Adding places

Adding a place is easy; just select 'edit map' on the tool bar and then further select 'add a place' from the pull-down menu and a red polygon tool will appear. Read below how to make a proper polygon.

Polygons

A polygon is a multi-sided shape that can be used to define a place in detail. Polygons are made up of sides and points. There is a limitation on the number of points you can add to a polygon depending on user level. Each corner of the polygon is shown as a little red square when you are in edit mode. When you want to make a new polygon first be doubly sure that a 'new' polygon is needed (see Map type section for advice). Then from the "Edit Map" pull-down menu, select "Add Place". This generates a little red cross, next to your cursor arrow, and a black box with red writing appears at the base of the screen, with two options “save” (not yet available of course) and “cancel”, whose functions are pretty obvious. There is also a “help” link which takes you to this very Guidance on adding places should you need it.

Move the red cross to a specific point on the edge of the outline you want to make and click your mouse-button (typically left-click). This generates a small red box in place of the cross and represents your first 'polygon point'. (Note: when creating detailed polygons that might involve say more than just a few points, it is a good idea to always start generating your polygons in the same general relative place, such as at the 12 O’clock point as on a clock-face. This way you know where in general you are on the outline, as you progress through the process. When you move the cursor again another red cross will appear next to it and when you mouse-click again you will generate your second polygon point. Finally, a third red cross will automatically occur as you move your mouse and naturally a further mouse-click will generate a third polygon point. You have now generated a triangle which is the simplest polygon possible, but do try to carry on and avoid a simple triangular polygon, if possible, as most outlines are not normally triangular in shape.

From here on as you need to add further points, in order to accurately plot your polygon, you simply drag your cursor slowly across the line of the polygon side nearest to where you wish to add a further point, and you will see the red cross appear again. Simply place this cross carefully over where the next point in the polygon is needed and mouse-click again to generate further polygon points. If a point is in the wrong place don't worry, you can always move it by clicking on it with your mouse while holding down the mouse key, then move the cursor to the spot you want it, and then release the mouse key. This is called "dragging". To create points that are some distance away, you will want to create the point first and then drag it to where you want it.

To delete an unwanted point, click on it and release. A box with the word "remove" will appear. Click on this box once, and wait for the point to disappear, which may take a moment if your polygon has many points. Be aware that the system will never permit polygon lines to cross over or intersect each other. So that as you move your red cross about, whenever a straight line drawn from it would cross over an existing line, the red cross simply disappears thereby preventing an 'intersecting' point from being generated. Equally, if deleting an existing point would cause existing lines to cross a message appears telling why you cannot delete that point.

You should ensure a polygon only outlines the immediate area of the place you are marking. Never overlap an adjacent area that is not part of the place. For example, you can tightly mark the outline of a building's structure or you could mark the outline of the building's surrounding property (e.g. grounds, car parking, footpaths etc.), this should always depend on what you are marking. Always ensure a place is marked clearly and accurately so it can be distinguishable as an independent place tag.

Satellite/aerial images typically show places photographed at something of an angle because they present three-dimensional (3D) information. Since Wikimapia's mapping system is only two-dimensional (2D), it is unavoidable that you can only add polygons that are 2D in nature. This means you should plot the image only as if viewing it from directly above "orthorectify" so that you outline its ground level footprint or nadir. Try to avoid marking 3D elements of the obliquely photographed object, such as the perspective projection of its sides and summit. This is especially important when plotting out tall buildings, like skyscrapers, where the visible perspective of its sides in a photograph might be very pronounced.

Once you have finished outlining your place, click on the "save" button at the bottom of the screen and a box will appear in which you can write information about the place. Although this all sounds quite involved after the first few polygons you make it will all become second nature. Just try your best and don't worry if it's not perfect first time, as it will always be possible to come back and refine it later.

Place information

Remember: Titles and descriptions should be written clearly, without errors, according to national language rules. Titles should be written in the language which corresponds to the language page chosen. For languages which use case distinction, titles should be begin with a capital letter but must not end with a full stop or period (e.g. London). In some languages proper names should have quotation mark. Wrong titles and descriptions should be edited.

