Wikimapia
 | This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: In places the language could be improved, there is also a lack of sourcing other than Wikimapia itself. (July 2012) |
Type of site | Collaborative mapping |
|---|---|
| Available in | 101 languages, including English |
| Created by | Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev |
| Revenue | From AdSense |
| URL | www |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Optional |
WikiMapia is an open-content collaborative mapping project aimed to mark all geographical objects in the world and provide a useful description for them. It combines interactive web map with a wiki system. Both registered users and guests have already marked over 18,000,000 objects and this number grows every day. Currently over 1,500,000 people joined Wikimapia community. The User generated content added by users is available under a Creative Commons Share Alike license through both a web application and an API.
Main principles
Wikimapia basic concern is to compile and sort by categories as much information about the whole world as possible, and provide an opportunity to explore and use it for free. Wikimapia is made collaboratively by lnternet volunteers who form content guidelines largely themselves.
History
Wikimapia was launched at 24 of May in 2006 by two Russian Internet entrepreneurs Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev. Though name of the project reminds of Wikipedia and they share “wiki” philosophy, Wikimapia is not a part of non-profit charitable Wikimedia Foundation, but is maintained by a privately owned commercial company.
How Wikimapia works
Wikimapia website provides Google Maps API-based interactive web map that consists of user-generated information layer on top of Google Maps satellite imagery and other resources. It allows the user to select any marked object and view its description. Apart from this and the search tool, the user can filter and highlight objects by categories.
The user can add a new location by drawing its outline on top of satellite photo, then writing a description for it, choosing its category and uploading reference pictures. Editing existing tags is possible for registered users only.
Linear features, i.e. roads, railroads and rivers, can also be drawn and provided with description and photos.
In December 2009 Wikimapia launched an API and made its content available in several formats for non-commercial use, this license was later updated to a Creative Commons Non Commerical License, and in 2012 to a Creative Commons Share Alike.
Wikimapia map can also be embedded on other websites.
Another feature that helps editing and exploring the information on Wikimapia is a watchlist system. Any user can choose and save a certain area to monitor changes of the map.
Wikimapia is a multi-lingual website and supports 101 languages. Every tag can have separate description on any of them. The interface is also being translated by users. When a visitor comes to Wikimapia, the system automatically sets a default language interface and offers a list of languages in a drop-down menu.
A small team of administrators maintain and continue to develop Wikimapia. They introducе new features and determine further evolution course. These and overall Wikimapia improvements are influenced by users as well through discussions on forum or reports and requests on issue tracking system.
Article quality in Wikimapia
Wikimapia users can add any information that seems valuable. This is the reason why articles may contain personal impression of a place, advices, notes of admonition, recommendations or else debatable information. So users should be aware that not all articles are of encyclopedic standard from the start. But it does not necessarily reduce the value of Wikimapia data, for it is in its concept[citation needed] that a private opinion based on personal experience can be useful and up-to-date too. Besides, Wikimapia is constantly being improved by users themselves.
Community
The community of Wikimapia users is largely self-organizing. But there is a rating system based on experience points, which users gain for every action according to its complexity. The system is supposed to encourage adding new information and preventing disruption or vandalism which are common problems of a crowd-sourcing project. While a person attains experience points the system provides him\her an access to new features or eases the restrictions to carry out certain actions.
If a person has built a reputation as a competent editor he/she might get a proposal to become a moderator. In such case he/she will receive some extra authority to help newcomers, monitor the map and ban a user as appropriate.
Wikimapia also operates a forum, where most discussions take place.
Clutter and filtering
In some areas of the world with out-of-date or very expensive mapping, such as in the case of developing countries, Wikimapia growth has been phenomenally rapid. This rapid growth brought problems of its own, however. Urban areas became covered with overlapping outlines marking the positions of private residences. To prevent cluttering Wikimapia moderators watch such areas closely and de-clutter them by distinguishing those residences from places of public interest and editing or deleting tags when needed.
Licensing
In May 2012 Wikimapia announced that all the content is now available under Creative Commons license Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) (Previously in Dec 2010 the data had been release under a Non-Commerical Creative Commons license). This means that Wikimapia offers all of its data for sharing, recasting, transforming or adapting in any form recognizably derived from the original for any use. But licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.
Despite this, because the WikiMapia's geo-located data is largely derived from aerial imagery provided from Google Maps (whose imagery is from a number of partners including TerraMetrics, Bluesky), the dataset (and any further derivations from it) may constitute a "derived work". Whilst dependent on jurisdiction, the principle allows aerial photography companies to license their exclusive right to derive geo-data from their imagery (commercially, or under proprietary restrictions)). Although Google are (as of July 2012), not known to have launched copyright actions in the courts over use of aerial imagery, their terms of service do include a specific provision barring 'derivations' without a license from Google.[3] Concerns have been raised about this.[4]
Business model
The site generates some income using Google ads.
Interoperability
Limited WikiMapia functionality is available on:
- Google Earth, using Google Earth dynamic layer in KML file.[5]
- Any HTML webpage, using code for a map frame which can be found on the top menu, under "WikiMapia:Map on your page"
- Most Java-enabled cellphones using 3rd party software such as Mobile GMaps.
- iOS (iPhone/iPad) application.[6]
See also
- Bhuvan
- Collaborative mapping
- Google Earth
- Google Map Maker
- List of GPS Software for Mobile Phones
- List of wikis
- OpenStreetMap
- Participatory GIS
- Placeopedia
- Public Participation GIS
References
- ^ "Wikimapia.org Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2012-08-02.
- ^ Wikimapia.org
- ^ [1] - Section's 2(a), 2(b) of Google Maps/Earth Additional Terms of Service"
- ^ [2] - Forum thread about licensing concerns
- ^ Wikimapia.org
- ^ Mifki.com
External links
