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Borders between countries are not always depicted in Wikimedia Maps
Closed, DuplicatePublicBUG REPORT

Assigned To
Authored By
Tohaomg
Nov 18 2021, 8:10 PM
Referenced Files
F35069693: Screenshot from 2022-04-27 12-10-58.png
Apr 27 2022, 6:41 AM
F34910238: image.png
Jan 7 2022, 11:08 AM
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Jan 7 2022, 11:08 AM
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Jan 6 2022, 9:37 AM
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Jan 5 2022, 11:59 AM

Description

List of steps to reproduce:

image.png (815×1 px, 376 KB)

What happens?:
Borders between some countries are not depicted in Wikimedia Maps inserted into Wikipedia pages using Extension:Kartographer. They become visible only if you zoom in enough, or, in case of Lithuanian-Latvian border, it is not visible even in the maximal zoom.

What should have happened instead?:
All state borders should have been shown

Software version, browser information, screenshots, other information, etc:
This bug appears across multiple devices:

  1. Windows 7, Google Chrome
  2. Windows 10, Opera
  3. Android, Opera

And in multiple projects:

  1. uk.wikipedia.orf
  2. en.wikipedia.org
  3. ua.wikimedia.org

Event Timeline

Jgiannelos closed this task as Resolved.EditedJan 5 2022, 11:24 AM
Jgiannelos claimed this task.
Jgiannelos subscribed.

This looks like its fixed in current production.

For example

image.png (443×348 px, 83 KB)

Tohaomg triaged this task as High priority.

Borders between France and Belgium and between Belgium and the Netherlands were indeed fixed, but some missing borders were not fixed (like DR Congo-Angola), and also some borders that were there before, now disappeared (Lithuania-Belarus, Lithuania-Russia, Belarus-Russia, Belarus-Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia, Ukraine-Moldova).

Set this task at a high prority, because the map in its current state imposes great reputational risks for the Ukrainian Wikipedia, as Ukrainian-Russian border is a very sensitive political topic and this border being absent from the map can be seen as Wikipedia denouncing Ukrainian independence and sovereignity. We should expect media titles like "Wikipedia decided to restore the USSR" if this bug is not fixed ASAP, which would be a PR disaster for the Ukrainian Wikipedia.

image.png (720×960 px, 403 KB)

Aklapper raised the priority of this task from High to Needs Triage.Jan 5 2022, 12:09 PM
MSantos triaged this task as High priority.Jan 5 2022, 1:15 PM
MSantos subscribed.

We're working on it at the moment. I'll keep the priority high, for now. We already have a fix to be applied and wrapping up investigations.

Wonderful, thank you. But I have to ask when should the fix be expected: is it hours, days or weeks? (our communicational team is pretty alerted right now)

@Tohaomg the fix should be up in a couple of hours but it might take a full day until tiles are refreshed, I'll keep you posted.

Update on the issue: Manually reloading the OSM data for specific regions looks like its working directly hitting kartotherian for maps:

image.png (1×2 px, 3 MB)

We still need to wait for upstream cache to expire for the changes to be reflected on maps.wikimedia.org.

It looks like upstream cache picked up the new borders we manually imported. cc @Tohaomg

For me at the moment Ukraine's and other former USSR republics national borders look fine now, but there are still some issues elsewhere:

Ukraine is missing some regional borders:

image.png (656×973 px, 406 KB)

(Cf this random map of Ukraine: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UkraineRegionalDomesticProductP2012change.PNG )

There is btw a separate issue there, the signage for Кривий ріг renders properly only since Zoom Level: 8, and this happens elsewhere on the map too, but probably a subject to a separate ticket

Still a big Angola, DRC, Uganda and Kenya conglomerate shown:

image.png (657×992 px, 279 KB)

Both Koreas and PRC are bundled too:

image.png (272×305 px, 68 KB)

India misses border with PRC too:

image.png (487×664 px, 238 KB)

Mali, (Western Sahara) and Morocco:

image.png (545×742 px, 147 KB)

I am not too good at geography so I would not be surprised if there are some things wrong elsewhere too.

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors as per their licence.

Its not feasible to fix each case one by one so it looks like the best way forward is to run a full planet import.

FYI: today the border between Sweden and Norway, the border between Angola and DR of Congo, as well as Morocco, Mauritania, Burkina Faso (maybe more) have been reported as missing

This has severe legal consequences for communities in many of these countries. Just hoping the developers are working on it as high priority.

Hi @Jgiannelos are you still the person assigned to this task?
As mentioned by users above, missing borders on a map view can have a very practical impact on volunteers working with these maps in different areas of the world, putting them at risk if they share these maps publicly (for example, a Wikidata Query Service map on social media).
From what I can see, there seem to be two different things going on:

  • a bug that doesn't show some borders at certain levels of zoom
  • some borders are completely missing from the map

It would be awesome if someone could look into it again. Thanks in advance!

Hi @Lea_Lacroix_WMDE we are currently working with @MSantos to properly fix borders by reimporting OSM planet data from scratch + pregenerate tiles.
Because of the amount of tiles to be generated this is going to take time. We are currently done with OSM planet import and today we are going to start triggering pregeneration for different zoom levels.

We had meetings with GLAM and education institutes and few top rankings government officials of an Indian state (Arunachal Pradesh) last week and we had to avoid all dynamic Wikimedia maps including that on the Wikidata query because of this issue. As the international border is missing in this area making it a highly sensitive issue, we might not only lose partnership opportunities but also can be persecuted if this comes up during our collaborations. So, is there any update?

We just switched over from codfw tegola to eqiad after a full planet import. After checking locally at the service it looks like the borders issues reported here are fixed. This change is going to be slowly reflected to prod today while cache gets invalidated.
On top of that we introduced some infrastructure changes to improve how we import OSM data and avoid data corruption.

Screenshot from 2022-04-27 12-10-58.png (690×1 px, 469 KB)
The international borders are missing again

Cannot reproduce anymore given the link the description.