Geonames now requires a &username=… parameter to its API, see: http://www.geonames.org/export/web-services.html This makes some plugins, e.g.: Wikipedia, earthquakes etc., fail with the following error in the description_* files in the cache: Please add a username to each call in order for geonames to be able to identify the calling application and count the credits usage. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Enable the Wikipedia online service. Actual Results: Nothing happens. Even moving around on the map makes nothing appear. Debugging the issue reveals the technical details mentioned above. Expected Results: It just works.
According to: http://www.geonames.org/export/#terms they now enforce a query limit of 30000 "credits" for the free-of-charge service, which is why they require that username parameter.
And going above that 30000 credits/day limit with the commercial plans costs AT LEAST € 5.04/week (that figure is the plan with the 100000 credits/day limit, and assuming an average of only 30000 credits/day so that its 5000000 credits last 166⅔ days). The cheapest plans actually have LOWER limits than the free one! So I don't think the commercial plans are a viable option for a Free Software project like Marble.
See also: http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/2206.page Unathenticated access has been deprecated for almost 3 years now. It had continued working until recently, but now it got dropped.
For over 3 years, that is. Some more links: http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/4347.page#14013 http://geonames.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/application-identification-for-free-geonames-web-services/
For the Wikipedia one, wikilocation.org might be an alternative if the query limit on geonames.org is a problem. For the other stuff, I don't know.
Thanks for researching this, Kevin. I'll commit a fix shortly to have it work again with the free API. wikilocation.org looks interesting. We should look into it as a possible alternative for the wikipedia plugin.
Git commit 12a1f748dedb75b20ae9e1b1bb6020be0a4f3a2f by Dennis Nienhüser. Committed on 26/02/2014 at 21:03. Pushed by nienhueser into branch 'master'. Fix geonames based online services after API change Affects Wikipedia, weather, postal codes and earthquakes services. M +1 -0 src/plugins/render/earthquake/EarthquakeModel.cpp M +2 -0 src/plugins/render/postalcode/PostalCodeModel.cpp M +4 -0 src/plugins/render/weather/GeoNamesWeatherService.cpp M +2 -0 src/plugins/render/wikipedia/WikipediaModel.cpp http://commits.kde.org/marble/12a1f748dedb75b20ae9e1b1bb6020be0a4f3a2f
Git commit f23aaea5812dbdfce26d3134a56d2dabc8967fd6 by Dennis Nienhüser. Committed on 26/02/2014 at 21:03. Pushed by nienhueser into branch 'KDE/4.12'. Fix geonames based online services after API change Affects Wikipedia, weather, postal codes and earthquakes services. FIXED-IN: 4.12.2 (cherry picked from commit 12a1f748dedb75b20ae9e1b1bb6020be0a4f3a2f) M +1 -0 src/plugins/render/earthquake/EarthquakeModel.cpp M +2 -0 src/plugins/render/postalcode/PostalCodeModel.cpp M +4 -0 src/plugins/render/weather/GeoNamesWeatherService.cpp M +2 -0 src/plugins/render/wikipedia/WikipediaModel.cpp http://commits.kde.org/marble/f23aaea5812dbdfce26d3134a56d2dabc8967fd6
4.12.2 is already released, the fix will be only in 4.12.3.