Show HN: Visualize the locations of Wikipedia contributors on a world map

https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikipedia-contributor-locations/

by grepper • 12 years ago

1 1 12 years ago

tools.wmflabs.org

grepper• 12 years ago

I put this together as a fun little side project after beginning to wonder about geographic biases present in Wikipedia articles. Here are just a few comparisons that I've tried & found at least mildly interesting...

- Religious figures: Muhammad vs Jesus vs Vishnu https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikipedia-contributor-locations/#!...

- Major cities: San Francisco vs New York City vs Chicago https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikipedia-contributor-locations/#!...

- World leaders: Barack Obama vs Elizabeth II vs Pranab Mukherjee https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikipedia-contributor-locations/#!...

Here's an album of screenshots http://imgur.com/a/wmsLX, if you don't mind losing the ability to zoom in and look around :)

All the code is open source and available on GitHub https://github.com/theopolisme/wikipedia-contributor-locatio.... The tool uses a Python backend to access the Wikipedia API and pull a list of revisions for the given articles, then look up their locations using MaxMind's free GeoIP database. On the frontend side of things, I used leaflet.js and a custom-modded (to allow for variable point radii to indicate multiple edits from the same location) version of leaflet.heat to draw the map.

Show HN: Visualize the locations of Wikipedia contributors on a world map

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