Talk:Beta Features/Nearby Pages/Archive 1

What do you like about Nearby Pages?

 * It is a useful tool to find what pages are nearby that you may want to put on your watchlist. Dleit Ḵaa (talk) 02:10, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It's 1) "cool" - makes Wikipedia look more like the modern cutting edge web and 2) useful - it allows for more target exploring for tourists and such. --Piotrus (talk) 02:52, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

What would you change about Nearby Pages?
Is this feature useful? Should we work more on it and use it as the basis to build it into a replacement for tools like Geohack? What's missing?

Close button misleading in current form

 * The "close" button doesn't work. It just brings me back one step if I've opened a file. It only actually closes the interface if I'm at the main screen. --MarkTraceur (talk) 19:27, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeh the design could be improved here but basically you are creating new windows and closing the top window. Maybe I could make them look stacked to make this clearer. Jdlrobson (talk) 19:05, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Design improvements

 * The layout seems a little cluttered, which is mostly fine, but some extra padding wouldn't hurt. --MarkTraceur (talk) 19:27, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Every article found nearby takes a huge space on screen. Why take up so much space? The distance could have been at the same line as the title, probably it could go first. The icon is fine, but it is necessary? --FocalPoint (talk) 16:30, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The "Nearby" and empty space around it is also HUGE! --FocalPoint (talk) 16:35, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Make it work in the file namespace

 * When I am on Stockholm I see the button with a long list of files nearby. Great! However, it does not seem to work in the File: namespace, but I think that would also be very useful too. I.e. the top file in the Stockholm list, File:Kungliga Myntet staty 2012.JPG, should also have a button (clearly it has a discoverable coordinate). --Jan Ainali (WMSE) (talk) 08:55, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes this is a known bug - it's actually caused by the lack of a space between geo coordinates generated in file templates. Luckily a fix is on the way: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/96882 Jdlrobson (talk) 19:05, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Escape needed

 * It needs an escape from geographically close together pages. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 00:57, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Show catchment area

 * It would be nice to know the radius of the catchment area, i.e. "The following pages are with x meters of the geographical location of y article." It would also be fun to be able to change the radius to increase or decrease the number of pages brought up. Dleit Ḵaa (talk) 02:09, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Not just fun. This is a must, as distances have different meanings in cities vs rural areas. Klipe (talk) 09:58, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Confusion of what the feature is

 * In fact I could not see any reaction. I've activated the feature, but where is this feature? How do I access to it. I see nothing. --Parzi (talk) 03:28, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * +1. How do I use this if activated? It isn't the small globe icon right of the coordinates that shows a map, is it? Because this is also there when the feature is disabled. --2003:63:2F00:D800:98DD:D5CA:240B:868A 14:02, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I've added a screenshot to the feature page hopefully this will help. There is also problems with it not showing in places it should but I'm working on this now Jdlrobson (talk) 19:05, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * If you mean "Show location on interactive map", you first should communicate this on this page, and second translate this button title in other languages than English. Regards Parzi (talk) 03:36, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I think this is a different feature? Sorry for any confusion (see above point) Jdlrobson (talk) 19:05, 22 November 2013 (UTC).

Inconsistent templates

 * I can't see this icon. I'm on German WP. --2003:63:2F00:D800:E12F:BA24:2399:5B04 22:11, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

The feature works by looking for an element in the page in the form

​37.787088; -122.400940​ ​

It seems geo coordinate templates are inconsistent across projects as on German Wikipedia this format is used (FWIW I actually prefer this formatting):

​ ​37.787328048611​ ​ ​-122.40098480194​ ​ ​

What can we do to make these templates consistent? Jdlrobson (talk) 23:06, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd say don't rely on the template, instead, use the information generated by parser function ? TheDJ (talk) 10:52, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Maps

