Community
| Language: | English • Português • Tiếng Việt • Українська • Русский |
|---|
Docs Navigation
User's Guide
Community
Wikimapia users form the Community. Though it is self-organising there are policies and etiquette. There is also a special rating system that permits a user to gain new experience levels. Users communicate with each other by means of messages and forum.
User levels
Experience points is a feature of Wikimapia that helps automatically determine Experience levels. They accrue automatically in your account based on your contributions to the Wikimapia project. This means that the more experience points you obtain, the more tools/features you can access and utilize.
| User level | Experience points | Tools available | Polygon dots limit | Polygon area limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 Unregistered Users/Guests (UU) | 0 | search, use category filter, change interface language, choose map type, add place/photo | 200 | ~50 km² |
| 1 Regular User (RU) | 0 + register | search, use category filter, change interface language, choose map type, edit profile, add place/ photo, edit place/ photo, delete place/ photo, translate tags, watchlist, status grid, report lists bug/features, use messages, write on forum, create collaborations | 500 dots | ~500 km² |
| 2 Regular User | 5000 | search, use category filter, change interface language, choose map type, edit profile , vote for users, add place/photo/linear feature, edit place/photo/linear feature, delete place/photo/linear feature, translate tags, watchlist, status grid, Satellite images updates list, report lists bug/features, use messages, write on forum, create collaborations | 500 dots | ~500 km² |
| 3 Regular User | 15000 | use category filter, change interface language, choose map type, edit profile, vote for users, add place/photo/linear feature, edit place/photo/linear feature, delete place/linear feature/photo, translate tags/ translate interface, watchlist, status grid, Satellite images updates list, report lists bug/features, use messages, write on forum, create collaborations | 500 dots | ~750 km² |
| 4 Regular User | 50000 | search, use category filter, change interface language, choose map type, edit profile, vote for users, add place/photo/linear feature, edit place/photo/linear feature, delete place/linear feature/photo, translate tags/translate interface, watchlist, status grid, Satellite images updates list, report lists bug/features, use messages, write on forum, create collaborations | 500 dots | ~1000 km² |
| 5 Regular User | 150000 | search, use category filter, change interface language, choose map type, edit profile, vote for users, add place/photo/linear feature, edit place/photo/linear feature, delete place/linear feature/photo, translate tags/translate interface, watchlist, status grid, Satellite images updates list, report lists bug/features, use messages, write on forum, create collaborations, mass editing/deleting photos (photo moderation), delete comments, suspicious edits page | 500 dots | ~1250 km² |
| 6 Regular User | 500000 | all | 500 dots | ~1500 km² |
| 7 Regular User | 1500000 | all | 500 dots | ~1750 km² |
| 8 Regular User | 5000000 | all | 500 dots | ~2000 km² |
| Forum moderators | approved by Wikimapia Team | depending on UL + edit/moderate forum | depending on UL | depending on UL |
| Categories moderators | approved by Wikimapia Team | depending on UL + edit category filter + category translation + create/edit/moderate categories | depending on UL | depending on UL |
| Documentors | approved by Wikimapia Team | depending on UL + create/edit Wikimapia Docs | depending on UL | depending on UL |
| Advanced Users (AU) | approved by other Advanced Users | all + add protection to places + write on AU forum + ban users + guest ban tool + vote on AU's promotion + 2-hour object deletion + edit multiple polygons + create/edit/moderate collaborations + category translation + add category descriptions | 2000 dots | ~70000 km² |
Rank chasing problem
Wikimapia's main goal is to help people exploring the world and sharing their knowledge. Wikimapia is not about rank or social status. Though, there is a rank system, that automatically determines experience levels, its only aim is helping to organize Wikimapia Community and encouraging users to contribute to the project. But all main decisions as promotion to Advanced User status or getting any other special role (forum moderator, documentor, etc) are made depending on the +quality+ (do not confuse with quantity) of users contributions and after discussion and voting among all the members of the Community.
As it is usual in other collaborative projects, Wikimapians criticize rank cheaters. Everything on Wikimapia is based on trust to your edits, which you will loose immediately as soon as you'll try to receive experience points for useless actions. Although it is not possible to ban a user for useless actions (unless it corrupts the information), a user can be demoted from AU for a poor quality of edits or his experience points will be zeroised by the Administrators.
