Talk:WMDE Technical Wishes/Geoinformation/Nearby articles

Thank you for taking the time to try out this new feature. Both positive and negative reactions are very helpful for us! We will be making further improvements on the recently released first version and the feedback we receive will help us prioritize our work. If you’d like to share your experience, you can take inspiration from the following questions or simply share your reactions.
Expectations:

• • When you first turned on the feature, was it what you expected?
  • When you scroll around and zoom in/out, does it work as expected?
  • Do you think the most relevant articles are shown?

Usefulness:

• • Do you find this feature useful? For you, for other readers?
  • Do you think it’s useful for this feature to be available for all maps embedded within an article? Or only specific types?

Looks good!

Looks good so far! I think this will be a great boon for readers interested in local history and culture. I'll add notes as comments below as I test. Thank you for your work! Mbrickn (talk) 17:00, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

@Mbrickn: Thanks a lot for your feedback. I hope you'll keep enjoying this feature. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 12:15, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Great start!

Hi, many thanks for working on this, this will be very useful for discovering related content! The current implementation looks good, and it's a great step forward, but it's a bit more limited than I'd have liked to have seen. The key problem is that it's hidden away with a few clicks needed to reveal it. I was hoping that it would be possible to display the nearby sites in the infobox directly, so people could click on them to visit articles/categories directly. However, I appreciate that this is a tricky thing to do, particularly from a server load perspective! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:09, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind feedback and your helpful thoughts about the challenges on how to find the feature. Displaying it in articles and infoboxes directly is indeed a performance problem, you are absolutely right. Unfortunately nothing that we will be able to solve without support from WMF and also no longer possible in our remaining time until the end of the year. Best Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 13:20, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Very nice gadget

Hi, I appreciate the good job done. It's easy to use and improve the very spread out Kartographer. Thanks a lot ! --Amadalvarez (talk) 14:30, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

@Amadalvarez: My reply comes quite late, but I wanted to thank you anyway for trying the feature and taking the time to comment here. -- Have a good weekend, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 12:53, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks to you, @Johanna Strodt (WMDE). If we ask for good tools, we need to participate and collaborate with developers.

Have a good weekend, too. Amadalvarez (talk) 18:07, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Translation

Hi, where is the text "Show nearby articles", in order to be able to translate it. Thanks ! Amadalvarez (talk) 14:21, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Hey, thanks so much for the kind feedback. I will pass it on to the team. You can translate the interface texts here. Thanks for you work and have a nice weekend. Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 10:53, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Done. Awaiting for refresh. Thanks, again, for this this good feature Amadalvarez (talk) 11:17, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Feedback

Thanks for this great work. It's somewhat difficult to test it on Wikipedias from the first group, as they don't use Kartographer very much. It will be interesting to see his work on Russian Wikipedia and other projects where maplink is used as the primary coordinates tool. From what I see in the Catalan Wikipedia, there are two things that I'm worried about. 1) As far as I understand, descriptions are taken only from Wikidata, but they are short and not always available. How technically difficult and resource-intensive is it to take them from Wikipedia articles using the first paragraph, as Realtime Preview does (using mw:Extension:TextExtracts if nothing changes)? 2) Most of the popup is occupied by an image, but when you click on it, nothing happens. Is it possible to add a link to an article or an image preview through MediaViewer? — putnik 12:55, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

One more note. It would be nice to save the button status, or have a setting to specify a default status. Many users would like to see this layer all the time. — putnik 13:00, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi and thanks very much for this great and detailed feedback and the suggestions! I’ll pass them on to the team and get back to you once I have the answers.

As for the testing, it would be great to have ruwiki onboard that uses maplink as the primary coordinates tool and to get more useful feedback. Usually it needs a consensus on most wikis to make such a decision. What is the procedure on ruwiki? If you are interested and there is support on ruwiki, we can totally include it into the first group of test wikis. Best Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 13:50, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

I've started a discussion in Russian Wikipedia. I'll be back in a week with a resolution. — putnik 05:41, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

@Putnik Thanks for starting and moderating the discussion. I've seen there are 7 supporters and no veto so far. We will be doing some configuration changes tomorrow and could deploy the feature on ruwiki tomorrow at one go if you like. If that feels rather rushed, no problem. Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 10:28, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

@Timur Vorkul, I would prefer not to rush and do it next week (maybe even on Monday). We had a not-so-great experience at Russian Wikipedia with discussions closed too quickly. — putnik 08:40, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Perfect, let me know once there is a final decision. Have a great day. Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 10:57, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

@Timur Vorkul, the discussion is ended, and all participants supported the proposal. You can turn it on. — putnik 21:13, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

@Putnik Thanks for letting us know. The show nearby feature will be enabled on ruwiki tomorrow.

