Nice project! It may be useful to select the included places also by QRank of Wikidata [1] so notable islands will appear, despite low populations. An SQLite DB of QRank [2] was also posted here in HN a while ago.
(Saving people a click for link#1: qrank sorts Wikidata entries by their pageviews across Wikipedia, Wikiquotes, Wikibooks, etc.)
I'm not sure that an online popularity contest should be the input for a base map. I understand the reasoning that they're more likely to be viewed by someone, but it's also a bubble: is Wikipedia / are Wikimedia projects as popular in Asia as this base map will be? Is that used for the same purpose as this base map? Should something be shown on a map when there's a lot of drama about it rather than because a lot of people live there?
I see the advantages also, like if literally nobody lives there but it's an interesting or large landmass then there's cause for it to be included. I just don't think this is the right (objective, fairest) importance measure to use
qrank is not a mere popularity contest and definitely not a more arbitrary measure of importance than the count of population within city boundaries (boundaries can be arbitrary; population vs commuters vs tourists; regional capitals etc.)
> I just don't think this is the right (objective, fairest) importance measure to use
What's "right" can depend on the purpose of the map.
[1] https://qrank.wmcloud.org/ [2] https://github.com/hikeratlas/qrank