How would I create a Wiki War Map site?

[Enki]

How would one go about creating a wiki style warmap that has the ability to put bases and troop movement information on it? Right now, I would want to focus on just the technical necessity of what would need to be built into an MVP of the website.

So here are some user stories.


*I am a contributor and want to input the coordinates of the base in my town
*I am the webmaster and want to embed the map on my website
*I am a contributor and want to input links to information such as the base's website, it's wikipedia entry, etc...
*I am a contributor and I live in Pakistan and want to put up a drone strike.
*I am a researcher and I want to vet the information via some type of rating system.
*I am an administrator and want to maintain a community of contributors.


What would be the best way to input the GIS data for website embed?

I have some ideas as to how to rate the veracity of the information. Generally multiple confirmation would be a good method. This would be a crowd-sourced endeavor in journalism, not meant to be actionable intelligence so a certain margin of error is acceptable.

Feel free to add some user stories if you're interested.

[Zack Morris]

I've no experience with setting up or administering wikis, unfortunately, but this sounds interesting. Is there anything remotely comparable out there to what you are trying to do so we can get a better sense of what you're envisioning?

I think this may require a custom-developed product. The Google Maps API may be useful. I think several web sites use Google Maps to tag things in their own, custom way.

[Enki]

I've no experience with setting up or administering wikis, unfortunately, but this sounds interesting. Is there anything remotely comparable out there to what you are trying to do so we can get a better sense of what you're envisioning?

I just want for people to be able to input certain information. So it could be a map with links to wiki articles.

I think this may require a custom-developed product. The Google Maps API may be useful. I think several web sites use Google Maps to tag things in their own, custom way.

Probably can do it with Google Fusion Tables. You might need to develop some sprites that will show up on the map and display certain information. I also don't know how to develop region information for Google Maps.

[Doc]

I've no experience with setting up or administering wikis, unfortunately, but this sounds interesting. Is there anything remotely comparable out there to what you are trying to do so we can get a better sense of what you're envisioning?

I think this may require a custom-developed product. The Google Maps API may be useful. I think several web sites use Google Maps to tag things in their own, custom way.

I can't claim much knowledge about this either. But yes there are several apps that use the Google API.

This one is only limited as a free app but it would give you an idea. As users log in there location could be logged automatically. (random IP address used)

http://www.ip2location.com/24.67.123.23

Take the Lat. and Long. manually to google maps

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=49.88307, ... 6&t=m&z=16

And you get it down to a street. Though this may or may not be correct based on how much effort was put into the particular mapping of a given ISP's network. But it would could be automated. The best way would probably a limited number of input fields

As far as this type of wiki there would have to be a structure for inputting the data. If not you will end up spending more time to sort it out than you would have. Things need to be quantified in data structures. The best way would probably a limited number of input fields.

[Demon of Undoing]

I'd say your big problem wouldn't be technical, but legal.

[Enki]

I'd say your big problem wouldn't be technical, but legal.

Gotta get it launched and then let the legal come after you.

[noddy]

as others have mentioned you can do this in the google api and a mix of their cloud store and mapping libraries.

you could also trawl through a search on "javascript map mashup" and see what prebuilts are out there, i had a quick look and their seems to be a few.

if you are actually in control of the server and want to get beyond javascript mashups you might want to look at http://openlayers.org/ for a free open source mapping api and http://www.openstreetmap.org/ for free open source map data and then use something like postgres with gis extensions for the datastore.

google may or may not shut you down for political pressure and it will probably want to charge you if it becomes popular - these charges get very expensive very quickly i found.

for this kind of task you dont really need gis extensions on the database but they will make it easier to feature creep into advanced queries.

lat,lon are just a couple of doubles (floats) so basic regional queries using crude bounding boxes are pretty easy without any proper gis support.