One thing which is lost when you convert from lat-long to decimal is the implicit precision of the coordinates. There is a clear difference in implied precision between degrees, degrees-and-minutes, and degrees-minutes-and-seconds references. The same also applies to OSGN coordinates (see below.) Unfortunately, since dm/dms measurements result in recurring decimals, truncating the decimal lat-long in similar ways will lead to unnecessary loss of precision.
It would be nice if an extra parameter could be added to the template to help this: perhaps a "precision" field indicating the effective number of significant figures after the decimal would be the simplest approach at capturing this information lest it be lost? For example, a precision of 0 would mean "to the nearest degree", a precision of 2 would mean "to the nearest 100th of a degress", and so on. -- The Anome 14:37, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A major problem with geocoding interoperability is the use of British OSGB36 National Grid coordinates in UK articles. Since most UK high-resolution geodata is held in OSGB36 coordinates, and they are ideally suited to high-precision use for locations in the UK, their use in UK-based articles is a Good Thing.
However, converting between them and lat-long coordinates is non-trivial. (see this document for an authoritative reference). Unfortunately, this means that most programs that scrape Wikipedia's database dumps will not be able to understand these coordinates, and that UK articles, which are actually some of the most consistently georeferenced in Wikipedia, will appear to be almost devoid of georeferences from the point of view of such software. Since other countries also have similar national grid systems, this problem probably also occurs in other Wikipedia editions.
The best long-term solution, in my opinion, would be to natively support OSGB36, and other specialized coordinate systems, from within the MediaWiki geodata extension. High-resolution lat-long coordinates could then be kept updated in an auxiliary database table, which would track geodata references of all sorts as they were added to Wikipedia articles, and this table could be made available through dumps.
One possible interim solution would be to have a tag which would combine OSGB and lat-long coordinates in a single tag, where the OSGB coordinates would be the master reference, with the lat-long coordinates updated to match the OSGB coordinates, perhaps by a bot, or perhaps as part of the article save logic. -- The Anome 14:23, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
New KML in more languages now available. Have Fun! It is a part of Wikipedia-World -- sk 23:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I created a dot map of the world based on the geographic coordinates found in Wikipedia. Why is Minnesota so sparse? --Bkkbrad
There is a note at Talk:Main Page#Positioning of appeal banner that coordinates listed using the coor title temmplates are clashing with the donations banner. I know that in previous funding drives, the positioning of the coordinates was temporarily changed. Is there a solution if some users see the banner and some don't? - BanyanTree 03:19, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 19:49, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
While an editor can choose either decimal degrees or degrees/minutes/seconds to enter coordinates, does either system have its advantages or disadvantages? Is there one that most people here generally prefer? Thanks, 12.45.169.249 21:55, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The 'Geo' microformat only recognises decimal values - see Category_talk:Coordinates_templates for discussion of the implications. Andy Mabbett 15:39, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The operator Firefox extension is a useful tool that can automatically make good use of web pages that include geographical information in them. There should be an easy way to modify the Wikipedia geographical coordinates so that they are detected by "operator". --Mihai 21:25, 1 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In german wikipedia we discuse the problem, that we can only use one geotag per article for maps and so on (Wikipedia-World). An example is RAF_Museum which is located in London and in Cosford.
So we want to use a new parameter with the name "section" or so. There should be two ways to use this parameter:
section:sub
section:ownname
{{coord|46|57|08.66|N|7|26|22.50|E|region:CH_type:landmark_section:parttwo}}
Is it understandable? Is it OK so? Would other names better(shorter)? My english is not the best. Thanks. de:Benutzer:Kolossos 11:56, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Just published... http://earth.google.com/userguide/v4/geoweb_faq.html (Caniago 17:21, 8 January 2007 (UTC))[reply]
I seem to recall that these templates used to take you to a list of useful choices, such as randmcnally, topozone, mapquest, etc. Now they take you to tools.wikimedia.de, which is extremely slow. Response times in minutes or tens of minutes, at least for me (running Mozilla on Debian stable; I seem to remember occasionally getting faster responses on Windows, which is a red flag in itself).
Isn't there a way around tools.wikimedia.de, or can the latter at least be sped up? --Trovatore 08:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hello all! We've installed the coordenates templates in our Wikipedia and linked it to the German page. Our template category is eu:Kategoria:Koordenatu txantiloiak and we're now working with a little information, but trying to put all basque towns and villages with it's coordinate. We would like to know how to make a dump in order to see WikiMiniAtlas links and Google Earth links in basque. Is it possible? If we have to make it, I'm ready to work on it. Please, if someone knows how, contact me on eu:Lankide eztabaida:Theklan. - eu:Lankide:Theklan
There are quite a lot of articles (and also panoramio photos, google community links etc.) at 0°0′0″N 0°0′0″E / 0.00000°N 0.00000°E / 0.00000; 0.00000, due to empty coordinate templates in articles. It seems like most of the misplaced articles are italian towns like e.g. Nissoria. Is there a generic way to find all these to fix or at least delete them, so in a future update GE that point will not look like the center of the universe anymore? It shouldn't be much difficult to change the program which creates the Community Layer accordingly. andy 17:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I need some help with this cat. It appears many people are opposed to this idea but I fail to see the discussion in the Cfd (Category for discussion). All I see is a big poll of votes. --CyclePat 21:07, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