 * It would need to support the case of pages with multiple geographic references, such as lists of monuments in a given area or about a given topic. Klipe (talk) 09:58, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually I'm a bit surprised to see that such a feature is not implemented as a map. I prefer the maps that we can already access from the top right corner (i.e. same location as the Nearby Pages user interface) of geocoded articles on the English and French Wikipedia's, through similar although slightly different features.  Alongside with the geographic coordinates, links (globe with a down arrow in en:WP, word "carte" on fr:WP) open pop-ups where the current and nearby Wikipedia pages are located on a map.  See for example the page fr:Herbeumont and en:Herbeumont. These features support zooming in and out and mention pages containing multiple coordinates (such as fr:Liste du patrimoine immobilier classé de Herbeumont). The feature on en:WP allows for a short summary of linked pages to appear as overlay and is available also for any coordinates inside a page.  The feature on fr:WP is available only for pages geocoded with one set of coordinates, but it provides an option to show thumbnail images on the map.  Finally, both provide options to show the nearby pages from Wikipedia's in other languages. These features are not perfect (in particular, none of them is available in "mobile view") but at least they could inspire the designers of the Nearby Pages feature. Klipe (talk) 09:58, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Definitely lots of inspiration there and yes a map would be great but first we need to resolve this bug: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33980. Jdlrobson (talk) 19:10, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Icon choice

 * Could the icon on pages be made smaller so that it's the same size as the page title? Callanecc (talk) 13:01, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Seconded. This is also Sven Manguard (talk) 04:08, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Replacement? No way!
The question on the top of this section reads ..."Should we"... "use it as the basis to build it into a replacement for tools like Geohack?". My answer is "No way". Even if we are happy on how it works, it is complementary to existing tools and not an adequate replacement. --FocalPoint (talk) 16:18, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

In current form of course it is an inadequate replacement. My concern about this feature is that if you provide yet another button into exploring geo data which will be confusing to end readers. I was curious whether there was an opportunity/motiviation to expand on this feature to do other things that are provided by geohack. Jdlrobson (talk) 19:15, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

First you need to answer - what is geohack? w:Wikipedia:Geohack doesn't answer it well, so I am not even able to answer your question. If you mean the links from GPS coordinates, I'd say no. It's not as useful, not yet; or rather - it does something else. --Piotrus (talk) 02:54, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
 * They are highly different functions, so cannot easily be compared. I'd say that for most people currently, when they are reading, I think they are interested in 'Where is this thing? show me' (geohack, wikiminiatlas). Nearby as used by this beta feature is more an 'I know where this is, show me other stuff around this'. So I would say: build out OpenStreetMaps/WikiMiniAtlas, use the nearby information to show surrounding articles in that map (WMA already does this). From both of those tools add a link to geohack, to give ppl more mapping options but stop making it the primary entry point. Then use the near by information as input for a separate "related articles" feature. My opinion is that Near by as a feature for a page makes less sense to me. It is a data point that you should feed features with, it is less a feature for a page in itself. Special:Nearby is a feature on it's own (show me what is around me), but nearby on an article isn't/shouldn't. TheDJ (talk) 11:31, 26 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for this User:TheDJ. I guess my question was "what would a geoservice" for mobile look like and would this be part of it and you have lots of interesting thoughts around that :-)

User:Piotrus -> [geohack] Jdlrobson (talk) 17:21, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Loading message misleading
When loading, the message "Loading topics near your current location" is shown. This is misleading as it implies that the pages are near where you are, not where the page you are looking at is. Something like "Loading topics near [pagename]" or the current header line ("The following pages are related to [pagename] by their geographical location") would be better:Jay8g (talk) 17:58, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

The non-Vector version is far inferior to the Vector version
The version when using the Vector skin is much nicer than the version when using other skins. It would be nice if they all could use the Vector version. Is there a major reason why they use different versions?:Jay8g (talk) 17:58, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

I thought I had only enabled this feature for Vector but it seems something went wrong. I only wrote the initial version for Vector and it wasn't suppose to be applicable to other skins. I will look at this. Jdlrobson (talk) 19:11, 23 November 2013 (UTC)


 * It works, mostly, in non-Vector skins, and even seems to have been programmed to work with them (different button text, button placement). It just works less well:Jay8g (talk) 01:33, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Make it easier to add GPS coordinates to articles
Since this tools relies on GPS coordinates, to make it even more useful, you need to make adding GPS coordinates easier. Even I, an experienced Wikipedian, find things described at w:Wikipedia:Obtaining geographic coordinates way to complex and difficult to do easily. The easiest way would be to code a tool that extracts GPS from Google Maps. Imagine that for articles that are categorized as geographical features and are missing the GPS coords) we would have an (opt-in?) button (red version of the current button) that one's clicked would ask the editor to feed it the Google Map link for that location, then convert it into a coord template. --Piotrus (talk) 03:05, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

What bugs or issues have you found using Nearby Pages?
Note bug fixes will take at least 1 week to surface due to the existing software deployment system.

