Extension:GeoData/blogpost

GeoData: a new age of geotagging on Wikipedia

Ever wondered which articles are around you? This is getting closer as today the GeoData extension for MediaWiki went into production officially.

What it does
Coordinates added to articles are stored separately in the database, allowing to query the coordinates of a particular page or a list of pages around a given point. The Solr search engine is used for spatial queries, making the searches extremely fast. All the functionality is available via the API.

How it works
GeoData adds a new parser function,  which saves coordinates passed to it into the database.  

Setting it up
GeoData requires some manual setup to start collecting the data. Typically, all that is needed is to insert a  into a template that and wait some time for job queue to process the pages that use it (example changes). Currently, this extension is enabled on all Wikipedias, Wikivoyages and special projects (like Commons) with at least 3 projects already actively using it (English, Simple and Chinese Wikipedias).