Language

There is a reason for it to come first: it is very important to get right. This field is mandatory. Note that the default language is shown in the box. Please make sure the language you chose is the same language you intended to create your tag in. For example, do not select English as the language choice and enter your created place or description in Dutch, French or any other languages.

If you want to add a language to an already created place, you can select 'Menu' > 'Add another language' in a place window, or you can select 'edit info in other language >>' in a place edit window. Choose your desired language from the list of over a hundred choices available and proceed to add your language generally.

Title

Enter a title for your newly created place. This field is mandatory, but please note that address can be used instead of title. In this case, you have to leave 'Title' field blank and data from address field will be used automatically as a title. Choose your title carefully as this is what will appear when someone hovers their mouse over the place tag. You should always add the officially recognized name of the place you are marking, and if by chance this is not apparent, you may add the most popular or widely used name for the title. Anything which is not part of a place's name should be included in the description section instead.

Using known abbreviations (preferably those meeting abbreviation convention) instead of several words is supposed. Other words should be written completely.

Keep in mind that "CAPS LOCK" should be avoided because this is the web convention for someone shouting. It is better to type in mixed caps.

Note that if you are adding a private residence, it is often best to simply provide the address as the title rather than the name of the person who lives there. This is also true for apartment buildings that have no business name.

Description

Type something that describes the place. It can be anything about the place: its history, its strangeness, etc. This is an optional field but a place's description is what makes a tag useful or interesting.

You will be prompted with: Please provide a place information (be good, don't write bad words).

You can provide URL's in the text. You may find on testing the URL that you have to "URL encode" as percent-hexnum-hexnum some punctuation characters before the link works properly, and you must always ensure that it begins with the hyper-text protocol prefix "http://" in any event. If you provide a YouTube link, it will be shown with a YouTube embedded player and a preview, as well as the plan link.

Address

• Street is a special feature which links a place tag to a road object. Therefore, both object types will share a common association much like the address of a building with its street. Road objects linked to place tags can be viewed in the place tag's window and place tag linked to road objects can be viewed in the road object's window. Use the arrow to the right of the field to see if your street has already been entered. If it has, select it. If not, scroll to the bottom of the list, select "Another..." and type the name of your street into the new field labelled "enter name". For example, in the address 210 Banks Road, Swingville, USA Banks Road is the street. This field is optional.

• Building number is the number of your place from its address. For example, in the address 210 Banks Road, Swingville, USA, 210 is the building number. Nothing else should be entered in this box, for example, name of the building. Sometimes some buildings do not have number but only the name of the building, in case like that, the name should appear in the title, and this box to be leave blank. This field is optional.

Be aware that each city or other jurisdiction generally has a system of street naming and addressing that should be followed. In some cases, the cardinal direction is an integral part of the street name, so that "South Brown Street" is different from "North Brown Street". In other naming conventions, the street is just "Brown Street" and North and South are considered to be part of a building's number, such as "501 N." If you are not familiar with the local naming convention, assume that the direction belongs in the Building number field and don't include it in the Street field.

When you open an addressed place tag, you can click on the street name, opening the street info page. There, you can edit its name, add another language or just see the list of address numbers along this street. Addresses with the building number field that don't start with a number are displayed as 0 in this list. The numbers are links for their related place tags. You can also reach this info page, in street edit mode, if there is a street associated to this address.

Full address systems usually require more fields to define a place exactly. But, if you want to provide a complete address, including city, neighborhood, zip code, you should put this information in the description field. If you do this, don't forget to put street name and number in the correct address fields, so that Wikimapia can understand that information as an address. References to nearby places ("next to...") or other street names (in corners, for example) also should be only in description, not in the address field.

In some cases, you may know only the street name, but not the building number. If it occurs, you can leave the building number empty, so that you can fill in after finding out the correct number or anyone else can complete this information. It's not necessary to put '0', or '-' in the number field if you don't know it.

