Local Wikipedia: Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you
Comments
delichon
ASalazarMX
I await with bated breath the entry about that ergonomic log.
etewiah
I have just the thing for you. With a chattymap collection, you can tell stories about all those wonderful places and share them with the world:
allthetime
Your description excited me to click the link. Then I was met with a generic landing page and then clicking map didn’t show me a map. It should just be a map with the stories immediately available as markers. Then clicking through to an about link should take you to that secondary content.
CobrastanJorji
I agree. What I expected was a place for very personal little stories and journals about specific, hyperlocal spots on Earth. What I got was an empty site for public polls on restaurants in large cities.
etewiah
That is good feedback - much appreciated.
There isn't enough content to showcase on the map right now but I'll work on that. Give it another go in a couple of weeks or so.
allthetime
You could seed the map by scraping things like local papers, historical archives, reviews of all kinds, etc. maybe giving them a less prominent appearance compared to user submitted. Getting people using and exploring the tool right away instead of being met with walls of copy and detached forums might be a good move. You could pull the old reddit move and spend a few days adding a tonne of your own stories under different names and/or try and find some others that would be interested in doing the same. Others here would probably tell you to just use LLMs, but I'd avoid that.
As it stands I think you will have a hard time getting people to start filling your database.
etewiah
My plan is indeed to seed some initial data from areas that I know well.
I'm quite into paddle boarding at the moment and in the UK there are a lot of good places to launch from that are not well known so that would be a good niche to start with.
dtjohnnymonkey
I love this idea. Every time I go on a road trip I wish I could just tune into some audio clips about local stories as I'm driving by.
gnabgib
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ek_erilaz
I wonder if its more common to notice interesting and special places when in nature versus in the built environment. All of your examples are from nature, and most of mine would be too. But considering it further... in college there was a nook I found on the second floor of a nondescript building, where lounge chairs were built into the floor and covered with astroturf, and at just after midday the sun would shine down on it through a sort of compluvium in the roof. I'd been on that campus for almost three years before I discovered it, and only visited a few times because it was quite out of the way. But what a quiet little refuge, I hope its still there.
liam_plainly
[flagged]
carterpaul
This reads like an excerpt from Piranesi by Susanna Clark
jimbokun
Just looked at the Piranesi Wikipedia page. The description reminds me of the Heaven Sent episode of Dr Who.
Facemelters
Atlas Obscura is your answer to this: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/all-places-in-the-atla...
samtp
There is not even an entry for a river, mountain, lake, etc? Do you live in the middle of the ocean or desert?
rhipitr
Part of me would want to share these pleasant places with others. Part of me would not.
skinfaxi
As first-hand accounts I don't think you could enter these on Wikipedia anyway.
zahlman
Indeed. The project in the OP is nonsensical to me, because it's impossible to get the desired result by filtering the real Wikipedia. The articles you'd actually want it to have would blatantly violate WP:N, WP:NPOV and especially WP:NOR.
awesome_dude
> To the northeast is the spot where I found a perfect arrowhead
You live in an area rich with history stretching back 35 - 50 thousand years
ant6n
I live in the middle of Berlin. This makes the wiki like a sight seeing book. I think the radius is way too big here.
gib444
Do you have a spare bedroom on Airbnb? Asking for a friend
lifeformed
Citation needed.
nomilk
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)
benrutter
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
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
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
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
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.
ricksunny
In nomadism (as in digital nomad) this is quite salient to me, relevant to communication with relations, colleagues and potential ones (i.e. job/gig economic opportunities) across time zones and countries. I am constantly on the lookout for tools that create the feeling of geographic salience without actually being in the same area. I’ve learned to avoid answering the remotely-asked question ‘so where are you anyways’ for as long as possible, for answering candidly usually ends any follow-up communications (“this person is ‘out there’, not serious, etc”).
