My Map Has Errors – I Know

I apologize to Mr. Peng who wrote to me to complain that there is an error on my Shanghai Map. He searched for Zhong Shan South Road II and come to my site since mine is the first in the result. According to my map, the place is somewhere near Xi Kang Road. He took bus No 113 there only to find the road he was looking for is at the other side of the city.

I apologize for the inconvenience my map caused. I put a disclaimer on the map with red font and put it on the top of the page. It reads:

注意:本地图上的点信息由网友提供,任何人都可以添加一个点;没有人进行任何核实。它可能会帮助您尽快地在整张地图上找到您要找的点,但是一定要先在原始地图上确认再使用。Note: All the point information on this map was contributed by readers and is not verified for ts accuracy. Please reference the map image before use.

The Map

The map is built with two ideas in mind:

  • A map should be simple with less interface and load fast.
  • A map should be built with community effort

So I simply put the tiles of the maps and enable people to pinpoint on the city map and scroll using the errors.

Then I opened the right to add a point to anyone who has access to the page. This is built upon the Wiki concept. In the previous version, I enabled people to write description to any point and delete any point but it is not included in this version.

The point information is not accurate. I guess about half of the information is wrong. I will find a better way to control the quality to make it usable, but now, I guess I don’t have time to do it. So a disclaimer is the best solution that I can accomplish within five minutes.

English Version?

I don’t have an English version map. I know it is highly demanded and many readers asked me for that. I’m afraid I don’t have one.

Copyright

Actually, the copyright of the map is the SMI. I have contacted with them and want to make some progress to get a usage license before I use. We made appointment to meet before but didn’t find the time.

5 thoughts on “My Map Has Errors – I Know

  1. How about the SMI get out of their small holes and deliver an english version of the map, it should definitely not be your problem, Jianshuo ?

  2. Yes, the map has quite a lot of errors, but is still very usable and helpful!

    I noted several ones over the last weeks, from slight writing errors (“jin zhang lu/rd” where it should be “jin zang lu/rd”), points off by several 100m up to points totally (and absurdly) off, as I just noticed somebody put a marker “pudong airport” near “xintiandi”!!

    A method to edit/delete markers would be very helpful. Maybe we can figure out a smart way that would not cause even greater harm when enabled!

    How is this handled on all the “wiki” sites?

    Any suggestions?

  3. I agree with Joachim that the map is very useful, I often use it to create points and send links to friends.

    I think it would be most useful if every point had an associated wiki page, along with, as you described above, giving users the ability the delete or change the coordinates of the points. That way, people could describe what exists at a certain point, similar to Wang Jianshuo’s recent posts on Shanghai’s Line 1 metro stations. Points with less/no description could be subject to pruning.

    But of course, that involves lots of coding. Maybe somebody with more time and the necessary resources can volunteer :)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *