Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maps

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Archive 1 (2004) Archive 2 (2005) Archive 3 (2006) Wikipedia talk:Maps

Contents 1 Gallery of Exemplars 2 Map colors 2.1 ColorBrewer 3 On Style and Standards 4 Battle of Chalons 5 Maps of the Roman-Spartan War 6 Comments requested 7 Comments on some maps requested 8 XML+XSL=SVG 9 High resolution map of Sweden 10 Airport route map - comments requested 11 Categories and templates 12 Need advice on my territorial evolution maps 13 Antarctica exploration map 14 US army maps 15 Request for review of map classification 16 Battle of Greece maps

[edit] Gallery of Exemplars

As I suggested in the Map Colors discussion below, having a gallery of exemplars might help to advance our discussion of standards. These exemplars might also serve as an interim standards for mapmakers to use until the project establishes standards. Since mapmaking (and reading) are extremely visual, it helps to be able to see what people are talking about. Here is a suggestion of what such a gallery might look like:

UK outline map Standard colors: Medium blue - 9ec7f3 Yellow - ffffd0 Tan - f7d3aa Additional colors: Gray - 808080

Ancient Greek Colonies of North Black Sea Example of inset Standard colors: Medium blue - 9ec7f3 Yellow - ffffd0 Black - 000000 Blue -1821de Additional colors: Red - ff3329 Taupe? - 4d4d4d NavyBlue? - 0000aa

Florida Political Map Standard colors: Medium blue - 9ec7f3 Yellow - ffffd0 Black - 000000 Orange - f7d3aa Additional colors: PowderBlue? - cee3e9 BrightYellow? - ffff00 Red? - ff0000

Switzerland outline map Example of contrast shading, alternate pallette

Blank map of India, used as a base map for other India maps. It is a featured picture and an example of a SVG format map.

An historic map example featuring the Holy Roman Empire.

People could then add, delete or change the comments as the discussion on standards advances. Tomcool 13:46, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Map colors

We need to come up with a standard palette of colors to recommend for use in all geographical maps. The previous use of "Pink" (FF0D0) and "Lavender" (F2D0FF) as third and fourth colors for four-color maps is unworkable.

Color	Hex	RGB	Sample	Used for
Black	#000000	0, 0, 0		Primary label color
Brown	#A08070	160, 128, 112		Political borders. Country, state, and province borders should be brown.
Light brown	#D0C0A0	208, 192, 160		Secondary political borders.
Light yellow	#FFFFD0	255, 255, 208		Primary territory of interest, or one of four choices for four-color maps.
Pink	#FFD0D0	255, 208, 208		Another color to be used for four-color maps.
Orange	#F8A20C	248, 162, 12		A third color to be used for four-color maps.
Green	#3CE67B	60, 230, 123		A fourth color to be used for four-color maps.
Light blue	#CEFEF2	206, 254, 242		An alternate color to be used for four-color maps.
Orange	#F7D3AA	247, 211, 170		Alternative color for the above Tan (surrounding territories).
Medium blue	#9EC7F3	158, 199, 243		Bodies of water. Oceans or lakes.
Blue	#1821DE	24, 33, 222		Water borders, if necessary. For lake or ocean borders that need a color contrasting with surrounding land, or for rivers.
Red	#B00000	176, 0, 0		Points of interest. Cities, especially.
Red-orange	#F07568	240, 117, 104		Alternative color for the above Red (points of interest).
Medium red	#E0584E	224, 88, 78		Border color for areas highlighted in Red-orange
Green	#A0F090	160, 240, 144		Parks or natural preservation areas

Feel free to add or revise the colors above and suggest new colors for specific purposes.

This is an important idea but doesn't take into account the complexity of map-making. Reading over the list of suggested uses, this looks to me like a scheme for regional or perhaps national maps; cities are shown, perhaps, as small dots or symbols. Many maps are of this type but many are not.

City maps must show, at a minimum, highways, arteries, and streets; by convention most maps use different colors for each. Topographic maps show contour lines; railway maps (among others) show rail lines. Demographic maps and their relatives tend to use large numbers of colors to show populations or distributions of some variable. (Personally, if the variable assumes ordered values I strongly prefer tints of one basic color.) Mass transit maps are often drawn by transit agencies to reflect scheduled service that is named by color (see Chicago 'L'); we must follow these schemes.

