World map showing where pirate parties operate

[jh]

It is definitly neccessary to have a list of pirate parties (and poeple/sites trying to found one) on this international page. This thing should be on the first page.

But a list is boring and could be very long (if our success continues). What do you think of a big map of the world. Each country may a one of 4 colors, for example:
grey - no pirate party yet; thoughts are in a prison
yellow - PP foundation in progress
green - there is an (active) pirate party
tape & bones - PP in the parliament

This image could be linked direclty to the national websites or to a little stats page.

In my imagination such a big globe transmitts our opinion of the pirates free mind movement conquering the world .. is that too much ?

[infinite_emma]

Nicklas has started to work on a front-page, so go bother him instantly with all these good ideas!

I agree, the front-page should contain links to all parties around, and information on what the parties stand for and so on. Necessary in order, not in the least, to make sense out of this place.

[Nicklas W Bjurman]

Yes, quite interesting... I shall try and create such a feature on the page.

[Nicklas W Bjurman]

Now a question... I think we could make use of Google Map API. I have read their Terms of Use and it allows for us to freely make use of it as we do not profit out of the page. However it is copyrighted in itself.

I guess as there will not be any other pp-international organisation there really is no need for the page to be copyabled by only making use of non copyrighted materials or material which has been copylefted.

At first it felt kind of hypocractic but then I remebered at least we Swedish Pirates only want to reform the copyright laws to allow for the use of materials for private use... And google allows for this at least at the time beign but that can be changed at their disposal.

[jh]

Is their API able of doing country coloring ?
Or do you want to give every member the possibility to pin it's position on the map (both sounds cool ) ?

For the first task I suggest using a map from WiKi commons. Only for the later google provides some very powerful tools. But I discourage the direct use of google for registering your position (like with frappr) because of googles dubios data protection.

[Nicklas W Bjurman]

I can fix it so that country coloring can be done. What is really cool with the google maps is that you can add so much more information on an instance by just clicking the country. I guess that would be possible to do by oneself as well... Actually it probably is better to do it by ourselves coding such a thing on our own.

Then we do not need to rely on google and their terms and we do not need to learn an API from scratch. I'll see what possibilities lies in our reach...

[djgallagher]

This could also be implemented directly as a shared map on flagr.com (http://www.flagr.com for details). The difference being, they've gone to the trouble of creating the interface to google already. And they provide a flash object to embed that map in our site. Only site members can contribute to the map, but that may be a non-issue since joining is free and easy.

[jh]

This might (!) be could to collect the data but is a bad idea to display on the first page (especially if it is flash). If it has the possibility to export the gathered data we might use it, but i doubt they support a "move customer elsewhere"-feature.

If I am wrong, they're service could be used to gather data wich is then drawn to a static map on the front page.

[Nicklas W Bjurman]

What I had in mind would be much simplier. Just a map color coded manually as we find out about more parties. The map contains areal links for the countries that has a party and when it is pressed information about the party in that country is shown on a different location of the page. Information like status of the party, URL and whatever more could be usefull.

[Nicklas W Bjurman]

I wonder what shall we consider an active Pirate Party? Obviously Sweden is one as it's party has been registered.

Is spain an active Pirate Party? I do not know of their registration status but obviously they have a whole lot of activity. Same goes for USA...

[SM5POR]

I wonder what shall we consider an active Pirate Party? Obviously Sweden is one as it's party has been registered.

Registration procedures are different and mean different things in different countries, so I think that's a poor indicator of "activity". In Sweden, registration is not mandatory, and relates only to use of the party name in elections. In other countries, any organization must formally register themselves in order to be able to conduct various activities in public, such as holding property or arranging demonstrations.

In my opinion, I think it's sufficient if the party has a name, an elected board of some kind (could be an interrim board) that considers itself active, and a way to contact them. A website of their own is highly recommended, but I wouldn't make it an absolute requirement, since they may have technical or administrative problems setting one up, and they could coordinate real activities already using this forum.

[pululante]

Regarding the last considerations from SM5POR, the status in Spain is the following:
- We have not registered officially on the Ministry of Home Affairs.
- We have a name
- We don't have any elected board, but a group of people actively working.
- We have a website and wiki

I would say that official registration would be the definite step.

[Florian Hufsky]

I wonder what shall we consider an active Pirate Party? Obviously Sweden is one as it's party has been registered.

Is spain an active Pirate Party? I do not know of their registration status but obviously they have a whole lot of activity. Same goes for USA...

Austria should be registerd in the next few days. We handed our bylaws to the ministry for internal affairs today and are awaiting a confirmation.

We can start collecting signatures tomorrow. -> You need 2600 signatures to be allowed to participate in the national elections.

Consider Austria active.

Oh, and: elections in austria take place 1. October.

[jh]

What about this classification ?

grey - no pirate party yet; thoughts are in a prison
yellow - PP foundation in progress
green - there is a pirate party
tape & bones - PP in the parliament

It is easy to decide (except if a foundation process died before being finished) for each country.

bttw @Florian: wow, you seem to be more agile than we are in Germany, congratulations to your (soon existing) PP

[Florian Hufsky]

Thanks jh.