Template talk:GeoGroupTemplate

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Geographical coordinates GeoGroupTemplate is of interest to WikiProject Geographical coordinates, which encourages the use of geographical coordinates in Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, visit the project page.
Templates for deletion This template was considered for deletion on 2007 August 2. The result of the discussion was Keep.
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[edit] Labelling

Authors of parsing tools might consider using article titles, section headings, and table headings to generate KML files with data in labeled groups. In List of impact craters in the United States and Central America there could obviously be three groups used: "United States", "Central America", "Unconfirmed impact craters". This would be particularly useful with larger lists. (SEWilco 18:52, 13 August 2007 (UTC))

Thanks for the idea, that'll clarify the list of coordinates when they're taken out of context into a KML file. I modified the kmlexport tool to parse section headings into KML folders. --Para 18:52, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Another bug

From M42_motorway, which has coordinates with precision to 4 decimal places, Para's tool is producing KML with 5 decimal places, wrongly appending a zero (and thereby falsely implying such precision) to all values. Brian Suda's version, which Para replaced in this template, with one of his own making, is correctly using four DPs. I've restored the original, until we see when and if Para can fix this bug. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 10:10, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

A minor issue with appended zeros is hardly a reason to make thousands of coordinates inaccessible to users [1], as the Suda tool only supports microformats and is not Wikipedia specific. Anyhow, fixed. --Para 12:19, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
There is no "inaccessibility" involved, as KML is only used on pages with microformats. Far better to use an external tool which is giving valid information, than an internal one which is not. Though your comment reminds me - you ave still to properly answer my question, above. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 13:11, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Why would KML be for microformat pages only?? All coordinates on Wikipedia can be converted to KML and they have nothing to do with microformats. You may have created the template, but you do not control its use, and where anyone envisages or advocates this template to be used in is irrelevant. A link to a KML exporter can be seen useful with any article that has coordinates, and it is thus applicable to them all. Your edits are disruptive, as usual. --Para 13:30, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
"Why would KML be for microformat pages only??" Where did I say it would? You're making things up, again; and your ranting accusations are as false as usual. You've been warned, recently , over your incivility towards me. Kindly desist. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 14:21, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
The KML file format can be used with any Wikipedia page, but this template KML which we're discussing is only being used on some pages because it is only relevant to collections of coordinates. (SEWilco 15:12, 14 August 2007 (UTC))
Why would this template be relevant for collections of coordinates only? The KML format serves users just as well if it doesn't contain more than a single coordinate pair. It is currently not possible to have the annotated kmlexport functionality from the standard Wikipedia coordinate interface other than through this template. --Para 15:27, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
If KML (or other, such as GPX) export functionality is desired for single coordinate pairs, (aka single waypoints), then it should be added to {{GeoTemplate}}; as you should by now be aware, that's the page for single-waypoint services. I note that you have yet to answer my above, or earlier question on this page. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 16:18, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Single-point export through KML is in {{GeoTemplate}}. Look for "Find this location with Google Earth." (SEWilco 01:47, 15 August 2007 (UTC))
It is currently not possible to have the annotated kmlexport functionality from the standard Wikipedia coordinate interface other than through this template. --Para 08:18, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
OK. And this template is now working with the specified precision? Good. Bug resolved. (SEWilco 15:08, 15 August 2007 (UTC))
Yes, see my first comment to this topic and the concurrent reversion of Andy's edit. --Para 15:53, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] kml template considered harmful when used for polylines markup

From the examples the promotors of template kml gave so far - like motorways - I get more and more the understanding that many usages of Wiki articles with so called "multi coordinates" actually are meant as a ordered sequence of points, typically called a polyline in GIS. Please avoid using template kml for that purpose: It's name does'nt indicate this semantics at all, so it must be considered harmful. And it is superfluous anyway because any external webapplication and existing links like {{GeoTemplate}} already can parse an article and produce KML or any other geodata format. We must find a better way to encode polylines. -- Geonick 23:58, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

That should be "some examples", not "the examples". A polyline is a different type of item than a collection of related coordinates. (SEWilco 00:07, 21 August 2007 (UTC))


[edit] doc missing

Template:GeoGroupTemplate/doc is missing. Template should be documented. (SEWilco 16:33, 22 August 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Help me improve the export from a table of coordinates