dspillett
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
PebblesRox
It was a really strange feeling to read through Asimov and get to Robots and Empire, where the story, having ranged throughout a galactic empire in the far-flung future, follows the characters not just to Earth but to Three Mile Island — a place I had seen before! A place less than an hour a way from my hometown! It made the story feel more connected to my own life in a way that I was not expecting.
perfectritone
Anecdotal: I felt much more connected to Kurt Vonnegut's writing knowing that I had walked the same streets as him. The cultural aspects of his characters hit differently being able to match it to people I had met in similar places, albeit at different times.
dgunay
Definitely. I read a few articles top to bottom that I normally wouldn't have even bothered to look up on real Wikipedia, learned some cool local lore.
IAmBroom
I think it's an odd side-effect of our built-in prejudice to value our tribe over strangers, which is a safety feature in all social animals.
"A plane crash in <other country> killed all passengers, including 2 from <our country>" is a fairly common news styling.
cryzinger
One of the nearest articles to me is also a random plane crash, lol.
tannertech
There is a Stalin quote to this effect
shevy-java
> 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.
esperent
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...
dspillett
> EDIT: actually this is just a wrapper around wikipedia's nearby feature I think.
It does at least add a useful feature: being able to state a location to search from. The Wikipedia page (unless there is one other than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby that is more flexible) will only work off your current location, which is completely turned off on my work machine. Also upon checking on my phone, even with “desktop site” forced, the map looks to be an additional feasure too.
drivers99
> The Wikipedia page [...] will only work off your current location
You can put the coordinates of any location in the URL. One way to get that is in google maps, when you right click and click on the coordinates. Paste it where the coordinates go in the URL and remove the space after the comma.
It appears to limit itself to 50 results though, which only got me results up to 930 m away from the location I picked near me.
tannertech
Correct. The default Wikipedia mobile app has this as well.
parkersweb
I have the opposite problem - I live a half hour walk from central Cambridge UK, so results are full of the tourist destinations!
hashar
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.
csande17
For what it's worth, the actual search backend seems to be implemented in the separate "GeoData" extension: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GeoData
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
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...
alentred
When you change the language you are essentially moving to a different Wikipedia site, so yes it does - it pulls the results from the local site you are on.
nottorp
Ok so in theory you'll get the best results on Wikipedia in the local language... if the locals have bothered to fill in Wikipedia.
dukeyukey
I'm in North London, 500 entries for me, including several pubs.
zahlman
> Wikipedia cannot determine your location. Please try again with a better signal.
Oh, it doesn't try to fall back to geofencing, hmm?
throwaway173738
In the same vein all of my results are schools except two so it would be nice to have some filters on keyword.
darkest_ruby
Distances measured in yards for European destinations is an insult
valleyer
To convert to meters, multiply by 1.
Rotundo
That's an imperial meter, a standard SI meter is about ten percent longer.
ButlerianJihad
I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home; they're not much bigger than two meters!
adrianmonk
Use the Force, Luke, but it's up to you to decide how many newtons.
bluGill
For realistic purposes that is well within rounding error and they are the same. Most measures should not be that precise.
nkrisc
Good enough for this.
ChrisRR
Multiply by 0.914
ziiinq
[dead]
flohofwoe
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' ;)
alnwlsn
I rarely see yards used in the united states outside of football and other sports. Usually, distances to travel will go as feet, then right into miles. I can't think of many people who wouldn't say "quarter mile" over "440 yards". Anything less than that is in feet. Buildings and structures are measured in square feet, our long tape measures are usually labeled "300 feet" and not "100 yard", and in land surveying, measurements are often done in (decimal) feet.
One place I do come across yards is in "a yard of dirt" (or mulch, sand, concrete, etc) where it means cubic yard.
jherdman
Heh, yeah. I found the imperial units to be very jarring as a Canadian.
roryirvine
And mixes it with miles, too. Crazy decision.
ChrisRR
Why is that crazy? They're both imperial units
roryirvine
Because to convert from one to t'other, you have to multiply by 22 x 10 x 8 or whatever it is, rather than simply shift the digits.
