still need a little more insight into the data structures here:
- can you link to the Mediawiki documentation page on geocordinates in a comment?
- what's in coordinates[1:]?

also, by "decimal" I meant the python ``Decimal`` type, as in:
 ````python
from decimal import Decimal

one = Decimal("1.00")
````

``Decimal`` objects are the preferred format for lat/lon over floats and strings because of their precision and methods.