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List:       wikien-l
Subject:    Re: [WikiEN-l] 18 months
From:       Pete Bartlett <pcb21 () yahoo ! com>
Date:       2006-04-25 15:23:19
Message-ID: 20060425152319.74211.qmail () web34512 ! mail ! mud ! yahoo ! com
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MGM, Geni and Erik wrote about:
>WikiAtlas

As it was the specific example of mapping data that spurred my mini-rant,
I wanted to quickly reply on that aspect. The more general stuff I hope to 
say something more coherent on later.

To Geni: Yes copyright isn't on our side here. But the situation in the US
is better than many other places, so we could push ahead there.

To MGM: I want to encourage more general thinking than a binary "this is in"
/"this is out". Of course if we are writing about Pullman, Washington, to write in 
prose about every junction would be tedious beyond belief. But on the hand,
why shouldn't (in an ideal Free world) the user have the possibility to open a sidebar
with a map of the area to the standard of Google Maps, with other places with a 
Wikipedia article marked on. etc etc. We should have useful integration, not 
standalone barely-speaking-to-one-another projects.

If that's a bit blue sky here's another example, 
if you go to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London article
you will see some co-ordinates in the top-right corner (at least in Monobook skin - 
not sure about the rest). Click those co-ordinates and you get a list of map resources
- it is an extension modelled on clicking on an ISBN. That is a simple idea, but
is really effective. I'd like to see that spread across all geographical articles just as 
a simple start. Also, is there a show-stopping reason why the extension is not
turned on MediaWiki? (I'll try the other list for that)

Pete






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