Note that not every place is an addressable object. For example, cities and neighborhoods usually don't have a specific address. So, you should leave their address fields empty. Don't put the name of an important street name in that region if it's not really the address of the place tag.

Languages

As the place tags, streets also can be described in multiple languages. This allows the street name to appear in every place tag info page, in every language it's described. And the street will appears in each page according to the language. Once a language page has an address, you will not be able to choose names from a list in other languages. It happens because the street name in these other languages should correspond to the translated version with respect to the language page that has already an address. You can provide this translations by two ways:

• By the street info page, that you can reach by clicking on the street name, on any place tag in this street (in the language this street name is already stored). In this street info page, you can select option Add another language under menu and then select the language.
• If there is a place in this street that is already described in the language you want to add, you can choose to edit the place tag in this language. This way, you'll see a text field after Street (instead of a list), where you can type the translated version.

Duplicated names

Since November 2008, Wikimapia has a system to check for duplicated entries in the address system. It tries to avoid creation of duplicated entries, with the same name, referring to the same street. The same system also allows an automatic detection when you want to name a street where there is already an addressed place tag or another nearby homonymic street, associating these entries, making them a unique one.

The system detects duplication in address editions and while naming new streets. But it doesn't detect duplications when users type a new address direct in the address field of a place tag. That's why it's important to check the street names list before choosing Other... and typing a new name. Pay attention also when crating places in a language other than English.

The system is not case sensitive. So Sun street or SUN STREET are considered duplicated entries for Sun Street (which is the recommended form). The checking is made by language. so, if we add a Moon Street in English, there will be no duplication detection if there is already a Moon Street registered in another language (if it doesn't have Moon Street as its English version too, of course).

When the system detects you tried to provide a duplicated entry, a message appears saying "Sorry, there is already a street with the name you entered." and the info page of the existent street opens. In order to do what you attempt or, you should:

• If you were editing an address when received the message, edit the place again and select the correct street name from the list. Remember that, in this case, only this place will be corrected (while editing an address would allow you to correct many places with a unique action). So, to correct all places with the wrong address, you should repeat this process for all of them.

• If you were correcting (editing) a street name in the street edit mode: You should select all segments you want to receive this new, correct name, and then choose the option 'clear (unset) name. Save. Select the segments again and, when naming, choose choose street names from nearest street and check for the name in this list. If it's there and you know there is part of the street already named, select it and save. If there is no part of the street already named, there is probably a homonymic street in the nearby region (read the last paragraph of this section). If the street name is not there, the duplication was caused by a street name from the address system. In this case, you can write the street name in the title and save. The street and the address system will be associated automatically.

Since street names in different cities (or neighborhoods, in some cases) can have the same name in the real life, Wikimapia checks for duplicated names in a 2 km range only. But there are cases when different streets are homonymic and they are closer than 2 km. There is no final solution to this problem yet. We suggest that you choose one of the streets to put a '.' in the end of the name.

Exceptions

In some regions or cities, the address is not described by a street name and a number. In these cases, try to find an experienced user in this region and ask him/her how you should write the address of these places, adapting the real addressing system to the Wikimapia's one. If you can't find such experienced user, you can follow some examples. If they are not satisfactory, ask the forum and propose your own standard to adapt this local address system.

Wikipedia link

If the place you have described or are editing has a corresponding Wikipedia article to assist in the description or to provide a understanding of a place, then feel free to add the entire URL of the Wikipedia article in this location. But you should remember that Wikipedia article about a specific object is a good way to enrich the description, while articles about the type of an object are unnecessary (i.e. it’s a good idea to provide an article from Wikipedia about the Eiffel tower to the Eiffel Tower, but there is no need to provide an article that explains what a “tower” is). As long as the article is relevant, it is okay to add it. Keep in mind that only one Wikipedia® article can be added in the text box.