Button placement

 * I like the feature. However, I don't think the icon gives enough of an idea as to what it does. I appreciate that, since it is going across projects, text is probably no good. But I feel fairly certain that a better image could be devised. The other thing is that it seems to be only taking co-ordinates from the co-ordinates template. Some articles have the co-ordinates in an infobox instead. FormerIP (talk) 00:52, 22 November 2013 (UTC)


 * The button overlaps the top icons, especially in featured articles(with the FA top icon). I think the location of the button should be fixed. Or isn't it a problem? Hard to see top icons(protected, FA, GA, etc.) -Priviet (talk) 14:42, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

The placement of the button definitely needs work. There is so many things up there that it makes it hard to know where to put it. Should it maybe be a tab next to Page and discussion? Ideas welcomed. Jdlrobson (talk) 19:07, 22 November 2013 (UTC)


 * For me, on Swedish Wikipedia, the coordinates are partly covered by the button. I am using Firefox 25.0.1 on Windows 7. Best, John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 14:46, 26 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree that the icon should not retain it's current placement. That area is already in use by existing UI elements. Kaldari (talk) 15:09, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Button regressions

 * It changes the appearence of the "Save" button in the w:pt:Special:Preferences, w:pt:Special:MyContributions and others. Helder 11:31, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I can confirm this. It changes all button layouts to this 3D "Win95 style" that was popular in the mid-to-end-90ies. --2003:63:2F00:D800:98DD:D5CA:240B:868A 14:05, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Multiple issues: Skalman (talk) 06:44, 22 November 2013 (UTC) It will do this until the fix is merged and deployed to a server but rest assured it is being dealt with :-) Jdlrobson (talk) 01:41, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
 * (Firefox, Chrome) Button doesn't react on hover (previously it became brighter (Fx) or had its border darken (Chr))
 * (Firefox) Less clear that a button is focused (previously there was an orange focus ring, now only a dotted, inner "outline")
 * (Firefox, Chrome) Unclear outline: barely visible top and right border (previously I could see the whole button, now only its "shadow")
 * Button issues are all fixed in https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/97069 reviews welcomed Jdlrobson (talk) 19:06, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It still changes most button layouts to "Win95 style" for me Bertaz (talk) 01:16, 24 November 2013 (UTC) Buttons_Bug_Nearby_Pages.jpg
 * When are the bugfixes usually merged to the servers? --2003:63:2F00:D800:195D:8731:E740:9B34 17:13, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

CategoryTree compatibility issues

 * It seems (in the sense that it works without Nearby, and not with Nearby), that Nearby breaks the category expansion in Category view (achieved through CategoryTree?). Clicking the "+" expander displays “Problem loading data. Please wait a moment and try again.”. (Firefox 25/Ubuntu 12.04). Jean-Fred (talk) 20:46, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I have the same with Firefox 24.1.1 on Mageia 3. Pamputt (talk) 06:00, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor save button issue
When editing a short page, or at the top of a page, using VE, the Nearby Places icon partially covers VE's Save button. FF 25, Mac OS 10.8. The Interior (talk) 23:57, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Layout of buttons
When activating this beta feature, the layout of the buttons such as “Safe page” changes (everywhere). --Leyo (talk) 00:19, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

See Button regressions above... Jdlrobson (talk) 00:21, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I had overlooked this thread, thanks. --Leyo (talk) 00:28, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Bugs in English and German WP
In English WP, this new feature produces on my Laptop (Win Vista, Firefox 25.0.1) a semi transparent table containing pictures, names of articles and distances of nearby articles. But this table overlaps large parts of the current article. I switched off all personal modifications in my simple.js and simple.css, but the bug is stil there. — In German WP, this feature doesn't work at all, but produces a bug: After a page is fully loaded, the back links in references (↑) disappear. --DF5GO (talk) 00:10, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

I can't reproduce your first issue. Can you submit a screenshot? As for other bug already captured. Fix is in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57409 Jdlrobson (talk) 00:18, 23 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Screenshot - Bug in Nearby Pages.jpg Here is a screenshot of this bug. I captured this screenshot from en:Konstanz. Thanks for the bugzilla link on the second bug. --DF5GO (talk) 00:56, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This is likely in monobook. I have had the same issue myself, when on articles with long lists, after scrolling down. Also, as you can also see on that screenshot, the text is very small, probably the typical monobook issue that has affected other extensions. Jay8g (talk) 02:26, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * On ENWP, Vector I also get the backlinks in references sections disappearing. Extraordinary. Took me a long time to find this was the cause. On a hard refresh the backlinks are there and then disappear later on in the page redrawing. With Javascript disabled, the backlinks are OK. Thincat (talk) 17:42, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Twinkle
Hi again,

Seems either this or Media Viewer feature is causing Twinkle not to work?

parsererror "OK" occurred while contacting the API.

