Category talk:Maps

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About this Category

This category's subcategories are for geographically-based or Politically-based (international and other mankind defined boundaries, etcetera) maps. The top-level map categories are for the overall categories of regions, continents, countries, subnational divisions, cities, etcetera in descending order of territorial area. Geographic features like oceans, seas, lakes and so forth are listed in regions if they cross international boundaries, or by country if they do not. Other major geophysical themed features are in the root: Category:Maps of geographical features.

• See Category:Maps by theme for many additional, geographically-based maps covering topography, other geographic features, biology, history, economics, politics, religion, population, ethnography, disease, weather, celestial maps, music, sports, etc.. See also the Atlas index. Atlases are organized and commented collections of geographical, political and historical maps.
• See Category:Maps by time and its subcategories for classification by time. Think about the difference of Maps by century shown and Maps by century made.
• See Category:Maps by type for technical aspects, use Category:SVG maps for any vector graphics, Category:Map templates for working material (blank maps, language-neutral maps, ..), see also Category:Cartography for map projections, map symbols and so on

Please help categorize the maps in the media section at the end. See meta:Help:Category. Please add maps to the subcategories below. Click the plus (+) signs to explore the subcategories in the nested directories below. There are many inadequately categorized maps in the subcategories too.

See also Category:Earth sciences, especially Category:Geography, Category:Cartography and Category:Demography. There are many maps in their subcategories that need to be categorized in map categories. See local categories also, as at en:Category:Maps.

See also

Do not sort in here:

• For other types of maps, such as mathematical mappings, please use another category, such as Category:Architectural plans or Category:Diagrams. For genealogical maps see: Category:Family trees. Category:Astronomical maps contains boths maps and star charts.
• See also: Category:Satellite pictures and Category:Aerial photographs – maplike images, no maps (but see Category:Geographic Overlays for combining them)

Maps by projection

I've noted that there are a lot of maps of parts of the world in the Map projections category. Content that doesn't illustrate map projections shouldn't be there. I therefore suggest sub catagories like below in the Maps category:

• Maps by projection
  • Maps by projection surface
    • Maps with azimuthal projection
    • Maps with conical projection
    • Maps with cylindrical projection
  • Maps by projection property
    • Maps with conformal projection
    • Maps with equiareal projection
    • Maps with equidistant projection

Changed the category name forms above from plural to singular. See below for rationale. Johan G (talk) 12:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

There should probably be a short description (one or two sentences) of the projections or properties. For details on map projections, see en:Map projections. Johan G (talk) 20:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. Feel free to do it! Cheers. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

As I was moving a map with an unknown azimuthal projection i realised that in the category name only the word Maps should be in plural. One map (usually) doesn't have multiple projections. Johan G (talk) 12:00, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Some map projection galleries might be helpful too. Modeled after the the various diagrams galleries:

• General diagram types
• Specific diagram types
• Systems engineering
• Management diagram
• Flow chart
• Flow diagram
• Activity diagram
• and so on... --Timeshifter (talk) 12:02, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorting of the subcategories

I noted that there are a lot of subcategories before the sorted ones. Perhaps they would be easier to find if they where sorted differently, putting as an example Maps by country under C instead by using a pipe in the subcategory's category link like this [[Category:Maps by country|country]]. Johan G (talk) 11:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Mediawiki has a longstanding problem with listing only some of the subcategories on the first page. So people have been using the pipe trick to put the main subdivisions in front. So that users can go to the big subcategories without having to hunt further for page 2 ("next 200"). --Timeshifter (talk) 21:16, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Maps by scale

I would create a new subcategory Category:Maps by scale. So we can search the maps by the scale. Most maps based on a scale (for example 1:10.000). For example File:Vermont map.png based on 1:2.500.000. So we can use this category for intersect this category with other category like regions (for example "Maps of Germany"). Also we find better maps for overview or for details. -- sk (talk) 11:34, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Not sure that makes much sense. The scale of a digital map depends entirely on the display or print resolution. A raster map that is 1:10,000 when displayed at 300 DPI will be 1:20,000 if displayed at 600 DPI. Vector maps have an even greater range of reasonable display sizes and therefore scales. —LX (talk, contribs) 23:35, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

@LX: This is right. But I don't mean the display or print scale. I mean the original scale on the map or map series. In a map 1:20000 there are more details than in a map 1:250.000. In one map a big city is only a little circle. An other map shows all the details. At the moment we have no category for this. Ok, I think mostly about old printed maps (like Category:Messtischblatt 1:25.000 or Category:International Map of the World 1:1.000.000). A modern map in SVG-Format and with a en:Linear scale maybe don't need a "category:maps by scale". But all maps with known numeric scale can be put in this new categories. -- sk (talk) 12:45, 28 May 2018 (UTC)