CZ:Geography Workgroup/Gazetteer/Geogra-thon

What's a Geogra-Thon?

It's when a bunch of people getting together on a wiki at a particular time to do a bunch of writing. It's like an online party! It's also like theMonthly Write-a-Thon except for one crusial thing. Well two things actually. First it's not a complete free for all - this day is focused on geography. In particular the Gazetteer articles for countries, towns, cities and regions. Secondly, it's on a different day.

When?

Write-a-Thons happen the Last Tuesday of every month. The next Write-a-Thon is Tuesday, January 29. January 29 is a long day since we have writers all around the world. It starts on January 28 at 1200 GMT, in New Zealand, and ends on January 30 at 1000 GMT, in Hawaii. Save The Date! Put it on your calendar! Set yourself a reminder!

Any new article you create, and any edit you make to somebody else's Write-a-Thon article, when it's that day in your part of the world, will count.

Our first monthly Write-a-Thon took place Wednesday, August 1, 2007 and was considered a roaring good time—so lets make sure the Geogra-thon does just as well.

What are the rules?

Rules? This is a party! There are no rules!

Well, OK, maybe there are a couple rules:

• We'll have a Write-a-Thon the last Tuesday of every month.
• To participate, you only have to do two things:
  1. Start a new article within the geography (even just a stub will qualify just try to write a ballanced and well writen stub) please remember to include the CZ:The Article Checklist! and
  2. make a substantive edit (not just a copyedit) to an existing geography article. Then you can list your name here as a partier. Until then, you're just a porch-sitter, party-crasher, or total party poop.

I don't know what to write! Help?

Write about what you know. Start with the biggest geographical region, such as your country of residence. Then do the State or Province you live in. Next try the nearest big city to your home and so on down. Once you have exhaused your current location. Do the same for your place of birth. What about places you visited on holliday. You must remember something about them. You see, you had plenty to contribute after all.

Holliday snaps

It's all fine writing articles but we also need illistrations. Dig out your old photo album, scan in the best of your snaps and put them onto the relevent article. Pop down town and take a pic of the local landmark and put it own your town/cities article.

Create an article, already!

Check it out: Start an article!

Now (this time anyway) easier than ever! Stubs are not only permitted they are encouraged!

Porch sitters--article creators who didn't edit a new article

• Todd started an article about the state he was born in, Ohio, while waiting for others to show up.

• He spent too much time working on on the new skin(s) that Derek Harkness only had time for one article today. Like Todd, he choose his place of birth - Paisley. Might have time later before America goes to bed, to do some more. P.S the skins are ready.

Questions

So I've been mulling over adding things to US state articles such as state mottos, animals, songs, etc. and what would be the best way to go about it. My first thought was designing a template box to stick on each article. But the more I've thought about it, this seems like something that might be better suited for a Catalogs subpage called "Symbols and Emblems" or something. Opinions? --Todd Coles 21:33, 28 January 2008 (CST)

Catalogs sounds good for these. Derek Harkness 10:18, 29 January 2008 (CST)

Why is the circumfrance of the earth 24,901.55 miles or 40,075.16 kilometers. Surly it would have been sensible to choose round numbers for the scale? Derek Harkness 10:18, 29 January 2008 (CST)

Previous shindigs

• November's Geogra-thon
• December's Geogra-thon

See also

• Larry Sanger, Why the Write-a-Thon worked, Citizendium Blog, August 9, 2007
• Weekly Wiki
• Article of the Week
• New Article of the Week
• Monthly Write-a-Thon

Images from Google Earth and/or MapQuest

I have a couple of images captured by SnagIt from Google Earth and Mapquest to illustrate my newly created article about Stravenues. Any chance that one of them could be used somehow? Each of them had a copyright thingee on the bottom of their screens before I grabbed 'em. Steve -- anything you can do? Email someone for permission if necessary? Many thanks! Hayford Peirce 13:13, 25 December 2007 (CST)

Here's some info I got from our competitor's article about Google Earth:

Currently, every image created from Google Earth using satellite data provided by Google Earth is a copyrighted map. Any derivative from Google Earth is made from copyrighted data which, under United States Copyright Law, may not be used except under the licenses Google provides. Google allows non-commercial personal use of the images (e.g. on a personal website or blog) as long as copyrights and attributions are preserved.[31] By contrast, images created with NASA's globe software World Wind use the Blue Marble, Landsat or USGS layer, each of which is a terrain layer in the public domain. Works created by an agency of the United States government are public domain at the moment of creation. This means that those images can be freely modified, re-distributed and used for commercial purposes.

Well, we're non-commercial, but are we "personal" enough for them? Or should I try to use the World Wind sites to look for the same thing? Hayford Peirce 16:11, 25 December 2007 (CST)

We had a question about exactly this on the Forum. The conclusion after reading the legal position of Google Earth was that we cannot use images from there. We need specific copyright permission. You should try the other source, I think. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 19:32, 25 December 2007 (CST)