF right now. Google maps itself has apparently gone down a few times since their beta started. Maybe we should comment this feature out until maps.google is out of beta. Let's give it a few days to observe behavior. --Chinasaur 22:25, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, my bad. Looks like it's down. --SPUI (talk) 03:25, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Actually it's not down, it just refuses to load in K-Meleon. When I first tried it out, it told me that it wasn't supported but I could try anyway, and it worked. But now it won't even do that. --SPUI (talk) 08:37, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, if I set it to identify as IE it works. Hopefully this will be fixed. --SPUI (talk) 08:41, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Generic geographical coordinates, with map links

For a generic, global, concept for handling maps and related resources, please look at the Geographical coordinates WikiProject, and also the coordinate style guide. -- Egil 16:34, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Better Terraserver link?

The Terraserver link currently goes to their special "Terraservice" interface. Is there any reason it does this, rather than the standard interface, which is easier to navigate? --SPUI (talk) 22:35, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I can't remember why I used the "sample map server". If you've worked out the necessary GET arguments, go ahead and change it, or just change one and I'll change the rest for you. Maybe make a note on my talk if you do this after more than a few days. It looks like the standard interface will pick "urban areas" color photos automatically if they are available, which may make the current "color aerial" extra template obsolete (this would be good). --Chinasaur 03:18, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
That was trivial - a change from map.aspx to image.aspx seems to have fixed it. I've changed them all (a few were already changed by someone else). --SPUI (talk) 21:25, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, I will change them momentarily again to take out the specification for black and white photo. Looks like then it will pick the color photo automagically if it is available, which is preferable. I will leave the "closeup color aerial" template though since it is still useful for more close up shots and for shots that are only partially available in color and so might get black and white chosen when color would be better. --Chinasaur 08:38, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I also changed the w=600&h=400 into w=2 since the GET argument for image.aspx works differently. Not sure w=2 is what we want, the more zoomed in w=1 is closer to the old map.aspx way. But I just finished making them all w=2 and taking out the t=1, so for now I'm done... --Chinasaur 09:06, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I just tried to use the Terraserver link on Watchung Circle and got an error. Removing the s=xx argument seemed to eliminate the problem. Please fix... --Lensovet 21:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hoodscale & Google aerial photo

Is there any reason that the hoodscale template lacks the Google aerial photo link? If not, shall we add it? Bbpen 19:58, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In general if you see inconsistencies go ahead and fix them as you see fit. I don't know any reason why there should be any inconsistencies between templates. --Chinasaur 08:00, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I added it to hoodscale and countyscale.

[edit] Changed the template for more accuracy

I changed the template for a few reasons:

  • Some names of services did not have the correct capitalizations (Topozone should be TopoZone, etc).
  • There is a difference between TerraServer and TerraServer-USA (TerraServer is now a for-profit site, while TerraServer-USA still has public domain images).
  • Aerial images are not available for all parts of the United States. If none is available for a certain location, a topographic map will be shown instead (if available).
  • Google Maps images are actually satellite images, and are technically different from aerial images taken from airplanes.

--Ixfd64 22:31, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

I generally prefer as compact a template as possible, but I agree these distinctions are probably worth making. If you don't hear any major objections over the next week or so, please consider also changing the other scale templates for consistency. --Chinasaur 08:01, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I will consider changing the other templates in a few days. --Ixfd64 21:09, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)

[edit] Google hybrid map link?

Should we replace the separate Google street maps and satellite maps with the newly-released hybrid maps? It basically just entails sticking a &t=h on the end. --NeuronExMachina 12:13, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. I often get lost with the satellite image alone. I really like the new hybrid. Nelson Ricardo 14:46, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
Go for it; I would say just leave the format the same and replace the google aerial link with the hybrid link. Please change other templates as well. --Chinasaur 08:11, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Integration with Google Earth

Guys: I think that Google Earth is very cool, but it is a desktop application, not a web service. I have a stupid hack that will launch Google Earth if it is installed (CGI to convert URL params to KML file and return correct MIME type). I have created a new template called Template:GIS view and it has three inputs: lat, long and height. It seems like the natural units are decimal on the lat/long and meters for altitude because that is was the KML format uses. I would appreciate any feedback you have.Amorrow 08:54, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Google Maps > Google Local

Just a heads up, I took the liberty of changing all (or at least most) of the references to "Google Maps" to "Google Local" to reflect the service's new name. -Jeff 02:04, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Virtual Earth change

