[1] The data, a crowdsourced collection of places marked by registered users and guests, has grown to just under 28,000,000 objects as of November 2017[update],[4] and is released under the Creative Commons License Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA).

Their Facebook page indicated they were hit by one or possibly several DNS attacks after a request was made to remove Ukrainian military installation listings, which was not immediately honored.

According to the website, Wikimapia is an open-content collaborative mapping project, aimed at marking all geographical objects in the world and providing a useful description of them.

The Wikimapia layer is a collection of "objects" with a polygonal outline (like buildings, forests, or lakes) and "linear features" (streets, railroads, rivers, ferry).

Using a simple graphical editing tool, users are able to draw an outline or polygon that matches the satellite image layer underneath.

Each object or "tag" has specific information fields which include categories, a textual description, street address, and a related Wikipedia link.

A "watchlist" could be manually set up to monitor all activity or object changes made in one or more of the assigned rectangular areas on the map.

[1] Improvements are largely based on a feedback system from registered users through public forum discussions, bug reports and feature requests.

[3] The textual description attached to each place object is in free format, having no restriction on style, except for possessing a Neutral Point of View, where "neutral" is defined as excluding "feelings, opinions, experiences, words which display a personal bias or agenda, politics and/or religion".

[7] Citing the source of the information is optional, and a link to a relevant and existing Wikipedia article is encouraged.

In spite of these recommendations, map coverage is generally uneven, with some areas, usually in developing countries, being cluttered with crude outlines, private residences, subjective evaluations or advertisements, requiring constant attention and refining by regular editors.