Wikipedia articles that do not exist or are not relevant to the topic should and will be removed. Only Wikipedia® articles will display in this box, "User Pages" and other types of namespace will not display, nor will any other outside URLs. It is recommended to cut and paste the link/URL in full from Wikipedia®, since errors will result in a no link listed in the Wikimapia article. Do not add Wikipedia link to a different language interface, for example, a Wikipedia link in English should only be applied to a tag that is in the English page, and not to insert Wikipedia link in other languages. You can insert the link to the correct and appropriate language pages if the tag had that particular languages been translated.

This field is optional.

Categories

Categories are labels that classify place tags according to their place type or function. A place tag must have at least one category and this is especially necessary when searching for specific place tags via the category search tool. Categories also enrich place tags visually by displaying icons and/or different polygon colors. The latter can only be viewed in the 'Map view'.

Selecting Categories reveals a list of the most popular from which you can choose. If the required category is not in the list scroll to the bottom of it and use the search box to find it. Take care not to overcategorize; in most cases a single category is sufficient.

There are two important points to remember: never use two or more categories as combinations to indicate one category, and only the most appropriate category that best describes the immediate function of your place tags should be used. Do not add extra categories for secondary places/services found within your place tag if they can be marked as place tags themselves.

This place is a building

As Wikimapia is a mapping website, it is important to distinguish different object types on the map. One of the most crucial aspects of a good map is to differentiate buildings from non-buildings. If the place you are marking is a building then you should check the building check box in the edit window. The effect of a ticked box is to cause the place to display in dark grey on the Wikimapia map. Removing the tick causes the place to display in light grey. So, it is crucial this feature is used correctly to render the proper shade. For these purposes a "building" is a contiguous built structural feature, which is typically seen as having both walls and a roof. It does not include any surrounding grounds and features, such as e.g. gardens, car parking and footpath access etc. If you want to include such features in your polygon do not tick the building box.

This field has a default that depends on the category chosen but take care as the default may be wrong. Obviously, for place tags, which are not buildings (e.g. parks, lakes, public squares etc.) ensure that the building check box is not checked, otherwise the entire polygon will be incorrectly rendered as a building and will conceal actual place tag buildings inside it in the 'Map view'. For a suggestion of how best to make use of this feature see Hint and tip number 2 below.

Photos

Photos are an integral part of describing a geographic location and this is apparent in sites like Flickr and Panoramio and applications such as Google Earth and Picasa. Wikimapia enables you to enjoy photos of places by allowing you to add them to their respective objects.

To add a photo, click 'Menu' > 'Add/manage photos' in the window. You can upload an image from your computer or you can add the URL of an image hosted on another website. Please note that photos must be related to the object and you cannot submit copyrighted material.

To add a photo to a linear object, you must open the window of a place which has the desired street as its address and click it. Click 'Menu' > 'Add/manage photos' in the window and proceed to add the image as described above.

Photos must have a direct relation with a host object. Priority is given to primary images which shows the object itself externally and internally. Secondary images which have a lesser significance to an object are also allowed as long as there is a direct connection with a host object, even in the absence of primary images. The willful removal of a secondary image is forbidden unless it is replaced with a primary image. Examples of secondary images are:

• company logos; emblems, coat of arms & flags belonging to localities, counties & states; armed forces & emergency services insignias etc.
• unique products originating or sold from businesses e.g. restaurant dishes, clothes displayed by mannequins/models, products packaging etc. These should be unique to the object.
• people at work to demonstrate the function of the object e.g. craftsmen/women showing a unique/rare skill, teachers & students in a classroom or assembly, tourists outside a popular point of interest etc. The object must be visible in the background.