The link to Virtual Earth is broken -- now it appears to be "Windows Live Local powered by Virtual Earth". Anyone want to change the template? --WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 14:41, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] US Census TIGER images

from discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Bridges the notion of TIGER images came up. I wasn't aware of them before, apologies if this has been raised but would this be another good thing to add to the templates? Here is an example URL:

 http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapsurfer?act=in&infact=2&map.x=211&map.y=180&lat=41.9158630&lon=-73.9838486&wid=0.015&ht=0.015&iht=359&iwd=422&&off=CITIES&tlevel=-&tvar=-&tmeth=i&mlat=41.93011&mlon=-73.99726&msym=redpin&mlabel=Kingston__NY&murl=&conf=mapnew.con

I don't know how to decode all the parms (some for example I KNOW aren't needed, like the label and pushpin type) but it does seem to take latitude and longitude parameters... Presumably this data is PD or government data, and therefore images of it could be made free of copyvio issues (some of the bridge infobox templates have a place for a map image, all the other sources in this template are I think copyrighted non PD images and therefore can't be taken for the 'pedia? Please feel free to redirect me if I should ask this question elsewhere. Just modifying the template is a bit beyond my current metawiki skills I think, plus it's used a LOT of places so wouldn't wnat to break things! (I am bold but not THAT bold!) ++Lar 03:28, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Let me rephrase that question, since I see "surrounds" uses TIGER already... should "hoodscale" have a line for surrounds? ++Lar 03:30, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 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 Wikipedia: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)

[edit] standardization

Why are the fields different for this and Template:Geolinks-US-hoodscale Template:Geolinks-US-cityscale? Some of them have Yahoo, MS virtual earth, others do not. Is this a technical problem? If so, why not eliminate the difficult ones until they can be made the same for all scales. Why does the hoodscale page redirect here? Cacophony 01:10, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Things get decrepit once in a while. I was going to say please fix what you can or I'll try to get around to it, but it looks like things are already fixed up pretty well. In general, if you think you understand the guiding principles (1: be selective about what links are in these templates, 2: be consistent across the different scale templates) then feel free to fix things up when necessary. --Chinasaur 18:00, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Interwiki link to vi:

Please add an interwiki link to the Vietnamese version of this template:

[[vi:Tiêu bản:Geolinks-US-streetscale]]

Thanks.

– Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 05:36, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Done, thanks. - Bobet 11:24, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bold styling

Can we remove the bold styling on the first link? jareha 05:11, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A bug in a template usage

Please see article Redridge Steel Dam, which includes {{Geolinks-US-streetscale|47.147291|-88.763180}} I'm doing something wrong there but am not sure what. The coords are displaying at the very top of the article instead of at or near the rest of the links to the map. Does the template expect that it is contained in a table or under a specific heading? Thanks! ++Lar: t/c 19:28, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

It's not a bug. I'm not sure where the discussion on this is, but this "feature" has been added to several of the coordinates templates including this one. -Aude (talk | contribs) 13:35, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
OK, a feature then. But it's a feature I would prefer to have control over, I don't want the coords at the very top of the article where they throw off the rest of the look and feel, unless that is now a mandated style? Short of forking, how does one achieve that? Pointers to where this has been discussed gratefully received! ++Lar: t/c 13:56, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please make this optional

See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates#Consensus where User:Saxifrage says that embedded use of coord d is not necessarily widely supported. Please consider making this an optional thing (using {{qif}} perhaps?), perhaps defaulted to on so as not to upset other uses too much, but I want to be able to turn it off without having to make a fork of this template. Thanks for giving this careful consideration. ++Lar: t/c 21:08, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Google - marker symbol

Hope no one minds, but I just modified this template to add the "query" parameter for google maps, which will add a marker symbol at the specified lat/long location. The "ll" parameter used (still kept it there, but perhaps not needed) merely centers the map but no marker. -Aude (talk | contribs) 13:33, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Is this still accurate? I would like to see a marker pointing to the coordinate like it does on a couple other map templates.--NMajdan•talk 16:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] E/W mixed up-bug

The coordinates displayed at the top of articles like Redridge Steel Dam or Three Mile Island indicate a position east of Greenwich, which is wrong, even though the data is given correctly (I suppose) in the article source. Robert--84.190.78.189 23:06, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Use either the + and - numbers (with east and north positive), or use N E S W for the directions. Even if they are correctly entered, -101.32° E is a pretty dumb way to express 101.32° W, but I'd bet that a lot of people haven't enered them correctly. Gene Nygaard 05:08, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Google Local - name change to Google Maps.

