This is a great idea but I'd definitely make the distance configurable. Where I am right now would need several hours walking to reach anywhere Wikipedia worthy but if I expanded to say a 15km circle there's probably a couple of places of interest.
Meanwhile if someone lives in a city they'll get loads of results.
EDIT: actually this is just a wrapper around wikipedia's nearby feature I think. I tried a couple of places and they give identical results.
I have the opposite problem - I live a half hour walk from central Cambridge UK, so results are full of the tourist destinations!
hashar 1 hours ago [-]
Disclaimer: I work for the Wikimedia Foundation, albeit in the infrastructure rather than in development / product.
I like this feature a lot, but I do not know how it is implemented and whether it would be possible to have users change the range. Maybe it is hardcoded for some performance reason, I have honestly no clue. But I am giving below a few paths that could help one eventually improve the system.
Do note I am not in the development / product side and I have no view about their backlog or whether they have the bandwidth to review such an incoming review request or a patch.
That extension exposes a public API that allows setting any search radius up to 10 km ( https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=help&modules=query... ), so presumably there's no barrier to making the search radius smaller, but maybe there'd be performance issues if you allowed making it larger.
(NearbyPages just embeds a Vue app into the page that makes a client-side fetch() call to invoke that API with a hard-coded radius.)
nottorp 18 minutes ago [-]
The Special:Nearby feature seems to support changing the language. nearbywiki.org is just English while the OP has a language switch but it's limited.
Now I'm not sure if switching the language pulls in more results or just changes the article language...
tannertech 43 minutes ago [-]
Correct. The default Wikipedia mobile app has this as well.
richardw 12 minutes ago [-]
Excellent. I discovered that the Sydney area Fairlight eventually led to the name of the synthesiser, which had a massive impact on music.
Distances measured in yards for European destinations is an insult
flohofwoe 2 hours ago [-]
Hmm, I see metric distances (kilometers). Accessing from Germany. It's still using the English Wikipedia though, not the German one (which I think would have more local content).
PS: there's a side bar link to switch between miles and km, I might have pressed that (was expecting to see some sort of distance map though instead of switching between 'imperial' and 'modern' ;)
roryirvine 2 hours ago [-]
And mixes it with miles, too. Crazy decision.
flohofwoe 2 hours ago [-]
Could that be a UK thing? I wouldn't know tbh, because between mixing yards and miles versus sticking to imperial units in the 21st century, the latter is definitely crazier ;)
petepete 2 hours ago [-]
Yep, we mix them up. Distance and speed in miles, fuel priced in pounds per litre.
dukky 1 hours ago [-]
And fuel economy in miles per gallon!
pezezin 2 hours ago [-]
> Distances measured in yards for non-US destinations is an insult
FTFY. I live in Japan and it also shows me the distance in yards and miles.
valleyer 3 hours ago [-]
To convert to meters, multiply by 1.
Rotundo 3 hours ago [-]
That's an imperial meter, a standard SI meter is about ten percent longer.
ButlerianJihad 2 hours ago [-]
I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home; they're not much bigger than two meters!
ChrisRR 2 hours ago [-]
Multiply by 0.914
ziiinq 2 hours ago [-]
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nomilk 2 hours ago [-]
Weird psychological quirk: otherwise banal articles seem much more pertinent when they happen to be nearby (I just read about a random plane crash from decades ago but felt very invested in it, due to proximity).
Wonder if this is related to the biological phenomena of humans tending to care more about humans who resemble themselves than those who don't (homophily)
dspillett 31 minutes ago [-]
I think¹ it is more likely just a function of how we judge danger. Something local could be relevant to us now (if it were ongoing, or was likely to occur again, or affects/affected someone we care about), something far away might be relevant to us later. Nearby or approaching animal sounds? Definitely pay attention. More distant animal sounds? Maybe keep an ear on that. A tale of animal sounds in the next valley? Only take much note if it is part of an otherwise interesting/entertaining story.