For example, there's a park that's 1 mi 180 yds from me - if you were to pick one and stick with it then you could say either 1.1 mis or 1940 yds, rather than mixing the two and expecting people to do multiple rounds of arithmetic.
ChrisRR
Well yeah, imperial units are a mess. But keeping it all imperial or all metric is better than mixing the two
flohofwoe
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 ;)
wkjagt
In Canada we have imperial for short measurements (inches and feet for lumber, people's heights) but metric for longer distances (kilometers for driving distances for example)
petepete
Yep, we mix them up. Distance and speed in miles, fuel priced in pounds per litre.
dukky
And fuel economy in miles per gallon!
arethuza
Driving distances in miles, walking distances in kilometers!
roryirvine
And, though admittedly not really exposed much to the public, canals and railways both manage to mix chains in there, too... agh!
arethuza
And thinking about the height of mountains in meters even though the reason for walking up them is because they reach a certain height in feet.
ChrisRR
I don't see the issue. Miles and yards are both imperial units.
pezezin
> 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.
slymax
Wikipedia has a nearby feature that works in other languages as well
edwcross
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.
flipbrad
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.
jayknight
You can go to any article with location data, click the coordinates to go to the geohack page with links to all kinds of data about that location, which includes a link to "List of nearby articles" which takes you back to wikipedia's nearby search for that location. So from the White House page:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House ->
2. https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?pagename=White_Hou... ->
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/38.89777...
GJim
> Which I never used because it requires permission to see my location
A healthy mistrust.
It's bizare how many people give their coodinates to any random website that asks for them.
djeastm
Generally agree, but this is Wikipedia we're talking about.
fsiefken
location can be set through browser add-ons or devtools/about:config
https://www.location-guard.com/
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/change-geolocation-...
trombuance
Speaking of: All the OP link does is pull articles from Wikipedia. Am I in a minority in not seeing the point? When I read the title I expected it to be a site for locals to share their knowledge, that would have been really cool. It's strangers who'd benefit most from local knowledge, people generally know their homes and what's around them. It also didn't even work when I tried it and showed articles that were over 100 miles off the location I input.
everdrive
This was much cooler than I expected. It doesn't seem to be accurate with regard to the "half hour walk" but it still paints a nice radius. I'm in a fairly rural area, so I didn't expect to find much of anything, but it's got local parks and trails as well as churches and landmarks. It's a short list; there's just not much around us, but this seems like a cool resource
noduerme
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!
jayknight
Yeah, But I didn't really want to read this article as I was waking up...
karussell
Great project. Also nice that they are using photon for their address search.
I might be pendantic here (for reasons you find in my profile), but this isnt a "half hour walk" and it is just a 3 km radius around the location, i.e. as the crow flies and rivers or walls are ignored. A real half hour walk would be an isochrone for a walking profile ;)
pastel8739
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.
aworks
I bought many a book and saw various authors at Printers Inc., although apparently more than 25 years ago.
Had some meaningful conversations at the Cafe (which I assume finally closed as well). I never liked the Starbucks across the street.
phgn
Yes particularly in SF so many of the historical buildings seem to be gone :(
Because of earthquakes maybe?
biotechbio
Hello fellow palo alto person
trencedamp
Really cool idea but not ideal for tourists. I just tried where I live and it mostly gave me a list of housing developments and roads. Nothing actually interesting, and there definitely are interesting things!
phforms
There is also the Wikimedia project Wikivoyage[1], which focusses exclusively on travel guides. I just recently learned about it but haven’t actually used it yet, so I don’t know if it is any good.
waterproof
I love this. Suggestion: make locations linkable eg. https://edjefferson.com/localwiki?lat=xx&lon=yy
Then post on location specific subreddits. Folks will eat this up.
