Wikimapia Chronology

This article intends to store important events for Wikimapia, in a chronologic way. This data may be used forward when someone wants to write a history of Wikimapia!

How to contribute

What should be here

Most important events regarding the whole Wikimapia project, including:

• Features: when new features were added, changed, or removed. They may be map features, like polygons, or auxiliary features, like this wiki or forum.
• Number of places: when we got to reach each additional million places
• Important bugs: some bugs should really have a space in Wikimapia history, like the famous polygon bug (can anyone remember the day it was fixed?), or those caused in server change on April 30, 2008. But do not add current general bugs here.
• Community events: When registration starts, when user levels appear, and how it changed as the time passed.

After we have some data, we'll probably want to sort them, according to their themes, like "features", "community", "number of places" and so on. I prefer to have these classes defined after we have put some of them here, because it will allow us to select better categories. Also, it will make easier to add items here, and will avoid re-work over this categorization (we can do it only once, in the end).

What should not be here

Personal facts, like "when I add my 1000^th place", or "when such user was banned". Also, I would not like or see local events regarding what was done in a specific area, like "when I accomplish to tag every county in such state". OK, it can be interesting, but we are seeking for facts related to the whole community, and things like this will probably overload our table. By the way, every one is free to create your own article to inform such milestone.

Important data

By now, each event is described by 4 separate fields:

Date

Ideally, each event should have a complete date information, with day, month and year, in format "yyyy/mm/dd", like "2009/03/28". Since it may be difficult, especially for the very first events, one can add an unknown date information, by writing "2006/07/??" if s/he doesn't know the exact day. If you don't know the precise day, but you can guess it, do it by writing "2006/07/06?" and other users can help to make it more precise. Finally, since we live in a spheric world, and local date may be different in different regions, please refer to GMT date when you want to add something.

Title

Something very short to announce what happened that day. It must have only essential information to readers to know about what we are referring to.

Description

A brief explanation of title, giving complementary information. But remember: don't write long and complete texts here... It may clutter the table and it would call more attention to an item than to the whole article. If are willing to write a complete history about that fact, publish it at the forum (or in a separate article in this wiki), so that it can be used once a Wikimapia history is written.

Source

A link to where this information is provided.

Examples

In these examples, there is no information source, since they are fictitious.

First example:

• Date: 2009/06/05
• Title: 10 million places
• Description: Wikimapia has reached 10 million tags. By this time, it had 12.5 million created places, with 2.5 million deleted tags. Follow here the WikiMapia forum thread about this milestone.

Second example:

• Date: 2008/05/03?
• Title: End of fixed polygon bug
• Description: This bug annoyed users for more than 1 year. Sometimes, when you hover the mouse over a place, its polygon doesn't disappear from your screen anymore. It was even created tag in honour of this bug.

Third example:

• Date: 2009/02/29
• Title: Promotion to UL2
• Description: Usernames of every user promoted that day

