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Local Wikipedia: Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you

273 points by sohkamyung 10 hours ago | 65 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 38 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 23 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 15 minutes ago

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

nomilk 5 minutes ago

Weird psychological quirk: otherwise banal articles seem much more pertinent when they happen to be nearby (I just read about a random plane crash from decades ago but felt very invested in it, due to proximity).

Wonder if this is related to the biological phenomena of humans tending to care more about humans who resemble themselves than those who don't (homophily)

darkest_ruby 59 minutes ago

Distances measured in yards for European destinations is an insult

flohofwoe 19 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' ;)

roryirvine 30 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 8 minutes ago

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

valleyer 55 minutes ago

To convert to meters, multiply by 1.

Rotundo 42 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 12 minutes ago

Multiply by 0.914

ziiinq 22 minutes ago

[dead]

pezezin 30 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.

ChrisRR 10 minutes ago

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

bbrks 5 minutes ago

Same. Nearby villages, churches, schools, and then a random Edwardian sewage pumping station that is open to the public. TIL!

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 2 hours 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 25 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 33 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 14 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.

rf15 59 minutes 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 58 minutes ago

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

monegator 2 hours ago

same!

kristopolous 13 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 2 hours ago

Yes!! And with today's translation programs, the user does not even need to understand the local language. Better — for me — would even be a mix of languages. Give me the most and longest articles of all languages for the places around.

vintagedave 2 hours 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 16 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 39 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 38 minutes ago

Why is this not called Walkipedia?

zkmon 45 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 41 minutes ago

You wouldn't even have spices thinking like that

dllu 3 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 2 hours ago

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

snickerer 2 hours 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 2 hours ago

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

refsab 3 hours ago

Very cool. Obvious in hindsight with every location having coordinates.

Found an abbey around my place in Western Bavaria I didn't know existed

no1guangming 31 minutes ago

Checked Hong Kong, not much on the page

thatwasunusual 3 hours ago

I love it. It would also be nice to be able to a) enter desired distance, and b) choose the metric system.

ortichic 2 hours ago

c) select the Wikipedia language. There are some English Wikipedia articles for my region, but my local language Wikipedia has much more

kls0e 2 hours ago

thanks a lot, +1 für b).

INTPenis 2 hours ago

This is a really fun idea, but I went from excited to disgusted in the span of one click.

The first thing that pops up for my city of Malmö is the school stabbing that happened in 2022. They're so rare here, and yet Wikipedia felt I just had to see it.

I'm not going to make stupid feature requests, but it would be cool with a filter for types of Wikipedia articles to show.

ChrisGreenHeur 2 hours ago

I guess it works but I have no idea what a yard or a mile is.

numpad0 38 minutes ago

A mile is supposed to be (1 / 60 / 360 / Earth.circumferenceOf()), so a 1.5mi radius or 3mi diameter circle is (supposed to be slightly short of) 3/60 or 0.05 degrees on a map.

A yard is just 10% short of a meter, just the same thing for most practical purposes.

(full disclosure: I did look these up)

retsibsi 2 hours ago

Metric rules and imperial drools, I agree, but I reckon if we put our minds to it we can multiply by 0.9 and 1.6 (or 0.91 and 1.61 if you are genius). Keeps the mind sharp in this age of outsourced thinking!

MajorTakeaway 3 hours ago

This took too long to make.

flohofwoe 6 minutes ago

Maybe because Wikipedia has it as a builtin feature ;) (tbf I wasn't aware of that either):

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

izecube 24 minutes ago

none Americans complaining about using yards is hilarious tbh

dyauspitr 2 hours ago

Very nice! It really should have a field to enter the radius of the search.

timonoko 2 hours ago

https://wiki-map.com/ considered much better.

Has local language too.