TonyStr
Super cool idea! Would love support for other languages, as English Wikipedia is quite limited where I live.
rf15
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...
tippa123
+1 from me one but even with 'just' english I was surprised at the amount and quality of stuff in my area.
monegator
same!
ek_erilaz
This is so cool! Looking at my own city, most of the points of interest are public buildings; somehow the fact that its MY fire department building makes it relevant to me. Otherwise I'd probably never read an article about the history of a random fire department building. A few other commenters have mentioned that information feels more interesting when its physically close to you, I agree.
I had an idea a while back to gather audio recordings of people telling stories of their adventures in my area (Alaska) and placing them on a map, with the arbitrary restriction that you have to physically go to the place the story happened to unlock it. It works, and I think its pretty cool, but also found it takes a TON of time meeting with people, recording, cleaning up the audio... after about 100 stories I slowed down on the project. But if anyone here lives in Alaska, you can listen to these stories (mobile app only) for free at https://loremaps.io/app. Someday I hope to get back to it.
abeppu
I don't at all understand Wikipedia's notability criteria. I see pages for individual public transit stops in SF. I switched it to look near my work, and it shows me defunct restaurants, an office building, the dead mall. Do these all deserve their own pages?
vintagedave
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.
user_7832
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
jamiescript
Why is this not called Walkipedia?
kubb
Is it possible to change the language of Wikipedia? For many places, the local language Wikipedia has more articles.
snickerer
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.
phgn
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!!
possibleworlds
Recently my friend paid attention to a statue of a man near his apartment he had passed for years. The story is behind this person is worthy of a movie, he’s like a character in a Pynchon novel:
JbMaj9
Someone already made an app with the same idea 10+ years ago, and they’re still maintaining that, for free:
https://apps.apple.com/hk/app/inquire-wikipedia-around-you/i...
nkrisc
How are the locations decided? For example: a broad, regional geologic feature (a sedimentary layer spanning for tens or hundreds of miles) is presented on the map with a point located at a nearby private residence.
Is that home just coincidentally near the geometric center of the geographic region the feature is named after?
If this were the kind of thing that caught on and became wildly popular I'd be concerned about it misdirecting people to private property.
mvdwoord
Vey nicely done! One issue though, not many local articles in english here. I see no obvious way to change language?
ChrisRR
Mine is all of the local schools and then a cold war nuclear bunker that I didn't know about
bbrks
Same. Nearby villages, churches, schools, and then a random Edwardian sewage pumping station that is open to the public. TIL!
Salparvezml
Ordinary houses are the gap for me. Most of the history within a half hour walk isn't notable enough for Wikipedia: who built a place, when the porch was added, what got covered up behind the plaster in the 1950s. That record usually lives in the heads of whoever worked on the house and disappears with them. A walkable map seems like a natural place to start collecting it.
johnny_lol
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!
jcrawfordor
My husband built this map browser for Wikipedia, in large part for travel planning: https://wikimap.wiki/
suncemoje
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
adg001
It doesn't work very well, in my experience. I have entered my hometown, which happens to have a Wikipedia entry. Local Wikipedia listed nearby entries, but omitted the Wikipedia page of the town itself, alongside other Wikipedia entries related to the same place. So, I tried looking up a nearby town, and see whether the pages related to my hometown would eventually show up, but they didn't. The pages involved have the coordinates populated.
brianjlogan
I just ran through the alternatives posted and my personal preference for UX is the OP's.
Speed to load, the specific use case I want which is just to load up near me and see a performant map I can browse.
The other links were either projects, games, or apps that did the same with older map projections that performed poorly for me.
thatwasunusual
I love it. It would also be nice to be able to a) enter desired distance, and b) choose the metric system.
ortichic
c) select the Wikipedia language. There are some English Wikipedia articles for my region, but my local language Wikipedia has much more
kls0e
thanks a lot, +1 für b).
stonecore
That's a nice idea, but doesn't it solve a “problem” that doesn't really need a solution in the first place, or? Wouldn't it make more sense to be able to filter by categories, such as day trip destinations, family, etc.?
firefax
Wikivoyage is a useful alternative to those expensive Lonely Planet books, though they got a little manic about having each district of a city have it's own page in some smaller areas.