I have recently created a List of aluminium smelters that gives the coordinates of over 100 inductrial plants. Today I added the {{kml}} template and this successfully exports the coordinates. Unfortunately the are labeled 1 .. 121. How do I do better? Ideally I would like to label each point and potentially link to WP articles. Qwerty310 00:18, 26 August 2007 (UTC) ... and now I have had a closer look at the example I have some ideas Qwerty310 00:22, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, just add |name=The Desired Label to the coord template calls. A fix has been proposed but is awaiting administrative editing over in {{coord}}. (SEWilco 04:03, 26 August 2007 (UTC))
Thanks for that. It pretty much works now, but as you can see from List of aluminium smelters the label for the first coord gets the wrong text. Qwerty310 10:53, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] only sometimes works

This working with Catagories could turn out to be really useful. I do not however understand why it works for some articles and not for others. I initially only though it worked for pages containing coord and not other methods such as values in Infoboxs. This is however not the case, see Category:Towns in Derbyshire as example. Most are using "infobox UK place", some show on map and some not. Can anyone explain why?Traveler100 17:00, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

With an article name the tool pulls the article from the live Wikipedia, but the more resource intensive category request uses the coordinates from Wikipedia-World, which is updated from the dumps. That project probably recognises the community approved coordinate entry methods only, and since the infoboxes in that category use other parameters for coordinates, the displayed articles are the ones that have a recognised coordinate template. --Para 17:17, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
It's amazing how well it works for categories! Not sure though why Schlatt-Haslen when loaded from Category:Municipalities of Appenzell Innerrhoden appears to be in Germany. -- User:Docu
Yep, the only problem is that it doesn't use live data. Wikipedia-World in Google Earth says that the coordinates for that article come from de:Schlatt-Haslen, but the coordinates there don't seem to be the ones we're seeing. This is something to bug de:User:Stefan Kühn and de:User:Kolossos about. What they probably should implement is a live update on request feature. --Para 22:56, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
The coordinates used seem to be the erroneous ones mentioned in that article (48° 16' N, 9° 24' O). -- User:Docu
I'm also a fan of using {{GeoGroupTemplate}} on category pages. However, unless I'm misunderstanding something on the Wikipedia-World project page, it appears that they haven't updated their data since 29 July 2007. That means any coordinates added or changed within the past five months do not appear when using this tool from a category page. -- Zyxw (talk) 08:38, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
That's right, unfortunately. If someone wants to help and parse a more recent dump from http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/, I could update the tool's database, but that will only help by a few months, as dumping the English Wikipedia database hasn't worked properly for a long time now. There's been some discussion of the problem on the wikitech-l mailing list. --Para (talk) 18:43, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Neûchâtel category

The template worked quite well on most of the categories I applied it to. On Category:Municipalities of the canton of Neuchâtel, the link breaks due to the "â" in the category name. -- User:Docu

This is all because of Google's feature where parentheses have a special purpose and aren't allowed in kml file urls. Additionally spaces must be encoded as underscores. So with these rules the only way on MediaWiki side is to use FULLPAGENAMEE, which converts spaces to underscodes, urlencodes special characters, but leaves the parentheses intact. Because of this last part the template was modified to urlencode the name a second time, but that wasn't enough, so a third urlencode run was added. This is an ugly hack and I'm amazed it works at all. Turns out it doesn't.
Maybe someone can try to find a combination of encodings that might work with both Neuchâtel and Splashdown (spacecraft landing)? If we can't make that happen on the wiki side, the link in the template could be changed so that it first points to the toolserver with an initial parameter and the toolserver then redirects to Google Maps with the url encoded according to their wishes, but that would add unnecessary overhead for most articles. --Para 19:13, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I think I found a workaround: Template:GeoGroupTemplate/Test. -- User:Docu

[edit] KML export 2007-09-28

KML export is nonresponsive. Wikipedia:Toolserver was down yesterday, is there still a problem? (SEWilco 19:36, 28 September 2007 (UTC))

The toolserver databases are generally unhappy at the moment, but that only affects links from categories. Links from articles should always work, unless of course if the whole toolserver or Wikipedia itself is down. --Para 20:08, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
KML export was failing a few minutes ago on List of National Historic Landmarks in Kansas and List of National Historic Landmarks in Minnesota. (SEWilco 20:15, 28 September 2007 (UTC))
Did CBDunkerson (talk · contribs) change to the old tool because of this mention? I can't find any article or coordinate format with problems. Is this reproducible? When it's failing, are you sure it's the tool and not Google? What do you get when you try to access the tool directly? What is the maximum latency both with Google and directly? --Para 14:31, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
I think the change of CBDunkerson should be reversed, especially since the old tool (suda.co.uk) fails with pages like Extreme points of Switzerland --- User:Docu
Did it need fixing? Above I said "was failing" because it was again working. The message was intended as information to Para as to the timeframe when failures were happening. Is there a discussion in some remote corner with other info about this template? (SEWilco 20:41, 30 September 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Use in {{Howtoreqphotoin}}

This template is transcluded with {{Howtoreqphotoin}}, which is a simple "how to". When used in Category pages (such as Category:California geography stubs or Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Ohio) it somehow produces a usable google map and klm, even though there are no coordinates on the category pages. This use is not documented anywhere (I can't even figure out how it works there).

