science

Wikimapia

Wikimapia is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Wikimapia rather than just read about it. In short: Wikimapia (stylized as wikimapia) is a geographic online encyclopedia project. The project implements an interactive clickable web map that utilizes Google Maps with a geographically referenced wiki system, with the aim to mark and describe all geographical objects in the world.

Key takeaways

Wikimapia belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Wikimapia to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Wikimapia from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Wikimapia (stylized as wikimapia) is a geographic online encyclopedia project. The project implements an interactive clickable web map that utilizes Google Maps with a geographically referenced wiki system, with the aim to mark and describe all geographical objects in the world.

History Wikimapia was created in Russia by Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev in May 2006. The data, a crowdsourced collection of places marked by registered users and guests, has grown to over 32,000,000 objects as of May 2026 and is released under the Creative Commons License Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA). Although the project's name is reminiscent of that of Wikipedia, and the creators share parts of the "wiki" philosophy, it is not a part of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation family of wikis. Since 2018, following years of declining popularity, the site has gone nearly inactive with the site's owners having been unable to pay for the usage of Google Maps and the site's social media accounts having remained derelict. A study from 2017 remarked that the site's popularity was in a steady decline since 2012. After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the page was closed on 2 March 2022. As of 13 March 2022 access to the site was met with the following message: "Wikimapia is turned off for some time (days or even weeks). The site is under cyber attack all these days. Stay tuned. Explanation later." Their Facebook page indicated they were hit by one or possibly several DNS attacks after a request was made to remove Ukrainian military installation listings, which was not immediately honored. However, an older version of Wikimapia was still accessible despite the page being closed. After two weeks, the page went back and reopened on 25 March 2022.

Main principles According to the website, Wikimapia is an open-content collaborative mapping project, aimed at marking all geographical objects in the world and providing a useful description of them. It aims to create and maintain a free, complete, multilingual and up-to-date map of the whole world. Wikimapia intends to contain detailed information about every place on Earth.

Features

Viewing

The Wikimapia website provides a Google Maps API-based interactive web map that consists of user-generated information layered on top of Google Maps satellite imagery and other resources. The navigation interface provides scroll and zoom functionality similar to that of Google Maps. The Wikimapia layer is a collection of "objects" with a polygonal outline (like buildings, forests, or lakes) and "linear features" (streets, railroads, rivers, ferry). Streets are connected by intersection points to form a street grid. Both kinds of items may have textual descriptions and photos attached to them. Viewers are able to click on any marked object or street segment to see its description. Descriptions can be searched by a built-in search tool. Tools for refining existing places according to category as well as measuring distances between objects are also available. Objects marked as buildings can have internal places (such as a business inside a larger office building) added. Categories are organized in a hierarchy such that viewing by a more general category includes having the specific category included. This is such as viewing "house" includes viewing "detached house". The hierarchy is not a strict hierarchy. For instance, the category "convenience store" appears in multiple places in the hierarchy. The interface is available in many languages, and the textual description of each item may have multiple versions in different languages. Wikimapia maps can also be embedded on other websites.

Map editing The data in Wikimapia is derived from voluntary crowdsourcing. All users, registered or unregistered (guests), are allowed to add a place on the Wikimapia layer, but guests cannot edit places created by registered users, and have some other limitations. Using a simple graphical editing tool, users are able to draw an outline or polygon that matches the satellite image layer underneath. Each object or "tag" has specific information fields which include categories, a textual description, street address, and a related Wikipedia link. Users are likewise capable of uploading several relevant photos. Registered users have fewer restrictions on map editing, and are able to edit and/or delete existing places as well as draw "linear features" (roads, railroads, rivers, and ferry lines). A "watchlist" could be manually set up to monitor all activity or object changes made in one or more of the assigned rectangular areas on the map.

Administration The website is maintained and developed by a small team of administrators (the Wikimapia Team), who introduce new features and determine further evolution course. Improvements are largely based on a feedback system from registered users through public forum discussions, bug reports and feature requests.

User levels and special roles The registered user community is largely self-organized, with users communicating through an internal message system and through a public forum. Map editing rewards the user "experience points" and milestone "awards" assigned by the system. Registered users are automatically ranked in levels according to accumulated experience points, with higher levels gaining access to advanced tools and having fewer restrictions on editing activity. A registered user may be promoted to "Advanced User" (AU) status as other existing AUs deem it fit. Additional editing and moderation tools, which include the authority to ban users, are given to an Advanced User, who is given the responsibility of countering vandalism in the map. Special roles of maintaining the website forum, place categories, and the Wikimapia Documentation (Docs) are also given by the Wikimapia Team to some users.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Wikimapia

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Wikimapia claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Wikimapia before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Wikimapia ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Wikimapia

In research: Wikimapia appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Wikimapia in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Wikimapia is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Collaborative mapping, Crowdsourcing, Internet properties established in 2006, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Wikimapia outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Wikimapia in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Wikimapia means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Wikimapia out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Wikimapia in simple terms?

Why does Wikimapia matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Wikimapia?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Wikimapia.