Awards
In addition to experience points there is another reward system. Award stars (one, two or three) are automatically granted based on various thresholds (i.e. place or road creation, photos addition) of one's stats.
Voting
Voting is our method of providing positive feedback to you about your contributions to Wikimapia, and for you to provide positive feedback to other users about theirs. People who make a positive contribution to Wikimapia ("describing the world" by creating useful and well-described places) are deserving a positive vote.
Neither award stars, nor votes can not influence directly your user level, but having award stars or a lot of votes means you have quite succeeded in map improving or you have a high social status on Wikimapia. That, for example, except giving a nice feeling, can help in case you made a request for an Advanced User status.
Special roles
Wikimapia Team
It is them who make changes and maintain the site. Wikimapia developers are always busy with Wikimapia improvement, so please think twice before addressing yourself to them. If your case is urgent they will gladly help you. But if AUs can also help you with the issue, you should send a message to AUs first.
| Wikimapia Team members | Real name |
|---|---|
| koriakine | Alexandre Koriakine (co-founder) |
| jacksav | Evgeniy Saveliev (co-founder) |
| w8r | Alexander Milevski (front-end engineer) |
| lnklnklnk | Alexander Eroshkin |
| Ivan Tikhonov | Ivan Tikhonov |
| podkovyrin | Andrew Podkovyrin |
| Annette Turiyanskaya | Annette Turiyanskaya |
Forum moderators
This role allows the use of moderator tools in the Wikimapia forum. It is granted by Wikimapia Team members.
Categories moderators
This role allows the use of moderator tools for Wikimapia categories. It is granted by Wikimapia Team members.
Here is some information for Categories moderators:
What are categories?
What exactly is a category, anyway? For example, is "city" a category? Answer: Not really. A category is really just an ID number in the category database. So "88" in the category database is a category. The basic idea is that category "88" represents the same kind of thing everywhere, no matter which country it is in.
A category has a number of properties, and the most important property is ... its name (in English). Another property would be, for example, its name (in Russian). So if we give category "88" a name of "city" in English, its name in Russian should also mean "city". We can not decide to give a Russian name to category "88" that means something different, for example "house".
Even though "city" isn't really a category, for convenience and because no one has memorized the category ID numbers, we usually use the category name in square brackets to represent the category. So [city] is actually category 88; and [город (ru)] is also category 88, but referring specifically to the Russian synonym/translation.
In even more technical detail, the number that is stored with each place tag is in fact not the category ID, but rather a "synonym id". Each synonym id has its own name, that you can see on the "Category list" page, and it is these synonyms that are structured to make up the category hierarchy. This makes it possible to, for example, start with two separate categories, then make them synonyms (thus blending the places together), and then undo the synonym relation, and end up with the original two categories separate again, all without changing anything on the individual place tags.
How do we use categories?
What kinds of questions can we ask of the category database that we would like to see displayed on the map? Here are some suggestions, presented as templates of what we should think of when we assign a category to a place tag.
- "This place is a [category]." Examples: [village], [school], [police station], [mcdonalds]. But not [compressor].
- "This place is a [category] type of place." Examples: [military], [production].
- "This place is associated with / owned by [category]." Examples: [roman empire], [Long Island Rail Road].
Those are some of the obvious templates, but surely there are others that would also be useful. Please make suggestions in the 'Category cleanup' section of the Forum!
This writer is generally not in favour of things like:
- "This place is in [category]." Examples: [paris], [russia], [africa].
Although for some reason, a personal quirk!, I am ok with English counties [nottinghamshire] and French/Italian provinces [lombardy], for example, but not US/Canadian states/provinces [california], [ontario]. These are specific [first level administration] places - perhaps historical ones - and the category should be applied to cities and towns only. - "This was created by [category]." Example: [johnsmith].
- "I can buy [category] in this place." Examples: [phone], [computer], [apple]. Names like these should be reworded according to template (1) above: [cell phone shop], [computer sales / service], [grocery] (just to pick some thoughts off the top of my head), provided the 'thing' isn't silly, like [coke].
