Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates

Feedback requested for innovation made

Hello. There is a discussion that might be of your interest and it would be great if you can provide your feedback at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maps#Feedback requested for innovation made. Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 01:14, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Improving geodata accuracy on OSM and Wikidata

I have captured my experience about improving geodata accuracy on OSM and Wikidata and shared it through a short OSM user diary and also a long form article on OSM wiki. Let me know your feedback or your questions. Arjunaraoc (talk) 11:04, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Global Entity Reference System

I see that the Overture Maps Foundation (https://overturemaps.org/) have created a new identifier, the Global Entity Reference System. GERS identifiers are opaque 128-bit handles intended to identify unique entities at any level within the hierarchy of a geographic data system, but don't seem to be UUIDs. (See https://docs.overturemaps.org/guides/gers/). There seems to be some structure within them to be used to ease allocation (and perhaps as a sanity check), but that structure is not supposed to be used as data by end users. (See https://github.com/OvertureMaps/schema/discussions/27)

They also define more structured metadata types, such as places: https://docs.overturemaps.org/schema/reference/places/place/

We should probably follow this iniatiative and work out whether we should link our data with theirs. — The Anome (talk) 10:17, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

"coord restricted"?

I suggest a new coord family tag, {{coord restricted}}. This would indicate that the article describes somewhere with known coordinates, but that those coordinates are restricted from public view with good reasons, and Wikipedians should not attempt to add coordinates to those articles. The primary use would be for archeological sites, whose locations are restricted to thwart vandals and grave robbers. — The Anome (talk) 09:46, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Is that consistent with the purpose of Wikipedia?. Wikipedia is not censored: we are here to supply information. One productive way (that came from the discussion at Talk:Hyperion (tree)) is to supply approximate coordinates, and highlight the fact that the coordinates are approximate. Barring coordinates entirely from an article seems excessive. — hike395 (talk) 18:56, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

An approximation (e.g., d° m') followed by a hidden comment would suffice. If an editor disregards the hidden comment, they would likely disregard this proposed tag. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:06, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Re U.S. locations: I've seen cases in which an NRHP-listed house's location was restricted at the owner's request but our article gave the house's street address, and I've also seen ones in which a historic district's location was restricted but the NHRP nomination form gave the district's exact boundaries. Figuring that the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, in those cases, I went ahead and added coordinates. I've also seen cases in which the NHRP restricts an archaeological site's location and I declined to add coordinates, even though I knew where the place is. Re archaeological sites elsewhere: If the site is labeled on Google Maps or OpenStreetMap, I think it would be overscrupulous to avoid giving coordinates in our article. I think your suggested tag might be a good idea, especially to replace {{coord missing}} tags in articles about places whose "coordinates are restricted from public view with good reasons", but I fear that it might be applied indiscriminately. I also think that approximate coordinates could be useful in some cases, as hike395 and Mandruss have suggested. Deor (talk) 22:08, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree with hike395 that Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED, but we do not, for example, routinely publish people's home addresses, because there are sensible reasons not to do so. Approximate locations may be the right way to go in some circumstances; I did this recently for an archaeological site, where the exact location is restricted, but it is publicly described as being near a particular locality, by geolocating the article with that of the locality. For other cases, there might not be any locality to use in this way, and perhaps the use of very approximate coordinates might be a good idea for these cases. In any case, if we do have that tag, it should not be applied too widely, and just kept for edge cases like sensitive archological sites whose location is not already well-known. — The Anome (talk) 11:08, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Coordinates policy

Is it general WP policy that all articles on neighbourhoods, villages, towns, etc., should include their coordinates? Mcljlm (talk) 04:33, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Policy, no; recommendation, yes. If it's a fixed point, it has coords. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:43, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

What the fuck?

