Shame you can’t manually input a location (not only for privacy, but for tourists and visitors who might want to plan ahead)
You can! You just need to construct your URL manually.
For example, let’s say you’re in Idaho: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/43.1896782,-112.3461974
The numbers at the end are latitude and longitude. You can get these numbers from a GPS app, Google Maps, or OpenStreetMap. For example, here’s that same location on OSM: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/43.1896782/-112.3461974 . You can see the coordinates at the end of the URL.
Bit of a hassle, but you could potentially write a script or bookmarklet to make this easier.
Thanks, as you say, that’s a lot of hassle and not something a random user would be able to know on their own, so I appreciate the info!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/LAT,LONG
replace LAT and LONG
You can. I
- opened gMaps
- grabbed my lat/long
- corrected the nearby URL because in #Canada it’s always wrong when on desktop
- found the building I was in is apparently 1.3 km away, which will affect my walk to the loo
But the facility being wrong is secondary; it’s possible.
What is the structure of the Nearby URL when manually entering coordinates?
By the makers of wikipedia:
This is how you can get offline Wikipedia articles for OSM. Great when traveling.
You can, for example, read articles about things you pass in a plane, train, auto, or bike. Without internet.
Do you mind to elaborate?
Because the post is for Wikipedia website, which is online
In OsmAnd you can download map data for use offline. In the same download page for thr map data there’s also a download for Wikipedia data.
Download data is per country, so someone just bundled all the articles that have GPS coordinates withing the bounds of each country, and you can download all those articles for offline use in the OsmAnd app.
Thank you very much.
The place where I live
The lake I visited once
Two churches
A 14th century battle
A museum
A concentration camp
It’s not too great a puzzle, as you’re having your nations flag in your user name, but…
Kaunas?
Kaunas would have way more stuff around. :)
I live in a middle of historically significant nowhere.
Lol, bunch of schools, two correctional centers, and some sites of “historic battles”.
Welcome to pretty much anywhere in the southeastern US.
I have just been informed you can also see pages nearby other pages with a special URL query (apparently no interface exists for this yet)
…and I thought of a web game you can make with this, if anyone’s bored and looking for something to do: https://brain.d.on-t.work/notes/9on0iba4evg40hic
- pick a random page
- find all pages nearby
- make the player guess the random page from the nearby pages
- if they haven’t guessed the exact page, compare the coordinates and score based on distance to the correct page
Cool! Its like Geoguessr meets Wikispeedia!
Nearby me is suburb I live in and the nearby suburbs, oh and the electoral district of those exact same suburbs.
cool tip, i didn’t know about this either but it’s awesome!
What a cool feature!
I took a look. It’s all train stations, schools, and farms.
You’d think I lived in the middle of nowhere.
yeah same here unfortunately. but then I am currently somewhere I’d consider middle of nowhere
actually there was one plane crash but that’s not necessarily an article I’m interested in
I have 5 results. An Indian reservation, a little-known geographic feature and 3 unincorporated communities. All of those outside of 5km from me.
You have denied access to Location Services for Wikipedia. To change this please visit your browser or device settings
Even if I allowed my browser location access, the location would be wrong.
Actually learned a lot I didn’t know about the history of the little town I live in - very cool! Thank you!
A bunch of schools, parks, and malls is all I really see. The only thing of interest that’s happened around here is we had a machete attack in 2016.
Er. Stupid question. How do I actually tell it where I am so this will work? Or does it only work on mobile?
I just posted an answer under a different comment. See https://lemm.ee/comment/8402398
Lots of railway stations, an old church, and literally just a cliff. Yeah that sounds about right, level-of-excitement-round-here-wise!
Not entirely worth the effort but I appreciate the tutorial nontheless :D
TIL Wikipedia has no page for the 28’ Canadian Toonie monument
8 schools, an airport, and a hospital. Gripping.