Could someone more knowledgeable explain this in the documentation. Or even fix the transclusion in in {{Howtoreqphotoin}} so that it only shows up on category pages. The template is automatically displayed on pages such as wikiprojects, where it produces zilch. It is also transcluded in talk pages tagged with {{WikiProject New Orleans}} for example (via the transclusion of Wikipedia:WikiProject New Orleans/to do, wich contains {{Howtoreqphotoin}}), with the same result, zero. This makes it difficult to follow "What links here", and is just poor implementation. Thank you. --Qyd 20:03, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Edit: {{GeoGroupTemplate}} only works on categories containing at least one article that is geo tagged. It does extract coordinates from the articles included in a category, and the displayed map only lists items corresponding to geo tagged articles. That's all great, it should be documented. --Qyd 20:17, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Agreed, the template is useful only on pages that have coordinates on them, or on category pages. It's difficult to make the documentation easily understandable when people require inclusion of partially working tools, but perhaps my previous answers to this question would help someone trying to improve the documentation? Anyway, looks like there's need for a tool that links to GeoHack from a page that doesn't have any coordinates and isn't a category, or that's what the person who added this magic template to the howto seemed to be after. --Para 16:29, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Compressed display option?

Hi. I'm working on numerous list-articles such as List of National Historic Landmarks in Kansas, where we want to include the template prominently, but recently the display size of the template has increased from showing just "Map of all coordinates" on one line, to showing "Map of all coordinates / Export points of interest as KML / Export microformated coordinates as GeoRSS / Map of microformated coordinates" on four lines. For our application, I don't think the readers want to know about those export options, and the expanded version looks bad. Is there a way to show a compressed display, back down on one line? doncram (talk) 08:15, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

It bothered me too. I restored the previous, collapsed version. For future, new versions, I'd suggest that a test version is done first. -- User:Docu
Thanks! doncram (talk) 16:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Use on categories

Currently, it doesn't work on categories. The good news is that Kolossos is updating some of the extractions. -- User:Docu

Fixed. The database had disappeared from the server somehow. I'll update it again when new info is available. --Para (talk) 11:00, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

.:Great, thanks. -- User:Docu

[edit] Maximum number of places?

The template doesn't work properly on List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania. Is this because there are too many places? --NE2 17:56, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

There are about 387 coordinates on that page. On google maps, I got a list of approx. 376 on the left side. Not all these are displayed simultaneously on the map, but when zooming on parts of the state, more and more are shown for that area. -- User:Docu
When I go to [2], the left side says "File not found at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~....". What URL did you use? --NE2 09:06, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Wait a second... it just decided to work properly. Strange... --NE2 09:07, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] map of coords from category of talk pages

I have brought this up before but wondering if anyone has ideas for an alternative solution.

A number of photographers would like to address requests in the categories under Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in places. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Photography#Coordinates for Image/Photo requests. Is there any method, even running a program on request, that could create a map of the reqphoto talk pages based on co-ordinates on the article page? We would really like to address lists like this: Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Germany or this : Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Wales but difficult to find pages of places that are in your current location without spending a great deal of time clicking through links. Traveler100 (talk) 17:34, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Already done. There is a delay before changes are shown. The following text on a Category page is from use of the template {{Howtoreqphotoin}} with the parameters |New York|New York}}. The GeoGroupTemplate is also shown in such a category by Howtoreqphotoin. -- SEWilco (talk) 05:40, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

For New York-related articles needing a photograph, use {{reqphoto|in=New York}} in the talk page, which adds the article to Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in New York. You can help Wikipedia by uploading freely licensed photographs for these articles to Wikimedia Commons.

This is great. I had tried it last week and got a blank page. I guess I should have checked again before making this post. Thank you very much. Traveler100 (talk) 07:05, 24 May 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Broken (toolserver.org)?

It appears to be broken since the toolserver has a new URL. -- User:Docu

Actually, this is another problem. While the admins were doing various changes on the toolserver, they changed something™ that broke compression for all perl tools. I disabled compression while they fix whatever's broken, so the tool works again. --Para (talk) 13:23, 31 May 2008 (UTC)