I do strongly agree that map standardization contributes to the overall professionalism of the project. Color palettes only scratch the surface; fonts, line styles, and a host of other variables ought to be standardized. I do fear, though, that there are simply too many existing maps in widely various styles to be redrawn. These act as a giant boat anchor opposing any effort at standardization. Still, I feel there's some value in the effort. John Reid 09:15, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Multiple pastel shades are very difficult to distinguish on LCD screens, like my laptop. I would encourage the use of more highly saturated colors than the ones proposed, for color-coded maps where the color carries the information content. (Rather than just helping to increase the contrast between two sides of a black-line border.) -- Beland 01:36, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Any opinions on the colours to use when shading a map by height? I personally quite like a progression from green (sea level) to yellow (low hills) to white (mountains) and perhaps to purple (for the very highest mountains). -- ras52 12:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for making such a comprehensive and useful recommendation. I think adoption of a palate (or a series of palates) such as this one is a good way to go. One quibble: the basic color, Light yellow, #FFFFD0, is a little vibrant, maybe even garish, when used for large areas. I noticed that a lot of good maps used in Wikipedia use a slightly tamer yellow, #FFFFEO, so I recommend establishing that as a standard. (Example in a map I built is at right.) One other recommendation to help advance this issue: we should create a gallery of good maps that we can refer to as interim standards and as examples to advance discussion. (Interestingly, if you browse all maps that have been Featured Pictures in Wikicommons, there's only a handful, and they don't immediately suggest a standard.) One of the maps we should consider for this gallery is the outstanding map of Switzerland (to the right.) Tomcool 23:20, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I am at a loss as to why the Switzerland map is an exemplar. While the use of shading makes for an interesting effect, it does not produce the clarity that we need here, particularly for so complex a map as that of Switzerland. In addition, the names/labels on the map are too small to be read except at the higher magnifications. Moreover, of the five maps shown as exemplars, this one does not use anything close to the standard colours. Thanks for listening, Madman 05:12, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ColorBrewer

I would consider that we adopt the pallette of color brewer. SCmurky 23:49, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Which ColorBrewer palette? The best-looking one for height seems to be the fourth sequential one which runs from dark green, through increasingly pale colours to a cream, but I don't think that's ideal — for a start I'd prefer it all to be paler, go to white (rather than cream), and perhaps beyond white to purple. But maybe ColorBrewer can do more than I'm realising. Was this the colour scheme you had in mind? -- ras52 08:56, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I was just thinking in general, because it takes time to establish conventions regarding map colors, and colorbrewer does have a standard palette with lots of variety. This would probably work better than the list we have above. Do you know of a more extensive list of colors for use in maps? SCmurky 17:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Also I would have to say I disagree with any efforts to limit color choices within cloropleth maps (eg. pink, green, red, blue for a 4-color map), no matter the number of classes. Colorbrewer has a large palette, this would offer some standardization for colors, without limiting choice (eg. pastel vs. darker colors). SCmurky 17:40, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

The recommendation to use Colorbrewer is a well-considered one. A lot of work has gone into establishing these standard palettes, and many aspects have been addressed, such as friendliness for color-blindness and photocopying. The Colorbrewer interface is also excellent. The problem, IMO, is that the many of the color choices could be better. Many of the colors are unnatural and garish. This is an aesthetic question, I know, but I think that some of the palettes are ugly and maps made from them are going to tend to be ugly maps. I'd like to hear from some more experienced map-makers and maybe some graphic artists, fine artists (especially painters), or photographers or colorists to see what they think. Tomcool 23:31, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On Style and Standards

I made some first steps in creating some badly missing African river maps – see Image:CongoLualaba_watershed_plain.png and Image:CongoLualaba_watershed_topo.png and while working on that i had a few thoughts i would like to share and get some feedback for:

• As already mentioned by others it might be a good idea to have some standard color maps for relief altitude coloring. There should best be at least two variants for maps where the main purpose is showing the topography and others where it should not distract too much from other map content. Currently the most widely used color maps for this purpose on Wikipedia seem to be the Demis one (like Image:Topographic30deg_N0E30.png) which i find not that nice and the one introduced by User:Captain Blood (like in Image:Canada_topo.jpg) which is very heavy.