Elucalidavah
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.
aembleton
Comaps also has offline wikipedia entries. So you can be on a hill, and read about the iron age fort that was once there.
britta
Wikinewsie is also fun, showing regional current events articles from Wikipedia:
demivoleegaston
It's cool, but I think this should be extended beyond landmarks. It would be fun to have people that lived in the area or that are connected to that area for some reason
anon_cow1111
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
thechao
I've got one article near me. There's another group of articles that, I guess, are a bit further off? One of them reads like an ad for a creepy park. Luckily, the actual walking time is more like 24 hours. Yay rural Texas?
richardw
Excellent. I discovered that the Sydney area Fairlight eventually led to the name of the synthesiser, which had a massive impact on music.
https://edjefferson.com/localwiki/?w=Fairlight%2C_New_South_...
mxfh
Like german speaking folks didn't invent the same thing 20 times over 20 years ago.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regiowiki
Filtering is all nice, but for a truly local wiki you should get different relevance criteria and different licensing criteria, to be able to negotiate citing local more recent sources.
lode
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).
bhelkey
A note, I found that many of the descriptions in "Did you know" include the place name. That is to say, I saw many many descriptions with the phrase "located in $CITY, $STATE, United States".
As all points are within a small radius, these description are very redundant.
danking00
If you like this you’d probably like Inquire which does a very similar thing but with a maps focused UI and designed for a phone.
dllu
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.
altilunium
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.
profsummergig
Simply fantastic. In my obscure little city, I've already discovered a bunch of historic places I had no idea about.
jabroni_salad
This is really neat. Apparently my dentist's office was initially built as an opera house.
marcomezzavilla
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.
mxfh
Because hosting with some other entity is not what you want for a regional focus where you want to set your own relevance criteria and licensing agreements ideally.
Germany and Austria have quite a bit of local Wikis with more than 20 active editors. Usually as some entity adjacent to the cities archive or run by some local foundation.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regiowiki#Deutschsprachige_Reg...
kmarc
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.
hbn
This is a really cool idea but my entire city is mostly articles for regional districts and schools. I also found an article on the casino and the refinery on the edge of town.
netfortius
English version only. Tried a few towns in Europe, and it's missing a lot of what the local language Wikipedia offers, so it's useful, in large part, probably for the anglophone world only.
slyall
I found out that a closed church I walk past regularly was called "St Chad's"
rconti
Pretty cool! Here in Menlo Park, they call out Kepler's Books, which most people would know about, but also the first Round Table Pizza which I think few people know about.
charles_f
Of note, something similar exists in OSMAnd~. You can download wikipedia articles for areas you downloaded. It's very useful when you visit a place IMO
l0b0
Looking at articles about the surrounding area while being a passenger is a great way to discover future destinations, and to just learn what's out there. OSMAnd makes this really easy by toggling the Wikipedia overlay.
keerthiko
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.
mju
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.^^
paxy
The concept is cool but in practice Wikipedia with just a bunch of buildings is not that interesting. Surely there are more than ~300 noteworthy articles for a dense NYC zip code.
koito17
All I get are train stations unless I decide to input the city instead of the street... but then the areas are no longer 30-minute walks!
Interesting failure mode, but I like the concept overall.
JeanCampos
Great idea! top10 "vibe code this in an afternoon"!
hrldcpr
Fun to follow subway station articles along my local line, until they stop becoming clickable links because they're too far away
ctrlaltdileep
Very cool, I imagine this would be useful for someone having moved to somewhere new. I'm planning a potential move so will definitely be using this!
h1696UOuk
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?
eng_qs_anon
This is great. One request-- please let me enlarge images in the articles.
captainbland
This is really cool, will definitely be using
floriferous
This is so amazing. Thank you for building this. I hope you keep refining it and making it better for different use cases!
sirnicolaz
Thank you, i would like to give you a tip. this is the kind of work that makes the internet a better and more useful place
CPUHall
Kinda cool, thanks for building this. Not much around me unfortunately, maybe allow expanding the range of distance?
