Commons:Bots/Requests/Emijrpbot (Task 7)

Emijrpbot (talk · contribs) (Task 7)

Operator: emijrp (talk)

Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought: Adding region info to coordinate templates like {{Location dec}} and {{Object location dec}} using GeoNames webservices to convert coordinates into a country code and a ISO number. See example.

Automatic or manually assisted: automatic

Edit type (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): continuous

Maximum edit rate (eg edits per minute): 10

Bot flag requested: (Y/N): n

Programming language(s): python (pywikipediabot)

emijrp (talk) 16:38, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

 Question Why is that useful? I have seen it in some files, but never found case there it makes a difference. --Jarekt (talk) 02:34, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

It is metadata information useful for categorization, bots, dispenser's coordinates database, and other uses for sure. Being an available parameter in these templates, I think a bot doing the work instead humans is better. emijrp (talk) 13:44, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it's good idea to place this information into images description directly. May be combine with GeoCommons database and provide API access for bots? --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:50, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

The region info isn't added into images description but into coordinates templates (as allowed since ages in the 3rd parameter), did you see the diff? Regards. emijrp (talk) 16:09, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Bot reached my uploads :-) and I definitely don't see any value in such changes (adding country or USA state). May be this make some sense for uncategorized files (but why not in external database?), but definitely useless for files in relevant geographical categories. I don't think that existence of parameter should be only justification :-) --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:55, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

It is due to some strange quirks in history that some people have gotten it into their heads the region: is actually something useful. It was original used in the gis extension to show 'better' local maps. The flaw in this thinking is providers purposely limit coverage to a single geographic region, in the internet age. A better implementation would uses a polygon map of coverage and show only those which cover the areas. Using appropriate data structures the average search time is O(log n).

The only other tool that usefully uses region: was a region: validator. The bad news, besides the occasional out of whack vertices putting part of Connecticut in the Atlantic Ocean, it doesn't match the boarder exactly (2 GiB limit). And unfortunately borders are a bit of a magnet for articles and photographs. The last I heard about GeoNames the were provide out of date Wikipedia geocoordinates, so they aren't likely to be using the newest ISO region code. Finally, GeoHack already has a point in region lookup, I'd put it into the ghel dumps if the daily processing didn't already take 3-4 hours. Dispenser (talk) 06:01, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Your database doesn't include the region info for all landmarks, can you add it? So, if region parameter is not useful, it must be marked as deprecated and deleted. emijrp (talk) 08:32, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I've finally re-implemented the region look up and database cache. It takes over 6 hours to build the 130 MB cache which include 1.1 million regions for 2 million coordinates without region. It improves on GeoHack by falling back to the closest region if its under a certain distance as the geometry is very rough. I've also gone ahead and marked region: as deprecated in GeoHack's documentation and will remove references on the GeoTemplate. —Dispenser (talk) 06:50, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

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Not approved for this task It appears that consensus is against the usefulness this task, but also that this request has spurred improvements to be made anyway, so thanks. --99of9 (talk) 11:48, 23 May 2012 (UTC)