Mapmaking and Wikipedia

[piotrus]

We all know Wikipedia. But... how many know that Wikipedia (and its sister projects) has a lively map making community? That community has developed many map making tools, and I believe there is great potential for cooperation between the Cartographers Guild and Wikipedia map experts. Please check the following links:

* Wikipedia WikiProject Maps
* Wikimedia Commons Map resources
* List of maps requested for Wikipedia articles

Whenever you make a map, please consider uploading it to Wikipedia. High quality maps can be nominated for featured status here, and each Featured image is put in a queue for 24h front exposure on Wikipedia Main Page - a page that gets tens of millions page views a day...

[NeonKnight]

I voted maybe, like a lot of other folks, because, while Wikipedia needs maps, and lots of them, they need real world maps, and not fantasy maps.

[piotrus]

I voted maybe, like a lot of other folks, because, while Wikipedia needs maps, and lots of them, they need real world maps, and not fantasy maps.

Actually this is NOT true. Wikipedia needs fantasy maps to illustrate notable fictional universe. For example, look at Middle-earth article: it has three maps, but all of them are non-free and will eventually be deleted from Wikipedia

For examples of maps of fictional places made for Wikipedia, look no further than Category:Maps of fictional places or locations.

[Ascension]

I was trying to find this area but there are just so many links I finally got lost and gave up...thanks.

[Redrobes]

Actually this is NOT true. Wikipedia needs fantasy maps to illustrate notable fictional universe. For example, look at Middle-earth article: it has three maps, but all of them are non-free and will eventually be deleted from Wikipedia

I ran this idea past Monks a while ago and he was cool with the idea of using the Me-DEM map for wikipedia cos we didn't think theirs was all that great. So if they are going to bin theirs anyway then they should use ours. I am one of the admins for the MeDem thing but I defer a lot to Monks and the others. We made a ME poster for the Jan Challenge:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=4055
The issue for ME is that its an owned map so this is fan art and should be cleared with Tolkien estate before use really. Anyway we did all our work in the full knowledge that the results would be free. I'll run it by him again and see if they would like a donation.

[piotrus]

Good points. Anybody who would like to see their map on Wikipedia can follow the below short procedure:
* go to Wikimedia Commons and create an account (top right corner of the screen)
* upload a file - How-to (please don't forget to add a license, and a category)
* (optional but highly recommended): go to Wikipedia, find articles that should be using the image, and add the image to those articles - How-to

[Redrobes]

I had a look at wikipedia and they are saying that because the map is from a book then its copyright and that any fan based art from that image is breaking copyright and on those two points I agree. Making a Tolkien based map or any commercially inspired map has always been a risk. So they are planning to scan the original book map and claim fair use for it instead. That to my mind seems barmy and no different to what a fan based map is. If you treat the map as one page from a 500 page book then its a small section of it and then you might be able to say that this is a small bit to make comment on. But the map might be taken as a whole work in itself and then you would have to scan a little bit of the map in order to make the claim that your using it as fair use. Anyway its all moot as far as I am concerned. They would not take the me-dem map because it is intrinsically an unlicensed copy of the original. The problem here is the copyright rules not the map.