• Map projections. Of course this much depends on the map purpose but some general guidelines might be good to introduce. http://www.radicalcartography.net/?projectionref provides some useful information but is very elaborate. Especially for medium area maps like of continents or larger countries there are lots of possibilites with strongly varying results. I also noticed that a lot of maps do not have any information on the projection used in the description. This is not always necessary but if you know it and it is not self-evident i would encourage everyone to provide this information. Imagico 22:43, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Very nice Congo maps, though I might add country borders to give more frame of reference. It's been on my list to do for awhile but I never got around to downloading the African datasets. I've had requests to do the Nile as well if you want to take it on. As for the relief coloring I like the Demis one, especially if your adding other content becuase it's light enough not to get in the way. Kmusser 15:00, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

For the Nile the nothern part is difficult so find a clear edge of the drainage basin for. The western edge of what is shown in http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/water-resources/map-299.html looks very much like guesswork to me.

I uploaded versions with borders but this of course means more clutter – Image:CongoLualaba_watershed_plain_political.png and Image:CongoLualaba_watershed_topo_political.png. Imagico 21:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

For another datasource to check against try http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/hydro/africa.html - though in really dry areas drainage boundaries are largely guesswork, nothing to be done about that. I do like the new maps better, not quite as pretty but probably more useful - I'd use the topo_political one for the article. Kmusser 23:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that link – I made the Nile now using that data for the north-east edge (and the VMAP0 river network for the other parts): Image:Nile_watershed_plain.png and Image:Nile_watershed_topo.png. I also think the Shaded version with borders is probably best although it does not use the standard colors of course. Imagico 14:14, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I uploaded an old topographic map I made that is somewhere in between the light and dark examples that you gave. I still have the color ramp I used for this one somewhere if others are interested in using it. Image:Uspaintedrelief.png Kmusser 15:41, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that looks quite good (although i am not sure if the use of violet coloring for the high mountains is optimal). But as you said a brighter scheme is less disturbing for secondary use. Imagico 21:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Battle of Chalons

Proposed image for the battle of Châlons. Althoguh it look like a map it cannot deserve the proper title as it holds no true scale. Due to the rarity of informaiton and lack of actual knowledge on the location of the battle I took artistic leave to build the terrain based on Jordanes' dercription. Thoughts are welcomed.--Dryzen 19:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

First, let me commend you for your work: you have spent many hours on this map. Also, I have no problem with the background; until a recognized authority proves where this battle occured, all we can say about the battlefield is what Jordanes says -- that on one side there was a hill of some height and a stream that ran through it. However, there are a few changes I would recommend:

• I don't understand why you have the Alans at the far left at the beginning. Jordanes is quite clear that from the beginning of the battle they had been stationed in the middle, between the Romans and the Visigoths, where Aetius and Theodoric could keep an eye on them.
• I'd also rename the groups you have called "Germanics". First, I'm not sure that this is the proper term; "German tribes" might be more accurate. However, the Huns had a number of non-German allies at the battle -- Slavic peoples, horse-warrior peoples, & others -- or so many modern historians & nationalists state; I'd rename the group on the Hunnic side to "Hunnic allies" or "Allied people", & avoid the problem entirely.
• Related to this is another problem, that you have a lot more information on this map than I would vouch for -- & I have researched this battle fairly thoroughly for my contributions to this article. There are a number of commanders I do not recognize as having participated: Merowig, Ellak, Ardaric, etc. And you provide a lot more details on unit movements than I believe can be documented. I feel the best thing to do is to remove some of the detail you have added. Although I don't like Michael Babcock's book The Night Attila Died for several reasons, I think his simple map & brief notes provide a model worth copying. His portrait of the battle focusses on three actions (to which I have added some notes):
  • The initial race to sieze the hill between the Huns & the Romano-Gothic Allies, which the Allies won. (Jordanes is unclear here: he places the Visigoths on the right of the Allies lines, yet from his account one could conclude that the Visigoths under Theodoric captured this hill on the allied army left.)
  • Then Attila led a countercharge into the middle of his opponents' lines, which Babcock claims drove the Alani under Sangiban back. (This may have also been the skirmish where King Theodoric of the Visigoths was killed.)
  • Attila then fell back to his encampment, where he prepared to fight to his death, with the Visigoths in close persuit. Some, under Theodoric's son Thorismund, apparently pursued the fleeing enemy past Attila's camp, for Jordanes notes Thorismund mistook the Hun's camp for his own & was almost caught while entering it.

