Local Wikipedia: Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you (edjefferson.com)

273 pointsby sohkamyung9 hours ago65 comments

esperent 2 hours ago

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...

tomthe 37 minutes ago

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.

jstanley 22 minutes ago

Cool map but FYI most of the ones near me are just random buildings that don't even have Wikipedia articles.

tomthe 18 minutes 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 14 minutes ago

Would it be possible to filter this to only show wikipedia objects?

darkest_ruby an hour ago

Distances measured in yards for European destinations is an insult

valleyer an hour ago

To convert to meters, multiply by 1.

Rotundo 41 minutes ago

That's an imperial meter, a standard SI meter is about ten percent longer.

ButlerianJihad 32 minutes ago

I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home; they're not much bigger than two meters!

ChrisRR 11 minutes ago

Multiply by 0.914

pezezin 29 minutes 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.

roryirvine 29 minutes ago

And mixes it with miles, too. Crazy decision.

flohofwoe 12 minutes 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 7 minutes ago

Yep, we mix them up. Distance and speed in miles, fuel priced in pounds per litre.

flohofwoe 18 minutes 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' ;)

ChrisRR 9 minutes ago

Mine is all of the local schools and then a cold war nuclear bunker that I didn't know about

noduerme 2 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 2 hours ago

Wikipedia has a nearby feature that works in other languages as well

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby

edwcross 2 hours ago

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 2 hours ago

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.

fsiefken an hour ago

location can be set through browser add-ons or devtools/about:config

https://www.location-guard.com/

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/change-geolocation-...

phgn 24 minutes 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, ...

Local History is fun!!

[1] https://openworldapp.xyz

johnny_lol 32 minutes 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!

pastel8739 2 hours ago

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.

phgn 13 minutes ago

Yes particularly in SF so many of the historical buildings seem to be gone :(

Because of earthquakes maybe?

TonyStr 2 hours ago

Super cool idea! Would love support for other languages, as English Wikipedia is quite limited where I live.

monegator an hour ago

same!

rf15 an hour ago

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 an hour ago

+1 from me one but even with 'just' english I was surprised at the amount and quality of stuff in my area.

kristopolous 12 minutes ago

https://localwiki.org/

Been around over 20 years

kubb 2 hours ago

Is it possible to change the language of Wikipedia? For many places, the local language Wikipedia has more articles.

snickerer an hour 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.

vintagedave an hour ago

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 15 minutes 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

mvdwoord 2 hours ago

Vey nicely done! One issue though, not many local articles in english here. I see no obvious way to change language?

flohofwoe 20 minutes 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)

collabs 38 minutes 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.

jamiescript 37 minutes ago

Why is this not called Walkipedia?

zkmon 44 minutes 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 40 minutes ago

You wouldn't even have spices thinking like that

dllu 2 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.

slyall 2 hours ago

I found out that a closed church I walk past regularly was called "St Chad's"

Elucalidavah 2 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.

dzogchen an hour ago

Very cool idea. Would be even better if it had an option to use a local language.

snickerer an hour ago

Content that is curated by interested humans, without commercial interests, is so good.

Trigodil 2 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).

bcvvvy an hour ago

This is the World Wide Web I want to see. Amazing job. Thank you!