- "This place is [category]." Examples: [green], [dangerous]. These words are usually adjectives, and are not suitable for category names.
How is the category system structured?
The 'new' (2012) category system has a specific structure added. Categories can now have 'parents', 'children' and 'brothers/sisters'. A category can have any number of children and, any number of parents and any number of synonyms (brothers/sisters). The idea is that the results you get when filtering will now also include places with 'child' and 'grandchild' categories, and their synonyms. So if you filter for [restaurant] it will also find places categorized only as [Italian restaurant], for example (or it will once this relationship functionality is enabled in the filtering function, which it is not, at the beginning). In addition, once the full functionality is enabled, the rendering properties that are associated with some categories, like parks being coloured green, will also carry through to their child and grandchild categories.
If you tried to draw this as a diagram (like a family tree), it could get very complex, with relationship arrows going all over the place. It is very flexible. So flexible that it is even possible to set up links such that the 'child' and 'grandfather' categories are the same, thus making a closed loop in the diagram. (This is obviously not a good thing to do, however, so don't do it!)
When there are synonyms, there is one default synonym. This is the name that will be shown as the main category name. The default synonym in a different language does not have to be the same as in English.
What does a Category Moderator (CM) do?
There are three main activities for CM's:
1. Organize the categories.
Create the parent/child/synonym links in the new structure in the official WM language (English). This is the initial primary task and in order to assist with this you need to be proficient in English. This part is also more like a project in that as we proceed there will be less and less remaining to do. At some point we should be able to declare it "completed enough" and move on to the day-to-day maintenance tasks.
2. Translate the English category names into other languages
Here also you must understand what the name in English means before you can translate it. If there is a question, it must be discussed before doing anything. Note that it is now possible for a category to not have a name in English. If you find one like this, please add the English translation.
3. Ongoing maintenance
This will continue forever as people make new (not-yet-approved) categories.
What tools are available to manage categories?
Use the table below to find the tools that are described in this section:
| Tool / Function | Where to find it |
|---|---|
| Create a category | Edit a place | Add category |
| Approve a category | Tools | Unapproved categories |
| Unapprove a category | Category info page |
| Rename a category | Tools | Category list |
| Modify the description | Category info page | Edit category |
| Make two existing categories synonymous | Tools | Unapproved categories |
| Remove a synonym | Category info page | Edit category |
| Set the default synonym | Category info page | Edit category |
| Add and remove child/parent categories | Category info page | Edit category |
| Add a translation (to another language) | Category info page | Add translation |
| Remove a translation | (not available) |
| Merge categories (merges places into a single category) |
Tools | Unapproved categories |
| Delete a category | Tools | Unapproved categories |
| Search for a category/synonym | Tools | Category list |
| Audit recent changes | Tools | Global categories watchlist |
| Audit edits to places with this category | Category info page | View watchlist |
| Audit changes to this category | Category info page | View history |
| Look at category structure | Tools | Category hierarchy |
Create a category
This function has to be performed by a Category Moderator. If there is any category word you think is lacking or you would like a category created, please contact a Category Moderator. List of categories Moderators
From the "Tools | Unapproved categories" page you can:
- Approve the category. This means it is no longer hidden, and can be applied to place tags. If this is a newly added word, please check that it is a word that makes for a good category (see above). You should also make an English version, if it's not already in English, and add a description that helps people understand how this category should be used.
- Make a synonym for an existing category.
- Note 1: This is useful only for those circumstances where there is no existing place with both categories. If such places exist, you will be informed about which ones they are so you can deal with them manually before retrying the Make a synonym function.
- Note 2: Don't make things synonyms unless they really are the same, and you want to have two different names for the same type of thing. This can be un-done, however, so it's not a disaster if you make a mistake.
- Note 3: The category you start with becomes a synonym of the category you select in the search function (which is the default synonym ).
- Merge categories. The category you merge from, which is thus going to disappear, must have only a small number of associated places. Note that this can not be un-done, so you must be 100% sure that these two categories represent the exact same type of thing.
- Delete a category.
