Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maps/Archive 3

message: http://petition.publicgeodata.org/ --Historiograf 23:28, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please sign the petion for PUBLIC GEODATA 

message: I feel like we need a discussion of the quality needed, and to try to encourage people that just because a map exists, doesn't mean it can't be done better.
My work is firmly "entry level" - it exists only because nothing did before, and a better map is certainly needed. As an example, the map I made of Hamilton Parish, Bermuda, but never put up:
Basic map. I went to Bermuda recently to put it up, and saw Grutness had already put up a map:
A better map, IMO. Includes a close-up version with finer lines, though I'd suggest it could include the lines in the inset, but that's not a major issue. This is a discussion about incremental quality.
Now, my fear is - If I had put up MY map when I uploaded it months ago, would Grutness have gone through the trouble of making his? 
There are three levels of maps. Entry-level like mine - just simple borders. Then there's better ones, like Grutness's there, or what not, things with a little more detail, a little more information. And then there's upper-level, like the ones for the Philippines, with sharp, highly accurate lines, and many text labels. I'm just concerned that people who can make better ones see lesser quality ones and decide to work on something else, but I don't know, since I'm not one of those people. 
Thoughts? --Golbez 02:55, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you do run the risk of getting a generalized map.  However, its seems like the benefit outweighs the risk in most cases where there isn't a map.  And, if i come along and need a more detailed map, then i'll try to make it and post it.  A side issue:  along the lines of quality and standards - is there a common placement for maps in the article?  Can we have locator maps or scalebars, near the big pretty maps so someone can tell that Dominica is smaller than Great Inagua?  Or, better yet - tie these maps together so that if i'm in Dominica, the locator map is the same as the Caribbean map?  Thanks!  --naomi 16:13, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quality 

message: Could someone make a new map for Race (United States Census), using our map templates? --Bryan Nguyen | Talk 03:07, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: ok I did one using the same colours :Image:Original locations of races US census definition.PNG. didnt think it should be too detailed or it might become controversial as to exactly which area is which etc so I used the blank map rather than map with countries. Im assuming Australia belongs in the pacific island section -- Astrokey44|talk 10:31, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map request 

message: Hello. I'm a member of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing articles using these criteria, and we are are asking for your help. As you are most aware of the issues surrounding your focus area, we are wondering if you could provide us with a list of the articles that fall within the scope of your WikiProject, and that are either featured, A-class, B-class, or Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Do you have any recommendations? If you do, please post your suggestions at the listing of all active Places WikiProjects, and if you have any questions, ask me in the Work Via WikiProjects talk page or directly in my talk page. Thanks a lot! Titoxd(?!? - help us) 18:23, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team|Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team]] cooperation

message: Hi, I'm new here. I want to make new maps for Indonesian regions. Could somebody send me any templates or source for GIMPS or CorelDraw (note that Indonesia is an archipelago country), that will look like  or . Usually I manipulate map colors from ArcView to Paint, but it looks bad (especially the line and text). My email is wicax2020 at yahoo dot com. Wic2020Talk 01:03, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Would something like my blank map work? This is of the provinces, not the regions, but it could be used as a template to zoom in and add internal borders and such. --Golbez 03:24, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maps 

message: I though people at this WikiProject might know how people make maps like this  or this ? Is there some Wikipedia tool to make these maps or do people just use their software programs to make the maps?--Jersey Devil 00:08, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The first one looks like it has been made from one of the blank maps at :Wikipedia:Blank maps -- Astrokey44|talk 14:38, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Question

message: I have written on many articles dealing with history and like to make maps on many of these articles, so people can understand where battles occured, people were born, lived and died and also what the borders of countries were, and whom were the enemies and allies of these countries. Maybe someone likes to help me and explain how it works. I have been a mapoholic since I was ten and i have looked at many historical atlases. I am very bad in programming.--Daanschr 13:23, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: do you have Adobe Illustrator?, that works well for maps. Or for a free program, try GIMP or Inkscape --Astrokey44 15:55, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was going to say what AstroKey said, no need for programming, all you really need is a graphics program of some sort.  Take a look at some of the user created maps to get ideas.  Kmusser 17:27, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

