Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates/Archive 23

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Citing verifable sources

I've been digging through a handful of the articles at Category:United States articles missing geocoordinate data (thanks for {{coord missing}}!), and although many of the locations have coordinates that are relatively easy to find or calculate, some of them have proven to be much more challenging. For those particularly tough ones, when I do find a verifiable source, I'd like to be able to reference it, but I don't know how to do that when I've got the coordinates displaying in the title. For example, in Tassajara Formation, I'd like to do something like
{{coord|37.86|-122.00|display=title}}<ref>{{cite web|blahblahblah...}}</ref>
but that doesn't connect the footnote to the coordinates. For now, I stuck the reference after the first sentence, but that sentence isn't really what the reference applies to. How should I be doing this? Travisl (talk) 18:17, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll point out that the following emits the footnote link between the globe and the coordinate, although I hesitate to recommend the incantation. It works because coord does not have a ref parameter thus ignores it, but the wikiparser detects the ref tag. -- SEWilco (talk) 17:50, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
{{coord|37.86|-122.00|display=title|ref=<ref>{{cite web|blahblahblah...}}</ref>}}

{{coord|37.86|-122.00|ref=<ref>this is the citation</ref>}} gives 37°52′N 122°00′W / 37.86°N 122.00°W which also gives an empty references section (

^ this is the citation

). I tried it with display=title too, but didn't see a difference.

Is that a purpose that the source: field is suited for? What about adding a ref= parameter to {{coord}}? —EncMstr (talk) 18:17, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

SEWilco was close. Dropping the ref= forces it to work. So, for example, this works, for now:
{{coord|37.86|-122.00|display=title|<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.google.com|title=Google.com}}</ref>}}
Travisl (talk) 22:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

source= or source: seems the better solution. An unnamed parameter in {{coord}} just complicates things. -- User:Docu 14:10, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention that embedding templates-within-refs-within templates makes the things much more difficult to read, both in human and machine-parsing terms. In this case, "source:google.com" would suffice. -- The Anome (talk) 14:43, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm in complete agreement that it should be made easier to read, and that "source=" would be a good tag to add, but it's not yet functional for this kind of use. And while "source:google.com" would work for the simple example I gave, what about an article like Tassajara Formation? Currently, to get it to work, I have it as:
{{coord|37.86|-122.00|display=title|<ref>{{cite web|url=http://pubs.usgs.gov/mf/2000/2342/mf2342f.pdf|title=Geologic Map and Map Database of the Oakland Metropolitan Area, Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco Counties, California|first=R.W.|last=Graymer|year=2000|accessdate=2008-10-08|format=PDF}}</ref>}}
, but I'm well aware that this could be broken by a future coord template update, and I'm not satisfied with my workaround. Because I'm still learning the coord tag, is there anything I should have done differently with this article?

For what it's worth, I also noticed this this has to be placed above {{reflist}}, or it won't get included in the list of references.Travisl (talk) 16:32, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Bah -- it does, however, also make the coordinates unlinked. See, e.g., Terminus (Atlanta) Travisl (talk) 05:38, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

To slightly revivify this discussion, I note that Travisl and I have been discussing this in the context of Russian Monument (Liechtenstein), which started with the not clickable but referenced coordinate version, then a clickable but not obviously referenced coord and finally a longhand note. It would be ideal if we could amend {{coord}} such that it could carry an inline reference without breaking. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:28, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Lakes (3)

Category:Wikipedia infobox lake articles without coordinates is now below 750 (of 5282), compared to 1050 (of 5000) in August. This is an increase of nearly 600.

Of those 750 articles, 50 are about lakes in Europe, 356 in the United States, and 91 in Canada.

Thank you to all those participating. -- (Oct 26, 2008) User:Docu

Yeah! Great work to all participating, Spencer^T♦^C 22:11, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Sweet. I picked a letter (T), and added coordinates to all of the lakes starting with that letter. All lakes starting with T have coordinates now. Time to pick another letter tomorrow. Thanks for pointing out this sub-project. Fun! Travisl (talk) 05:41, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

U, V, Y, Z, Ø, Đ, and Ş are done. There weren't any Xs. 667 lake pages to go. Travisl (talk) 05:23, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Good work! BTW letter "E" is gone (at least for now). Current status is 682 (of 5344). -- (Nov 9, 2008) User:Docu

