Commons:GeoCommons

For information on how to add location data, see Commons:Geocoding.

Shortcut

• COM:GEOCO

GeoCommons is a project to show geocoded images from Wikimedia Commons in Google Earth.

The images are plotted as icons so as not to obscure the ground view, and open up on a mouse click. If the heading parameter is provided in the tag, the icon points to the direction of the camera's viewpoint.

Installation

Load GeoCommons.kml in Google Earth and start browsing! The file is only a pointer to the database, so it doesn't have to be reloaded for new data.

If you don't have the Google Earth program yet, a free download is available here. (Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Mac OS X, Linux)

Alternatively, you can browse them on Google Maps, but the thumbnails are smaller and placemarks less accurate.

Functionality

When the GeoCommons layer is active, the program sends its viewpoint coordinates to GeoCommons on the toolserver whenever the user moves around in Google Earth. GeoCommons finds the images in that view from a spatial R-tree database and returns a compressed response to the Google Earth program. The response currently contains at most 100 points, making sure the "best of Commons" is included. The criteria for choosing the images is currently their featured, quality image and picture of the day status. The database updates follow the toolserver replication lag.

How can I help?

• Upload your photos to Commons
• Geocode existing photos (see category gallery)
• Refine geocoding of inaccurately placed images (see list)
• Watch recent geocoding changes to monitor the quality

Similar projects

• Wikipedia World - Geocoded Wikipedia articles or images from articles in Google Earth
• WikiMiniAtlas on Commons - Geocoded Commons images displayed on a Javascript map

• All Panoramio photos KML
• Geograph British Isles KML
• Flickr (through another site) KML

For more information about geocoding in Wikimedia Projects, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates and Commons:Geocoding.

Credits

• GeoCommons by Para
• Dynamic Google Earth implementation based on Wikipedia World by User:Kolossos
• Database dump parser based on parsecommonsdump.pl by de:User:Dschwen

Note! This project is in no way affiliated with GEOCOMMONS from FortiusOne.