Tim Waters, Susanna Ånäs, Albin Larsson and Ari Häyrinen received an IEG (Individual Engagement Grant) from the Wikimedia Foundation to work on a renewed Warper for the Wikimaps project.

We have observed that if the Warper experience was easier and more pleasant, we would attract more volunteers in warping old maps.

In order to let some developers work on the program features and others on the user interface, we would need to separate program components, decouple them. The program could serve any external application through the API. The Warper’s own user interface would be one of the program’s clients, and the Warper program would be dogfooding the Warper interface.

New features

We also have neat new features that we had already started to work on. Stay tuned for specific blog posts about them!

• Importing a Commons category of maps to the Warper.
• Importing control points for already georeferenced maps for single maps as well as batches
• The most wanted from the feature wish list

Design

We are focusing only on the program features in this project, but we are guided by the envisioned design of the tool. Have a look and comment the evolving mockup doc.

Finding maps

Viewing

Viewing several maps

Rectifying

Cropping

Logic model

What we put in, who we address, what comes out in short, medium and long range. Do you agree? Have a look and comment!

What to expect

We will arrange focused meetings with advisors regarding specific aspects of the development, and make documentation about the meetings available. Additionally, there will be a public Hangout session open for everyone. If you wish to participate, enroll as volunteer or leave a note on the project page.

About us

Tim Waters – back end. Tim is the original developer of the MapWarper software. It was originally created for the New York Public Library, where it serves thousands of openly available maps. The open source code has spawned MapWarpers around the globe.

Albin Larsson – front end. Albin has worked on the iD editor for OpenHistoricalMap, a sister project for the Wikimaps project. He has made a proposal for a linked data approach to OpenHistoricalMap data and created a prototype of modeling historical buildings in 3D.

Ari Häyrinen – integrations. Ari is developing a metadata enhancement tool to be used with GLAM mass uploads in a Wikimedia Finland project. The project will link between copies of files in different repositories to take advantage of spatial mapping possibilities offered by some of them.

Susanna Ånäs – coordination, design. Susanna has run the Wikimaps project and network over a two-year period. She will contribute to the design aspects, but mainly her task is to facilitate communication and participation in the project.

Follow the project via these

• Project hub at Wikimedia Meta
• GitHub repository
• Follow this blog!
• Tweet #wikimaps