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T321548 We are looking forward to extensive feedback! Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 12:40, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi, @Putnik I feel proud that you use cawiki to test the gadget. It worths to be pioneer !!.

Seriously: Certainly, WD labels and descriptions are not always available, however use the first paragraph of article text could be worst when doesn't exists, for instance in stub or short or without format article, because its length would be harmful.

The image may link to its Commons entry in order to acomplish with the license rights. The link inthe name already points to the article.

@Timur Vorkul (WMDE) In addition to Putnik demands, I suggets to show the coordinate in popup in order to be able to jump to external maps, because the "external maps button" points, obviously, to the coordinate of the initial point but not the selected nearby one.

Thanks !, Amadalvarez (talk) 09:34, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Currently, we are collecting feedback and will look at it all together with the usability tests being performed at the moment. Thanks again for your insightful ideas regarding the image, the sticky setting and the short description we definitely will consider in the review process.

In fact, there is currently no fallback option if no short description in Wikidata is available. To generate the short description from Wikipedia articles, from a mere technical perspective, it would be necessary to first retrieve whether the Wikidata item can be assigned to a Wikipedia article in the respective language. Then the short description could be queried via the API or, if not available, through the TextExtracts. However, in this discussion, it is already apparent there are different needs and ideas about the short description. This in turn means that an individual configuration option would be required which is, unfortunately, out of scope as there is only a short time until the end of the year to work on Kartographer.

@Amadalvarez, to make sure I understand your last suggestion: Would you like the pop-up to include the nearby article’s coordinate, so you can copy and paste it? Or would you rather like to be able to open a nearby article location in an external map? Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 12:24, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

First one. Together with name & image. Initially, tha fact to see the coordinate is only to know it, because we are already in a OSM map. However, if exceptionally we need (want) to open in another map, we can get coordinate easily.

Regarding your comment about limited possibilities to implement, don't mind for us; I consider my suggestion just an improve for everyone, but not essential to us. Thanks, Amadalvarez (talk) 16:36, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification! I'll pass it on to our UX team member. Best Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 11:01, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

There is another feature that was mentioned on Russian forum, but not here. Old (pre-Kartographer) map had different icons for different types of articles (water, mountain, etc), and it could be helpful to distinguish what dot you are looking for. I hope these types can be somehow exported from GeoData. — putnik 22:27, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Do you mean, mw:Help:Extension:Kartographer/Icons ?. They are which we use in cawiki maps. Amadalvarez (talk) 04:48, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

And, you can see the icon used in function of P31 item at ca:Plantilla:Icona marcador mapa.

BTW, I support @Putnik proposal. Amadalvarez (talk) 05:14, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

@Putnik, thanks for your feedback. It is currently not possible to assign different markers to different types of articles in the "show nearby articles" feature. Nearby articles are only shown as grey dots. We are also not planning to add this because our work in this focus area is now done. As Amadalvarez mentioned, the maki icons (fairly recently updated by our team) can be set manually on Kartographer maps, but I assume that's not what you meant. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 12:38, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Nice and usefule tool

I discovered this feature recently and I want to tell you that I find it very interesting and useful, both for readers and contributors. Thank you for this nice work! I look forward to its installation on all other Wikimedia projects, in particular for French-speaking projects. — Baidax ^💬 16:04, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, @Baidax! -- Greetings from the Technical Wishes team, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 16:08, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Looks great!

Hello! I played around with this on the english wikivoyage, and I think it looks great. Thank you for all the hard work on implementing this feature! It does what I expect it to do and I didn't notice any bugs. My feedback would be: it's hard for users to notice that this feature exists. The button is small and clicking it the first time is a bit of a mystery.

A wiki-specific thing that's probably technically impossible, is omitting some articles from getting displayed. For example I zoomed into Boston and you get three articles: Boston, Greater Boston, and Boston/Downtown. I think ideally you'd only see the bottom level destination (the downtown article). I also noticed redirected pages generate markers which is a little annoying. I don't know of a solve for this other than to add some new wikidata field you'd have to query on, which is again probably too heavy of a lift.

Great work overall and I wish the "clustering" could be applied to the base map too! (which is probably also impossible.) Thanks again! ButteBag (talk) 13:49, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

@ButteBag: Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts about this feature. I have passed your ideas on to our team, and we'll check if they are feasible or not. -- Have a good weekend, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 13:57, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

@ButteBag: One question about your comment "I also noticed redirected pages generate markers which is a little annoying": We were not able to recreate this. Can you give an example where this occurs? -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 13:35, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T136455

As for your wish to apply the clustering to the base map as well, a request for this has existed for some years now, but it was marked as low priority, and is unfortunately out of our scope for this project. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 15:14, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