Showing more than this borders too close to original research for my taste -- unless your intent is to illustrate how a specific authority interprets the evidence for this battle, which then is fine but you should indicate that this is what you are doing. -- llywrch 19:32, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• Not German tribes, that hurts my brain, "Germanic tribes" otherwise the ancient Gauls would be French tribes.

Well "Germanic" hurts mine. So there. :-P -- llywrch 21:53, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but it usage in modern scientific literature to use Germanic tribes as they are Germanic peoples. German is a 16th century creation to distinguish between Dutch people as now the inhabitants of the Netherlands were called Dutch and that of the HRE German. Wandalstouring 00:05, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• • "Attila then fell back to his encampment, where he prepared to fight to his death, with the Visigoths in close persuit. Some, under Theodoric's son Thorismund, apparently pursued the fleeing enemy past Attila's camp, for Jordanes notes Thorismund mistook the Hun's camp for his own & was almost caught while entering it."

• I think this are two seperate things whether someone follows the enemy in pursuit or mistakes an enemy camp for his own.
• Source this map. Afterwards we can remove unsourced material.Wandalstouring 19:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the first thing we need to do is source the map, and remove anything which is unsourced. old windy bear 23:21, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The map is source on the map's page. Most of it had been cut off in the re-loading. I've little time so I'll make my reply brief:

• I've not read Michael Babcock's book and thus have not seen his map. The extract from Military Magazine only had a similar map as our own article.
• Merowig was in charge of the Frankish force that slip of when Ellak Khan's division broke through the Alan lines. This information was taken from a few french source. Most of wich is present at this site http://mapage.noos.fr/huns/Bataille.html .
• As to the Germanics, sadly both the Romans and the Huns had a battle built of numerous different tribes and peoples. I took the names wich I found most often.
• Well there was researh I can't deny that, this information didn't come out of nowhere. I tried to show as much of the actions as possible. Such as the multiple Visigoth groups that formed after they had beaten back the Ostrogoths: some charging back into battle others looting and some chasing their earlier opponents. I hope the returning arrow showed Attila's retreat?

With this little explanation keep up the critique.--Dryzen 03:07, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Although I did create a map of what could be called the Chalons campaign, I can't contribute much knowledge concerning the actual battle itself. However, I thought I'd add some thoughts concerning the map:

• In general, PNG or SVG will provide sharper detail than JPG.
• Perhaps a series of maps would be more understandable than one single map that attempts to show everything. See, for an example, the Battle of Grunwald article which has four maps that create an easily understood narrative.
• Most battle maps represent the forces with rectangles, rather than circles.
• The Legend icons for "Dispersal/Raiding" and "Scattering" are difficult to see, even at this large size. Can they be larger?
• Yes, "Germanics" is an attempt to make a noun from an adjective. It should be German tribes, or German forces, or even Germans.

Take a look at Osprey: Rome's Enemies(1) Germanics and Dacians. To say German tribes is a little bit quaint. Wandalstouring 00:10, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I did some research it the most common use is Germans, but Germanic tribes. Wandalstouring 00:13, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

• I would prefer a plain green background instead of the gradient now used. We should either use a gradient to show some feature (e.g. higher elevation) or not use it at all.

Despite these nit-picks and suggestions, you've made a great map. I hope to see more. MapMaster 20:19, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• Perhaps a mape that shows the changes like the map of Australia here:
  
  The background could use more colors to show the elevation, what about yellow to brown? Wandalstouring 13:40, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

To enumerate the changes:

• Use of Germanics or Geman tribes and what about the minor leaders/factiosn?
• Use larger icons for dispersal.
• Change topology colour: solid or gradiant (Yellow to brown could be done, wasn't done from onset due to prototype image, then I didn't think about it for the finals)
• I had rectangles but I found that that gave too much of a size and organisation impression. It hard to know how large where the battles (divisions) and what form they where organized in. But I can change it back to rectangles.
• And the sources? I didn't really get a good reply on that point.
• Series or Animated?
• I'll see about exporting into another format. Will depend on the above as well.

