Is it possible to have Kartographer enabled on new wikis for testing? Is the development work on it going to be propagated to the production systems gradually or will it be purely closed testing (e.g. on testwiki only) in the beginning? I'm very interested in trying this out as early as possible on bgwiki.
Topic on Talk:Map improvements 2018
Hi @Iliev,
Kartographer can be deployed to bgwiki. We don't anticipate technical problems.
We don't expect our work to be restricted to testwiki. It should be deployed everywhere on a weekly basis after it's been tested.
You might find interesting to know that we are currently working on localization of the maps labels. They are currently shown in their local language (names on the map of France are shown in french, names in Japan are shown in japanese, etc) but with this change all labels will be shown in the page language that embeds the map (assuming translations exist). You can find more information in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T112948.
The reason I mention it is because this will make the maps much more interesting and pleasant to readers of your wiki. You may prefer to wait for this feature to be ready before enabling it on your wiki.
@Sbisson (WMF), thank you very much for the quick and detailed answer. It's really great to hear that the project is actively moving ahead. What would be the procedure to ask for Kartographer to be enabled on bgwiki: a ticket on Phabricator, perhaps, or something else?
Yes, file a task on Phabricator and tag it with Collab-Maps (and if you could put the link here too, that would be great). We do require local community consensus before enabling maps, though, so if there isn't already one, you would first have to start a discussion about it on bgwiki, then if the other users agree, file a task pointing to that consensus.
@Roan Kattouw (WMF), thank you! So are there any downsides to enabling the Kartographer extension that need to be considered by the community? My impression was that the extension would simply allow the use of the mapframe tag—not impose anything else on the editing process. Am I missing something?
In other words, why a community may want to oppose to Kartographer being enabled?
I'll defer to @CKoerner (WMF) for the answer to that, he's been working on maps for much longer than I have.
Sorry for the delay in responding @Iliev, I was out last week. As for reasons why a community wouldn't want Kartographer to be enabled? Some folks, and communities, are a little more conservative in adopting new technologies. Some would like it if other wikis are early adopters before bringing software to their community. That said, I think there is minimal potential for negative impact of Kartographer. If it's not used on an article, no problem! If it is used and there are bugs, they can be reported, and the map removed from use until the issue is resolved.
I hope that helps provide al little context.
@CKoerner (WMF), that's exactly what I needed as an explanation. Thank you! I'll initiate a discussion on our Village pump.
@Iliev In the meantime, you and others in the bgwiki community can also help by translating the Kartographer software to Bulgarian. Right now only 2 of the 90 messages are translated.
@Roan Kattouw (WMF), excellent idea, thanks! :)
The request has been filed as phab:T192895