[Foundation-l] Proposal for a new project: Wikipedia Historical Atlas

Sat Jul 2 23:01:24 UTC 2005

I realize that we get a new proposal about once a week, so I'll make
this simple and clear. I think it would be extremely helpful and a great
innovation to create a wiki-based historical atlas.  Here's why.

An historical atlas would be useful: it would provide viewers with
visual portrayals of political and cultural change that Wikipedia cannot
explain in the most long-winded history article.

An historical atlas would be innovative: as far as I know there has only
been one previous computer-based historical atlas, and its price kept it
out of the reach of viewers. Paper-based atlantes lack the animation
that a Web or software-based atlas could provide. Additionally, unlike
any paper-based atlas, you could cross-reference map keys to Wikipedia
entries.

An historical atlas would be an active project: Like Wikipedia, it
provides immediate results-- you can see your changes on a map. You
can't copyright facts of history, so any contributor could take
information from a paper atlas and mark it up.

An historical atlas would supplement Wikipedia, making it easy to
generate standardized maps for any country at any point in history.

Here are some previous atlantes individuals have compiled:
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/20centry.htm
  This site demonstrates how useful an historical atlas can be.
http://www.clockwk.com/
  This $90 software is something like what I hope the project could
  become.

The only obstacle to this project is actually writing the software. I
would think this would require a standard vector-based format and
process used for a website, which can be downloaded as offline software.
Changes to the map would also require some sort of user-friendly vector
setup.

I welcome any comments or criticism.

Ashibaka