elsslotsI would like to suggest (and please forgive me if it has already been) to substitute the current use of Google Maps to show all the WHS locations with
OpenStreetMap.
Now, this may sound like a big change, but from indirect experience I think that the embedding in the site should be very easy: actually, OpenStreetMap is made to be used and also contributed to by the users. I leave the final word to the more technically experienced on this site, but probably the shift could be done without too much hustle.
As for the motivations, well: the first one is to favour an independent open-source application versus a private data-collecting (and -selling) company. This is already a much debated issue which touches important problems about privacy, so I'll just limit myself to say that, in my opinion, open-source softwares best suit such a collaborative effort from an ethical and a functional point of view (but please, if anyone works at Google here, don't be upset with me, it's nothing personal 🙂).
The second and probably most "interesting" motivation, and unrelated to the first one, is that I find that OpenStreetMap is simply a better map: it is clearer, more informative, and has better details. Let's for example compare a view of Delphoi with
Google Maps and with
OpenStreetMap for an example. It is true OpenStreetMap lacks satellite images and StreetView, and I am not able to gauge how much this is important for users; to me personally it's negligible, at least for its function here.
OK, so I don't know if I was convincing enough 😄 Anyway, let me know what you think about it!
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And just another map-related suggestion, would it be possible to add maps for each connection, so as to see their distribution?