- Note: Under this new system that categories are never actually deleted, they just become hidden when their usage count drops to zero. So if someone subsequently tries to create the same category again, the old version is just revived instead of creating a new one.
From the Category info page you can:
(This is the page with buttons for "Filter places", "View watchlist", etc.).
- Edit some of the category info:
- Modify the description.
- Add and remove child/parent categories.
-
- Note 1: It is appropriate to make a parent/child relationship when you can say that "a <child category> is one kind of <parent category>". For example, "an [Italian restaurant] is one kind of [restaurant]", or "a [McDonalds] is one kind of [fast food (restaurant)]". If you can not make a statement like that, perhaps you should not do this.
- Note 2: Adding a child or parent increases the "count" number of the parent category, whereas removing a child or parent does not decrease that count. These numbers are really estimates and will get recalculated automatically twice a day anyway.
- Set the default synonym or remove a synonym.
-
- Note 1: When you remove a synonym it automatically becomes Unapproved, so you will probably want to go and approve it.
- Note 2: The default synonym does not have to be the same in each language, so you can change the default synonym in Russian without affecting the English default, for example.
- Unapprove a category. You must do this first before the category becomes accessible on the Unapproved categories page (above).
- Add a translation.
From the "Tools | Category list" page you can:
- Search for a category (synonym, actually) in any language. Note that the 'normal' category search will only return results that match in your current language or in English. This page also shows the language that the name is in, as well as the English name of the main category.
- Rename a category.
- Note 1: Most "special" characters (@#$*...) can be included in category names, but some may have to be url-encoded (eg: "&"=%26). Always check the result after renaming to verify it worked properly.
The "Tools | Global category watchlist" page
- shows changes made to the hierarchy and category names.
Other "Categories" info
- When you change the relationships between categories, by adding or deleting parent/child/synonym categories, for example, you should not expect to immediately see the new relationships when filtering for the affected places. Realtime regeneration may be enabled in the future, but at the beginning these data are only regenerated periodically (a few times per day, maybe).
- There are some functions that are only available for "small" categories. This will usually mean that the button to do that function is not there if the category is not "small". The exact definition of "small" is not (yet) decided, but think "fewer than 100", and it can also mean different numbers for different functions.
- You can download a spreadsheet-compatible list of all the categories from http://wikimapia.org/#show=/user/tools/categories/?download=1 (note that the field separator is a semicolon). You can use this to, for example, find categories with low usage that are candidates for deletion, or find categories with missing or misleading translations from English into other languages.
Advanced Users
Any user with level 5 or + may become advanced users and his/her candidacy (it will be offered automatically) will be put to vote. If current Advanced Users decide that a person has demonstrated him/herself as a competent editor and can help Wikimapia by taking additional responsibilities and powers he/she will be invited in Advanced Users group.
A list of languages spoken by AUs can be found here.
This AU Codex is a code of conduct for Advanced Users.
Documentors
This role allows to edit the Wikimapia Documentation (This Documentation). It is granted by Wikimapia Team members.
Forum
See also: Forum Guidelines
The forum is Wikimapia's discussion area, where you can read other users' questions and answers on a variety of topics, ask your own questions and join in the discussions. The people who frequent the forum are other users just like you, although the Wikimapia Team Members (admins) do occasionally contribute as well.
To ensure discussions and debates flow freely without any hindrances, users are obliged to adhere to the forum guidelines published here and here.
Collaborations
Main article: Collaborations
Collaborations are projects created by the Wikimapia community to do such activities, an example is adding polygons to places without polygons. Any registered user 1+ level can create a collaboration.
1. To create a collaboration open your profile page, find Tools tab and click on Collaborations. Choose Create a Collaboration. Add a title, its brief description and a country, if needed.
2. Send first 20 invitations to your group. For example, choose 20 users from your recent Messages.
3. When your collaboration reaches more than 20 participants, you can invite more 980 users. But choose carefully. Analyse your watch list or history list on the map to decide, who may be interested in your collaboration.
4. When creating a collaboration, a topic in Collaborations section of the forum with the same title appears automatically. Communicate with other participants of the group and write about your recent results here!
