[Labs-l] creating a MapStory Labs project

Fri Jul 27 23:13:30 UTC 2012

Hello,

We recently attended Wikimania in Washington DC, where we met Erik
Möller<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_M%C3%B6ller>,
who showed us Wikimedia Labs, telling us it would be a good fit. We're
interested in helping create a Wikimedia Labs project around serving *
mapstories*. A mapstory is a type of map that shows change over time, which
is, like wikipedia or openstreetmap (OSM, www.openstreetmap.org), being
developed in an online community built on the same standards of openness,
at *www.mapstory.org* <http://www.mapstory.org>. We are aware that
wikimedia and openstreetmap (OSM) are collaborating to serve OSM data
through wikimedia to be seen on wikipedia articles, and would love to do
the same. MapStory is inspired by both openstreetmap and wikipedia, and is
being built on the same standards of openness, and intends to be yet
another companion in the open knowledge community, and is to be governed in
similar ways by the MapStory Foundation. At the moment, MapStory is
invitation-based, as it is being developed, but it will be fully open to
anyone's registration.

Examples of mapstories include:
*Events: Yellowstone Fire: http://mapstory.org/maps/149
*Trends: Population Growth: http://mapstory.org/maps/162
*General historical change: Africa: http://mapstory.org/maps/153, walmart:
http://mapstory.org/maps/60, NYC subway: http://mapstory.org/maps/117/view
*Large scale mapstories - some mapstories will be enormous, allowing you to
eventually type in a time, and see the way the world was then. So, a user
might type in "1900", and see all the roads, buildings, land use, and
landscape down to very local levels, like you can with OSM now.

The integration of mapstories into wikipedia and other wikimedia projects
would be extremely fruitful. I can imagine that any article about political
entities, events, and statistics can, and probably will, have a mapstory.
I'll reply to this message with some examples in a moment.
*
What do we need to do in order for us to establish a MapStory labs project,
or add ourselves to an existing one? *Unfortunately, I am not a developer
myself, but we can at least get started while the developers crank out the
core mapstory functionality.

I've cc-ed Christopher Tucker, the founder of MapStory.
Please reply-all if you can :)

Thanks,
Nitin Gadia
Ames, Iowa, USA
MapStory Foundation
*www.mapstory.org* <http://www.mapstory.org>
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