There has been recent confusion about the ordering of coordinates in geospatial data in MongoDB, including this blog post (see related GODRIVER-2429) that started as a bug report but ended up being an issue related to expected coordinate order (i.e. order of latitude, longitude in points). Before it was resolved, it was shared on Hacker News and was popular enough to make the front page.

While the Geospatial Queries, GeoJSON, and $near manual pages describe that MongoDB uses coordinate order (longitude, latitude), users may assume a coordinate order based on experience with other systems and may gloss over that information. A more prominent notice of the coordinate order that MongoDB expects could reduce confusion. Please add a more prominent notice (e.g. a "Note" or "Warning" block) that the MongoDB coordinate order is (longitude, latitude) to all manual pages that describe geospatial data and operations.

Relevant pages (that I could find):

• https://www.mongodb.com/docs/manual/geospatial-queries/
• https://www.mongodb.com/docs/manual/reference/geojson/
• https://www.mongodb.com/docs/manual/reference/operator/query/near/

For more context about coordinate order, check out this wiki article about axis order confusion, this website dedicated to grouping geospatial formats/tools based on what coordinate order they use, and this article about the history of coordinate order in different industries.