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Support KML files in Commons
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Description

This card tracks a proposal that's currently part of the Community Wishlist Survey: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey

The Wishlist Survey voting phase lasts until Dec 14th. After the voting has concluded, the top proposals will form the backlog for the Community Tech team to investigate and address.

See also T28059: Add support for KML/KMZ filetype, which may overlap/duplicate.

Proposal:

KML files are used in en.wikipedia to display route maps (eg roads, train lines, and other linear features) via w:en:Template:Attached KML (see d:Q6690822 for the equivilent on other wikis).

Currently this is achieved by storing the KML files as text in subpages of the template (transclusion count for en.wikipedia: https://tools.wmflabs.org/templatecount/index.php?lang=en&name=Attached_KML&namespace=10#bottom), which is sub-optimal for multiple reasons:

  1. There is no associated {{information}} template, for description, author, date, licence, information source, etc.
  1. The licence is restricted to the standard licence for a wikitext page, rather than being able to choose a different licence such as CC0 or CC-BY
  1. Categorisation is difficult, as including [[Category: ]] links at the end of the page breaks the KML file.
  1. The KML files serve only one wiki – they cannot be shared with other wikis, nor associated with the relevant Wikidata item.

Being able to upload KML files to Commons would fix these issues; Commons has previously been suggested as the better place for the files (see w:en:Template talk:Attached KML: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Attached_KML).

See also technical discussion at T28059: Add support for KML/KMZ filetype

  • Evad37 (talk) 16:05, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey/Commons#Support_KML_files_in_Commons