--------
[1] caveat: I am in no way a biologist, sociologist, nor psychiatrist - this pondering may be complete bunkum
benrutter 2 hours ago [-]
I don't know if that is a psychological quirk - it seems pretty rational to me. We are more affected by events that happen close to us than those that happen far away, so instinctively finding local events more interesting than distant ones seems like what I'd expect[0].
[0] Not that my expectation has any weight, I have close to zero knowledge of psychology.
hobofan 30 minutes ago [-]
Unless you are in a highly urban area, most Wiki articles will be about _places_ and sometimes _events at the places_, but usually not _events_ themselves.
For things that affect people, I think the impact of the recency axis is significantly larger than the one of the geographical axis. e.g. I feel the effects of the Iran war in my daily consumer prices in my daily life. I don't feel the effects of a famous person being born two doors down from my place 200 years ago in my daily live.
Of course highly local things, like e.g. local politics are also felt, but those are also barely reflected in Wikipedia articles.
deklesen 2 hours ago [-]
Mhh i wonder how this would have evolved, since, you know, for 99.99% of time, humans didn't really get any information other than from their immediate proximity. And if they did (e.g. earthquake), it was very much relevant and should affect them.
Just flaunting my ignorance of biology here.
benrutter 2 hours ago [-]
I'm at least a tiny bit less ignorant on biology than psychology. I don't think this is the kind of thing that does evolve.
Normally more general capacities than that evolve. We've evolved the ability to learn and adapt, and that's what we're using to create these heuristics. But I don't people evolve into individual beliefs/attitudes in that way.
altmanaltman 42 minutes ago [-]
I mean, it's the brain, not the world around it. Our brains haven't really evolved much while civilization and technology have been growthmaxxing. Same reason why certain social media posts can trigger a physical, emotional reaction, even though for 99.99% of the time there were no cellphones or social media.
shevy-java 1 hours ago [-]
> otherwise banal articles
I don't think it is quite banal. The focus is on distance,
with distance being local. There is IMO nothing banal about
that. And the article linked in is minimal rather than banal.
(Also good thing you did not forget the 'b' there.)
You can of course assume everything to have a manipulative focus, but I don't see it here.
tannertech 37 minutes ago [-]
There is a Stalin quote to this effect
profsummergig 17 minutes ago [-]
Simply fantastic. In my obscure little city, I've already discovered a bunch of historic places I had no idea about.
noduerme 4 hours ago [-]
This is super cool! Just punched in my zip code, and hit "random article" three times, and came up with three weird stories I didn't know about the history of places within a few blocks of me in Portland, Oregon. What an awesome idea for travelers!
slymax 3 hours ago [-]
Wikipedia has a nearby feature that works in other languages as well
Which I never used because it requires permission to see my location, and at home, my ISP gives a location far from where I live anyway. So even if I allowed it, it would be meaningless.
So, unless there is some way to manually enter a town name or ZIP code that I missed, the feature is unusable, which is a shame.
I see it's capped to 500 articles, because the first two zip codes i tried were the middle of manhattan and the middle of sf, and i was curious just how many wikipedia articles these two epicenters have.
+1 from me one but even with 'just' english I was surprised at the amount and quality of stuff in my area.
monegator 3 hours ago [-]
same!
xnickb 4 minutes ago [-]
So I thought this is brilliant and decided to find something close to me in Berlin. I was shown the "Nazi Germany" article.
han2 21 minutes ago [-]
This should be official feature in Wikipedia
anon_cow1111 31 minutes ago [-]
A lot of popular websites like to throw snarky error pages at you which some people find annoying. But I actually DO want to see this site give you snarky pages if it finds zero normal articles within x distance.
From today's featured article:
Dirt
Nearest to you:
Missing sock
Wilson the volleyball
Gut microbiome
Depression
Ants
Overdue bill
Serial killer
ChrisRR 2 hours ago [-]
Mine is all of the local schools and then a cold war nuclear bunker that I didn't know about
bbrks 2 hours ago [-]
Same. Nearby villages, churches, schools, and then a random Edwardian sewage pumping station that is open to the public. TIL!
kubb 4 hours ago [-]
Is it possible to change the language of Wikipedia? For many places, the local language Wikipedia has more articles.
snickerer 3 hours ago [-]
Yes!!
