Commons:Wikimaps/Design/use cases

What Wikimaps could do

Roughly placing maps in their coordinates

• Could happen within the Wikimedia Commons environment
• Alternatively in the Wikimaps environment as a service through Oauth for example. Sending the file over to the tools and saving it back (or just the metadata) in the originating environment.
• An example http://maptcha.org/

Warping maps

• Sending files over from Wikimedia Commons and saving back.
• Searching for maps in the Internet and saving to Wikimedia Commons in exchange for warping.
• Using separately imported data to do the georeferencing/warping

Warping and stitching aerial images

• With aerial images you also need to take into account the terrain and do calculations to correct the distortion caused by different altitudes
• See http://mapknitter.org/

Finding old maps (in Wikimedia Commons / the world)

• A map search within Wikimedia Commons
• Could also be extended to worldwide repositories, whose metadata could be read
• Based on textual location (languages, scripts, alternatives), time (exact, historical event dates, personal events of people), combination,

Tracing maps for OHM

• Using maps from different repositories
• Referencing the source maps
• Extending the start_date, end_date concepts to match the workflow with maps
• Making the changes visual: slider
• Catering for uncertainty, conflicting information, imprecision, narrative descriptions of place
• Gathering place names

Use case scenarios

Please add your story: The map need that you have come across in Wikimedia or elsewhere. Historical maps. Making maps. Historical places. Telling stories about historical events. Either complement what we have already started here or add something completely new.

Finding maps

A person trying to find suitable old maps

• would run into a pile of unreferenced maps
• Could be accessing from Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, the map search directly, or while vectorizing (or anywhere else…)

A person writing an article in Wikipedia about a topic would want to

- While being in the article, find a suitable map - or be recommended maps and images based on categorization of the article: time, location - this could work for the location map: if there is no location map, it should be recommended - After finding a historical scanned map, maybe crop and annotate it

A person may be browsing Wikimedia Commons

- and do house cleaning: categorizing, placing maps, vectorizing - a key classification task is to identify a map

A mapper would want to

- search for maps anywhere for a given time and period

Georeferencing maps

A person wanting to place an unreferenced map

- Would do that while uploading or to a previously uploaded map - Would want to do that to a batch of unreferenced maps

Placing options of a map

- Geocoding a textual description taking into consideration time fuzzy descriptions - Placing, scaling and rotating the map - Additionally warping

A person might want to send a map to be georeferenced only

-The tool could be free to use if the source material would be saved to the Commons?

Finding places on a map

- Finding more information about a place on a map or an aerial image: What is this?

Imagining further

Locating old photographs by address

I have a set of old images. I go to Wikimedia to upload the images. I type in the text on the backside of the image. The search proposes locations to me based on the text: It’s an address in a city that has changed name since. I am presented with a POI or an area in that location, on map of the time, links to texts, images, maps etc that match the time and the location. I must confirm matches to the information or add some of my own. I can add personalities, events (public or private, big or small). I can also work with materials that are non-notable.

GLAM uploader

I represent an archive that has thousands of maps. I want to upload them to the Commons using the GWToolset. The XML file maps the metadata fields to the Commons metadata slots. In the process place names are identified and the locations of the maps are proposed for confirmation.

Mapper looking for maps

I am a mapper that has a dataset to import to OpenHistoricalMap

Biographies

I am a person working to place events in the life of a person on a map. I get an automatic presentation of such a map based on the text in Wikipedia, linking time, locations and media to a map of the time. Additionally, I can ask for a search to be extended to all repositories in the world who offer their materials openly. I will add new materials. The open materials from other repositories are added to Wikimedia Commons, while the information I provided describes that media. All this could be made into different presentations: a clickable map, a slideshow, a route on my mobile…

Amateur researcher

I am a person making original research of a person in Wikimedia, my great-grandmother. I add images, dates, personal events and transcribed snippets from archives to my research. New materials emerge based on information I provide, making possible a collaborative enquiry, and I can confirm relation to my study. In the end, I will be able to create living presentations and publications, and I have transcribed and interpreted information for others to use.

Events aggregation overlay visualization

I am a person browsing old maps of a place. I slide the slider, see places change. I see a heat map superimposed on the map, showing that something important happened in that place at a given time. Entering the space, I am presented with a feed of media of things that happened in that place. I can also aggregate longer periods or filter based on different criteria.

Search with historical spelling

I look for materials about a specific location. In it’s existence, it has been written in different ways, in different languages. When I type the name, the query is associated with a specific place in time, and the information is found.

Historical mobile navigation - non-notable

I use my mobile to navigate in a city. I can tune it to a time in history or allow information from all times. I follow a map, see images in their locations, get information and read texts about places. I can follow the history of a building, the shops that occupied it over the times, and stories of people who lived there.

Maybe even some letters by residents of a house have been read and recorded by some volunteers. I sit down at the site of the event and listen.

Rephotographing, enriching photographs

I set out to find places for old pictures in the city. I grab a set of images that are roughly in my area. I find exactly the site of the photograph. I then rephotograph the place, placing the camera and adjusting the camera as well as I can. It can be a game or a competition. The position of me and where the camera is pointing, and the image itself can be returned to the database.

Positioning maps the mobile way

I take an old map of a place where I am and try to find locations by going to the places and pinning them. While I’m at it, the map adjusts better to the base map, and I can find more places easily.