Photo Restrictions

There are restrictions on the type of images you can add. You cannot add images which do not explicitly show an object and this applies to images which are too vague or negligible. In addition, you cannot add images to illustrate or demonstrate the function of a place if they have no direct association whatsoever. It is forbidden to add images that fall in the following categories:

• Copyright images. Images which have licenses and require permission from the owner to be used beforehand.
• Obscene images. Explicit/shocking images of death, blood, gore etc.
• Nudity & Pornographic images. Strictly unacceptable examples of vulgarity. This includes suggestive images that exhibit blatant innuendos.
• Duplicates images. Copies of same image in one tag and photos taken with the same/similar camera angle.
• Spam images. Same image repeated in several tags.
• Politically-charged, racist or anti-religious images. Hateful, or slanderous images with malicious intent to offend.
• Non-relevant images. These include but are not limited to:
  • Personal photos, portraits, passport photos etc.
  • Cartoons, clip arts, GIFs etc.
  • Celebrities, sport personalities, models etc.
  • Religious symbols and pictures used to bless, adorn or revere an object or its religious significance.

Photo Attribution & Watermarking

If you have permission to use an image or its license permits you to use it in Wikimapia, you should adhere to its conditions for redistribution. If you need to provide attribution, you can do this by entering the necessary details in the comments section of the image in question. This procedure is especially necessary for copyrighted images with watermarks. You can also provide your personal images with or without watermarks.

However, you should be aware that by uploading images you agree to the requirements of Wikimapia's Terms of Reference.

Comments

The Comments section, which is available in all Wikimapia objects, allows you to make a comment or add an opinion about the tagged object. This is the only place where you can state an opinion which does not belong to the placetag's article because it is outside the scope of Wikimapia's Neutral Point of View policy. Keep in mind that unwelcome, offensive, meaningless comments, and senseless (without practical advantage) a question-reply chat (chain comments) between the users as well as comments unrelated to the tagged object are not permissible.

To add a comment, enter your text in the comment text box at the bottom of a placetag's window and click 'Send'. Unregistered users will be prompted to add a comment author's name in the 'Your name' text box.

Parent & Child tags

Parent & child tags are special place tags that are linked to each other. Parent tags contain child tags nested within them. This form of tagging is suitable for marking places that are located inside larger places, but the parent tag must be a building to make use of this function.

There are two methods to link child place tags to parent place tags. There is the embedding method and there is the binding method.

The embedding method is suited to marking places that do not require polygons. This is ideal for places whose delimitation is difficult or impossible to determine within the boundary of the parent tag due to severe overlapping etc. This is also applicable to vertically constructed or multilevel buildings, such as high-rise residential apartments or office buildings.

The binding method is perfect for adding child tags whose boundaries can be defined within the parent tag. This is fitting for tenant-type places that exist in one building under the same roof (eg. shopping malls, retail parks etc.) or for existing tags that were marked before the parent building. In either case, the emphasis of this method is the inclusion of existing tags to be marked congruously on a singular level, floor or storey, within the boundary of the parent tag.

How to create and link an embedded child tag

1. Ensure the parent building checkbox has been ticked.
2. Select located in the window. A new window will open ready for entering embedded child tag details. Once completed, click "Save". It's as simple as that!

How to bind existing child tags

1. Ensure the building checkbox has been ticked in the parent and child place tags.
2. Make sure the polygon of the parent tag encompasses the polygon of the child tag i.e. the boundary of the child tag must not breach or be larger than the parent tag's boundary.
3. Select located in the window.
4. Select located at the top of the window.
5. Choose the desired child tag from the dropdown list and then click on the "Bind" button.
   

You will have successfully linked a child tag to its parent tag, using either of the methods explained above.

When a parent tag is open, you will then be able to view all child tags listed under "In this building"

Clicking on a child tag will open its window. The layout of the child tag is identical to that of a regular tag except for the header Clicking on the parent tag's blue label will navigate back to the parent tag's window.

The benefit of the binding method is that child tags can be easily unlinked from parent tag to become separate tags.

How to unbind a child tag

To disconnect a child tag from its parent, simply select from the child tag's menu.

This only works for child tags nested within parent tags using the binding method, it does not work for embedded child tags because they only exist within parent tags. The removal of a embedded child tag from its parent can only be done by deletion.