Dont worry about the nit-picks, I like constructive critism, its good for the map. :o)--Dryzen 15:53, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Maps of the Roman-Spartan War

Can anyone help and create some maps of the troop movement in the Roman-Spartan War? If you need some help on how it should look like and what happened, etc. post it on the article's talk page. Thank you very much. Wandalstouring 20:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comments requested

Could you take a peek at the map on the right, and let me know how it can be improved? It's the old townships of Manchester, taken from a 1905 history of Lancashire. There's an online version of the original here, and in context here. Obviously, it needs a title (across the bottom) and a scale (in the space at the lower left?) and the source (in the space at the lower right?) I've used the colours suggested above. My minor breakthrough came when I put the labels at half intensity - pure black just stood out too much. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mr Stephen (talk • contribs) 23:41, 21 January 2007 (UTC).

One day, I will remember to sign my posts ... Mr Stephen 00:01, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

• This is a fine map of the ancient parish, can I add the image to the Manchester page and also on the Manchester (ancient parish) page? Cwb61 18:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks and help yourself, but I will try to make the final additions (as above) over the weekend, so it might change a little bit. Mr Stephen 22:09, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I also believe this to be a fine map. Yes, I would agree with a title and a scale. Not sure that the source is needed on the map itself, although I would definitely add it to the Image page. If I had to make suggestions, they would be to bring the lower edge of the map up a bit to reduce the space not showing to the city, and to increase the size of the legend on the upper right, for better legibility.

All in all a fine map. I hope we can see more such maps from you. MapMaster 00:40, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comments on some maps requested

I've been thinking about making maps that show the Monongahela River basin and its main tributaries. It is a relatively small river system, but a fairly confusing one in terms of the names of the streams. I thought I might be able to make a map or a set of maps about it. At first I thought I might be able to make a single map of the river system, perhaps with letter or numbers next to streams and a key naming them. That is still a possibility, but I've ended up making a few test maps of individual streams in the system. I thought I could post a few here and ask for feedback. There are some tricky aspects to making maps of the Monongahela basin while keeping the maps clear and clean and image sizes around 300-400 pixels wide. First, it seems that you need to show the Allegheny and Ohio rivers, and the city of Pittsburgh, since the Monongahela is so strongly associated with them, no? Second, the streams mostly flow north in meandering ways, and close together, making it hard to label along the stream lines. So for these maps I've tried bolding specific streams, giving them a glow, and naming them both at the bottom and somewhere near the stream itself.

Here is an example of the style I've been working on, for the Cheat River: Image:Monon-CheatRiver.png

Also, there is one stream in the system, Black Fork that is very short. I'm curious if the map I made for it is alright, or how it might be better: Image:Monon-BlackFork.png

Since this basin is a small area, I'm thinking some kind of locator inset map might be needed, showing where in the US this is, don't you think? On the other hand, it is hard to avoid clutter on maps when they are only 400 pixels wide. Finally, my instinct is to make the maps 300 pixels wide rather than closer to 400 as they are here. Does it make sense to reduce them to 300 pixels myself, or let the wiki reduce them automatically? Are they acceptable at 300 pixels, or would it be better to tweak the text. And is it even worth the trouble? Here's a couple 300 pixel reduced maps: Image:Monon-BlackFork300.png and Image:Monon-CheatRiver300.png

Thoughts? Thanks! Pfly 21:08, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that looks great, even the Black Fork one. You could include a U.S. inset, though if you do zoom out a bit to make room for it, I don't think it's critical though - as long as Pittsburgh is in the map, I think that's a well known enough city that most people would be able to orient themselves. I think the text size is fine. For the image size I started out doing mine 300 pixels wide, but my more recent ones I've done at around 500 and let wiki reduce them and they seem to come out a little better, not a big difference either way though. Kmusser 03:09, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] XML+XSL=SVG