The category is now down to 604 (of 5445). That means, we are 179 ahead since November. -- (Dec 26, 2008) User:Docu

{{PAGESINCATEGORY}} gives a running total: 0. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:20, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Would you put that back to the #To_do list? You removed [1] it from there some time ago. -- User:Docu

(In reply to Docu (talk · contribs)). No. I removed it because there are dozens of similar categroies, all of no lesser importance. BTW, your sig is still unhelpfully devoid of links. Please fix it. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:39, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Nearly done countries challenge #4

Okay, that was getting a bit tricky. Here's an update:

~~3 articles need coords in The Central African Republic~~ Done This was a tough one. I'm not entirely happy with my conclusion for Abiras, and had to make a leap of faith about the mouth of the Gboyo River, but in the process found that http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps is a great resource for finding maps of really obscure, remote locations.

Deep breath --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:43, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Open items moved to #5. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:51, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Just to let everyone know how geocoding is going at the moment, I've been collecting daily totals in a coord missing scorecard page. It seems to show about 100 articles per day being "organically" geocoded each day at the moment: two days have been atypical: one day was a gecoding bot run, and the most recent day was particularly slow, but I imagine that was because everyone was watching the U.S. elections instead of editing articles.

In other news, I've added outreach messages to various railway WikiProjects, which cover several thousand untagged railway station articles between them. -- The Anome (talk) 01:58, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

The scorecard is kinda cool. I notice that US articles make up about 20% of the total untagged articles. Since this cat is so large, maybe we should consider breaking them up by state. --Bachrach44 (talk) 17:38, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Muqayshit

I happened to be doing some coordinates for UAE articles, and I found a hoax page: Muqayshit, which I deleted (I could tell it was a hoax- incorrect locational info, no reliable internet search results, etc.). Complete nonsense about being the largest island in the UAE, but looked quite real. Spencer^T♦^C 03:06, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Interesting! That's another clear argument for the effectiveness of geocoding for establishing verifiability. -- The Anome (talk) 03:38, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Although... See this Google search for Muqayshiţ (notice the diacritic on the "ţ"), and "grep Muqayshiţ geonames_dd_dms_date_20081022.txt" on the global GNS file seems to show an island of that name at aound 24°10′39″N 53°47′10″E / 24.1775°N 53.786111°E, as well as a "PT" feature Ra’s Muqayshiţ near that location at 24°10′04″N 53°37′17″E / 24.167778°N 53.621389°E.

This article appears to call the island Abu'l-Abyadh. The spelling Abu al Abyad finds a Wikipedia article about an island with an identical description (largest island in the UAE), as confirmed by Googling (e.g. http://www.uaeinteract.com/docs/ERWDA_Releases_Book_on_Abu_Dhabis_Largest_Island/5679.htm), and the GNS lists an island called Abu al Abyadh at 24°10′39″N 53°47′10″E / 24.1775°N 53.786111°E, identical to the coordinates given for the island feature called "Muqayshiţ", and with the same feature ID, -782036, implying that it is an alternative name for the same feature.

Grepping for the feature ID finds a lot of names for the same feature, including Megaishit, Maqaishat Island, Abū al Abyaḑ, Magayshit, Abū al Aby, Al Jirāb...

Accordingly, I've restored Muqayshit, and added merge notices, since it seems they're the same place.

Which still shows the importance of geocoding for verifiability! -- The Anome (talk) 03:42, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

<sheepish/> Oops. Spencer^T♦^C 20:58, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

US state level

I happened upon Category:Ohio articles missing geocoordinate data. I think I'm going to work through this one. Can this be added to the scoresheet? Spencer^T♦^C 03:41, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Hm. Seems that's why the US went down ~300 coordinates on two days. Spencer^T♦^C 03:46, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Nearly done countries challenge #5

We seem to be reasonably good at islands. Here's this week's homework; geocode these: --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:49, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

1 article each in North Korea, ~~Namibia~~ Done, ~~Turkmenistan~~ Done & ~~Saint Vincent and the Grenadines~~ Done
4 articles need coords in Djibouti
8 5 articles need coords in Suriname - this map and this may may help finding some locations.
~~14 3 articles need coords in Bhutan~~ Done
~~14 articles need coords in Comoros~~ Done
- http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps is a great resource for finding maps of really obscure, remote locations.

