Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Miscellaneous/Kartographer icon improvements

Random proposal ►◄ Miscellaneous  The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Kartographer icon improvements

• Problem: Kartographer-based Maplink/Mapframe maps work wonders to easily show maps in Wikipedia infoboxes and beyond. However the mapping tool really suffers from a lack of identifying icons. Especially for maps that show numerous features, editors are having to be creative to come up with icons that just barely associate with their topics. This is because MediaWiki uses an obsolete version of Maki icons, and I've been told an update is impossible, but it still wouldn't fix all the problems relevant to Wikimedia spaces.

Other problems include, for accessibility, making more options for legibility. Icons should be able to be at least colored black, for increased contrast when the marker color is set to a light color. Markers should also have options for other shapes, to allow for differentiation when using grayscale maps and for people with low color recognition (see task T131618).

• Who would benefit: All wikis including Commons, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, and innumerous Wikipedia articles.
• Proposed solution: Developing an additional entirely new set of icons, including many of the below missing or unclear examples:

Part one: icon/marker formatting

• Icons, currently only available in white, should be available at least in black as well, for increased contrast when marker-color is set to a light color
• Markers should have more shape options behind the tear-drop shape.

Part two: fixing unclear icons

• bank – should be a dollar bill or bank building (fixed in Maki, not here)
• building – should be renamed 'house', with a better symbol for building (fixed in Maki, not here)
• church – should resemble common church icons
• cinema – clapperboard icon evokes a film studio, could be clearer for movie theaters (fixed in Maki, not here)
• fire station – currently resembles an active fire, not a station
• library – would look better if it incorporated a building along with a book/books, see these
• mosque – should resemble common mosque icons
• prison – unclear, looks like a fence (fixed in Maki, not here)
• school – should resemble common school icons
• synagogue – should resemble common synagogue icons

Part three: adding missing icons

• amusement park (fixed in Maki, not here)
• apartment building (fixed in Maki, not here)
• aquarium (fixed in Maki, not here)
• beach (fixed in Maki, not here)
• bridge (fixed in Maki, not here)
• casino (fixed in Maki, not here)
• castle (fixed in Maki, not here)
• courthouse
• elevator
• escalator (fixed in Maki, not here)
• forest
• government building
• hotel – more general 'lodging' exists, see clearer example
• jewelry store (fixed in Maki, not here)
• lake
• landmark (fixed in Maki, not here)
• marketplace or food hall
• mountain (fixed in Maki, not here)
• nuclear power plant – more general 'industrial' exists
• power plant – more general 'industrial' exists
• ship or museum ship – 'ferry' exists
• stadium/arena – limited individual sports are available, though those are not applicable for multipurpose arenas (fixed in Maki, not here)
• train station – more general 'rail' exists, see clearer example
• skyscraper – more general 'commercial' exists, see clearer example (fixed in Maki, not here)
• solar farm
• stairs
• volcano (fixed in Maki, not here)
• waterfall (fixed in Maki, not here)
• windmill (fixed in Maki, not here)
• 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. – allows for clearer maps of relocations (see second map here)

• More comments: The above set of icons proposed are only ones I have found immediately relevant; others in the current Maki set or elsewhere may prove to be as well.
• Phabricator tickets: task T145475, task T141304, task T131618, task T141715
• Proposer: Ɱ (talk) 00:11, 19 November 2020 (UTC)