Sometimes I am unsure on where the special:Nearby feature assumes that I am. Why not indicate the geoposition of my current position on the top right pf the special:Nearby page? Then if I click on the coordinates, I would see my position on various maps.
Talk:Beta Features/Nearby Pages
The calculated distances presented by Special:Nearby often differ a kilometer or a few hundred meters from the straight line distances provides by several maps. Why?
Does the scale of the location type (1:1000 for landmark, 1:100000 for waterbody, etc) have any impact on the distance calculation, or does it only consider the nominal geoposition of each place?
It was a neat feature – when are you thinking of bringing it back, and are there any particular features you have planned?
Jdforrester (WMF): The design is almost done and I'll start development in May. We hope to have the first release with the new design by end of June.
Prtksxna: Brilliant, thank you.
This feature is still being worked on for mobile. The beta feature helped fix a variety of bugs there and showed there was interest in such a feature.
The next step is to build on this work to provide a desktop experience with maps. There is a hackathon around maps at the Zürich Hackathon 2014 and a new design in the works being led by @User:Prtksxna. He should be able to give a better idea of timelines for this.
Wow, a very old page. But yes, please more maps and more powerful ones. Map the ten or twenty articles near me, and more important map the ten or twenty near the article I'm looking at. And from the map, click to an article. I mostly use WP Mobile for photo expeditions, so a map that also shows the existing (geotagged) photos would be enormously useful.
Is it possible to specify (and change) the nearby range?
my edit to the page header, and note that I did not vandalize it, although I did make a typo.
A major issue with "Special:Nearby" is that you are forced to send your current location data (to google and WMF, etc.) or else: you can't use it _at all_. You have to send very sensitive data, and you don't even get explained what you are doing and what is happening. You want to see which Wikipedia articles are nearby your next holiday destination? Not possible.
Why can't we choose nearby: "Eiffel Tower"? Or type any other WP article with a geographic location? Or "drop a pin" on a map? That is not a technical problem, as we can see with "Nearby Pages". Why not give the user a _choice_ and _some control_ of what he wants to see nearby?
See also Bug 49413 - Allow user to enter a location on Special:Nearby and feedback on dewiki.
I missed it a while ago, when it stopped working on monobook...
Yes, I miss it so I'll be pleased to see something re-emerge. Thank you for the work (and or giving me a chance to use (misuse?) low for the first time).
We'll have to make sure the next version works in Monobook :)
Jdlrobson: Glad to be hearing that... all I've been hearing lately is "Monobook is not the default, we won't support it".
Frankly, no. I do miss the awesome OpenStreetMap functionality that is standard on almost every Wikipedia language version (right next to WikiminiAtlas) - except on english Wikipedia. It's not even available as a gadget on enWP! You can only activate it by user script on enWP, see de:Hilfe:OpenStreetMap#Installation_in_anderen_Sprachen. This OSM tool is years old, it works, it's beautiful, it's useful, ... just perfect. "Nearby Pages" is inferior, I'm sorry. This makes me really wonder if this is a case of "If something is not happening on english Wikipedia, it doesn't exist for WMF". This new mockup places the map _over_ the article text (so you can't read the article _and_ look at the map) and the map window is tiny (so you can't read the map either).
This is so much better on the OSM-tool by Kolossos, the map unfolds above the article text and has a usable, readable size on screen. Plus you can choose a layer of geotagged commons images. Plus you can choose a layer of geotagged articles in other Wikipedia language versions. etc...
Regarding "Drop pin": That is a bad idea. Inviting bad edits in good-faith and map vandalism alike. Who is supposed to clean this up, the WP community? Please, just don't! Read up on the selfie-pocalypse on commons, or the terrible VisualEditor deployment on Wikipedia and think about it. Think!
I'll admit one thing ;-) though: the map pin icons at Kolossos OSM-tool are ugly (I think he agrees). See this map on the iOS Wikipedia app of _2012_ , it has nice map icons and i think that would be an improvement to the OSM-tool above (with the confused icon shadows... and weird sized icons).
A new design is planned. What are your thoughts on this new design? What could be done to improve it?
I have made 50,000 edits on enwiki. And here I am, not seeing how to start a new thread to respond.
DePiep: What do you mean? You just responded to the topic, as far as I can tell.
If you have issues with Flow, feel free to leave comments on Talk:Flow so the developers can see them.
Nicereddy: I made a reply, not a new topic. I completely missed the "Start a new topic" box: very light grey. This subthread is OT and so better be stopped.
User:DePiep: Thanks for the pointer to the very light grey "Start a new topic" box! That is really terrible UI design, unless someone _wanted_ to make this function practically invisible... Same for the very light grey "Comment on". Seriously..??
Jdlrobson: I'd recommend the following:
- Upload the mockups to Wikimedia Commons as well ;)
- Make "Exit fullscreen" in D(d) a MediaWiki.ui button (or use the Multimedia Viewer's "X"?)
- Remove underline from "Show/Hide Map" and use up/down carats as iconography to represent what pressing them will do. To make up for the lack of underline, you could make the text blue or bold? I just hate underlines unless you're mouse is right above the button itself.
- Try moving "# Topics near New York" above the map instead of between the map and article list?
- Remove divider lines from above and below "# Topics near New York", you can probably just use the background color's contrast to signify different sections of the pop-out.
- The sidebar design concept, while interesting, conflicts with user expectations and isn't used anywhere else on Wikipedia. It could work, but I think it'd be too disruptive for navigating the article.
- Make sure the "Drop pin" icon (See: this mockup) matches the Nearby Places icon with the transparent circle inside the pin. Although, maybe that was purposeful to avoid confusion between the two.
- Overall, I'd prefer if there were less gray, or if the current gray were replaced with one that was brighter. At present it looks pretty ugly and contrasts with the white too much.
Tell me if you need any clarifications, the mockups are definitely an improvement over the Beta Feature's design!
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