General question: How is the scorecard updated? I tried manually updating it, but it's taking forever, and then I accidentally did something and I lost everything. Is there a quicker way than viewing each individual category? Spencer^T♦^C 22:37, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I assume The Anome has a bot or some toolserver magic way of getting the figures. Doing it by hand is a recipe for madness. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:43, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

coords for places which don't exist yet

Should places which don't exist yet (like the proposed 1138 Peachtree building) be given coordinates? --Bachrach44 (talk) 00:59, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Do up the coords, if anyone complains, just comment it out, but leave it in the article. perhaps explain that in the comment. --smadge1 (talk) 01:01, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

If the place has an identified proposed location, then yes. 1138 Peachtree clearly falls into that class. I've just stumbled on Allandale railway station, which'll likely never be built, but it is a good example of something which deserves a coordinate. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:05, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I even started listing real coords for places that don't yet have a page on my on user page. --smadge1 (talk) 02:45, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Since the names of articles are used on things like Google Maps & Google Earth (and others), perhaps the article should be renamed something like Allandale railway station (proposed), or Allandale railway station (aborted) Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:52, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Planned or aborted geographical features

Allandale railway station was moved to Allandale railway station (proposed), but that move was reverted. I don't think that this should be decided on a per-article basis, without an over-arching policy, so I've started a discussion at Naming conventions#Planned or aborted geographical features Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:51, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Geohack - UK - New Popular Edition Maps

Could/should New Popular Edition Maps be added to the Great Britain section in Geohack? NPE appears to accept URLs having OS refs as arguments. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:50, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

See User:The Anome/npemap.org.uk URLs for a collection of all of these I can currently find, after manual removal of various classes of inappropriate pages and links. -- The Anome (talk) 10:39, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Bear in mind that some of the listed stations already have coords. I'll look at the margin of error issue later this evening. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:30, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Note that Geohack's conversion to OSGB fails to convert for the change in geoid, so grid co-ordinates from WP are typically about 150m out. This was discussed a year ago, I filed a bug [2], and I even found some PHP code that could be slotted in as a drop-in replacement [3], but so far nothing has been done about it. Jheald (talk) 20:00, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Can I suggest you drop a note onto User talk:Magnus Manske; I gather he is involved in the care & feeding of geohack. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:02, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

~~And what about geograph. Admittedly this is photographs & not maps, but it is (presumably) addressable by OS coordinates?~~ --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:59, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

We do already give a link to geograph. Jheald (talk) 20:00, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

So we do. thanks. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:04, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I have just set up Jonathan Stott's OSGB conversion code that Jheald pointed us to, together with Tagishsimon's mention at User:The Anome/npemap.org.uk URLs on how their references work, on the toolserver. I interpreted that as round(easting/1000)-1 and the same for northing. The tool takes the usual decimal coordinates on Wikipedia and redirects to the NPE Maps site. So for example, the NPE link above shows Abbots Ripton railway station, which according to the article is at coordinates 52°23′35″N 0°12′20″W / 52.393056°N 0.205556°W. The URL http://toolserver.org/~para/wgs2npemaps.php?ll=52.393056,-0.205556 with those coordinates leads to the same NPE page. It seems to work elsewhere too, but please test before putting it on GeoTemplate. --Para (talk) 18:35, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I've tested it on four locations and am satisfied that the target is always fairly central on the map. Observing that it alters the position of its map by whole squares, and has a display of 4 rows by 8 columns, I don't think we can do better than you have done, Para, in getting a more central display of the target than we're getting. It gets a big tick from me; thank you very much for implementing it. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:38, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

If we follow the geo-links in 52°23′35″N 0°12′20″W / 52.393056°N 0.205556°W, and select 'Old OS Maps' on the right, we are then taken (in npe maps) to an undefined page (trying to use #7576,-5566,1). Any ideas? (Para's link in contrast works perfectly.) Occuli (talk) 22:17, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

That 'Old OS Maps' on the ponies.me.uk site was added to GeoTemplate five months ago and the link has been broken ever since[4]. Something tells me old maps aren't that popular when nobody has mentioned anything before. The latitude and longitude were swapped in the link, I fixed it for now. However, we should replicate the links to those services on GeoTemplate, if we haven't already. Then the only remaining advantage of that site is the transparent Google Maps overlay. --Para (talk) 00:12, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Vyf Rand

As part of the Nearly Done Countries challenge, I thought I'd take a look at Namibia's Vyf Rand article.

