Mapping the geographic information in Wikipedia

From Devwiki

Aude

A number of proposals and efforts have come about over the years for "stable" versions within Wikipedia, as well as projects such as Veropedia. Veropedia is broadly focused on "core topics". A different approach is to focus on specific, narrow topic areas rather than a broad focus cutting across topic areas.

Since one can't do everything really really well, it makes sense to focus efforts on a set number of topic areas and do them well. With so much time put into Wikipedia over the past few years, I am interested in getting to some endpoint with some sort of "finished" product. Such a "finished" product could be a set of featured articles for the topic. Not as well known, but Wikipedia has something called "featured topics" which are a set of articles for a topic that are all featured or good articles. Such featured topics are suitable candidates for developing into a finished product such as a wikireader or web-based equivalent (a separate stable version site focused on that topic only).

Being a geographer, I tend to be interested in places. One of my wiki interests has been to write about places of local interest (when I was living in the Washington, D.C. area, and now in Egypt). A featured topic could be to make all articles in the Washington, D.C. category into good or featured articles. (or articles of certain importance within the category)

The project is in rough stages of development at this point, but I have registered a domain and started developing a site to collect (stable/quality versions) articles for the topic. Being a geographically focused topic, it makes sense to include a map interface. Perhaps, add a map tab and allow browsing content that way, as well as through text and wikilinks. Such an interface can be added using Google Maps or custom maps using Geoserver or another solution. There could also be a photo or media tab, with featured pictures for places, and other features.