how to handle old urls (for "Google Projection") etc

[jmckenna]

• there are a lot of references out there (returned by Google searches) to urls such as:
  • http://spatialreference.org/ref/user/google-projection/
  • http://spatialreference.org/ref/sr-org/google-projection/

This ticket's purpose is to discuss how to handle those. (If the answer is: "we are not planning to handle those old Google Mercator links" then this ticket can be closed)

For the user's experience, redirects could be created to handle the special case for those "Google Projection" searches returning broken links.

[hobu]

Is the google-projection the one that matters most here?

Our 404 page for any sr-org references should state something to the effect that support for custom projections has been removed and people can find the old definitions in the JSON files in the GitHub repository if they really need to dig up what something referred to.

We should not plan to handle any sr-org custom projections for https://spatialreference.org going forward. There are multiple reasons for this:

1. The previous https://spatialreference.org did NO validation of user submitted CRS other than to ensure that (a very old version of) GDAL/PROJ could read it and regurgitate it.
2. When https://spatialreference.org came out in 2007, the EPSG community was not engaging with the open source / open data community (remember that EPSG initially rejected inclusion of Web Mercator / EPSG:3857 into the EPSG database), and as a reaction to that and other web unfriendly behavior, https://spatialreference.org was willing to take on the role of being a "CRS Authority". There is no need for such a stance now.
3. PROJ does not want to be an authority either. People coming to PROJ to add custom projection definitions are pointed to the EPSG community and told to work through their process and see their coordinate system reflected in the EPSG database once it makes it through validation and inclusion. That process has lots of value, and most importantly, the communication of those definitions is to a much wider audience than just the PROJ ecosystem.
4. When https://spatialreference.org came out in 2007, there was no PROJJSON, WKT was missing the ability to express many things, and one couldn't consume coordinate systems in JavaScript. The convenience and utility of "hit a website and turn an ID or URL into a CRS definition" is necessarily diminished now that all of these capabilities now exist. https://spatialreference.org is still great for browsing and it is super useful google juice, but its utility as an automation enabler is not so strong any more in my opinion.

[jjimenezshaw]

That "google projection" is EPSG:3857 (https://spatialreference.org/ref/epsg/3857/) right? A.k.a Web Mercator Projection Apparently it was added to EPSG in 2008. I hope that 15 years later people is aware of that ;)

[jmckenna]

Thanks everyone for the discussion. Closing, as there is no plans to handle.