And with today's translation programs, the user does not even need to understand the local language.
Better — for me — would even be a mix of languages. Give me the most and longest articles of all languages for the places around.
johnny_lol 2 hours ago [-]
I used this during my walk around around Tirana, Albania this morning where I'm traveling right now. I learned some interesting history about the neighborhood I'm staying in. Also discovered some museums and buildings nearby that I'd like to check out now.
When I visit a new city I usually spend time poking around Google Maps to discover points of interest nearby, but this will be another useful resource. Thanks!
suncemoje 2 hours ago [-]
I was going to mention Google Maps as well - IMO would be useful to add reviews from there to get a better sense of suggested places
kmarc 60 minutes ago [-]
Great idea. Similarly, the only reason I keep OsmAnd installed is that I can add a layer of "Wikipedia articles" -- a fun way to kill time when I'm backpacking and want to explore something outside the influence-o-sphere.
Now getting this info as easily navigable webpages is amazing.
Vey nicely done! One issue though, not many local articles in english here. I see no obvious way to change language?
phgn 2 hours ago [-]
Omg I love this so much mate! Incredible how much more relevant nearby articles feel than the default to which you have no personal connection. I also think local news are much better/useful for the same reason.
I'm working on something similar! Open World, an app that turns collecting nearby Wikipedia places into a game! [1]
It started with you having to go to the place IRL to unlock the article/story, mostly so you find cool spots out on a walk. But slowly I discovered that most people go on walks somewhat rarely, so now it also includes a virtual Fast-Travel system using Apple Maps LookAround :)
Oh, also a 3D map of the different neighbourhoods of a city to unlock one a time, plus narrative Quests to complete with the secrets you found, ...
I live somewhere pretty remote, and every article it suggests is an entry for a nearby village, which is usually a sentence long. There are other interesting things nearby: could it have some kind of variance function, so it looks specifically for a variety of content?
Here I am, seeing something cool and immediately asking for changes. Spirit of the internet ;) Genuinely, it is a wonderful idea, and I admire the concept and that you did it.
user_7832 2 hours ago [-]
Very similar, except I live in a very large city... but it's not an anglophile 1st world country, so tr list is full of streets and unis and roads. "Hey do you know your <location> features <location station>!?" lol
lode 1 hours ago [-]
Related: You can also check geotagged Wikipedia pages on a map: https://wiki-map.com/
A fun way to find articles nearby that need photographs is Wikishootme - https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/ (although it seems to be offline at the moment).
altilunium 2 hours ago [-]
most of the things within a half-hour walk from us are actually banned on wikipedia because they're not notable enough.. i was expecting this site to let us freely add "those forbidden" things. i had high hopes when reading the title alone..
turns out, it just filters existing wikipedia articles based on their proximity to a given coordinate.
mju 1 hours ago [-]
I imagine it would be sooo cool... but for me, living in the proverbial middle of nowhere, far away from cities and tourist attractions, there isn't really that much to do or read, unfortunately.^^
Yes, but coverage outside the US is surprisingly sparse. Many European countries (Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Greece…) have fewer than 20 points of interest each.
h1696UOuk 1 hours ago [-]
Doesn't the Wikipedia iOS app already have a feature exactly like this and every map solution that's posted in this comment section? Do they add anything?
SCdF 1 hours ago [-]
This is very cool! Yes wikipedia does this already, but I love that it formats it into your own mini wikipedia.
amelius 51 minutes ago [-]
Can I pick other planets?
(It could be fun to have an AI populate the db)
kaeluka 2 hours ago [-]
This is very cool - one feature request: please support other languages! German Wikipedia would have way better info for my location :-)
dllu 4 hours ago [-]
Cool idea! I had lots of fun looking at stuff nearby.