Chronologic events

Date	Title	Description	Source
2006/05/24	Opening day	It was probably the day when the first place tag was created. It seems to be this one.	WikiMapia Blog
2006/08/04	WikiMapia Blog opening day	In this very first post of WikiMapia Blog, there is a list of 39 languages, each one followed by a number, that is supposed to be the number of place descriptions in this language WikiMapia had at that time. English was the first one, with 728,136.	First post in WikiMapia Blog
2006/08/09	Matt's WikiMapia Blog opening day	With his blog, Matt provided the very first User Guide, with many screenshots and detailed explanations. At first, he wrote something in his main blog and then decided to open a specific blog dedicated to WikiMapia.	First post in Matt's Blog
2006/08/16	1 million places	The 1,000,000th place was the Upper Room Apostolic Faith Church, in Kansas, USA. It was the 1,081,496 created place, and so we can conclude we had 81,496 deleted places at that time. It took just 84 days to reach this milestone (an average of 11,905 places per day). At that time any places could be easily deleted immediately by everyone after minor editing (an undocumented feature).	WikiMapia Blog
2006/08/25	Upcoming places	Upcoming places were implemented. This way, users could vote up or down to each place, before it became a WikiMapia valid place. By this time, we had 1,282,468 places. Rules of approving: at least 24 hours old; more than 2 positive votes (yes) and 0 negative (no); with 1 negative vote, it needs at least 8 positive; places with only 2 positive votes and 0 negative will be automatically approved after one week; places with more than 1 negative votes and more will be deleted.	Comment by Koriakine in WikiMapia Blog, Matt's Blog
2006/09?/??	Comments	Although it was announced in WikiMapia Blog only on September 25, Matt wrote about comments a bit before at his blog.
2006/09/21	WikiMapia in GPS		WikiMapia blog, Matt's Blog
2006/09/25	Photos and comments for places	Comments were probably added before September 21.	WikiMapia Blog.
2006/10/01	WikiMapia layer for Google Earth	WikiMapia places become available in Google Earth by downloading this file. At that time, we had 1,621,646 places.	WikiMapia Blog and Matt's Blog
2006/10/08	User registration	Registration became available, bringing more functionalities to registered users (after 3 days), like moving places rectangle, and also profile characteristics, like languages, website, own location (maybe, not all of them introduced together). Special treatment was given to users who were already in contact with WikiMapia team, or with Koriakine in Wikipedia.	[1]
2006/11/14?	Private messages, grey rectangle for private places, etc	Private messages between users, special grey rectangle to indicated a place is private one, and other minor features were introduced. At that time, we had 1,923,754 places, plus 97,482 deleted ones.	WikiMapia blog, WikiMapia forum
2006/11/22	2 million places	2 days before WikiMapia completed 6 months, it reached its 2,000,000 places milestone. At that time, there were 101,524 deleted places (and people couldn't see them yet). It took 98 days to jump from the first to the second million, resulting in an average of 10,204 places per day (between the first and the second million) and in a global average of 10,989 places per day.	WikiMapia Blog
2006/12/04	YouTube videos in description	At least since this date (or maybe before), people can add YouTube links to youtube in descriptions	Matt's Blog
2006/12/27	Server change	Server changed to become things faster. At that time, every data was backed up every day, to avoid losing information.	WikiMapia Blog
2008/01/11?	Obligatory place type	Few months after this feature was introduced, it became obligatory.	WikiMapia blog
2008/01?/??	New design	A design similar to the current classic one was introduced, with search box in at the top right corner of the screen, and main functions at the top left one. It was done before February 6 (look at this post in Matt's blog.	WikiMapia Blog
2007/03/08	3 million places	It took 108 days to jump from the second to the third million and a total of 290 days since WikiMapia opening day. It resulted in an average of 9,259 places per day, in last 108 days, and a global average of 10,345 places per day. By that time, about 200,000 places were deleted.	WikiMapia Blog
2007/03/22	Polygons and Geotools	Registered users became able to create polygon for places. Only a single polygon could be displayed at a time, by hovering mouse over place's rectangle. A remarkable fact was that initially polygons were green! Also, area and distance measure became available by Geotools menu.	WikiMapia Blog and Matt's Blog