text: photoshop has a way to replace colours, not sure if GIMP has that too. Also, perhaps you could use this :Image:BlankMap-Europe-v3.png map? If you set it to 50% opacity and put a map showing mountains and rivers as a layer below it in GIMP, you can trace over them onto the map. I suppose you have already seen :Image:Roman Empire.png which shows Roman empire in 44BC? --Astrokey44 16:26, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Good work, is Lycia the part of Turkey which is not coloured? --Astrokey44 08:11, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I think that looks pretty good. For reference I also use Photoshop, which gives more control over colour and smoothing than MS paint, but it's definitely not free :-) Kmusser 12:35, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

text: What happens when you try to upload hte pic over it? And no, I don't think you can control the underline, but as for color, yes, with a font-color thingamajig. --Golbez 00:09, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Request for help in creating maps

message: Hi! I've listed my blank map of India as a candidate for a featured picture. =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Featured picture candidate 

message: I've noticed that maps of many countries do not adhere to the neutral point of view and show only regions claimed by the "host" country. To mark such maps, I've created a new template: :Template:POV-map and have suggested some guidelines in Template talk:POV-map#Removing bias. =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:41, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maps with disputed claims 

message: Please see Wikipedia:Barnstar_and_award_proposals/New_Proposals#Mapmakers_Star.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:42, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What happened to this proposal?  It seems to have been closed.  MapMaster 04:15, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It was approved, Mapmakers stars may be given.  Kmusser 14:20, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Award proposal 

message: The now deleted template:Infobox U.S. City had a "pin coords" parameter that was used with absolute positioning CSS to put a location dot on a mostly blank map.  The replacement template, template:Infobox City does not have this parameter and, instead, a map per location is being used.  Does anyone know of any good reason not to use CSS absolute positioning for this purpose?  I can imagine support for absolute positioning might vary by browser, but haven't seen anyone complain about this anywhere which makes me think it's supported by relatively current versions of at least IE, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:45, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Does silence mean "I don't know of any problems" or "I don't know what you're talking about" or no one watches this page?  It's a little hard for me to tell. If anyone watching could say something (anything) that might help. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:48, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

text: One consideration I've thought of, but don't know how legitimate it might be, is that it seems a "pre-dotted" map (unique map for a location including the dot) might be friendlier for Wikipedia:mirrors and forks.  On the other hand, templates are getting so complex these days (with m:ParserFunctions and all) that I suspect it's getting to the point that non-MediaWiki mirrors are having a hard time consuming alot of Wikipedia content.  I'm still looking for comments.  Even "I don't know" would be appreciated.  Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:04, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

text: If anyone would like to see an example of a template using this technique, Template:Ie citytown infobox seems to be the origin of the technique.  Essentially all articles using this template plunk a locator dot on top of a blank map of (a county in) Ireland. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:14, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: One idea is that the CSS method requires the underlying map to remain the same; if the image is changed, the placement of the dots may be incorrect. But overall it seems to me that having a single "map" image is better, as it enforces consistency. —Bkell (talk) 04:17, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected areas uses a dot on a common underlying map for all protected areas, e.g., Yosemite National Park. One minor problem is that Safari on OS X displays the dot about 2 or 3 pixels from the location displayed on Windows browsers. But, if you simply want to indicate the approximate location of the feature, it works fine.  Walter Siegmund (talk) 04:30, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I honestly don't know. It would be nice to use dots, but only if it can be consistent across all browsers. We also have to keep in mind that text-based browsers, where people would download the image separately, cannot use it. But that's a minor issue as far as I'm concerned, because the info is still there to generate the image themselves. As for "do people know a reason not to do it," the best answer I can give is ask the Technical Village Pump (WP:VPT) about using CSS in this manner. --Golbez 04:46, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree, but I just wanted to point out that, IMO, we should never care what is best for the mirrors. If they can't handle it, oh well. --Golbez 23:43, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Locator dots 