Right now it seems that it simply removes links for stuff without a geotag that's nearby. But many articles are in fact nearby and are simply missing geotags, or perhaps encompass a slightly larger area where only a part of it is close by. Also, all the pictures don't have working links so I can't click on a picture to make it bigger.
flohofwoe 2 hours ago [-]
Neat! A whole 25 articles for my neck of the wood :D
(although I guess the German Wikipedia would have a bit more content than the English Wikipedia used here)
slyall 3 hours ago [-]
I found out that a closed church I walk past regularly was called "St Chad's"
Elucalidavah 3 hours ago [-]
Related: OsmAnd has support for wikipedia-sourced points for the local offline maps. Not sure about the details though. Only related thing I found for an explanation is "Geospatial Wikidata Dataset", which is suspiciously fresh.
rpigab 1 hours ago [-]
Did you know ...
... that A is a commune in the X department in western France?
... that B is a commune in the X department in western France?
... that C is a commune in the X department in western France?
... that D is a commune in the X department in western France?
... that E is a commune in the X department in western France?
... that F is a commune in the X department in western France?
Yes, I knew. They're all nearby communes. If I go in any direction, I can't miss them.
thomasahle 2 hours ago [-]
Fun!
Would be nice if it supported articles in different languages.
zkmon 3 hours ago [-]
I consider this to be far more progress for humanity than landing on moon or sending a spaceship to outside of solar system. That's because this move is in the right direction, while others are not. As a human, you need to first master your habitat around you, before getting excited or concerned about things that happen in another country thousands of miles away.
vasco 3 hours ago [-]
You wouldn't even have spices thinking like that
Trigodil 3 hours ago [-]
This is so cool, although I would like a feature to filter by subtopic or what the structures are used for (e.g. churches, bridges, museums).
refsab 4 hours ago [-]
Very cool. Obvious in hindsight with every location having coordinates.
Found an abbey around my place in Western Bavaria I didn't know existed
snickerer 3 hours ago [-]
Content that is curated by interested humans, without commercial interests, is so good.
dzogchen 3 hours ago [-]
Very cool idea. Would be even better if it had an option to use a local language.
bcvvvy 3 hours ago [-]
This is the World Wide Web I want to see. Amazing job. Thank you!
thatwasunusual 4 hours ago [-]
I love it. It would also be nice to be able to a) enter desired distance, and b) choose the metric system.
ortichic 4 hours ago [-]
c) select the Wikipedia language. There are some English Wikipedia articles for my region, but my local language Wikipedia has much more
kls0e 4 hours ago [-]
thanks a lot, +1 für b).
collabs 2 hours ago [-]
The nearest place to me was
> 0.8 miles
Ok great I thought that I can walk...
however, it is actually 1.9 miles when walking according to Google Maps and the path lacks sidewalks.
INTPenis 3 hours ago [-]
This is a really fun idea, but I went from excited to disgusted in the span of one click.
The first thing that pops up for my city of Malmö is the school stabbing that happened in 2022. They're so rare here, and yet Wikipedia felt I just had to see it.
I'm not going to make stupid feature requests, but it would be cool with a filter for types of Wikipedia articles to show.
I guess it works but I have no idea what a yard or a mile is.
numpad0 2 hours ago [-]
A mile is supposed to be (1 / 60 / 360 / Earth.circumferenceOf()), so a 1.5mi radius or 3mi diameter circle is (supposed to be slightly short of) 3/60 or 0.05 degrees on a map.
A yard is just 10% short of a meter, just the same thing for most practical purposes.
(full disclosure: I did look these up)
retsibsi 3 hours ago [-]
Metric rules and imperial drools, I agree, but I reckon if we put our minds to it we can multiply by 0.9 and 1.6 (or 0.91 and 1.61 if you are genius). Keeps the mind sharp in this age of outsourced thinking!
2 hours ago [-]
dyauspitr 3 hours ago [-]
Very nice! It really should have a field to enter the radius of the search.
ktimespi 2 hours ago [-]
Coolest shit I've seen here in a while ngl
shevy-java 1 hours ago [-]
It's an interesting idea. Personally I prefer information to not
be restricted, but for those who are, for instance, not very mobile,
having Wikipedia as a focus nearby, kind of makes sense. I am not sure
how useful Wikipedia is, as a lot of information may be missing locally
or not be up to date, but given how utter crap Google search is these
days, any move towards improvements (including local things) is good.