All day it's not worked for me & as soon as I disable both beta features it works....

Cheers Davey2010 (talk) 00:42, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I had this problem, too. Disabling beta straightened it out. Chris troutman (talk) 06:21, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

This beta feature conflicts with the English Wikipedia gadget Twinkle. Twinkle attempts to make API requests using $.ajax, however these fail with error code "parsererror".

The reason for this seems to be that this beta feature includes MobileFrontend, which contains the following code (in javascripts/common/api.js): // TODO: this might be dangerous and cause conflicts with other code // should we move it to Api#ajax? $.ajaxSetup( {		url: apiUrl,		dataType: 'json',		data: {			format: 'json'		}	} ); However, Twinkle uses XML, not JSON, which is probably the reason for the error. Whoever wrote the TODO made a good prognostication... This, that and the other (talk) 01:31, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for debugging User:This, that and the other - will take a look. Jdlrobson (talk) 19:10, 23 November 2013 (UTC)


 * It's not just nearby features. I get the same error with only media viewer checked as well.  Can do some more testing later. Technical 13 (talk) 18:14, 25 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Tracked in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57556 Jdlrobson (talk) 20:21, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Nearby Pages doesn't work on many wikis: no button to see
It works for me on english WP, but not on german WP: no Nearby button, nothing. Checked it by activating it twice, first time when the beta feature was announced and second time just now (all with cache cleaning), it doesn't show up. Frankly, this is not a tragedy since we already have Kolossos OpenStreetMap tool at the same spot, which provides a map with pointers to articles nearby (for years now!). I rather find the inactivity to support this established and successful OSM tool frustrating, see bug 33980. This should really be prioritized! --Atlasowa (talk) 14:48, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The German template coord needs the function (see Extension:GeoData), like the English template coord.--Dega180 (talk) 17:54, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Not working either on ca.wiki although local coord template includes coordinates tag. --Vriullop (talk) 18:17, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Same problem on Portuguese Wikipedia (as reported at pt:WP:CP).
 * On English Wikipedia's article Portugal, the HTML code contains:""
 * In the article Portugal, the same div is empty: ""
 * If I replace "en" by "pt" in the url of the API request which is used on English Wikipedia, I still get some results. So it doesn't seem to be a problem with our template. Helder 10:28, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Cswiki here, doesn't seem to work here either. So what must be changed where so that Nearby Pages can work on cswiki too? As suggested by others, just Extension:GeoData doesn't seem to be the answer. --12:16, 27 November 2013 (UTC), Utar (talk)

Button overlap with banner
The button is overlapping with the banner. Fauzan Zaid (talk) 06:59, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't refresh instantly
Me and my students added coordinates to w:Jewelry Museum. But it tells us "there's nothing nearby", not picking up the city coordinates from w:Iksan (and vice versa). If there's a database lag, this should be noted somewhere. --Piotrus (talk) 03:00, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Disrupts footnote linking from reflist to article footnotes
Normally the numbered footnotes in the reference section have ^ buttons between the footnote numbers and the footnote annotations. These ^ buttons allow us to go to the footnote in the text. When "Nearby Features" is activated, these ^ buttons do not appear. They are useful buttons, and should remain active. I hope you can fix. Thanks. Srich32977 (talk) 06:46, 23 November 2013 (UTC) PS: I'm using my Chrome browser on my Mac laptop. 06:50, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The same BUG exists in other browsers and in the German Wikipedia, where the more fancy ↑ suddenly disappears. → disabled again. -- 32X (talk) 16:15, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Has been fixed in https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/97143 Jdlrobson (talk) 19:07, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I have this problem still on en:wikipedia. Chrome and Firefox browers alike --Coemgenus (talk) 22:46, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
 * We still have this problem in Catalan Wikipedia. (ca:Viquipèdia:La_taverna/Ajuda)--Pere prlpz (talk) 19:19, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