A question. Theorethically, it should be possible to store latitudes and longitudes in a custom XML file or a proper GML file, couple it with one ore more XSL file and generate an SVG map. This would be advantageous because it would decouple the geospatial data and its visual style in the same way today's HTML rely on CSS sytlesheets for their visual appearance. Has anybody looked into this? manu3d 23:15, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

That's how the program "Osmarender" works in the OpenStreetMap project. Yes, it works. Richard B 19:40, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] High resolution map of Sweden

Hi! I was wondering if anyone here have or know of a good high resolution map of Sweden. Please answer at my talk page. Thanks! --Krm500 23:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Airport route map - comments requested

I thought some of our airport articles would be greatly enhanced by route maps, so I took a crack at making one and would like comments on it. Kmusser 01:13, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I love the concept. Love. It needs refining but I'm not entirely sure where. Some suggestions, maybe things to toy with:

1. On the global map, ignore the dots in the United States - it just makes a blob. Or make them tiny or something. This could lead to...
2. On the USA map, ignore dots that aren't in the United States. This would open up the lower right for...
3. A map of Europe, which on the global map is just another blob. For airports that focus on other regions - like one that has far more East Asian destinations than European - you could put East Asia there instead.
4. Then again, then the Caribbean becomes a blob, and that's less easy to resolve. So maybe this is the better option - Show the United States and the neighboring regions on the big one, then the global map, in which case we just have to clean up the global map. So maybe you should ignore 1 and 2. :)
5. As it is, the map is cutting off south Texas.

I have to remember that this doesn't have to be authoritative, just a helpful illustration to add to the article, so I need to make sure I'm not demanding too much. I'm not demanding anything, just brainstorming.

I love having a different color dot for the anchor airlines of the airport, though personally maybe the dots should be on top of the longitude/latitude lines, instead of under. Did I mention I love the concept? Good show. --Golbez 02:02, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Nice map. I really like the projection, although perhaps that's just because it's so unusual.

Echoing to some extent Golbez's comments, I don't think that you can have the nearby cities (e.g. US, Canada, Mexico, Caribbean) on the same map with the distant departure cities. It's just a matter of scale. It might work if the secondary (world) map did NOT have the US on it.

In the Legend, "United" should be "United Airlines". I also find it difficult to differentiate between the "Multiple Carriers" and "United".

In any case, good job. MapMaster 17:16, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

My concern would be the mercurial and ephemeral nature of the information, subject to change without notice. Because of that, once you start the project, you might get part-way through the project and then start pulling your hair out. You should at least clearly date the maps "as of" so that future updates would be well-understood and differentiated. In places where there are various major carriers, I believe you would need to cite the different major carriers or you might be tagged for POV or advertizing, such as if you solely noted United Airlines in Dulles. I sort of like the concept, but you should address how you will keep up with this as a system of maps over time. --Petercorless 18:34, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

My plan was simply to date them, currently it is dated in the text, but I could add the date directly to the map. It's intended to be a snapshot, not an authoritative map that would be constantly updated. For the carriers, I originally planned to do a different colored dot for each major carrier until I actually made the map and saw that almost 90% of the flights were United. I think which carriers are shown would have to be customized to each airport and that picking out the airlines that use that airport as a hub can be done in a non-POV fashion (usually it's already stated in the article text). For non-hub airports I don't think I'd bother differentiating carriers. Kmusser 19:14, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Just for fun as an example of the concept, can you whip one up for a non-hub? ABQ, GEG, or ALB would be a few ideas. --Golbez 19:27, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Will do, I'm still working on a few variations on this one which I should have up shortly. Kmusser 19:32, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

(caught in edit conflict) I was going to also suggest a low-volume foreign airport, what would be a good one without *too* many destinations... how about Sapporo or Eilat. --Golbez 19:27, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I have new examples for to look at. I revised the Dulles map, changing the colors a bit, adding a Europe inset, and removing the points that are in the insets so that each destination is only marked once. I tried out making the insets circular, which I think looks cool, but for some reason my mapping program then doesn't display lat/long lines correctly, I'm thinking of just doing away with the lines, it certainly makes the map easier to make. Also added the examples Golbez asked for - the Ovda destination data was rather dubious, but it does show you what that type of airport would look like. Kmusser 23:03, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Nice, nice. First of all, I love having the zoom-in and not showing it on the world map, AND showing on the world map which portions are zoomed in. It worked very well. I'm not sure which I prefer, the circle or the square; the circle looks better, but the square is probably more professional. And yeah, we don't NEED the lines, and if it makes this simpler, go for it, nuke 'em. Making the airport a star was also another good idea.