The internet was being ruined by the big corporations ruining the web
for many years - it is time to fight back.
It shows all Wikipedia articles on a zoomable map. The size of the labels depends on its pagerank score and the pageview statistics.
phgn 2 hours ago [-]
Wow this is surprisingly useful to explore local data, thanks for building!!
I wonder: why are you calculating PageRank, are the wiki article views not enough?
If I play around with the importance slider, PageRank seems to have much less difference between articles, highlighting just a few articles per city in large text.
And because of bot traffic, the pageview statistics are sometimes suspicious and noisy.
jstanley 2 hours ago [-]
Cool map but FYI most of the ones near me are just random buildings that don't even have Wikipedia articles.
tomthe 2 hours ago [-]
Oh, yes. It also includes all Wikidata entries with geocoordinates, but they have the lowest "importance" and are only shown very small.
You need to zoom out a bit to see places with articles.
syshyk 2 hours ago [-]
Would it be possible to filter this to only show wikipedia objects?
tomthe 22 minutes ago [-]
If you open the menu, there are already some filters, but no filter to filter out Wikidata-only entries yet. Maybe I will add it.
vegan_muffin 4 hours ago [-]
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extraveral 2 hours ago [-]
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ravivarmat 3 hours ago [-]
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aaron695 1 hours ago [-]
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huhu6tf 4 hours ago [-]
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izecube 2 hours ago [-]
none Americans complaining about using yards is hilarious tbh
Meanwhile if someone lives in a city they'll get loads of results.
EDIT: actually this is just a wrapper around wikipedia's nearby feature I think. I tried a couple of places and they give identical results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/15.90721...
I like this feature a lot, but I do not know how it is implemented and whether it would be possible to have users change the range. Maybe it is hardcoded for some performance reason, I have honestly no clue. But I am giving below a few paths that could help one eventually improve the system.
The page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby is powered by the MediaWiki extension https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:NearbyPages .
The source code is https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/extensions/NearbyPa... (GitHub mirror https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-NearbyPage... ).
Issues/bugs are tracked at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/nearbypages/ , it is possible a similar request already exists there.
Do note I am not in the development / product side and I have no view about their backlog or whether they have the bandwidth to review such an incoming review request or a patch.
That extension exposes a public API that allows setting any search radius up to 10 km ( https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=help&modules=query... ), so presumably there's no barrier to making the search radius smaller, but maybe there'd be performance issues if you allowed making it larger.
(NearbyPages just embeds a Vue app into the page that makes a client-side fetch() call to invoke that API with a hard-coded radius.)
Now I'm not sure if switching the language pulls in more results or just changes the article language...
https://edjefferson.com/localwiki/?w=Fairlight%2C_New_South_...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkiYy0i8FtA
PS: there's a side bar link to switch between miles and km, I might have pressed that (was expecting to see some sort of distance map though instead of switching between 'imperial' and 'modern' ;)
FTFY. I live in Japan and it also shows me the distance in yards and miles.
Wonder if this is related to the biological phenomena of humans tending to care more about humans who resemble themselves than those who don't (homophily)
--------
[1] caveat: I am in no way a biologist, sociologist, nor psychiatrist - this pondering may be complete bunkum
[0] Not that my expectation has any weight, I have close to zero knowledge of psychology.
For things that affect people, I think the impact of the recency axis is significantly larger than the one of the geographical axis. e.g. I feel the effects of the Iran war in my daily consumer prices in my daily life. I don't feel the effects of a famous person being born two doors down from my place 200 years ago in my daily live.
Of course highly local things, like e.g. local politics are also felt, but those are also barely reflected in Wikipedia articles.
Just flaunting my ignorance of biology here.
Normally more general capacities than that evolve. We've evolved the ability to learn and adapt, and that's what we're using to create these heuristics. But I don't people evolve into individual beliefs/attitudes in that way.
