("Wikipedia cannot determine your location. Please try again with a better signal.")

Also, let's say the user wants the articles near Milan. But travel to Milan is not allowed.
Well, please also allow him to enter arbitrary coordinates too.

This requires a service to convert a place name to a coordinate we don't currently have the product infrastructure to do this right now.

@Jidanni as @Jdlrobson said this should require a new service, like nominatim, for example, and because of that this feature request it's more suitable in the maps board.

It needs more technical specs though to know its feasibility.

One short term solution would be to show a map widget that the user can pan to choose the target area. As the map moves the results could update.

Fyi, I run a nominatim proxy on toollabs to make sure other toollabs projects using nominatim can use it without leaking userinfo.

I am saying (at least) just let me put in raw coordinates please.

24.18169, 120.86617

There. Look at that, not even any DMS mess for you to convert.
You can't beat that... no more work needed, just send it to the next step.

@Jidanni that's possible already, there's just no web UI.

Try this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/24.18169,120.86617

(and if you want a web UI a small gadget can easily take care of that )

Well all I know is once there is an entry box on the page,
the user will notice the URL created in the browser's URL bar,
so you will no longer be the only person who knows the
currently secret way to workaround this bug!

A lot of people don't understand raw coordinates so I think you are underestimating the challenges here from a user experience. If you want to have a 3rd party solution to that regard, please do go ahead and write a gadget to append an input box, but I won't be adding such an interface to the software.

@TheDJ's suggestion to have a wikimedia longitude / latitude lookup service sounds like a good starting point here.

Put the entry box even way down at the bottom if you like,
and even make it two textboxes: Latitude:[_____], Longitude: [______].
(slower entry than one paste of LAT,LON) if you insist. But at least
"provide this manual override", as you never know when "the car's autopilot isn't working".
Thanks.

Or at least add a tiny (i) ("i" in a circle) that mentions "how to share a link to this page for a certain location" from which the user could see how he could compose the URL.

E.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search has a "(?)" link for more info.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CategoryTree too.

I've been annoyed by Special:Nearby's inability to take arbitrary coordinates for a while. I don't speak JavaScript, so I threw a rough approximation of Special:Nearby together on Toolforge: https://anticompositetools.toolforge.org/nearfar/.

Passing coordinates to Special:Nearby in a URL parameter would be a good short-term fix until a whole geocoding service can be stood up. That would also allow sharing of Special:Nearby results with someone who isn't nearby, which I think would be a nice feature.

@AntiCompositeNumber while your are at it, you might as well throw in a radius[32 km] textbox, with the (currently secret) default sitting already inside the box.
Same with a maximum number of results box.

And... if the radius and max results are actually computed with some secret recipe depending on nearby density, all that should be mentioned in the future "(?) Help" link, which this page certainly needs.

Also consider using a numbered list, so one can better visually manage the results he is looking at. (<OL> vs <UL>.)

I've got no idea what Special:Nearby does, but the limit on the geosearch api is 10km.

In T247221#6064729, @AntiCompositeNumber wrote:

I've got no idea what Special:Nearby does

Yeah, there is no "(?) Help" link explaining what it does.

That would also allow sharing of Special:Nearby results with someone who isn't nearby, which I think would be a nice feature.

Just share the URL in your address bar? It updates as you browse.

@TheDJ have been working on the new version of Nearby (built in Vue) and playing around with mapbox shipped with Kartographer. How stable is that to use?
https://nearbypages.wmflabs.org
The map would provide a great tool for exploring the wiki as hopefully this demonstrates.

In T247221#6187465, @Jdlrobson wrote:

Just share the URL in your address bar? It updates as you browse.

Users don't know that copying random things from the URL bar is supported or not.

https://nearbypages.wmflabs.org

502 Bad Gateway

In T247221#6063050, @Jdlrobson wrote:

@Jidanni that's possible already, there's just no web UI.

Try this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/24.18169,120.86617

(and if you want a web UI a small gadget can easily take care of that )

I've added documentation of this feature to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:NearbyPages

I've added documentation of this feature to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:NearbyPages

OK, but e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/40.69,-74.04 still needs a "Help" or ⓘ link at top that links to that.

In T247221#7233395, @Jdlrobson wrote:

I think a map view would be best here but I am wary of putting more strain on the maps infastructure.

See T303813: Add a map to Special:Nearby for the Community Wishlist Survey 2022 wish about this.