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:
It’s very American that one of the pages nearby me is a well known mass shooting.
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!
On OsmAnd, go to configure map and enable Wikipedia. All articles with location are visible.
I love OsmAnd so I purchased the OsmAnd+, I highly recommend
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!
I took a look. It’s all train stations, schools, and farms.
You’d think I lived in the middle of nowhere.
I have 5 results. An Indian reservation, a little-known geographic feature and 3 unincorporated communities. All of those outside of 5km from me.
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
What a cool feature!
Actually learned a lot I didn’t know about the history of the little town I live in - very cool! Thank you!
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.
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
8 schools, an airport, and a hospital. Gripping.
