Wikipedia:Geonotice

A geonotice is a notice on Special:Watchlist that is displayed only to users who are physically located in some subset of the Earth. The configuration page of geonotices is on Wikipedia:Geonotice/list.json. View the active geonotices and the regions they cover on Wikipedia:Geonotice/Map.

The purpose of geonotices is to announce events that would be of great interest to people in a specific region, but that would not be interesting to most of our readers. The use of targeted messages allows us to scale our communication better; rather than flooding people with multiple messages or avoiding messages entirely, we can display messages only to the people who are most likely to find them useful.

Example uses for targeted messages are: to announce upcoming Wikipedia meetups and local events, for local chapter activities and to advertise mailing lists focused on geographical areas.

Geonotices requested here are only displayed on the watchlist on the English Wikipedia. If you want to target users of all Wikimedia Foundation wikis in a particular geographical area, you can go to meta:CentralNotice to request a geotargeted banner.

No data or personal information is gathered from users to make this notice possible, nor does this notice share any user's personal information with outsiders.

Geonotices are a type of watchlist notice, a type of top of page message similar to a MediaWiki:Sitenotice, MediaWiki:Anonnotice or MediaWiki:Watchlist-messages notice.

The current implementation works by loading the user's latitude and longitude from geoiplookup.wikimedia.org and using a small bit of JavaScript (Geonotice-core.js and Geonotice-list.js) to determine whether or not to display a notice to the user. The location detection is IP address-based, using a lookup system described at wikitech:Geolocation. Currently, MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition specifies the geonotices to be listed at MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js (IAdmin-protected), which is turn is updated automatically by User:MusikBot II by synchronizing from Wikipedia:Geonotice/list.json (Sysop-protected).

The "hide" button that is displayed with each message will persistently dismiss that particular message. You can also disable all Geonotices by disabling the Geonotice gadget in your preferences. Geonotices will also be hidden if you have opted to hide all watchlist notices.

Geonotices are currently a candidate to be integrated into MediaWiki proper. One significant open question is how best to allow users to specify the locations of interest for a message. Right now, the location range must be hard-coded in the the JavaScript itself.

This is a low-volume request page. If you're an admin and you want to put up a geonotice, feel free to read the guidance on this page and update Wikipedia:Geonotice/list.json yourself.

Create request

To propose a geonotice, simply create a new third level section (using ===) under the "Requests" section, using the boilerplate text below, and follow the instructions in this section.

=== [[Related page name (e.g. meetup page)]] ===
<syntaxhighlight lang="json">
  "begin" : "18 September 2019 00:00 UTC",
  "end" : "25 September 2019 00:00 UTC",
  "corners" : [[45, -90], [52, -100]], 
  "text" : "Replace this with your message. You can add [[Wikipedia:Meetup|Wikilinks]] or [https://en.wikipedia.org external links]."
</syntaxhighlight>

'''Discussion'''
* ''User requesting:'' ~~~~

Locations

Try to be as specific as possible with the location. For example, a Washington, D.C. meetup would not be appropriate to advertise to everyone in the United States. Be aware that the detection is not flawless; due to varying boundaries and the inaccuracies of IP locating, the result cannot be perfect.

It makes things much easier if you can give us geographic coordinates. The format of the coordinates is [ [latitude, longitude], [latitude, longitude] ]. To identify appropriate bounding boxes, the Flickr API offers a handy reference database - eg/ British Columbia. If in doubt, pick a central point and go a degree or two in all directions. To get a bounding box, you can use http://boundingbox.klokantech.com/ . Drag and drop the yellow handles to position and size your bounding box, then under "Copy & Paste" (at bottom), choose DublinCore. You can include that string in your request.

For country-wide geonotices, we can target the geonotice to a specific country with something such as "country": "US" instead of the "corners": specification. The geonotice tool uses ISO 3166 Country Codes. This method is generally more reliable.

Messages

Messages should be one or two sentences in length, and they should not contain any flashy text or images. It is a good idea to provide at least two options, in case one is deemed inappropriate.

Messages exceeding four sentences are deemed too large, except in cases where the sentences are short.

Geonotices should always be used with the understanding that some of the intended audience will be excluded and that some unintended people will be included. As such, the message should be written in a way that would be suitable for display to all users. For example, write "The New York City Wikipedia Meetup will be on August 12" rather than "Hello resident of Long Island...".

Remember to link the event signup page (where appropriate) in the notice - and please use a wikilink (to Wikipedia, Meta, etc) rather than a URL. External URLs do not always work reliably.

Date range

Try to post your request at least five days (preferably seven to ten days) in advance. It may take a while for requests to be handled.

Notify geonotice maintainers

In case there is no feedback in a few days after posting the request, ask User:Redrose64, User:L235, User:the wub, or an administrator to take a look.

Add new requests to the top of this list. Please include coordinates where possible, as this will speed up processing. Note that this page is quite low-traffic - if you've had no response after a day or two, or if it's urgent, please poke the administrators.

  "begin" : "6 December 2024 00:00 UTC",
  "end" : "15 December 2024 17:00 UTC",
  "corners" : [ [ 37.8, -74 ], [ 33, -86 ] ]
  "text" : "Join [[meta:North_Carolina_Wikipedians|NC Wikipedians]] for a [[Wikipedia:Meetup/NC/Virtual Editathon December 2024|virtual editathon]] Sunday, Dec. 15, 10:30am - 12pm. We'll work on NC counties affected by Hurricane Helene. 1st-timers welcome."

Discussion

• User request: Gaurav (talk) 18:22, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@The wub: pinging admin on behalf of Gaurav to request a review. Sodapopinski7 (talk) 12:57, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Done the wub "?!" 22:58, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Sodapopinski7 (talk) 1:38, 10 November 2024 (UTC) Sodapopinski7 (talk) 01:38, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  "begin" : "23 November 2024 00:00 UTC",
  "end" : "14 December 2024 23:59 UTC",
  "corners" : [ [ -88.3981, 41.5006 ], [ -87.2911, 42.491 ] ]
  "text" : "All Chicago editors are welcome at our '''[[Wikipedia:Meetup/Chicago/14_December_2024|December meetup]]''' at The Bourgeois Pig. Join fellow Wikipedians for coffee, conversation, and editing!"

Discussion

• User requesting: Luiysia (talk) 20:28, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@The wub: pinging admin since seems no recent updates for the past few weeks Luiysia (talk) 18:31, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Luiysia  Done the wub "?!" 00:13, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  "begin" : "5 December 2024 00:00 UTC",
  "end" : "12 December 2024 23:59 UTC",
  "corners" : [[38.85,-120.5], [36.6, -123.5]], 
  "text" : "[[Wikipedia:Meetup/San Francisco|Join]] Wikipedians in the Bay Area on December 12 for community, coworking and local organizing"

Discussion

• User requesting: e_mln_e (talk) 10:35, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@e_mln_e is the date correct? Wikipedia:Meetup/San Francisco says December 12. the wub "?!" 00:14, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@the wub oh my. Thanks for catching that. It's indeed December 12. Corrected. 24 November 2024

 Done the wub "?!" 11:21, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]