message: :Image:Gulfislands.JPG is a fair use map that should be failry easy to replace, but I also believe it to be rather uninformative. Looking at it, I find it difficult to precisely locate the archipelago in my mind. Also, it should properly identify the surrounding water bodies, I believe. Any taker? Circeus 01:17, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Image:Montaguemaps.jpg was uploaded by the same user. It is a "public domain" photograph of a copyrighted map (with nasty flare from the flash too). Mike Dillon 01:41, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Is it bad that I find that image hilarious? Wonder what article it illustrated... Circeus 01:52, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I uploaded a similar map: :Image:Gulf Islands map.png. I might have overdone the shading, and the overview inset is too colorfull, but I can modify that if you have suggestions--Qyd 01:14, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for replacement 

message: Is there anyone with the appropriate mapping software and (ideally) the background in Wikipedia standards who can make some maps of New Zealand. There are freely available local government boundary files.
What we need are three maps that we can colour/put dots on:
* A blank map of New Zealand (for dotting with placenames)
* A map of New Zealand showing territorial authority boundaries (from the boundary file above)
* A map of New Zealand showing regional council boundaries (also from the boundary file above)
A few of technical notes for anyone who does attempt this:
* Territorial authority boundaries typically (but not always) follow the coastline
* Regional council boundaries extend beyond the coastline
* We probably don't want to see the boundaries beyond the coastline
* I don't know where to get coastline data but maybe mapping software comes with coastline data or someone else knows where to get it
* Don't worry about the Chatham Islands, they are too far offshore to be included in the map
Thanks in advance for anyone who does help! This came out of a discussion on Talk:Wellington.
Ben Arnold 11:49, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think "freely available" comes with one minor caveat here. Statistics NZ require that they be acknowledged as the source of any information coming from them. A shapefile for the NZ coastline is available [here http://www.ollivier.co.nz/atlas/adminbdy/nzcoast.zip] (under the GPL, as far as I can see). -- Avenue 15:21, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're probably right, but it's also possible that the NZ Government has made these boundary files freely available (they aren't statistical boundaries) and Statistics New Zealand is doing us the favour of putting them up on their site. I've e-mailed Statistics New Zealand to find out what license they're under. Ben Arnold 17:18, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I forgot to say before that these 3 maps would be of use to quite a number of articles: the region map: about 17 articles; the territorial authority map: about 75 articles; the other map: hundreds of articles. If you helped out, it could make you famous! Ben Arnold 17:18, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I'll see what I can do. :) --Golbez 15:29, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A request for three maps of New Zealand 

message: I started a longduring project to build a WikiAtlas. This would lead to a collection of entries in Wikipedia (like Maps of Anguilla). More info can be found at Portal:Atlas. Electionworld (prev. :Wilfried) (talk 13:43, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map Collection: WikiAtlas 

message: Over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains we've just initiated the Maps task force to work on maps for articles related to rail transport worldwide.  We've tagged many of the articles on US rail subjects that need maps with  (and some use Mapdetails= to provide more information about the map that is needed), which adds the articles to .  I've gone through  to retag those that are rail transport related articles.  We've identified a few hundred articles that need maps, and there are likely several hundred more as we look to historical and worldwide rail transport subjects.
If you're interested in railroad maps, you're welcome to join in and help out.  I've made a few (such as on California Southern Railroad and on Wisconsin Central Railway), and I plan to work on many more based on our task force work list. Slambo (Speak) 19:53, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just started: Trains project Maps task force 