As for the lower-volume airports, that really shows where this shines. Sure, Vegas might be mentioned as a destination in the text, but I never noticed it - but now it's easy and neat to see that, inexplicably, there's a direct flight from Albany, New York, all the way to Las Vegas. And it was nice to have the airport codes there as well; for the lower volume airports that's viable, and obviously not for the higher volume ones (unless you wanted to do a 4x size map... which may not be TOO bad of an idea in some cases, heh) I also think it worked well for Ovda (Except for one minor issue - you're using an old version of the world map, as it still includes Serbia+Montenegro). I can see only one real issue with the projection you're using, and that's Australia. Will you simply have another box for Australia when we run into North American flights heading there? Because as it is, it's simply a strip of nondescript pixels, if that. --Golbez 00:36, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

And perhaps we should tilt the 'inset' maps based on a central city, because I know you're going to hear complaints that Europe is 90 degrees off kilter. ;) And if you have an Australian inset map it will be completely upside-down. --Golbez 00:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I am very impressed! Nicely done with all versions. If I had a vote, I like version two because the circles are in synergy with the global image. Ronbo76 15:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Made some minor edits, changed the projection for the Europe inset on version 2 and fixed the Montenegro boundary. I don't think I'll run into any projection problems if I don't use the funky projection for insets, there would be if I tried to show something literally going around the globe, but there are no such flights - the Dulles-Singapore route is almost as long as they come. I'm going to try a version of the Dulles map with labels just to see what it looks like as well. Kmusser 15:12, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks good. Have you decided on the round inset instead of square, or did you just test the new projection on the round? --Golbez 19:16, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, unless someone else argues against it I'm going to stick with the round insets.Kmusser 19:37, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Another version with labels added, I'm not sure I like it though, it does add more info, but I think the map is harder to read in thumbnail form. Kmusser 02:08, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Thumbnail version is hard to read but reads well when clicked upon. Ronbo76 02:12, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Well done, and it makes it easier to differentiate between the different airports in areas, like ORD and MDW. How are you making these, manually or with a program or what? --Golbez 03:12, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

With a GIS program (ArcGIS), the main work is compiling a list of coordinates for all the destinations, once that's done the GIS mostly does the rest - I'll write up a tutorial when I get a chance. Kmusser 10:59, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Step one should be How to get your hands on ArcGIS and keep your money. The licence acquisition for Editor and Info are rather difficult for the common mortal. Fine work.--Dryzen 21:25, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Very true, I recommend become a contractor for the Feds for that :-) Kmusser 23:53, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Working on it... even if its different feds. ;o)--Dryzen 15:57, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Categories and templates

A while back user Stevertigo made a new template for tagging map requests; Template:Mapit. I like that it has a different picture than the photo request (specifically, a map and not that dumb question mark), though I think it needs to have the categories we use built in.

Speaking of categories, would it be acceptable to make some more, specifically for places that span continents: perhaps "Middle East" for Bedouin or Arctic for Arctic bridge? Thank you. OverMyHead 18:27, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I would stick with Template:Reqmap and Template:Reqmapin since that's what most people are using, but if you wanted to edit those to replace the question mark with a map I certainly wouldn't object. You're welcome to make more categories. I had been making one for any country/region that had at least 3-4 requests, but have fallen behind. There are definitely enough for a Middle East category. Kmusser 22:47, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Definitly need to change the question mark, maybe a rough map (polygons) with questions marks? As to categories I think making some more specific sub-categories a good move to sort out the needs and requests but we should stop ourselves from develloping categories that are too specific or that will be lost within the Cat-tree.--Dryzen 16:04, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

What about this as a picture? OverMyHead 16:37, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Kmusser 17:55, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

That will do nicely.--Dryzen 16:22, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Need advice on my territorial evolution maps

Here's a few links to look at: Territorial evolution of the United States, Image:Canada provinces evolution.gif, Image:CSA states evolution.gif.