Would an administrator please edit the coding to reflect the name change? Google just announced today that they changed the name Google Local back to Google Maps - see here. All instances of 'Google Local' should be changed to reflect the semi-new name. –- kungming·2 | (Talk·Contact) 06:17, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

  • I would like to second this request. --taestell 23:17, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
    • I third, and I was the one who changed this in the first place (before the page was protected)-Jeff (talk) 18:38, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Done. (my first admin action!) ++Lar: t/c 19:04, 10 May 2006 (UTC) (PS, note, this was ONLY to change the name, 2 occurances of "Local" to "Maps". It did not address the more serious coord problem mentioned below because there's not, in my view, clear consensus for any change)

[edit] GlobalGuide.Org

This is yet another Google Map derivitive but it displays Wikipedia/Wikitravel articles 'on-the-fly' as well depending on the parameters:

--87.212.10.97 15:19, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Conflicting title links

FYI, I recently noticed that this template has added a feature whereby a link to the coordinates appears just below the article title line.

But there seems to be a conflict with the {{coor title dms}} template on some articles. See Old Faithful Geyser for an example -- at the time of writing this note the two title links overlap. — Eoghanacht talk 14:34, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

A strong argument for not doing this, in my view, and in general, for not doing things that force absolute coordinates when rendering things... For reference the version in question is this but if the templates are fixed it will no longer have that appearance, presumably... ++Lar: t/c 14:53, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Old Faithful Geyser could use another template, e.g. Template:Geolinks-US-hoodscale instead of Template:Geolinks-US-streetscale. There are no conflicts then. -- User:Docu

[edit] Please fix

Would somebody please fix this thing. It should flow nicely when placed in external links, but the coordinates are totally misplaced and make it look disorganized. I suggest moving coordinates directly after and on the same line as "Maps and aerial photos". Thank you.--Nelson Ricardo 16:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Which page are you looking at? Which skin do you use? -- User:Docu

[edit] What do you think about addind WikiMapia link to this template?

WikiMapia

Jack

There are at least three Wiki/Google mashups out there I know. If WikiMapia stays, why exclude Placeopedia or GlobalGuide? I have removed this, pending further discussion. --132.229.27.151 11:29, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I liked the WM links (in the building-scale template which I can't find) because they provided large photo fields with appropriate zoom levels. I marked up some things in my area. WM has a larger view and it seems more flexible because you can add text descriptions to things that aren't on Wikipedia, and you can make a box to show the size of the thing in addition to its location. Also, Terraserver is a little off in my area; the others agree with each other and if I go by them then TerraServer ends up showing the street in front of a school instead of the school. So I think WikiMapia is better than TerraServer which is still up there. --Howdybob 19:01, 22 June 2006 (UTC)


It's upon to people decide, what is better. --Alexandre Koriakine


Recently I opened this site – it’s awesome. All famous and many local interest places already marked there. Now I use it instead of maps.google.com. I think it must be in template - it's known and popular. I cheeked stats of these sites: http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=725&h=370&r=6m&y=r&a=1&z=6&u=wikimapia.org&u=placeopedia.com&u=globalguide.org

--sonua 14:22, 12 July 2006

[edit] Please keep this in sync

Please keep this in sync with Template:Mapit-US-cityscale . In particular, plase add the WikiMapia link to this template. -- 16:53, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] a bot for this template

I'm not too familiar with how bots are done, but I was thinking it would be very convienent if someone wrote a bot to take Category:Geography_of_Massachusetts, which has coordinates in most of the articles, and moved them into a mapit template on each page. thoughts? Arwcheek 12:52, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Broken? (PHP errors)

I was on the Australia Zoo article and clicked on the external link saying

This link was working several days ago, but now it gives the following PHP errors:

Warning: main(../../wiki/includes/Defines.php) [function.main]:
failed to open stream: No such file or directory in
/home/egil/public_html/extensions/mapsources/index.php on line 40

Fatal error: main() [function.require]: Failed opening required
'../../wiki/includes/Defines.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php')
in /home/egil/public_html/extensions/mapsources/index.php on line 40

Any hope for getting this fixed?

Richwales 16:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I updated the links from kvaleberg to Template:Coor URL. -- User:Docu

[edit] conflict with CoorHeader ?

I don't have any problems, but I have been told that on pages where there is both {{CoorHeader}} and {{Geolinks-US-buildingscale}} there can be problems (e.g. RMS Queen Mary. If that is the case, someone should probably run a bot to remove the CoorHeader template on any pages with the a geolinks template. BlankVerse 00:36, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

For links to some screen captures of examples of the problem, please see: User talk:Solarapex#RMS Queen Mary BlankVerse 09:08, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Can we add VirtualGlobetrotting.com links?

VirtualGlobetrotting.com supports searching by lat,lon: http://virtualglobetrotting.com/ll/(lat),(lon). Disclaimer: I'm the owner. I've also made a request under Template:Geolinks-US-cityscale. Nicjansma 07:05, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Default scale

Is there a way to change the default scale (zoom level)? TonyTheTiger 17:40, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../g/e/o/Template_talk%7EGeolinks-US-streetscale_46fc.html"