FfejL
Fun to compare the part of Bay Area I live in now to the Cleveland suburb I grew up in. Huge difference in entries!
flohofwoe
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)
keithnz
super interesting, https://edjefferson.com/localwiki/?w=Auckland_Film_Studios is so near me its not funny, and weirdly never seen a movie star in these parts even though some big budget films have been made there.
kaeluka
This is very cool - one feature request: please support other languages! German Wikipedia would have way better info for my location :-)
Trigodil
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).
han2
This should be official feature in Wikipedia
refsab
Very cool. Obvious in hindsight with every location having coordinates.
Found an abbey around my place in Western Bavaria I didn't know existed
thuruv
I always know wikipedia is an ocean. But having this popping up 100s of entries nearby is fun!
ReDress
Just when I moved over into a VPN, now the broader network / internet is looking more welcoming - heh
utopiah
Neat, would also make for a nice Zim (offline Wikipedia and other websites) plugin/view.
laybak
I love how this redirects attention from familiar patterns in a wholesome direction
SCdF
This is very cool! Yes wikipedia does this already, but I love that it formats it into your own mini wikipedia.
jcmontx
That's so cool, I've only got 3 articles nearby haha. I live in rural Argentina
cm2012
To me this exposes the extreme limitations Wikipedia has given itself. My location could have 10 times as many Wikipedia articles nearby about things that are interesting, unique, or historically relevant. But those articles would all get denied.
zkmon
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
You wouldn't even have spices thinking like that
zkmon
You don't need them if they are not native to your place and if you are native of your place.
vasco
Yeah no man, take your nationalistic crap somewhere else, I like spices and stuff from other places
random_cat_8745
This is amazing, I can better explore the region I live at. Thanks for the project!
nikharminds
How is this different from the default wikipedia app? What value it is bringing?
dd8601fn
Don’t try zip codes. It gives you somewhere in Mexico.
snickerer
Content that is curated by interested humans, without commercial interests, is so good.
KellyCriterion
It works great, cool project!
I discovered something rightout near me that I wasnt aware of!:)
dzogchen
Very cool idea. Would be even better if it had an option to use a local language.
Harukadia
Great software difinietly. How can we get much information such in local?
dyauspitr
Very nice! It really should have a field to enter the radius of the search.
arshxyz
This is amazing. How is the Did You Know section generated?
thomasahle
Fun! Would be nice if it supported articles in different languages.
bcvvvy
This is the World Wide Web I want to see. Amazing job. Thank you!
amelius
Can I pick other planets?
(It could be fun to have an AI populate the db)
demritocracy
I absolutely love this, phenomenal work!
aizk
Really missed calling it localpedia!
rsynnott
Some of the Did you know entries are unintentionally quite funny:
> ... that 7 Eccles Street was a row house in Dublin, Ireland?
I mean, as the name, and the fact that it is a _row house_ (though, also, it's weird that the article, and I checked, it's like that in the real Wikipedia too, calls it that; they're usually called terraced houses here), indicates that, well, there were a few of them. It's actually notable because it's where Leopold Bloom lives in Ulysses.
no1guangming
Checked Hong Kong, not much on the page
lukeplato
incredible that ideas like this are still being invented
collabs
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.
shevy-java
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.
bigfishrunning
the only way to fight back is to put up (and use!) small web pages, and foster small communities.
internet_points
neat idea :)
should probably use local language wikipedia? english is rather bare-bones for my area
jayknight
See also https://wikimap.toolforge.org/, which puts wikipedia articles on a map so you can explore that way.
Edit: others have pointed out https://wiki-map.com/, which is way better.
ebx
awesome idea! I learned about a lot of old buildings nearby
flipbrad
Osmand for android also embeds results on the map, as an optional layer.