message: Hi all,  I've been working on a map of Kinshasa for a while and here's what I got so far :Image:Kinshasa large nolabels.png. I'm using the recommended colours but I was wondering if there's any specific for city maps. Any suggestion is welcome. Cheers. --moyogo 20:28, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think we have any guidelines yet for city maps. Just a comment though - Are all those little orange specks in the east and northeast parts of Kinshasa? If not, then this looks more like a map of the Stanley Pool region, and perhaps should be focused only on the lower left. Looks good so far. --Golbez 21:26, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Are all those little orange specks in the east and northeast parts of Kinshasa? Yes and no, the rural communes or districts are much larger than the map, the urban communes are grouped in the southern part of the Malebo Pool. :Image:Kinshasa-communes.svg can give you an idea of what the City-Province is like. The two eastern parts in the top overview are the rural districts, the western part is the urban districts with residential one. The map I made is just a start, I guess we could have two maps, an large one with less details but the whole administrative City-Province and a smaller one with just the lower part of the Pool. --moyogo 22:38, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  City maps 

message: I need a political map of Europe, for the Eurovision Song Contest article, but it needs to display all parts of all the countries on this list (i.e. North African nations). At the moment this one is the closest, but I think that a new map needs to be created. Hopefully WikiProject Maps can do something to help. If a new map were to be created, would it be sensible to wait until Kosovo becomes an independent nation, so that this particular map would not be needed to be changed? RedvBlue 13:20, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why do you need all parts of all countries displayed on the map? Greenland isn't displayed completely, and parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands are missing, as well, and so on... —Nightstallion (?) 19:51, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Bigger map required

message: Hey guys, I wanted to make a map of Eritrea's primary road network. I have the coordinates (path) for most of the roads, but in some cases I will be relying on what I can find on Google Earth's maps (which are surprisingly hi-res). Anyway I was wondering if you guys would be able to help me make it. For instance I am not quite sure if that meta system for making maps on the fly ever got off the ground. Also I am not sure what program would be best to use. This would be my first map so I would prefer a program that didnt have a ridiculous learning curve (the GIMP), unless of course I could be shown the ropes quickly. Most importantly if I already have a map of Eritrea is there anyway to put geocode reference points so all I have to do is put the geodata into the software and it draws the map? I know this is asking a lot and I was not particularly brief but I would really appreciate any help I could get. Thanks! --Merhawie 22:55, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's hard. If your data is a bunch of coordinates, you should use some GIS software to place the data. Normal graphics editing software (like Photoshop, GIMP, Illustrator, Inkscape) won't cut it, unless your base map is in a Plate carrée projection/Equirectangular projection, and even then, it's a lot of work. I don't have any extensive experience using GIS software so I can't help you with that. --seav 11:20, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Eritrea Road Map

message: This is regarding the map in the article West Bengal — :Image:India West Bengal locator map.svg. West Bengal currently has 19 districts while the map shows 18. Midnapore District was divided into East Midnapore and West Midnapore. And I have not been able to find out a proper map on the web. However, I have found out a way ro build a proper map. 
See this map showing the assembly constituencies of all the districts of West Bengal. Now go to this website, and download "List of AC Name" from "Download data". An excel file will be downloaded listing all the assembly constituencies with their districts. From this data and the map, a map showing east and west Midnapur can be developed. Another website — this one — has relatively simpler map showing the sub-district entities of the previous district of Midnapore.
I do not know how to create maps. So I request the participants of this project to kindly see into the matter and help develope a correct map. Thanks a lot. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 17:20, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Corrected map needed of [[West Bengal]], [[India]]

message: I am preparing a map for a 17th-century naval exploration and would find it very useful to have a detailed coordinates grid for blank world maps like  :Image:BlankMap-World5.svg, to assist in positioning. Something like :Image:BlankMap-World2.svg, but with lines every 1 or 5 degrees, to keep on a different layer and discard when finished.
Rather than interpolating the available grid by hand, it would be much easier to re-generate it from the original source. Any pointers for a quick way to obtain such a grid, or someone willing to do it? Thanks, --BrokenArrow 13:22, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Coordinates grid for blank world map 

