Wiki: Nearby

Wikipedia appears to have taken a leaf out of Foursquare's book with its new Nearby feature. The new mobile page is designed to capture your location and deliver articles that help you learn more about your neighborhood, including museums, historic buildings, and nearby parks. Initially, Wikipedia is focused on displaying articles that require images or photos, prompting users to add a licensed image to pages that need them.

Visitors to Wikipedia's mobile site will see the new Nearby option in the navigation drawer. When accessed, the web app will match the location of the user's mobile device to geographic coordinates linked with relevant Wikipedia entries. The new mobile page offers similar features found in both Foursquare and Facebook's mobile apps — which are primarily aimed at surfacing friends and places close by — but also Google Now, which displays transit directions, places of interest, and information on what’s happening nearby. Wikipedia hopes that by asking users to add their own photos, it will encourage community contributions and improve the quality of local information on the site.