This HAS NOT BEEN fixed on English Wikipedia as of few seconds ago, I just traced this problem to this extension and was about to report it, but I see it is known. It's rather annoying, I hope this can be fixed quickly. --Piotrus (talk) 05:14, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I am having the same problem on the English Wikipedia as well. Very annoying.  Little Mountain 5  05:04, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Button styling
With nearby enabled, i get styling overrides for many of the various buttons throughout the UI. This is caused by the following block in mobile.bridge module

Especially the border-radius is annoying, since it switches the buttons from the OS default appearance, to a styled appearance (which looks ugly). I'd like my native buttons back please :D TheDJ (talk) 09:42, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

See #Button_regressions - this was not intended and has been dealt with. Jdlrobson (talk) 17:16, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
 * So this will no longer be a problem after the next deploy ? TheDJ (talk) 17:29, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Yup, as long as https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/97069/ gets merged... reviews welcomed :) Jdlrobson (talk) 18:12, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

The article you are visiting is also in the list
For example when reading the article sv:Dalkarlså and clicking on the Nearby Pages button the article "Dalkarlså" (i.e. the same place) is suggested (but 10 meters away). The exact same thing happens also in other geographical articles in swwp. I am using Firefox 25.0.1 on Windows 7. Best, John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 14:51, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Captured in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/57444 you can track this problem here. Jdlrobson (talk) 17:19, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Confirmed, for example in w:Church of the Resurrection in Katowice. --Piotrus (talk) 07:09, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Watch star animation
If I have this beta feature enabled, the watch star in the vector tabs of a page, animates with the rotating spinner, instead of the star shaped spinner when you click it to (un)watch a page. This is caused by the usage of !important in the mobile.bridge block: TheDJ (talk) 11:05, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Automatic scrolling
Clicking the icon automatically scrolls my window to 1 pixel below the top of the view frame. First, it shouldn't be messing with the scrolling to begin with. Second, it's especially annoying that even if you are already at the top of the page, it scrolls 1 pixel down. Using Firefox 25 on MacOS. Kaldari (talk) 15:14, 27 November 2013 (UTC)



Sidebar overlying main content
In Indonesian Wikipedia, if you activate Nearby beta feature and opening any history page, you will encounter placement problem like image beside. For example: this. William Surya Permana (talk) 17:31, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * , it seems that the beta feature is exposing a problem in id:MediaWiki:Histlegend that has seemingly already been present for a year. There is an unmatched div element in that message, that requires correcting. TheDJ (talk) 00:11, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I really like this!
I really like this feature! It's great to see the nearby places of interest and having the pictures in the menu is a great idea.

Two comments: -- The Anome (talk) 12:33, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * it's not easily discoverable. I had to spend about a minute looking at the en:London article before I saw it. Places I looked first: (1) the coordinates at the top of the article -- I expected text here, not a Google-like icon, which I didn't see because I wasn't looking for it and it got lost in the cluster of other icons there, and (2) in the text menu at the left side of the page
 * there's no effective filtering by importance in cases where the number of nearby articles is very largem as is the case for the en:London article. Ideally, there should be some sort of page ranking algorithm to determine the relative importance of nearby articles.

What would you suggest would be a good way of determining importance of nearby articles in this situation? Currently it is purely based on proximity but theoretically I guess we could filter it to be pages which have images / pages which are over a certain length / pages which have been featured (although that said I'm not sure what is feasible) Jdlrobson (talk) 19:22, 26 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's the sort of thing I'm thinking of -- some combination of topic relevance, article quality and distance. Size and precision of features should also play a part here. For example, where an article is about a state, the most relevant articles are probably the nearby states, not, for example, buildings which are near the geographic centre of the state. This is obviously a matter for future research. By the way, I think the recent improvements to the display of this feature are really good. -- The Anome (talk) 12:12, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

More comments
Hi all! Why don't u put all the coordinate data right into the Wikidata, and then make the "Nearby Pages" just access these information there and bring it to the articles on the many Wikipedia or, even better, into OSM maps also! Once in the Wikidata, projects like OSM could easily access them also! Sturm (talk) 21:53, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm sure there are wikidata people looking at doing this at a massive scale. From the frontend it doesn't really matter if the data is in wikipedia or wikidata I think. TheDJ (talk) 22:10, 26 November 2013 (UTC)