The article 2024 Southport stabbing currently shows coordinates are displayed to a precision of 0.1 second of arc. This is ridiculous overprecision, and entirely inappropriate to an article about such a serious subject; coordinates exist to show location, not to identify a particular doorknob. I've added format descriptors to the coord templates, which are only specified as decimals to 4 dp, to no avail; is this something being done by the infobox? If so, it's grotesque. — The Anome (talk) 22:40, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

The infobox was using {{Wikidatacoord}} to pull the overprecise coordinates from Wikidata. I've replaced that with coordinates given to four decimal places (copied from the {{OSM Location map}} template in the infobox, since I myself have no idea exactly where the event occurred). Deor (talk) 23:06, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

The Anomebot2 downtime

Just to let you know, The Anomebot2, which geocodes articles and adds {{coord missing}} tags, will be on hiatus for a bit, due to hardware failure and lack of time to restore it to operation. Everything is backed up, so nothing is lost, and I will be bringing the service back up in due course, probably running on a cloud instance. — The Anome (talk) 20:58, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

@The Anome: Since it's been more than three months since the bot has added {{coord missing}} tags, can you give any information about when it will be running again? Deor (talk) 00:30, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Parallel and meridian articles

I have two suggestions regarding to them.

1. Parallel articles should have lists starting at 180th meridian, nor Prime meridian, to avoid splitting of Europe and Africa.
2. French overseas deps should have their own flags used. --40bus (talk) 06:13, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

New script

Just letting anyone interested know that User:Jeeputer/coordInserter is now a thing - it helps with adding coordinates to pages in Category:Articles missing coordinates with coordinates on Wikidata. Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 23:03, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Seeking guidance for a feature in coordInserter

Hi. As Suntooooth and I discussed on my talk page, the script mentioned in the thread above can add a template (probably should be created) to indicate that the article with restricted address (such as Anderson Site (Franklin, Tennessee), see the associated Wikidata item) can not have a coord template. The proposed template can prevent people from adding {{coord missing}} again through a Preview warning or an Editnotice.

The actual question is, when coordinates are not present at Wikidata like for the article mentioned above, is it always the case that the address is restricted? In other words, when the item has a coordinate location (P625) property, but the property doesn't have coordinates data, should we place a template to indicate that there can't be a {{coord}} template on the page? Jeeputer ^Talk 05:04, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

I would say "definitely not". There is no reason to believe that a missing datum at wikidata means that it has to be missing. Also, it's hard to believe that the number of sites with confidential locations is too many for manual intervention. Zero^talk 12:47, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

bot to add the coordinates from wikidata to enwiki article

A few weeks ago, there was a request at WP:BOTREQ for a bot to go through Category:Articles missing coordinates with coordinates on Wikidata, add the coordinates from wikidata to enwiki article, and remove the {{coord missing}} template permalink. I had created a program to do that but I was notified that there was no clear consensus for the automation of the task. So here I am, trying the gauge the waters: would it be okay to automate the process? If yes, then what should be avoided, be careful of, and what format of the coordinates should be used? I believe if planned properly, this task could be safely automated. Courtesy ping @Deor, Dawnseeker2000, and Suntooooth: —usernamekiran (talk) 02:59, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I've previously expressed an opposition to the indiscriminate importation of coordinates from Wikidata, and my opinion has not changed. A bot's doing it is by definition indiscriminate. Deor (talk) 16:07, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @The Anome:, who I believe has proposed bot importation of coords before. Deor (talk) 16:11, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

@Deor I am neutral about the bot run. But I think we should discuss what should be, and shouldn't be done by the bot, and what are the risks. Maybe we can find solution for problematic cases, or skip such cases. I am currently running a very simpler similar task, of removing wikidata QID from enwiki infobox, if it matches with wikidata, in case any doubt, the bot skips the removal and adds such doubtful cases to User:KiranBOT/List of mismatched QID. Maybe we can approach the coords task similarly? —usernamekiran (talk) 12:40, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Article titles including co-ords as a disambiguator

Original heading: "Article titles including co-ords as a disambiguator should be strongly, strongly discouraged unless it really is the only way of disambiguating (and even then...)" ―Mandruss ☎ 16:05, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

I've going through some articles and, sheesh, those locations are very often just wrong, and not only that, almost always, if it's a real place, there's at least something that can be used to disambiguate other than the co-ords.

I think we should give some advice somewhere that we should always disambiguate a location with anything but co-ords if there's a better way of doing (e.g., county, district, province, etc.), and that if you find a map with two places with the same name close together, please consider that there may have been a mistake made somewhere because people aren't normally dumb enough to give their village the same name as one 5 minutes drive away. FOARP (talk) 14:53, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it isn't a good look. The only time coordinates should be used if there is several places of the same name within the same municipality and there is no way to distinguish them.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:07, 5 December 2024 (UTC)