message: I'm working on creating maps as part of the Former Countries WikiProject and I would like to use SVG. The maps that I am currently working on (using Inkscape) are location maps and so they need a lot of elements. The only problem is that the files are too big (1.7MB in one case). My attempts at simplifying the images result in unusable borders. Is there any way to reduce the file size, or should I just use the SVG to create high-resolution PNGs (which would have a smaller file size) and upload them? Thanks. - 52 Pickup 12:06, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 1.7Mb is not too big. Please make the SVG source available. --Dschwen 13:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Alrighty, here is an example of my work. At the moment, I have been making location maps for the provinces of Prussia (see: here) in PNG format and I would now like to make SVG versions of these. So far, I have uploaded one SVG image: :Image:Map-Prussia-LowerSilesia.svg, which is 1.3MB compared to 139k for :Image:Map-Prussia-LowerSilesia.png. The SVG version is clearly better quality, but the file size is 10 times larger. This might be okay for just one file, but I will be putting up heaps of images like this. So if there is any way to keep the file size down, I would like to do that now before I make a heap of other files. - 52 Pickup 09:13, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

text: How do you get Inkscape to load a file that big? When I try, it craps out :( --Golbez 12:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My computer is pretty powerful, maybe that helps. At first, Inkscape crashed a lot for me too. No idea. I wish I could make these files smaller, though. - 52 Pickup 12:48, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So's mine, that's the thing. When my old PC (AthlonXP 1800+, 512mb) couldn't do it, that could have been the computer. But when my new computer (Conroe, 2gb) can't? Are you using the release version of Inkscape or a development version? --Golbez 18:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm using v0.44.1 (9 sep 2006 build) - 52 Pickup 09:50, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Hi, I just looked into the source code of your svg file. It looks like most of the file size comes from ridicolously precise coordinates, something inkscape is responsible for. I.e. this is one of the coordinates in one of the file's path blocks: 50.600647. That's 50 pixels and 600647 millionths of a pixel. In other words, to make it in any way meaningful to have that kind of precision, you'd have to scale the shape in question, a one-million-fold to see any difference between 50.600647 and 50.600648. Unfortunately I do not know of any easy fix other than writing a little script in perl, python, tcl or even php, to strip all numbers of all or part of their decimal digits. Further optimization can be achieved using CSS styles rather inkscape's style attributes, but this specific file won't gain much in terms of file size reduction. It would, however, gain quite a lot in terms of editability as you'd have to change only few lines to do major changes to the map. An example of what I mean is available here. Have a look at the source code of the SVG file. The CSS style are right at the beginning of the file. manu3d 02:42, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Unfortunately my programming expertise is too miserable to write any useful scripts. There's now way that this precision can be reduced within Inkscape itself? - 52 Pickup 09:50, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Apparently not. I did find however a little extension that is intended to do just that. Unfortunately it doesn't work for me. I suspect because my inkscape installation is not on drive C. You might want to try it though. You can find it here: http://blog.subverted.net/?p=619  It just requires you to copy the files in the correct directory, and you'll then find it available in the Effects Menu. Give it a try and let us know if it works for you, please. manu3d 15:58, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It works! If you set the number of decimal points to 2, the file size reduces from 1.35MB to 993kB. Reducing it to 1 point brings it down to 871kB. Removing all decimal points only shaves off another 1kB. Nice find. - 52 Pickup 16:47, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, eventually I also managed to make it work (sort of) and I've noticed the same size reduction. The size isn't reduced any further setting to zero the precision because it doesn't actually eliminate the last decimal digit, but just resets it to 0. Glad I could be of help. manu3d 18:07, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: An important thing I noticed: all path names must have standard characters (i.e. no umlauts, slashes, etc) otherwise it won't work. - 52 Pickup 08:44, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  SVG newbie question 

message: Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory.  This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 14:49, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project directory 

message: A new project has started, Wikipedia:WikiProject historical atlas. We want to create a historical atlas for Wikipedia. Can anyone help us to find (free) systems for the creation of maps, so our software programmer doesn't have to do work that already has been done.--Daanschr 08:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Historical atlas

