Community

Revision as of 16:33, 18 June 2012

Wikimapia users form the Community. Though it is self-organising there are policies and etiquette. There is also a special rating system that permits a user to gain new experience levels. Users communicate with each other by means of messages and forum.

User levels

Experience points is a feature of Wikimapia that helps automatically determine Experience levels. They accrue automatically in your account based on your contributions to the Wikimapia project. This means that the more experience points you get the more places and Linear features you create or edit.

Awards

In addition to experience points there is another reward system. Award stars (one, two or three) are automatically granted based on various thresholds (i.e. place or road creation, photos addition) of one's stats.

Voting

Voting is our method of providing positive feedback to you about your contributions to Wikimapia, and for you to provide positive feedback to other users about theirs. People who make a positive contribution to Wikimapia ("describing the world" by creating useful and well-described places) are deserving a positive vote.

Neither award stars, nor votes can not influence directly your user level, but having award stars or a lot of votes means you have quite succeeded in map improving or you have a high social status on Wikimapia. That, for example, except giving a nice feeling, can help in case you made a request for an Advanced User status.

Special roles

Wikimapia Team

It is them who make changes and maintain the site. Wikimapia developers are always busy with Wikimapia improvement, so please think twice before addressing yourself to them. If your case is urgent they will gladly help you. But if AUs can also help you with the issue, you should send a message to AUs first.

Forum moderators

List of forum Moderators

This role allows the use of moderator tools in the Wikimapia forum. It is granted by Wikimapia Team members.

Categories moderators

List of categories Moderators

This role allows the use of moderator tools for Wikimapia categories. It is granted by Wikimapia Team members.

Here is some information for Categories moderators:

What are categories?

What exactly is a category, anyway? For example, is "city" a category? Answer: Not really. A category is really just an ID number in the category database. So "88" in the category database is a category. The basic idea is that category "88" represents the same kind of thing everywhere, no matter which country it is in.

A category has a number of properties, and the most important property is ... its name (in English). Another property would be, for example, its name (in Russian). So if we give category "88" a name of "city" in English, its name in Russian should also mean "city". We can not decide to give a Russian name to category "88" that means something different, for example "house".

Even though "city" isn't really a category, for convenience and because no one has memorized the category ID numbers, we usually use the category name in square brackets to represent the category. So [city] is actually category 88; and [город (ru)] is also category 88, but referring specifically to the Russian synonym/translation.

In even more technical detail, the number that is stored with each place tag is in fact not the category ID, but rather a "synonym id". Each synonym id has its own name, that you can see on the "Category list" page, and it is these synonyms that are structured to make up the category hierarchy. This makes it possible to, for example, start with two separate categories, then make them synonyms (thus blending the places together), and then undo the synonym relation, and end up with the original two categories separate again, all without changing anything on the individual place tags.

How do we use categories?

What kinds of questions can we ask of the category database that we would like to see displayed on the map? Here are some suggestions, presented as templates of what we should think of when we assign a category to a place tag.

1. "This place is a [category]." Examples: [village], [school], [police station], [mcdonalds]. But not [compressor].
2. "This place is a [category] type of place." Examples: [military], [production].
3. "This place is associated with / owned by [category]." Examples: [roman empire], [Long Island Rail Road].

Those are some of the obvious templates, but surely there are others that would also be useful. Please make suggestions in the 'Category cleanup' section of the Forum!

This writer is generally not in favour of things like:

1. "This place is in [category]." Examples: [paris], [russia], [africa].
   Although for some reason, a personal quirk!, I am ok with English counties [nottinghamshire] and French/Italian provinces [lombardy], for example, but not US/Canadian states/provinces [california], [ontario]. These are specific [first level administration] places - perhaps historical ones - and the category should be applied to cities and towns only.
2. "This was created by [category]." Example: [johnsmith].
3. "I can buy [category] in this place." Examples: [phone], [computer], [apple]. Names like these should be reworded according to template (1) above: [cell phone shop], [computer sales / service], [grocery] (just to pick some thoughts off the top of my head), provided the 'thing' isn't silly, like [coke].
4. "This place is [category]." Examples: [green], [dangerous]. These words are usually adjectives, and are not suitable for category names.

How is the category system structured?

The 'new' (2012) category system has a specific structure added. Categories can now have 'parents', 'children' and 'brothers/sisters'. A category can have any number of children and, any number of parents and any number of synonyms (brothers/sisters). The idea is that the results you get when filtering will now also include places with 'child' and 'grandchild' categories, and their synonyms. So if you filter for [restaurant] it will also find places categorized only as [Italian restaurant], for example (or it will once this relationship functionality is enabled in the filtering function, which it is not, at the beginning). In addition, once the full functionality is enabled, the rendering properties that are associated with some categories, like parks being coloured green, will also carry through to their child and grandchild categories.

If you tried to draw this as a diagram (like a family tree), it could get very complex, with relationship arrows going all over the place. It is very flexible. So flexible that it is even possible to set up links such that the 'child' and 'grandfather' categories are the same, thus making a closed loop in the diagram. (This is obviously not a good thing to do, however, so don't do it!)

When there are synonyms, there is one default synonym. This is the name that will be shown as the main category name. The default synonym in a different language does not have to be the same as in English.

What does a Category Moderator (CM) do?

There are three main activities for CM's:

1. Organize the categories.

Create the parent/child/synonym links in the new structure in the official WM language (English). This is the initial primary task and in order to assist with this you need to be proficient in English. This part is also more like a project in that as we proceed there will be less and less remaining to do. At some point we should be able to declare it "completed enough" and move on to the day-to-day maintenance tasks.

