Local Wikipedia trims Wikipedia down to the things within a half-hour walk of you

The tagline does all the work: “Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you.” The subtitle on Local Wikipedia is better, “The Encyclopedia For Local People,” and it looks the part, laid out like a Wikipedia front page with a Main page, Random article and an A to Z index.

You give it a place. The search box suggests “Glasgow, Brooklyn, SW1A 1AA, Colosseum,” or you tap “Use my location.” It goes off “Finding what’s nearby” and comes back with your own small Wikipedia.

The content is real Wikipedia. Per the page, it’s “direct from Wikipedia - geocoded pages only,” so anything that has map coordinates on its article qualifies, and anything that doesn’t stays out.

It also knows that some people live in the middle of nowhere. “If there are fewer than 25 things close to you, it takes the closest 25 things within about 6 miles,” the page says. Downtown gets the opposite rule: “If there are more than 500 things only the closest 500 will be included.”

What the page can’t tell you is what you’ll find, and that changes with every postcode you type. Somewhere on your own route there’s probably an article about a building you’ve walked past for years.

Why it matters

Your location never leaves the tab. “Your location stays in this browser: links you share don’t include it.” For a tool built entirely around where you’re standing, that’s the right default, and it means sharing an article from it doesn’t share your street.

It’s a toy from someone who makes good toys. Ed Jefferson says he makes “internet-powered interactive things” and writes for places like The Guardian, Time Out and the New Statesman. His other projects include London’s Busiest Bus Stops and What 9 Whos, which describes “any location on Earth by listing the names of 9 actors who have played Doctor Who.”

It’s unofficial. “This site has no affiliation with the actual Wikipedia,” the page says. It’s a new front door on the encyclopedia, built by one person, sitting on top of the coordinates Wikipedia editors already added.

Search engines and map apps already answer “what’s near me” with restaurants and gas stations. A filter like this one answers it with history, buildings, and whatever made a volunteer editor bother to pin an article to that spot.

The coverage is only as good as those pins. A quiet street with no geocoded articles gets the six-mile fallback, which nudges the next question toward Wikipedia itself: every place that comes up thin on Local Wikipedia is a place with an article waiting to be written.

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