Beta Features/Nearby Pages

Group:	Design
Start:	2014-03-10
End:	2014-04-30
Team members:	Prateek Saxena, Moiz Syed, Jon Robson

Nearby Pages provides a quick way to see pages that are geographically close to the page you are currently on.

Next Steps

See Beta Features/Nearby Pages/Design for ongoing design work. A big overhaul is planned to incorporate maps in the experience. In Zurich a hackathon is planned to try to get maps into Wikipedia. You are most welcomed there to help guide us.

Goals

Wiki* projects have a huge amount of geographical data. The (opt in) Nearby Pages allows you to surface related pages to what you are reading based on this information.

Key Changes

TL;DR: Adds a button to the top right corner of pages that contain geographical information. When clicked you will be able to see what other pages are nearby.

Implementation

This beta feature is currently part of the MobileFrontend extension and is also being trialled in the mobile beta. There are various design challenges to still overcome as well as various bugs and there are many ways this feature could be improved (including much design love). It is hoped that with a bit more work like Special:Nearby this can be a useful and enjoyable part of the reading experience.

Gallery

Nearby pages beta feature provides the blue button in the top right of the screen giving you the opportunity to explore nearby articles.
Example for the Timbuktu article on English Wikipedia