2007/04/08	Translation of user interface	61 new languages became available to interface translation. Before that, only English and Russian have their own interfaces.	WikiMapia Blog, where you can check list of new languages.
2007/05/24	First anniversary of WikiMapia	By this time, we had about 3,900 million places (3,700 normal ones, and 200 deleted) including 100,000 places with polygon. Also, 60,000 users were registered in WikiMapia, and a total of 500,000 comments were left by visitors.	WikiMapia Blog
2007/06/10	WikiMapia layer in Google Maps		WikiMapia Blog
2007/06/25	4 million places		Forum post, by Veljkovic
2007/09?/??	Forum opening day	The first topic at the forum was about Arabic and Hebrew translations and it was opened by jacksav, member of WikiMapia team.	WikiMapia Blog
2007/10/09	5 million places		Forum post, by Veljkovic
2007/10?/??	Zoom with mouse wheel	After a topic was opened in Feature Request forum section, it was implemented.	Forum thread
2007/10?/??	Road tools for testers		announcement thread at the forum, by Koriakine
20008/02?/??	Beginning of Polygon bug	Once you hover mouse over a place, its polygon remains displayed on your screen until you hover another polygoned object. It was first solved 4 months later Korikaine's announcement, but came back after 6 months, in beta version, too Mistver's statement.	Forum thread
2008/02?/??	Disabled list of UL2's actions, for non-UL2	It was done temporarily, in a moment of severe vandalism, to avoid revenge against UL2. It was disabled until, at least, March, 2008.	Announcement at the forum, by Koriakine. Forum thread
2008/03/??	New forum: Advanced users talk	This forum was created for UL2-only discussions following a month of severe vandalism.	First forum thread
2008/03/10	WikiMapia Anthem completed	WikiMapia Anthem was released at the forum, and then opened to translation into several languages.	Forum Announcement, by donotdisturb. Also this and this topics.
2008/04/10	Level 2 promotion for 9 users	Batavier, CarlGalloway, Editors, Omar_ok1978, ClintonDSims, Anonymous1, ejae2001ph, _AleX_ and boothy443 got promoted.	UL2 forum
2008/04/30	Database changes	Some bugs occurred and it took some time to see them corrected. Upcoming places were directly approved	Announcement, other announcement and related bugs at the forum.
2008/05/17	7 million places	At 01:10 PM Greenwich time	Forum thread
2008/05?/??	New feature: Categories for places	Categories for places, based in a large category database, were introduced. It replaced the former tag and pace type features.	Forum thread
2008/05?/??	New history feature	Since then, history of rectangle, polygon and deletion became available.	Forum thread
2008/05?/??	New feature: Address	Addresses based on street name and number can be added to each tag. Street names can be derived from streets drawn by the users and addresses of some close places or can be typed manually, if missing.	Announcement at the forum
2008/06?/??	Watchlist	Watchlists allows us to monitor every new change in a specific area we would like to take care of. It means a quicker way to combat vandalism. After 5 months, comments and photos were removed from watchlists, due to overload in watchlist system.	Forum announcement, by Koriakine
2008/06?/??	WikiMapia Layer	First attempt to make a map layer with WikiMapia data only, using different color for different kind of places, like green for parks, and blue for bodies of water, like lakes. Some months ago, it was disabled in classic version, becoming a beta exclusive feature (with some improvements). But it's still visible in classic, like this example of Moscow.	Announcement at the forum, by lnklnklnk.
2008/06?/??	Category filter	This feature allows users to select a category in order to see only places tagged with this category. It was the first real use of categories introduced a month before.	Announcement at the forum, by Koriakine
2008/07?/??	New polygon color: amber	Before this date, polygons used to be green, when we hover the mouse over rectangle. The hexadecimal code of new color is FFCC00 in satellite view, and a dark color in map mode (WikiMapia layer).	Forum thread
2008/07?/??	Mandatory polygon	Before this date, when one wants to add a place, s/he should define a rectangle and then write information. A polygon was optional. Since then, polygon became obligatory, being the very first thing one needs to do when adding a new place. This change was connected to WikiMapia layer and to upcoming beta version, since un-polygoned places were not displayed fine in these views.	Forum thread
2008/07/10?	User actions implemented	Prior to this, the only statistic available in users profile was 'Added places' and 'Edited places'. ('Roads segments' & 'Roads length' were added later.)	Forum thread.
2008/07/14	WikiMapia Wiki implemented	Although it was implemented by this date, it was announced only about 20 days later, in UL forum. First article was created on August 09, 2008.	Wikimedia implementation note and Oldest pages.
