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Image:Holy Roman Empire 1648.svg|An historic map example featuring the Holy Roman Empire.
Image:Holy Roman Empire 1648.svg|An historic map example featuring the Holy Roman Empire.
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People could then add, delete or change the comments as the discussion on standards advances. [[User:Tomcool|Tomcool]] 13:46, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


== Subpages of WikiProject Maps ==
== Subpages of WikiProject Maps ==

Revision as of 16:53, 2 August 2008

Shortcut

Maps are an important part of any encyclopedia. This page is a collection point for map resources for use in Wikipedia. The overall category for working on maps is Category:Wikipedia maps. For categorized maps themselves see Category:Maps. To access all the subpages of WikiProject Maps go to Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps.

This project also has some suggestions about how we might standardize the process of creating geographical maps. These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you are thinking of creating map graphics and aren't sure about the most appropriate style, color, or labelling to use, you may find these suggestions to be helpful.

Scope

This WikiProject is intended to:

  • Enhance the presence of geographical maps on Wikipedia
  • Provide guidelines for map creation and improvement
  • Promote standardized presentation to deal with currently inconsistent color schemes, styles, and labelling
  • Centralize listings of requests, leftovers, and source materials
  • Work on Portal:Atlas
  • Categorize uncategorized maps found at all levels of commons:Category:Maps.
  • Upload more public-domain maps. See Commons:Map resources.


Map colors

The goal of a free, on-line encyclopedia is furthered when maps are properly designed with a clear, consistent look and feel. The following are the standard colors for maps:

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

The following is a gallery of exemplar maps:

  • UK outline map Standard colors: Medium blue - 9ec7f3 Yellow - ffffd0 Tan - f7d3aa Additional colors: Gray - 808080
    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
    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
    Florida Political Map
    Standard colors:
    Medium blue - 9ec7f3
    Yellow - ffffd0
    Black - 000000
    Orange - f7d3aa
    Additional colors:
    PowderBlue? - cee3e9
    BrightYellow? - ffff00
    Red? - ff0000
  • Texas Locator Map with US insert. A popular map.
    Texas Locator Map with US insert. A popular map.
  • 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.
    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.
    An historic map example featuring the Holy Roman Empire.

Subpages of WikiProject Maps

To access all the subpages of WikiProject Maps go to Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps. The current subpages are:

The parent of this WikiProject is the WikiProject Geography. WikiProject Maps also is a management type WikiProject for pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia. The following illustrates the position of WikiProject Maps within the Wikipedia WikiProject lineage:

  • Creation/improvement of pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia
  • Acquisition of pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia
  • Distribution of pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia
  • Monitoring of pictorial representations displayed within Wikipedia

WikiProjects that have made use of geographical maps include:

Categories

The overall category for working on maps is Category:Wikipedia maps. For categorized maps themselves see Category:Maps.

Wikipedia maps
Map-related navigational boxes
Images of fictional maps
Wikipedia geographic image maps
WikiProject Geographical coordinates
Wikipedia OSM maps
User map galleries
WikiProject Maps
Coordinates templates
Map formatting and function templates

Participants

See also: Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Cartographers.

Requested maps

You can find current requests at:

To request a map using the category system (the recommended method), put {{Reqmap}} on the article's talk page. Even more helpful would be to tag your request for a specific location or region. To do this, use {{Reqmapin}} by typing {{Reqmapin|Region}} in the article's talk page. For example, {{Reqmapin|Australia}} adds an article to Category:Wikipedia requested maps in Australia.

After adding a map, please remember to remove {{Reqmap}} or {{Reqmapin}} template or the mapneeded parameter from the article's talk page.

Finding help

Ask for help on the project talk page, or ask the project participants directly on their talk pages.

Another very active place to seek map help is at:

See also the many resource and help links here:

Tools, templates, and sources

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Map resources.

When adding maps to articles, you have two options; you can add a separate map, or add a geo-referenced template that links to several maps depending on the reader's preference.

Blank maps

When making your own maps for a specialized purpose, check out the basic templates provided at

Coordinate-referenced map templates

The process of supplying freely licensed maps for direct use in Wikipedia articles is important to make the articles complete, especially for offline versions. A complementary effort, however, is adding latitude and longitude coordinates to articles about geographically fixed entities. This enables readers to click through to find maps of the surrounding area on external web sites like Google Maps. It also allows article titles, links, etc. to be automatically plotted on maps.

To learn how to add geographic coordinates to a page using templates, please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates.

Clickable geographic imagemaps

See:

For readers

Standard conventions

Map colors

The consistency of maps within Wikipedia would be greatly improved with adherence to a specific palette of colors. As of this writing, no standard set of colors has been agreed upon; the standard color palette is currently being discussed on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maps, so please feel free to register your opinions and suggestions there.

Map style

Appropriate map style is currently under discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maps. Please join in the conversation there.

File formats

SVG

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is one image format to use for geographical maps. As of September, 2005, MediaWiki now can convert SVG to PNG for display.

More info about SVG:

Discussion about SVG maps:

JPG

Image formats such as JPEG that use lossy data compression, are generally not as good for images that have sharp lines and text in them. When scaled the compression process used for these formats can make lines and text appear "fuzzy" (especially at higher compression levels), even if they were sharp when originally created.

This is not usually a problem with thumbnail JPG images in Wikipedia articles. People can click the image to enlarge it and see a sharper version of the image. But with scaled, intermediate-sized JPG images in a Wikipedia article it could be a problem. That is because the MediaWiki software compresses the image somewhat while scaling it, and the image may look "fuzzy", and have compression artifacts. MediaWiki does not scale using the highest quality settings.

Even at the highest quality settings there is no JPG setting for saving an image that will not compress the image a little. It is always a lossy compression.[1]

GIF

GIF is a free, lossless, low-color, 8-bit image format that is better for maps and other low-color graphics than JPG.

The MediaWiki software will scale a GIF image better than a JPG image. The GIF image will look more sharp after scaling. For example; when scaling an image to a smaller size to put it in a wikipedia page. See this discussion for more info:

In many image viewers and image editors one can find out the exact number of colors used in an image. In freeware IrfanView for example; click "information" in the image menu. If the image has less than 256 colors, then GIF will save the image accurately.

PNG

PNG is a lossless, truecolor image format. It is good for all maps, but especially for maps with more than 256 colors. There are some problems with MediaWiki scaling of low-color, PNG images. See:


Userbox for participants

Use the {{User Wikiproject Maps}} template for your user page. It will produce the following:

This user is a participant in
WikiProject Maps
Map Workshop (watch)


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