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An option to show all article-dots directly on the Nearby places map (instead of having to tap on clusters)
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Description

Feature summary (what you would like to be able to do and where):
On the map, article dots to tap on are hidden underneath larger dots that show a number of the articles that would become visible if one pressed on the large dot. A way to have all dots directly displayed on the map at their locations at whatever current zoom one is at would be very useful. I think this could be the most needed change in regard to the Nearby places map and certainly is the most important one of the Nearby issues I just submitted.

I asked about this in the MapLibre GitHub repo after creating this issue and this functionality is already possible with that software and only needs to be used in the app by adding a butting and/or preference for not showing clusters. One could disable clustering (set cluster to false) or leave it turned on but change the clusteringmaxzoom so it shows all items directly even at a very large zoom-level.

Use case(s) (list the steps that you performed to discover that problem, and describe the actual underlying problem which you want to solve. Do not describe only a solution):
See the example video at time 0:42 to see what I mean with these aggregate dots that show more dots on the map when pressed. This is about a way to have the dots-directly-on-the-map view as shown at 0:39 in the video at whatever zoomlevel one is at without having to select any dots (even if that means lots of dots right next to each other where one could simply zoom in).

This is useful for navigation. One can barely use the map with these aggregate dots where the actual articles are hidden beneath. For example, I'd like to zoom at a level where the whole city is visible and tap on items to directly see the Wikipedia article info and then another item at a different place of the city. In some regions there are fewer items so there it's even less useful to have articles hidden underneath these numbers-dots. Often even when zoomed in a lot, some articles are hidden like this, making it barely useful since one always needs to tap a numbers-dot then zoom out again. Probably the Map LibreMaps offers a way to see items directly like one can in other maps and if not, an issue at their repo could be created. For example, there are good reasons for why Google Maps shows items directly on the map instead of hiding them underneath aggregate dots with numbers.

Benefits (why should this be implemented?):
Drastically improves navigability of the map. Probably the largest problem of the Nearby feature for achieving its current potential usefulness.

Event Timeline

I hope the issue was clear enough – I noticed I didn't use the word cluster but these are what I'm referring to here and I don't think it's low importance: this and the issue of not being able to exclude mundane places articles like railway stations and schools from the map (T360197) are why I can't really use this feature in practice in the real world.

Having these cluster dots instead of lots of dots prevents just moving around the map and quickly looking up many items one after another or quickly moving to another location in the map and back. I don't think most people like using this at home and with lots of time instead of while on the go to find some interesting place among many dots nearby. Having this cluster view (especially if one can't filter items) makes this nearly impossible.

Other apps can also show dots directly or similar, for example the Tripadvisor app shows many individual items as long as one is zoomed in close enough (I think it only shows the most notable items when zoomed out further and btw the same could be done here using things like pageviews or WikiProject importance ratings and so on).

I will edit the issue soon and will ask about it in the MapLibre repo (maybe the importance is low because that issue may need to get addressed in this repo but I'm not sure if this isn't possible yet).

This functionality is already in MapLibre. A dev said:

clustering is an optional feature, you don't need to use clustering at all. I.e., it is already possible to show all dots at once, regardless of the current zoom. It is also possible to for example only have clusters appear on certain zoom levels.

Could you please add a button and/or preference to turn off clustering if it's already built in and apparently only needs to be enabled somewhere in the UI? I think it's key to making the Nearby places feature really useful and used more.

Prototyperspective renamed this task from An option to directly show all article-dots on the Nearby places map (instead of having to tap on dots with numbers) to An option to show all article-dots directly on the Nearby places map (instead of having to tap on clusters).Sep 24 2024, 4:22 PM
Prototyperspective updated the task description. (Show Details)