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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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' ;)
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 ;)
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!
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.
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.
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.^^
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).
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!
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.
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, ...
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/15.90721...
Correct. The default Wikipedia mobile app has this as well.
I have the opposite problem - I live a half hour walk from central Cambridge UK, so results are full of the tourist destinations!
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Distances measured in yards for European destinations is an insult
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' ;)
To convert to meters, multiply by 1.
That's an imperial meter, a standard SI meter is about ten percent longer.
I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home; they're not much bigger than two meters!
Multiply by 0.914
And mixes it with miles, too. Crazy decision.
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 ;)
Yep, we mix them up. Distance and speed in miles, fuel priced in pounds per litre.
And fuel economy in miles per gallon!
> 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.
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!
Wikipedia has a nearby feature that works in other languages as well
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby
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.
There is: the link format is
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.
location can be set through browser add-ons or devtools/about:config
https://www.location-guard.com/
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/change-geolocation-...
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.
https://en.nearbywiki.org is also excellent
Awesome, I found that possibly the first bookstore cafe was in Palo Alto on Cal Ave! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printers_Inc._Bookstore
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.
Yes particularly in SF so many of the historical buildings seem to be gone :(
Because of earthquakes maybe?
Super cool idea! Would love support for other languages, as English Wikipedia is quite limited where I live.
Check out what slymax and esperent wrote in another comment[1].
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...
+1 from me one but even with 'just' english I was surprised at the amount and quality of stuff in my area.
same!
Mine is all of the local schools and then a cold war nuclear bunker that I didn't know about
Same. Nearby villages, churches, schools, and then a random Edwardian sewage pumping station that is open to the public. TIL!
Can I pick other planets?
(It could be fun to have an AI populate the db)
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.^^
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).
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!
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
Is it possible to change the language of Wikipedia? For many places, the local language Wikipedia has more articles.
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.
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, ...
Local History is fun!!
[1] https://openworldapp.xyz
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.
Vey nicely done! One issue though, not many local articles in english here. I see no obvious way to change language?
Like others, I agree this is very cool.
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.
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
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?
https://localwiki.org/
Been around over 20 years
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.
This is very cool! Yes wikipedia does this already, but I love that it formats it into your own mini wikipedia.
This is very cool - one feature request: please support other languages! German Wikipedia would have way better info for my location :-)
Why is this not called Walkipedia?
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.
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)
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.
Fun! Would be nice if it supported articles in different languages.
I found out that a closed church I walk past regularly was called "St Chad's"
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.
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.
You wouldn't even have spices thinking like that
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).
Content that is curated by interested humans, without commercial interests, is so good.
Very cool idea. Would be even better if it had an option to use a local language.
Very cool. Obvious in hindsight with every location having coordinates.
Found an abbey around my place in Western Bavaria I didn't know existed
This is the World Wide Web I want to see. Amazing job. Thank you!
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.
I love it. It would also be nice to be able to a) enter desired distance, and b) choose the metric system.
c) select the Wikipedia language. There are some English Wikipedia articles for my region, but my local language Wikipedia has much more
thanks a lot, +1 für b).
https://wiki-map.com/ is better
Checked Hong Kong, not much on the page
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.
This took too long to make.
Maybe because Wikipedia has it as a builtin feature ;) (tbf I wasn't aware of that either):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby
I guess it works but I have no idea what a yard or a mile is.
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)
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!
Coolest shit I've seen here in a while ngl
Very nice! It really should have a field to enter the radius of the search.
none Americans complaining about using yards is hilarious tbh
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.
https://wiki-map.com/ considered much better.
Has local language too.
Osmand for android also embeds results on the map, as an optional layer.
Time to promote my project: https://tomthe.github.io/wiki-importance-map
It shows all Wikipedia articles on a zoomable map. The size of the labels depends on its pagerank score and the pageview statistics.
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.
Cool map but FYI most of the ones near me are just random buildings that don't even have Wikipedia articles.
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.
Would it be possible to filter this to only show wikipedia objects?
Why not Grokipedia?
https://grokipedia.com