2. Translate the English category names into other languages

Here also you must understand what the name in English means before you can translate it. If there is a question, it must be discussed before doing anything. Note that it is now possible for a category to not have a name in English. If you find one like this, please add the English translation.

3. Ongoing maintenance

This will continue forever as people make new (not-yet-approved) categories.

What tools are available to manage categories?

Create a category

There is no special moderator function for this, since it is actually not restricted to CM's but can be done by any level 4+ user from the 'edit' screen for a place tag: If the search for a category results in zero or very few matches, then the "add" function becomes available. Newly created categories automatically get put in Unapproved status (and thus appear on the "Unapproved categories" page) and are hidden from general use, but you can still "add" them to places if you continue to use the "add" method. Note that the category language will be your currently set language and not, for example, the language for the place tag you are adding it to.

From the "Tools | Unapproved categories" page you can:

• Approve the category. This means it is no longer hidden, and can be applied to place tags. If this is a newly added word, please check that it is a word that makes for a good category (see above). You should also make an English version, if it's not already in English, and add a description that helps people understand how this category should be used.
• Make a synonym for an existing category.

Note 1: This is useful only for those circumstances where there is no existing place with both categories. If such places exist, you will be informed about which ones they are so you can deal with them manually before retrying the Make a synonym function.

Note 2: Don't make things synonyms unless they really are the same, and you want to have two different names for the same type of thing. This can be un-done, however, so it's not a disaster if you make a mistake.

Note 3: The category you start with becomes a synonym of the category you select in the search function (which is the default synonym ).

• Merge categories. The category you merge from, which is thus going to disappear, must have only a small number of associated places. Note that this can not be un-done, so you must be 100% sure that these two categories represent the exact same type of thing.
• Delete a category.

Note 1: Under this new system that categories are never actually deleted, they just become hidden when their usage count drops to zero. So if someone subsequently tries to create the same category again, the old version is just revived instead of creating a new one.

Note 2: You will also notice that, despite its name, this function doesn't actually delete anything - it just shows you a list of places that you have to manually delete the category from.

From the Category info page you can:

This is the page with buttons for "Filter places", "View watchlist", etc.).

• Edit some of the category info:

- Modify the description.

- Add and remove child/parent categories.

Note 1: It is appropriate to make a parent/child relationship when you can say that "a <child category> is one kind of <parent category>". For example, "an [Italian restaurant] is one kind of [restaurant]", or "a [McDonalds] is one kind of [fast food (restaurant)]". If you can not make a statement like that, perhaps you should not do this.

Note 2: Adding a child or parent increases the "count" number of the parent category, whereas removing a child or parent does not decrease that count. These numbers are really estimates and will get recalculated automatically twice a day anyway.

- Set the default synonym or remove a synonym.

Note 1: When you remove a synonym it automatically becomes Unapproved, so you will probably want to go and approve it.

Note 2: The default synonym does not have to be the same in each language, so you can change the default synonym in Russian without affecting the English default, for example.

• Unapprove a category. You must do this first before the category becomes accessible on the Unapproved categories page (above).
• Add a translation.

From the "Tools | Category list" page you can:

• Search for a category (synonym, actually) in any language. Note that the 'normal' category search will only return results that match in your current language or in English. This page also shows the language that the name is in, as well as the English name of the main category.
• Rename a category.

The "Tools | Global category watchlist" page

shows changes made to the hierarchy and category names.

Other "Categories" info

• When you change the relationships between categories, by adding or deleting parent/child/synonym categories, for example, you should not expect to immediately see the new relationships when filtering for the affected places. Realtime regeneration may be enabled in the future, but at the beginning these data are only regenerated periodically (a few times per day, maybe).

• There are some functions that are only available for "small" categories. This will usually mean that the button to do that function is not there if the category is not "small". The exact definition of "small" is not (yet) decided, but think "fewer than 100", and it can also mean different numbers for different functions.

• You can download a spreadsheet-compatible list of all the categories from http://wikimapia.org/#show=/user/tools/categories/?download=1 (note that the field separator is a semicolon). You can use this to, for example, find categories with low usage that are candidates for deletion, or find categories with missing or misleading translations from English into other languages.

Advanced Users

List of Advanced Users

Anyone with 5+ user level can make a request for Advanced User Status (it will be offered automatically) and his/her candidacy will be put to vote. If current Advanced Users decide that a person has approved him/herself as a competent editor and can help Wikimapia by taking additional responsibilities and powers he/she will be invited in Advanced Users group.

List of Advanced users according languages

This AU Codex is a code of conduct for Advanced Users.

Documentors

List of documentors

This role allows to edit the Wikimapia Documentation (This Documentation). It is granted by Wikimapia Team members.

Forum

The forum is Wikimapia's discussion area, where you can read other users' questions and answers on a variety of topics, ask your own questions and join in the discussions. The people who frequent the forum are other users just like you, although the Wikimapia Team Members (admins) do occasionally contribute as well.

Collaborations

Collaborations are projects created by the Wikimapia community to do such activities, an example is adding polygons to places without polygons. Any registered user 1+ level can create a collaboration, the collaboration has to be approved by the Wikimapia team before it goes into affect. The creator of the collaboration can remove users or finish the collaboration at any time. Only approved collaborations get their own forum topic in the Collaborations section of the forum to discuss about collaborations.

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