This [5] specifies the location of Vyf Rand as "an informal settlement a few kilometres east of [Okahandja]", which cuts down the range of possible locations somewhat. This map gives a set of six possible locations for it.

This news report describes children having to walk 7 km each day to get to school at Nau Aib, implying that it is 3.5 km away from Nau Aib; there are coordinates for a Nau Aib clinic given here as 21°59′18″S 16°55′30″E / 21.98823°S 16.92488°E / -21.98823; 16.92488.

This photo is labeled as "Viewing Vyf Rand", but there's nothing at the geocoded point, suggesting that this was the point the photo was taken from, not Vyf Rand itself. The full-sized version of the photo (click on the photo itself on the Panoramio page) may well provide enough information for a sufficiently ingenious person to locate it by a combination of geometry and map-reading. (Possibly here, or here?) Can anyone help pin this down? -- The Anome (talk) 15:04, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Good research, but I'm not able to pin it down any better. However, I have e-mailed two people who have been providing spiritual support to church leaders in Namibia [6] and who have been in Vyf Rand. If they can provide coordinates, I'll use them. It's certainly not from a verifiable source, and it's from a primary source, both reasons that I'm hoping we'll find something published and verifible, but for now, if I get them from the Garbers, I'll clearly note it as such on the page. Travisl (talk) 20:16, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Response received, coordinates added, Namibia done. See Talk:Vyf Rand for more info. Travisl (talk) 03:12, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Fantastic! Satellite maps indeed confirm that there's something that looks very much like a squatter camp at that location. I note that my two guesses as to its location were way out. -- The Anome (talk) 13:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Tool for Google Maps

Hi WP:GEO! I have recently created this rather rudimentary tool for calculating normal geographic coordinates out of Google Maps links. Center on a location in Google Maps, right-click, click 'link', copy/paste the link into the first line of the tool, and click 'Go'. The 'WikiMarkup' result currently only works for north/east locations, although if there's enough interest, I'll fix this and add a documentation. Apologies if a similar tool already exists (I couldn't find one). -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 17:53, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I use http://mapper.acme.com/ , which gives you a cross-hair to put on the target, and a choice of units for coordinates. For the US, it also gives you the choice of USGS topo maps, in addition to Google's maps and satellite photos.

—WWoods (talk) 20:03, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I didn't know about this tool. It uses a highly outdated version of Google's maps though, therefore useless for Israel :( but I'm sure it's great for the US. -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 20:14, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Huh! I'd never compared them like that before. I'd assumed Acme was running on top of Google somehow. —WWoods (talk) 22:57, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to Ynhockey; it's an interesting tool which i may use ... it certainly requires less keystrokes through the tool than my current method of scraping the coords from multimap. And it gives me coord in DMS, which I like. I'd kinda like a type radiobutton on the screen so that I can choose a type; also a field for inputting the region, so that I can get all of the elements of the coord tag I conventionally use, such as {{coord|1|2|3|N|4|5|6|E|type:city_region:GB|display=title}}. All that said, I'd actually prefer, if anyone has the ingenuity, to get a version of some jaavascript which gives me a coord in DMS, along the lines of the following, which if summoned as a bookmark when on a google map, gives a decimal coord: javascript:void(prompt('',%22{{coord|%22 + gApplication.getMap().getCenter().lat() + %22|%22 + gApplication.getMap().getCenter().lng() + %22}}%22)); --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:52, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I have incorporated some of your suggestions, although I'm not quite sure how the whole type/region thing works on Wikipedia. Also, at this point I would not like to use any JavaScript, but if I have time, I'll play around with maybe incorporating the Google Maps gadget directly into the page. -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 21:58, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again. The one last change I suggest would be to constrain the seconds to 0 decimal places, or else to provide two output boxes, one with seconds to 2 dp, t'other to 0dp. Decimal seconds ... too precise in just about every case. thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:06, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Done. I made it still default to 2, but if you choose another number, it sticks until you exit the page. -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 22:19, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Howdy - I tried the second javascript option (the long one) listed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Obtaining_geographic_coordinates#Google_tools This seems to give incorrect coordinates. The first (short) one works, but I prefer the output format of the second option. Anybody out there know how to make it work right? If so, this would be a huge help! -- Kojones 19:19 US Mountain Time, 30 November 2008