I don't think it is quite banal. The focus is on distance, with distance being local. There is IMO nothing banal about that. And the article linked in is minimal rather than banal. (Also good thing you did not forget the 'b' there.)
You can of course assume everything to have a manipulative focus, but I don't see it here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby
So, unless there is some way to manually enter a town name or ZIP code that I missed, the feature is unusable, which is a shame.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/52.52000...
Change the lat long to any you want, and change "en." to other language codes to search a different (language) encyclopedia.
https://www.location-guard.com/
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/change-geolocation-...
It's cool, but a bit sad, to discover establishments that used to exist nearby but don't any longer. It's not easy to do that otherwise.
Because of earthquakes maybe?
You can let it pick your own location, and if you rewrite the language prefix at the beginning of the url, you get that language's version. [2][3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/15.90721...
[2] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/15.90721...
[3] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/15.90721...
From today's featured article:
Dirt
Nearest to you:
Missing sock
Wilson the volleyball
Gut microbiome
Depression
Ants
Overdue bill
Serial killer
When I visit a new city I usually spend time poking around Google Maps to discover points of interest nearby, but this will be another useful resource. Thanks!
Now getting this info as easily navigable webpages is amazing.
I'm working on something similar! Open World, an app that turns collecting nearby Wikipedia places into a game! [1]
It started with you having to go to the place IRL to unlock the article/story, mostly so you find cool spots out on a walk. But slowly I discovered that most people go on walks somewhat rarely, so now it also includes a virtual Fast-Travel system using Apple Maps LookAround :)
Oh, also a 3D map of the different neighbourhoods of a city to unlock one a time, plus narrative Quests to complete with the secrets you found, ...
Local History is fun!!
[1] https://openworldapp.xyz
I live somewhere pretty remote, and every article it suggests is an entry for a nearby village, which is usually a sentence long. There are other interesting things nearby: could it have some kind of variance function, so it looks specifically for a variety of content?
Here I am, seeing something cool and immediately asking for changes. Spirit of the internet ;) Genuinely, it is a wonderful idea, and I admire the concept and that you did it.
A fun way to find articles nearby that need photographs is Wikishootme - https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/ (although it seems to be offline at the moment).
turns out, it just filters existing wikipedia articles based on their proximity to a given coordinate.
Been around over 20 years
(It could be fun to have an AI populate the db)
Right now it seems that it simply removes links for stuff without a geotag that's nearby. But many articles are in fact nearby and are simply missing geotags, or perhaps encompass a slightly larger area where only a part of it is close by. Also, all the pictures don't have working links so I can't click on a picture to make it bigger.
(although I guess the German Wikipedia would have a bit more content than the English Wikipedia used here)
... that A is a commune in the X department in western France?
... that B is a commune in the X department in western France?
... that C is a commune in the X department in western France?
... that D is a commune in the X department in western France?
... that E is a commune in the X department in western France?
... that F is a commune in the X department in western France?
Yes, I knew. They're all nearby communes. If I go in any direction, I can't miss them.
Found an abbey around my place in Western Bavaria I didn't know existed
> 0.8 miles
Ok great I thought that I can walk...
however, it is actually 1.9 miles when walking according to Google Maps and the path lacks sidewalks.
The first thing that pops up for my city of Malmö is the school stabbing that happened in 2022. They're so rare here, and yet Wikipedia felt I just had to see it.
I'm not going to make stupid feature requests, but it would be cool with a filter for types of Wikipedia articles to show.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby
A yard is just 10% short of a meter, just the same thing for most practical purposes.
(full disclosure: I did look these up)
Has local language too.
It shows all Wikipedia articles on a zoomable map. The size of the labels depends on its pagerank score and the pageview statistics.
I wonder: why are you calculating PageRank, are the wiki article views not enough?
If I play around with the importance slider, PageRank seems to have much less difference between articles, highlighting just a few articles per city in large text.
And because of bot traffic, the pageview statistics are sometimes suspicious and noisy.
https://grokipedia.com