This suggestion will bundle several related suggestions in one post:
City name searches suffer from a couple of problems in my opinion:
- Only the "International" region will even attempt to show info about them except just the Wikipedia excerpt:
Please compare International region:
with Germany region:
It's obvious the widget for the International version is objectively better, no matter what region I otherwise use - it should just prefer a different Wikipedia for the text then but still show me the raw information. It seems right now it simply tries to show the Wikipedia info block but seems to ignore blocks outside the english wikipedia, maybe cause of a different format?
So this is suggestion number 1: Please use a proper city widget in all regions
On to the second suggestion: When I search for a cityname, I usually want to see one the follow information first:
- Where is it (state, country) - the current widget currently does this, good.
- What time is it there right now - current widget does not show that, it only shows me timezone and ONLY when I expand the widget: Suggestion 2 - Show current time in that city in a prominent place
- What's the dialing code for the city - current widget does show that, buried under loads of less important information and only when I expand the widget. Suggestion 3 - Show dialing code immediately
- What's the zipcode/postal code for the city - current widget shows that, buried and have to expand Suggestion 4 - Show postal code immediately
- What's today's weather there? - current widget does not show that at all, I have to search for weather seperately Suggestion 5 - Show simplified weather widget: Current temperature, max temperature expected today, will it rain/snow today and then a link to the full widget.
- Link to official website - good, currently included in immediately visible range.
So, to sum up. Currently city results look like this:
Cityname
City in State, Country
Wikipedia-Excerpt
Official Website
Country (duplicated info from above)
State (duplicated info from above)
District
Subdivisions (wtf, who cares)
Government
Expand Link
Instead my suggestion is:
Cityname
City in State, Country (state and country maybe linked to Wikipedia)
11° C|F (5° C|F - 22° C|F today) - Rain later (and then link to full weather widget)
Current time: 12:34
Postal Code: 93001 - 93059
Dialing code: 0941
Official Website
Small Wikipedia excerpt
Expand Link
This will probably solve most use cases users have first. If somebody simply queries a city for getting to know it, he'll have to expand the info/follow the links anyway, so the information I cut in my suggestion is an insignificant loss. Most of the time, people will search for cities though cause they'll either travel there today (current weather right now an later interesting) or want to call somebody there (current time interesting, we do not want to wake up people) or want to write a letter there (want to quickly lookup postal code)
As usual, wikidata.org might be a useful source for getting most the raw data for such a widget.