That said, here's two samples from my latest project:

thumb|it's big thumb|it's small

On the others, note that I start showing all of the land, but Mexico started large and got smaller. It would seem kind of insulting to have half of a map of present-day Mexico filled up with the United States. So, how should I go about animating this? Crop them all to the same size? Jump in height like I do? Forego animation altogether? Or, keep Texas and the USA there the entire time? Which I think is simply not an option. Thoughts? --Golbez 19:08, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

This is a common problem when creating a time series of map: the subject changes sizes or focus. I would suggest trying to keep the same scale in all maps, even is it means changing the size of the map. Good luck, 04:08, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Hrm, but in the case of Mexico, that would mean a good 1/3 of the map would be whitespace. I can change the scale without affecting readability... --Golbez 11:51, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm I see the dilema, how does it look keeping the smallest scale (i.e. largest territorial extent)? I'm leaning less towards keeping with a window encompassing the current territoiral extend becuse it cuts off an important portion of history and making a mid gif switch can dilude the loss or cause confusion in the readers. Not an easy choice, but the first will definitly have effect, juste like the Byzantine Map. --Dryzen 15:09, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm leaning towards that as well. After all, this isn't a map of Mexico - it's a map of all the land that has become or been a part of Mexico. --Golbez 15:11, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I know it's sparse, and some of the images need work, but it's quarter to 7am and I haven't been to sleep yet and somehow I decided, hey, I'll shlomp it up. So please check out User:Golbez/sandbox for what will in a few hours be Territorial evolution of Mexico. --Golbez 10:46, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Whats your take on replacing the dark grey for he united states with a pale grey or white? Currently I think the darker colour steals too much of the readers attention from the light pink of featured territory (Mexico). Either way I think it was the right call to keep the extent.--Dryzen 19:49, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't yet know if I *will* keep the extent; I may make two versions, one for the list, and one for the animated gif. The animated gif has to keep the full extent, but the list doesn't necessarily need to. I might go with pale grey, yeah. --Golbez 23:12, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

If you have the time, nothing works better like a small field (sandbox) test.--Dryzen 15:20, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

How does this one look? I'd have kept going except I forgot to add the dotted line, so I figured I'd throw up this errored one and see what people thing. Note that until this point in history, the foreign countries would still be dark gray; the switch to light gray with the grey words is signifying that this area is now unchanging, this is forever (at least to the present day) gone. --Golbez 23:14, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it worked out great with the lighter colour. Will you keep the above explicative?--Dryzen 13:57, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Antarctica exploration map

Hi, I would like someone to translate the following map from German to English so we can put it on the History of Antarctica page: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Karte_antarktis2_exp.png Should I request it here or at the Wikipedia:Translation pages? Thanks Andeggs 09:09, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] US army maps

Just pointing out the huge topographic maps series by the US army at the PCL collection.. they are all public domain, and very detailed, although they are a little old (1950s). There are already a few on commons --Astrokey44 01:46, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for review of map classification

I recently created two maps of the south-eastern Mediterranean region (Image:Southeast mediterranean annotated geography.jpg and Image:Israel and occupied territories map.png). They were created specifically to provide an overview of the region as a whole, showing the whole area at an equivalent resolution and a very high level of detail.

I'd be grateful if editors could take a look at Image talk:Israel and occupied territories map.png and Image talk:Southeast mediterranean annotated geography.jpg. I would appreciate an independent view of whether my stated rationale for classification makes sense. -- ChrisO 22:04, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I saw this dispute, and I agree with you on the categorization. --Golbez 22:09, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Kmusser 23:55, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Battle of Greece maps

I found these three excellent maps in the French wiki (available also in Commons):

• Image:Battle of Greece WWII map-fr.png
• Image:Bataille de Grèce09avril1941.PNG
• Image:Contre-attaque grecque.JPG (not available in Commons).

Could you help me with their translation? I want to replace the current maps of the article, most of which are old ones, and I am not absolutely sure that their copyright status is solid. I think that by translating them, we can enrich both Wikipedia and Wikicommons with three excellent maps. Thanks in advance!--Yannismarou 19:34, 31 March 2007 (UTC)