No worries, thanks again for looking into this! ButteBag (talk) 01:00, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Johanna Strodt (WMDE), sorry for the late response, I haven't been super active lately. To repro the issue (if it's an issue), view this page: North Shore (Massachusetts). Click "Explore nearby destinations", zoom in once, click icon above "Rowley". Observe you are taken to "Ipswich" page with the little (Redirected from Rowley) message. Hope that helps! ButteBag (talk) 01:00, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, ButteBag. That was very helpful. The problem you're describing is occurring with the Wikivoyage feature "Explore nearby destinations", but as far as I can see, not with the new feature. Is that correct? In that case, we wouldn't change anything about this, because the new feature will eventually replace the current Wikivoyage feature. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 09:15, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Crossing 180th meridian

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T229174

I'm quite sure you guys are probably aware. But in case you don't, the nearby option doesn't pick any pages close by if it crosses the 180th meridian (see phab:T229174). You can test that with voy:Taveuni. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 01:45, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: Thank you! An interesting problem, which is in fact not related to the nearby feature, but applies to manually set markers as well. We'll have a look if something can be done about this. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 13:46, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: Also, the problem already exists on Open Street Map, i.e. the source for our maps. See this example. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 15:12, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: Our team had a look at this, but unfortunately, this is out of scope for us. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 14:29, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

@Johanna Strodt (WMDE) No problem, I understand it's a broader issue on its own. Thanks for looking into it. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:08, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

My two cents

While in general this sounds like a useful feature for Wikipedia and Wikidata, and so on, one has to acknowledge that geo-data on Wikivoyage is structured a little differently than on Wikipedia and Wikidata. Geo-coded items on Wikipedia and Wikidata exist as standalone items. Geo-coded items on Wikivoyage contrarily can be articles but also listings within such articles. However, listings within articles would not be included in this "Show nearby" feature with the currently proposed solution, would they? This would discriminate such listings for the Wikivoyage implementation, where on Wikipedia and Wikidata they would be displayed. Indeed, many listings in Wikivoyage articles are already based on their Wikidata item and connected to them.

So, for this being actually useful to Wikivoyage, somehow all geo-coded listings within the Wikivoyage articles would need to be included, I believe. Otherwise, the map would end up with a sparse collection of Wikivoyage article points. Compare: 31k articles on the English Wikivoyage vs. 858,660 geo-coded items on Wikidata just for France (just as an example).

A useful approach would probably be a "Show nearby" that lets the user decide between articles and listing, or just a clear separation of article and listing markers.

Furthermore, one has to remember that any graphical overview should not come without an option to also have this information in a computer-readable or list form (GPX?). I would definitely see a use case where people are interested in nearby items but will want to load them into an external app. Wikivoyage is already a little limited in this sense, because GPXs can only be exported per article but not region- or country-wide.

Cheers Ceever (talk) 23:52, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello Ceever, thanks a lot for your comment. I want to make sure I understand it correctly. "Listings" are the attractions, monuments, activities, restaurants … that appear both in the article text and on the map, correct? The way I understand it, those elements are already shown on a Kartographer map on Wikivoyage, and can be "controlled" via the "layers" menu in the top right corner of the map. Are you saying that listings from other articles should also be shown when the "Show nearby" feature is enabled? As far as I understand, that also isn't the case with the current Wikivoyage gadget "Explore nearby destinations". Thanks for helping me understand this better, -- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 15:27, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi Johanna

Yes, you are right, listings are show in the Kartographer map—however only the listings that relate to the currently views WV article. Such a distinction is not made for Wikidata or Wikipedia, because they are structured in a different way than Wikivoyage.

It is certainly useful to have the nearby articles show, but I don't understand why we should exclude the listings of other articles from that view. If the listings from the current WV article are already there, it's a small step to just include all (nearby) listing. (Well, maybe not development-wise.) Also, the assignment of listings to certain articles on WV is sometimes a little arbitrary—many discussions have already been fought around this on WV. It would certainly help identifying interesting (nearby) destinations/listings that might have failed to be included into the current WV article. This way also the shortcoming of proper structuring of region and city articles (Where do you put which listings?), which many articles inhibit on WV, can be overcome.

I know one might argue that the amount of listings and therefore readability of the map could become overwhelming and unbearable. However, as you have mentioned, with the layer functionality one could easily exclude (IMHO) useless listings like accommodation or restaurants, or even distinguish between articles and listings.

Cheers Ceever (talk) 13:53, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

@Johanna: Just another remark on the layer selection to the right. It would be useful to add an option to deselect all, otherwise there are too many checkboxes that need t be deselected in case on just wants to see one kind of listing or just articles. Cheers Ceever (talk) 14:06, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Ceever, thanks a lot for your comments and explanations here and on English Wikivoyage. There were a few different requests:

• Also show listings nearby
• Add option to (de)select all checkboxes
• An exportable list of nearby articles for external use

These all sound like sensible requests. However, unfortunately, our work in this area has come to an end. We might be able tweak the behavior of the new "Show nearby articles" feature here and there, but we won't be able to add new functionality to it, or even change behavior outside this feature (which would be the case with checkboxes).