MajorTakeaway
This took too long to make.
flohofwoe
Maybe because Wikipedia has it as a builtin feature ;) (tbf I wasn't aware of that either):
rpigab
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.
keyboards
I love this so much
Perenti
Missed by about 70km.
INTPenis
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.
zulko
I made a map of Wikipedia pages and events once [1] and a key decision was: which pages to show first, and which to show only when the user zooms in?
I went with "let's show pages with the most words first". If people spent more time writing a page, it must be a great topic, right? Unfortunately, this also surfaces all the wars, crimes, accidents and controversies that generated the most coverage. These are the most active pages on Wikipedia.
[1] https://landnotes.org/?location=u0q9wgry-5&paneTab=about
smattiso
This is great!
ChrisGreenHeur
I guess it works but I have no idea what a yard or a mile is.
numpad0
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
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!
eru
Can we get SI units for distance?
gambiting
This is incredible. I already learned about several things literally within few miles from me that I had no idea existed. Thank you!
davidpfarrell
Walkapedia?
davidw
Closest thing is the Last Blockbuster: https://edjefferson.com/localwiki/?w=Last_Blockbuster
singularity2001
that would be one white page for me.
colordrops
Cool but I can't find any way to share a link to a particular location.
ronald_petty
Agree, add direct link to share, this is great.
tweepy
Could not agree more, this is a must have missing feature.
tonymet
I love these local articles. My Apple Watch Wikipedia app shows the local results and I use it to discreetly doomscroll when I’m bored in meetings.
0xbadcafebee
This, but combined with TravelWiki, and Atlas Obscura, all offline, would be my new favorite travel app
tdevito
Dark mode?
tdevito
Very cool
surfingdino
What a brilliant idea! I love it.
xnickb
So I thought this is brilliant and decided to find something close to me in Berlin. I was shown the "Nazi Germany" article.
hackerbrother
this is cool
whycome
How far away is communism from me?
ktimespi
Coolest shit I've seen here in a while ngl
krylonmae
Nobody cares about Wikipedia anymore, it’s all in AI.
utopiah
I do care still, there are dozens of us, dozens!
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tomthe
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.
phgn
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.
tomthe
Yes, the pageview statistics might be enough, but I started from the pagerank dataset https://github.com/athalhammer/danker
And because of bot traffic, the pageview statistics are sometimes suspicious and noisy.
jstanley
Cool map but FYI most of the ones near me are just random buildings that don't even have Wikipedia articles.
tomthe
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
Would it be possible to filter this to only show wikipedia objects?
tomthe
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.
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izecube
none Americans complaining about using yards is hilarious tbh
bigfishrunning
Having an encyclopedia entirely sourced in an LLM that is easily manipulated and prone to "hallucination" doesn't seem like a great idea, that's why not.
trombuance
I was very skeptical of the idea of a bot encyclopedia myself, but after looking up a few random articles and comparing them with human-authored encyclopedias, I can't say it's worse. One of the articles was actually substantially less biased than the Wikipedia version.
The LLM sources from the same reliable sources as Wikipedia (including Wikipedia itself). Wikipedia is arguably easier manipulated and known to be heavily astroturfed by governments, corporations and political activists. To manipulate Grokipedia you'd have to either hack xAI, which would almost certainly be discovered, or rewrite all its sources.
The nearest Wikipedia entry to me is about a 3 hours 15 minute walk away, the nearest town. But there are so many interesting things closer, perhaps I should add them to the wiki. Twenty minutes to the north there's a pleasant shady area at the bottom of a canyon with a fallen log with a curve that fits my buttocks nicely. Fifteen minutes to the southeast there is a dead elk cow that has only been 3/4 eaten by the local coyotes, etc., and has a quite remarkable odor. To the northeast is the spot where I found a perfect arrowhead, the prize of my collection. But maybe it's better for me to horde these places to myself.