2008/07?/??	8 million places	WikiMapia counting number crossed 8 million barrier sometimes, due to deletion requests probably.	Forum thread
2008/07/20	Level 2 promotion for 6 users	affm, aladprod, Ampersand, Anood_boy, JPP355 and sniper80s got promoted.	UL2 forum
2008/07/28	User ranking system was introduced		Forum thread
2008/08?/??	Permalink and other sharing tools	This update brought new ways to share a tag. Of them only permalink survived (until April 2009).	[http://wikimapia.org/forum/?t=2453
2008/08?/??	Not approved category	This category replaces, in a certain way, the old system of upcoming places, removed on April 30, 2007.	Forum thread
2008/09/?? (before 20)	Beta version	First mentioned in WikiMapia Blog, it was opened to UL2 first. A list of issues (including bugs) about this beta version is kept [[2]]. At the same time, it was announced the purpose of wiki to keep a documentation of WikiMapia. A month after, beta version became available to UL1, and after that, it was opened to everybody, including non-registered users (with some restrictions).	UL2 forum, and open forum
2008/09?/??	New banning system	New voting system to decide whether to ban a user or oppose banning. Available for UL2 only. At the same time, a promoting voting system was also implemented, but it didn't survive more than few days.	UL2 forum
2008/10/05	First wiki project	The Waikiki project marks the first use of the wiki for organizing and documenting a project.	[3]
2008/11?/??	Improvements in linear features: riverside, dirt road, tunnel and elevation design		UL2 forum
2008/12/16	9 million places	At that we had about 1.9 million deleted places	Forum thread
2008/11?/??	Riverside feature for everybody		Announcement at the forum (also broadcast via PMs)
2008/12?/??	Grey text for cities/villages	Places inside cities, villages start to receive a grey text with this settlement name after its title.	Forum thread
2008/12/26	Wikimapper Plus	Wikimapper Plus is a FireFox extension designed, in particular, to allow users to search for addresses and to draw circular polygons. It was developed by the user Specious.	Announcement at the forum, by Specious
2009/01?/??	New position for ad links	Ad links used to be on top of each tag, above title. Since this change, it is displayed on the right side of description.	Forum thread
2009/01?/??	Forum search tool		Forum thread
2009/02/08	Level 2 promotion for 11 users	amspost, atom, homosapiens, 19jp87, donquixote, keen91, kirakira, muhammadhani, Neum, nnoulas, Taranov got promoted.	UL2 forum
2009/03/03	Level 2 promotion for 13 users	box_911, Akela, AinarsM, lino2001, mrazidblack, alpassik, shoa, rajneeshvaid, Acemarklao, vikasv, taskforce38, bari & eldenbridge got promoted.	UL2 forum
2009/03/22	New forum section: News	A new forum section and a new special page dedicated to WikiMapia news.	[4]
2009/03/22	WikiMapia activity image	Opening News forum section, the very first WikiMapia activity image was shown. It considered February activity, and can be seen here	Forum thread
2009/03/24	Beta update	This beta update contributed to faster performance, especially regarding loading images. Also, road databases were changed, which brought us some bugs and unavailability of road naming until April 2, 2009.	Koriakine's announcement at the forum
2009/03/26	Forum improvements: formatting capabilities	Bold, italic and underline ([b], [i] and [u], respectively) tags for formatting typed text were introduced at the forum. Also, since then, we can insert images in forum posts using [img] ... [/img] tags.	RAINGOD's post in sandbox thread
2009/03/30	Database server changes	Service became unavailable for some time
2009/06	Beta update	Added "created by ..." on properties of railroad and road edit.
2009/06/23	Beta update	Update the render of layer (borders, text, logo), optimise railroad
2009/07/03	End of WikiMapia Classic prevalence	Beta becomes the DEFAULT version.
2009/08/05	Countries watchlist	A history by countries and entry type.
2009/11/03	Parent and child objects	Parent and child objects (nesting) function.
2009/12/04	WikiMapia launches WikiMapia API	WikiMapia Database became accessible through WikiMapia API.	WikiMapia Blog
2009/12/21	Changes in place deletion	A user must choose а reason for place deletion from the list and it will be saved for later use.	WikiMapia Blog
2010/01/15	Road properties update: lanes	Lanes function in road properties.	WikiMapia Blog
2010/01/16	Detailed WikiMapia statistics	Detailed WikiMapia statistics became available in a user profile.
2010/03/24	WikiMapia statistics itemization update	New WikiMapia statistics items became available in a user profile.	WikiMapia Blog
2010/05/17	Level 2 promotion for 2 users	M0NAX and Zlobnyak got promoted.	Koriakine's decision
