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It seems a number of commenters don’t know that Wikipedia has a built-in page to show you articles with subjects near you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spec

It seems a number of commenters don’t know that Wikipedia has a built-in page to show you articles with subjects near you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby

esperent 4y ago
Seems like the range is fixed at 10km which gives me a total of 5 articles, none of them very interesting - and besides, I'm quite familiar with my area in that range. Would be nice to be able to expand it so that I could discover interesting things a little further out but still in easy driving distance.
- jsmith99 4y ago
  It isn't customisable but doesn't seem fixed. I got about 55 articles, all within 1.7km.
- bawolff 4y ago
  Api version is customizable, but looks like api limits to at most 10 km https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=help&modules=query%2Bgeosearch https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=help&modules=query... (Probably possible to do a sparql query for this at https://query.wikidata.org https://query.wikidata.org but seems like it would be complicated, at least given my relatively novice level of sparql skills)
account42 4y ago
Both TFA and your wikipedia special page rely on location access without any fallback for specifying a location if you don't want to give them your real location (or at least not to the precision that GPS allows) or if your are on a desktop where no location info is available. Disappointing.
- ptilt 4y ago
  You can enter manually the GPS coordinate in the URL for the wikipedia nearby page.
- pcl 4y ago
  On a desktop, you should be able to fudge it with the dev tools location settings.
- 8bitsrule 4y ago
  Yes. In my case, it defaulted to a URL with coordinates in England. Tried editing the URL with localish coords, pressed enter ... nothing. Plenty of space in the toolbar to implement that. (Not the only map service that makes it hard to enter coords.) Also, don't see much need for more than 4 decimal-places after the Lat/Long values.
rplnt 4y ago
Why neither this nor tool in OP work with manually entering location is beyond me. My browser doesn't know my location. It doesn't help that it doesn't work even when I allow location in Firefox. But both would be solved if I could just select the location myself, as in any other application.
- runeks 4y ago
  > Why neither this nor tool in OP work with manually entering location is beyond me. The reason is that it would be extra work, and it’s not clear how many people actually want this feature.
  - tengwar2 4y ago
    And it would be very easy to find out how many people start the page load, and don't complete. This will be close to the number of people who cannot or will not allow their browser to divulge that information.
  - wohfab 4y ago
    But it's extremely little additional work, though. The application is already able to find articles around a given address. The only thing that would be changed, is that you enter the address by hand instead of letting the browser locate you. This can be easily done in a day
    - orf 4y ago
      Unless you’re entering your location as lat/long, it’s a lot more work.
  - Mordisquitos 4y ago
    "Extra" work? Accepting manually entered locations is utterly trivial compared to using the browser's location feature.
- tuukkah 4y ago
  The tools use the browser location as it's easy to access in a few lines of code, and the users can select the location themselves in multiple ways: * In the browser console * In the browser settings * In a browser extension Meanwhile, addresses are hard in a global context. Implementing address search can be a lot of work because browsers don't provide one so you need either a (global) address database or an API endpoint to access one. Also, people expect a search which is both fuzzy and with autocompletion, which works best by prioritising results based on the browser location. Finally, you need to implement a user interface for the search field.
jccalhoun 4y ago
If you don't/can't allow location, the results page is just a url with latitude and longitude so you can edit it to any location you want. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/40.68918633328429,-74.04444057901112 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/40.68918...

esperent 4y ago

Seems like the range is fixed at 10km which gives me a total of 5 articles, none of them very interesting - and besides, I'm quite familiar with my area in that range. Would be nice to be able to expand it so that I could discover interesting things a little further out but still in easy driving distance.

jsmith99 4y ago
It isn't customisable but doesn't seem fixed. I got about 55 articles, all within 1.7km.
bawolff 4y ago
Api version is customizable, but looks like api limits to at most 10 km https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=help&modules=query%2Bgeosearch https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=help&modules=query... (Probably possible to do a sparql query for this at https://query.wikidata.org https://query.wikidata.org but seems like it would be complicated, at least given my relatively novice level of sparql skills)

account42 4y ago

Both TFA and your wikipedia special page rely on location access without any fallback for specifying a location if you don't want to give them your real location (or at least not to the precision that GPS allows) or if your are on a desktop where no location info is available. Disappointing.

ptilt 4y ago
You can enter manually the GPS coordinate in the URL for the wikipedia nearby page.
pcl 4y ago
On a desktop, you should be able to fudge it with the dev tools location settings.
8bitsrule 4y ago
Yes. In my case, it defaulted to a URL with coordinates in England. Tried editing the URL with localish coords, pressed enter ... nothing. Plenty of space in the toolbar to implement that. (Not the only map service that makes it hard to enter coords.) Also, don't see much need for more than 4 decimal-places after the Lat/Long values.

rplnt 4y ago

Why neither this nor tool in OP work with manually entering location is beyond me. My browser doesn't know my location. It doesn't help that it doesn't work even when I allow location in Firefox. But both would be solved if I could just select the location myself, as in any other application.

runeks 4y ago
> Why neither this nor tool in OP work with manually entering location is beyond me. The reason is that it would be extra work, and it’s not clear how many people actually want this feature.
- tengwar2 4y ago
  And it would be very easy to find out how many people start the page load, and don't complete. This will be close to the number of people who cannot or will not allow their browser to divulge that information.
- wohfab 4y ago
  But it's extremely little additional work, though. The application is already able to find articles around a given address. The only thing that would be changed, is that you enter the address by hand instead of letting the browser locate you. This can be easily done in a day
  - orf 4y ago
    Unless you’re entering your location as lat/long, it’s a lot more work.
- Mordisquitos 4y ago
  "Extra" work? Accepting manually entered locations is utterly trivial compared to using the browser's location feature.
tuukkah 4y ago
The tools use the browser location as it's easy to access in a few lines of code, and the users can select the location themselves in multiple ways: * In the browser console * In the browser settings * In a browser extension Meanwhile, addresses are hard in a global context. Implementing address search can be a lot of work because browsers don't provide one so you need either a (global) address database or an API endpoint to access one. Also, people expect a search which is both fuzzy and with autocompletion, which works best by prioritising results based on the browser location. Finally, you need to implement a user interface for the search field.

jccalhoun 4y ago

If you don't/can't allow location, the results page is just a url with latitude and longitude so you can edit it to any location you want. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/40.68918633328429,-74.04444057901112 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/40.68918...