message: The Former countries WikiProject has been established to improve the quality and accessiblity of articles on now-defunct states. For each entry, we would like to have (at least) a location map for the country in question (for use in our infobox). The project is still starting up, but we should soon have a big list of entries that require such maps. If you are interested in helping out, sign up here. This department will work closely with WP Historical Atlas. - 52 Pickup 08:19, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP Former Countries, Cartography department 

message: I have made several maps for Wikipedia, including the maps for the Rowley Island, Loks Land Island, and Antioch articles.  I figured I should join this project if I were to continue contributing maps, but I don't know what I need to do in order to become a member.  Could someone point me in the right direction? --CommKing 19:45, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Add your name to the list. That's it. :) --Golbez 20:32, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How could I 'join'? 

message: OK, before I start converting my maps to SVG, I'd like a final consensus on what color they should be. Mine have all been pink, with red for emphasis; Morwen made some like that, and some with green, with light green for emphasis; and then we have the country locator maps, which are grey, with dark green for emphasis; and then the USA state locator maps, which are white, with red for emphasis.
So... which style should I use for my province locator maps? I've gotten a couple of complaints about the pink/red system, so I open it up to y'all. --Golbez 00:25, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no problem with pink/red or grey/green maps, but if you wanted them more in line with the color scheme laid out here you could use tan/yellow which is what I've been using for river basins.  I do like any of those better than the white/red maps.  Kmusser 17:37, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Kmusser.  I think that the pink/red maps look garish and non-professional while the grey/green maps bring an unwelcome darkness to the page. Like Kmusser, I use the colors listed at the top of this page whenever possible and have found that the tan/yellow combination is almost universally useful.  Do you have a gallery showing your work??  MapMaster 22:22, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The chart at the top of the screen has nothing for two color maps. As for a gallery, I have a rudimentary one here. --Golbez 22:42, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well I don't think the pink/red maps look garish, but the color scheme here is definitely useful for two colors - using primary area of interest (yellow) and surrounding areas (tan).  I think the Thailand maps (Chiang Mai as an example]] are some of the nicest province locator maps and they use the scheme here, although they go to 3 color (adding red as "point of interest") instead of 2 to include adjacent countries, which I think is a nice addition.  I'd probably use the lighter red-orange than the dark red though if you go that way.  Kmusser 17:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Final decision on two-color map colors 

message: Hello all. I'd like to make a map for each of the Neighborhoods in San Francisco, California that highlights each neighborhood, so that people can see at a glance what area that neighboorhood covers. I'm completely new to mapmaking, so what would be the best way to go about this? The best resource I've found would be a map at the SFMuni website. Thanks in advance for your help. - Zepheus <ツィフィアス> 00:00, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[San Francisco]] 

message: Are there standards for the range maps in the taxa-boxes for animals?  I've started making a few and have been using the various versions of the classic gray on white svg maps as a base.  But there are lots of different types floating around out there.  If there is already a discussion about this, please point  me to it.  Thanks. --Cody.Pope 21:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tryed to set up one there Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Maps Yug (talk) 15:49, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Range Maps?

message: Hello, I builded a Graphic lab/Maps which appear to be redundant with the WikiProject Maps. But, I think they are good points in both.
* WikiProject Maps : 
:# you were the first
:# you have a team, and you have the expertise
:# you already set up a standart palette of color
:# you are the most able to improve the carthographic norms on wikipedia.
* Graphic Lab and Graphic Lab/Maps
:# it is more attractive because...
:# ...it is more visual (Graphic Lab/Maps & Graphic Lab/Images to improve)
:# ...it is more simple
I encourage you to simplified your wikiproject pages, like the Graphic lab did. Take all the best ideas, and then set up a redirect.
Main page-Maps-Images.
Yug (talk) 15:45, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Graphic Lab and the WikiProject Maps 

message: Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 19:53, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia Day Awards