I'm sorry I don't have better news, and I hope the new feature will be helpful to you anyway. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 09:49, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

It is disappointing that the work has come to an end less than two weeks after asking for opinions on "What could still be improved?" (at the English Wikivoyage pub). Anyway, I do understand that the three suggestions are hard to include, as they probably would require some deep changes in the feature.

Can you add these wishes somewhere where they are found when this feature is being reworked next time and when there are thoughts about some other feature where the suggestions could be included?

–LPfi (talk) 10:47, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Well they did already ask 2 years ago of course, when this work began :) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:12, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello LPfi, I guess I could have been clearer about the process:

• The nearby feature was released on a few wikis, including English Wikivoyage, last October. We asked for feedback then and have adapted the feature since then.
• This last announcement was meant to catch issues with this feature before the release on more wikis, but I can understand that it was not entirely clear that there was no more time for bigger changes.
• This is because we have been working in the focus area "Better support for geoinformation" since 2020. The feature for showing nearby articles was just one of several projects in that focus area. Our work in this area actually ended last year, but one thing we will still do is to deploy the nearby feature to more wikis.

The best place to store wishes for future development is Phabricator. I have now created tickets for these three wishes, and tagged them with the Kartographer tag on Phabricator:

• Also show listings nearby: phab:T332783
• Add option to (de)select all checkboxes: phab:T332774
• An exportable list of nearby articles for external use phab:T332776

I am not an expert, so please check if anything is missing or wrong with how I phrased these requests. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 13:39, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

@Ceever "Another remark on the layer selection to the right. It would be useful to add an option to deselect all, otherwise there are too many checkboxes that need t be deselected"... Just wondering if with the filtering on the groups restored, this is still a concern ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:01, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

What do you mean? Can you show me an example? Cheers Ceever (talk) 10:17, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

@Ceever: I presume that TheDJ is referring to a bug that had appeared recently and has been fixed since (T332661). In the layer selection on the top right, layers for all types of listings were shown, not just those that were actually used on that map. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 15:44, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

@Johanna: Well, even with the few listing types of regular article (5-6), two clicks (deselect all and select one) are still quicker that deselecting 4 other listing types. But of course I don't know whether this would justify a separate implementation. Maybe it could be remembered for the future or when someone else will notice this as an issue. Cheers, Ceever (talk) 15:50, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Reload results

You need to press "Reload results", on other services it is done automatically Proeksad (talk) 22:01, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello Proeksad, thanks for your comment. An earlier version of our feature in fact also had automatic loading. We changed the behavior to a reload button for these reasons:

• We received feedback that it was confusing that points would disappear when zooming or moving the map around, and we observed the same confusion in user testing.
• Reloading via button is easier on the page performance, which is especially important for viewing the map on mobile.

-- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 14:23, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer.
CommentThis feature works on a desktop site on mobile devices but does not work on a mobile site. Will it be in the future? Proeksad (talk) 15:55, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

@Proeksad: We are hoping that the answer is yes. Our team made some changes, and is currently testing on the beta cluster if it works on mobile, too. It looks promising so far. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 08:58, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Labels on Wikidata

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T335363

On Wikidata, the map displays QID, not labels. For example: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q110360132#/map/0. Ayack (talk) 09:29, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Ayack, that is interesting. I have created a task on Phabricator (T335363) for this. It's likely that our team won't be able to fix this, especially since our work in this focus area is finished. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 15:23, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Ayack, we have passed this on to our colleagues on the Wikidata team because the steps that are necessary to fix this issue are in their field of expertise. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 15:50, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Nearby on Wikibooks

The feature does not work on Wikibooks and some other small projects. These projects usually do not use coordinates, but in the mobile version there is such button. Why? Example, example2, example3 Proeksad (talk) 16:08, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

@Johanna Strodt (WMDE) Proeksad (talk) 21:50, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi Proeksad, thanks a lot for reporting this. Can you tell me where this button is on the page. For some reason, I can't see it. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 07:55, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Press ☰ Proeksad (talk) 09:16, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Ah, thanks a lot, Proeksad. This project page here is about a feature Wikimedia Deutschland has developed: "show nearby articles" inside the feature Kartographer.

The "nearby button" you're referring to has nothing to do with that, but is about the special page "Nearby", which exists on all wikis that are using the extension Nearby pages. Special:Version on each wiki shows whether this extension is installed = active, or not. In English Wiktionary, it is installed, and that's why the button is shown.

If the extension Nearby pages doesn't make sense for a specific wiki, you could discuss in your wiki if the whole extension Nearby pages should be deinstalled or disabled. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:34, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! Proeksad (talk) 16:03, 19 June 2023 (UTC)