2010/05/22	Moscow WikiMapia Meeting (in celebrating the 4th WikiMapia anniversary)	Alexandre Koriakine, members of WikiMapia Team and users from the four countries (Russia, the Netherlands, Kazakhstan and Belarus) met together in Kolomenskoye Open-Air Museum to discuss the current and prospective WikiMapia issues and to communicate with each other in an informal atmosphere among the picturesque scenery near the Moskva River. Participants: Alexandre Koriakine, members of the WikiMapia Team and their companions, ArnoutSteenhoek, morgenstern1703, Maxmyd, Antares_610, boaty, loginovskikh, E220T, M0NAX, kizil1977, DENISpl, alexq, Utybr, donotdisturb.	Koriakine's advance announcement at the forum and photo report about the event.
2010/05/22	WikiMapia Meeting in Multan, Punjab Province, Pakistan	Participants: abbascon, Zahid786 et al.	Message at the forum and photo report about the event.
2010/05/25	Level 2 promotion for 5 users	loginovskikh, Maxmyd, E220T, boaty and kizil1977 got promoted.	Koriakine's decision following the discussion at the Moscow WikiMapia Meeting on May 22, 2010
2010/08/06	BETA version of watchlists and history (initially for UL2 only)	Extended functions (added comments, photos, advanced history etc.) became available for viewing.	Announcement at the forum by lnklnklnk (WikiMapia Team).
2010/09/10	Wikimapia UserScript release	A replacement for WikiMapper Plus FireFox add-on, which lost some functionality due to modifications of the Wikimapia source code + new polygon and place editing features that considerably enhance Wikimapia functionality. Design by IIIeka, translation into English and consultations on the user interface by donotdisturb. Based on the original script by pitr and WikiMapper Plus add-on by Specious.	Announcement at the forum.
2010/09/12	Level 2 promotion for 1 user	abbascon got promoted.	Announcement at the forum.
2010/10/07	Level 2 promotion for 1 user	junsanchez got promoted.	Announcement at the forum.
2010/10/23	Level 2 promotion for 1 user	0sph0 got promoted.	Announcement at the forum.
2010/10/26	Level 2 promotion for 1 user	disco_ got promoted.	Announcement at the forum.
2010/10/28	AutoComplete feature in place description window	AutoComplete feature for place title, description, categories and street names.	WikiMapia Blog.
2010/10/28	New message interface system	Two-tier message hierarchy introduced for trusted users and others.	WikiMapia Blog.
2010/11/28	Level 2 promotion for 1 user	detgfrsh got promoted.	Announcement at the forum.
2010/12/06	Roads and rivers in watchlist	Edit details of linear objects are now viewable in watchlists.	WikiMapia blog and announcement at the forum
2010/12/08	Level 2 promotion for 1 user	bigtex got promoted.	Announcement at the forum.
2010/12/09	Wikimapia reached 1 million registered users	Wikimapia has become fully open by offering all of its data under the Non-Commercial Creative Commons license. All data is available through the Wikimapia API.	WikiMapia Blog.
2010/12/10	Voting system abolished	Users' votes are no longer counted and displayed in user profile.	Announcement at the forum.
2012/01/04	Historical layer implemented	Historical layer was implemented as a special category. Places marked with 'historical layer/disappeared object' category are invisible in the Map View mode unless this category is expressly selected.	Announcement at the forum.
2012/1/??	Wikimapia documentation is announced	The new Wikimapia Documentation is announced to take the place of the Wiki.	Forum Thread
2012/5/second week???	New promotion system for advanced users introduced.	A new system of promoting new advanced users based on voting is introduced.	Forum Thread
2012/12/23	20 Million places	Number of created places on Wikimapia surpasses 20,000,000.	Forum Thread

Interesting topics to be researched

Put here some topics you may want to view in this table, but you don't have any idea when it happened:

• voting for users

• when and how normal votes served to ban users

• votes for banning users
• votes for promoting users
• blocking of UL2 actions list (and when it was published again)

it was blocked before February 2008 1

• Roads: when everyone started to use it
• When keywords system was implemented and when it was removed
• When place type system was implemented and when it was removed
• Semi-protection

before forum opening: http://wikimapia.org/forum/?t=43

• deletion of places

how was it done in beginning (before voting for tags option)?

time?

• deleted places

When has this layer become available? And in beta?

• User levels

• exist before October 2007, in a way similar to what they are now: http://wikimapia.org/forum/?t=58
• Advanced users exist since 2006, according to this list

• Miscellaneous

http://wikimapia.org/forum/?t=268