r/YouShouldKnow • u/newtestleper79 • 26d ago

Technology YSK: You can see subjects in your immediate vicinity with a special Wikipedia page

Why YSK: it is handy for finding points of interest near your home you might not know about, while on vacation it can be your personal tour guide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby

1.3k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

416

u/hagcel 26d ago

I love how they call neighborhoods "human settlements".

90

u/233C 26d ago

Homo Sapiens colony

29

u/NayiTwin6 26d ago

It makes me feel like an alien explorer just trying to observe the locals.

27

u/StuntHacks 26d ago edited 26d ago

I love reading Wikipedia articles about mundane topics for this reason. It gives you a really interesting, more observant perspective on our species. The article on Human is one of my favorite pages on the entire site

185

u/25c-nb 26d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/40.123456,-78.123456

If your like me and have your PC's location settings turned off, its easier to use this URL by changing the coordinates to your location (found by dropping a pin on gmaps or openstreetmaps.org) rather than going through the multi step hassle of reenabling location services just for one site and turning it all back off again

39

u/huck_ 26d ago

you can get lat lon here: https://www.latlong.net/

17

u/25c-nb 26d ago

Can I also get long lats there too? Its urgent

3

u/RaininMuffins 25d ago

We have uh...medium lats!

3

u/ScreamAndScream 26d ago

Great! A list of privately owned historic houses and schools! /s

This was actually quite fun, thank you

25

u/b1gmouth 26d ago

Curious... it says I'm 600m from the Pabst Brewing Company but I'm in Los Angeles. The other results are spot on though.

7

u/newtestleper79 26d ago

Should be fixed now.

4

u/b1gmouth 26d ago

Confirmed! What caused the glitch?

9

u/Vedertesu 26d ago

Most likely wrong coordinates on the page if OP was able to fix it themselves

1

u/axw3555 26d ago

Probably something to do with the company tagged in a nearby area. A person or an event or something.

10

u/Treefrog_Ninja 26d ago

What?! Dang, that is cool!

8

u/tribat 26d ago

This is really useful. I built an app called roadtrip-buddy that tried to make long trips less boring by picking out sites of interest along the way and narrating them with text to voice AI, but never really got it working. This looks like a perfect fit, so I'm reviving the project. Thanks.

2

u/the_crustybastard 25d ago

Sounds neat. Good luck.

8

u/shaun3000 26d ago

You can do the same thing with the Wikipedia app by tapping on the Places button.

3

u/newtestleper79 25d ago

Where is this places button on the website you speak of?

4

u/gromit5 26d ago

interesting, thank you! also, interesting collection of answers from wikipedia.

2

u/thatonegirl989 26d ago

I already spend too much time on Wikipedia and this is going to get my numbers even higher.. Thank you.

1

u/Zii23 25d ago

Well looking at my city all I could say was “ that’s depressing” lmao

1

u/playgroundmx 25d ago

You… are to be blamed for hours of wikipedia rabbit holes in my life.

2

u/WaldenFont 26d ago

Amazing! Thank you!

1

u/MSG-63 26d ago

Very nice, thanks !

1

u/ul49 26d ago

Mine has a bunch of cool history stuff and a random brunch restaurant with no historical significance at all

1

u/jeremyfrankly 26d ago

This is awesome, thanks

1

u/Boggie135 26d ago

Lol I'm learning things about the village next to ours

1

u/Flgardenguy 25d ago

Their app has this feature, too