Wikiatlas

The Wikiatlas or Wikimedia  World (or Commons Atlas)
is a wiki-portal on the Wikimedia Commons website, related to the English Wikipedia, Wikipedia App, Wikipedia  Portal Atlas. It contains thousands of gallery pages and maps about many nations or regions of the world."1. Wikimedia Commons", HowWikipediaWorks.com, 2008, webpage:
  HowW-ch16s01 .  "MapHist: A place to show off your maps", Tony Campbell,
  email in mailman.geo.uu.nl, February 2008, webpage:
   pipermail-360: mentions maps
  are available in the Wikimedia Atlas of the World.

As a collection of map image-galleries, the Wikiatlas links many sets of maps, such as:
 maps of Europe, maps of Africa, maps of North America, maps of Asia, maps of Oceania,
   --> class=infobox
 Groups of MapsAtlas of Europe
Atlas of Africa
Atlas of England
Atlas of Italy
Atlas of Mexico
Atlas of Germany
Atlas of Japan
Atlas of the U.S.
Atlas of Texas
Atlas of California
Atlas of Florida
 maps of the U.S.A., of Italy, of Germany, of China, of Taiwan,plus maps of Texas, or maps of Malaysian, and maps of Florida, etc.

Unlike Wikibooks or Wikisource, the Wikiatlas is not a separate wiki website, but rather, a large subset of the Wikimedia website.
There are many thousands of maps in the WikiAtlas.
190px|thumb|USA (or see: U.S. cities map)
100px|thumb|Africa map 
   --> border:1px solid #BBB; margin:7px 10px 2px 9px;"
145px Europe map in Wikiatlas
{| style="float:left;"  style="font-size:87%; margin:7px 0 0 6px;"  cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0
|  
|  
|-
|90px|England map from Wikiatlas  England map
|  
|105px|Italy map from Wikiatlas  Italy map
|}


Atlas pages are map groupings
The Wikiatlas is based on some simple ideas. All maps are grouped, in the manner of a World atlas, into pages stored with the name "Atlas of..." for each continent, such as:
 Atlas of Europe
 Atlas of Asia    Atlas of North America
 Atlas of South America    Atlas of Africa
 Atlas of Oceania
Similar page titles "Atlas of..." cover each nation or region, such as:
 Atlas of Argentina
 Atlas of Austria
 Atlas of Australia
 Atlas of Bangladesh
 Atlas of Belgium
 Atlas of Brazil
 Atlas of Canada
 Atlas of China
 Atlas of Taiwan
 Atlas of Colombia
 Atlas of Cuba   Atlas of Denmark
 Atlas of Egypt
 Atlas of England
 Atlas of Ethiopeia
 Atlas of Fiji
 Atlas of Finland
 Atlas of France
 Atlas of Germany
 Atlas of Greece
 Atlas of India
 Atlas of Ireland   Atlas of Israel
 Atlas of Italy
 Atlas of Japan
 Atlas of Kenya
 Atlas of S.Korea
 Atlas of N.Zealand
 Atlas of Norway
 Atlas of Pakistan
 Atlas of Peru
 Atlas of Portugal
 Atlas of Russia   Atlas of Spain
 Atlas of Sudan
 Atlas of Sweden
 Atlas of Switzerland
 Atlas of Turkey
 Atlas of Ukraine
 Atlas of UK
 Atlas of USA
 Atlas of Vanuatu
 Atlas of Venezuela
 Atlas of Wales
Some of the U.S. states also have Wikiatlas pages, such as:
 Atlas of Alabama    Atlas of California    Atlas of Florida    Atlas of Texas

Similarly, hundreds of other Wikiatlas pages are named as "Atlas of..." for over 200 nations and over 94 other regions of the World.

Wikiatlas page format
Many pages in the Wikiatlas are arranged in a distinctive format: with maps displayed down the left-side of the page, and explanatory text presented to the right-hand side. The description for each nation, territory, or region is written, first, in the official language(s) of the area, followed by other languages, including English.

Because the Wikiatlas is a wiki effort, developed by the Wikimedia volunteers, the level of detail and coverage varies, from section to section, of the Wikiatlas. Some groups of maps are very extensive, while other maps are rudimentary, depending on the time spent by volunteer writers.

History of Wikiatlas
The Wikiatlas was designed, during extended discussions on the Wikimedia website, beginning in 2003.  "Wikiatlas", Wikimedia.org, July 2003, webpage:
   Wikimedia-Meta-atlas.
Originally, the concept was to have an "automatic" map-generator, based on giving coordinates. However, use of maps beyond mere location, led to the current vast collections of maps also showing economic areas, precipitation, average-temperature, political regions, earthquake fault-lines, etc.  To show a location was only one way to use maps.

Many thousands of maps were collected, over the years. However, by June 2005, the Wikiatlas subproject still lacked sufficient structure to be considered viable.  "*Openstreetmap* Wikimania, August 4-8",
  Lars Aronsson, Openstreetmap.org, June 25, 2005, webpage:
   openstreetmap-mail-761.
In April 2006, the Wikiatlas was mentioned in an archaeology
conference as a "nascent" project."Unsuported Assertions: An Analysis of Criticism of
  Wikipedia and Possible Solutions", Elijah Meeks, University
  of California, Merced, USA, in "List of Abstracts",
  34th Annual Meeting and Conference of Computer Applications
  and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology",
  April 18-21, 2006, webpage (PDF):
   caa2006-PDF.
Finally, a coherent page-format was generalized during mid-2007, using page layouts stored in MediaWiki template files.  "Talk:WikiEarth", e-katalog.com.pl,
  revision: 16:28, 24 August 2007, web:
   TalkWikiE-Aug7. Hundreds of Wikimedia and Wikipedia editors worked on various aspects of the page descriptions in over 100 languages, including uploading and modifying the thousands of map images. Some of the maps were transferred from Wikipedia image pages.

Wikimedia readership
Although readership figures are not specifically available, of the complete grouping of all Wikiatlas pages, the general readership of the Wikimedia website has been based, nearly 50% (in early 2009), within the following: United States 24.5%, Germany 10.7%, India 5.7%, United Kingdom 4.0%, and Italy 3.5%.  "Traffic Details from Alexa - wikimedia",
  Alexa Internet, Inc., March 2009, web:
   Alexa-wikimedia.

Notes

References
"1. Wikimedia Commons", HowWikipediaWorks.com, 2008, webpage: HowW-ch16s01 .

Other websites
 Wikiatlas main page on Wikimedia Commons.

Category:Maps
Category:Wikis
Category:Wikimedia Foundation