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

1 pointsby grepperover 10 years ago

1 comment

grepperover 10 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&#x27;ve tried &amp; found at least mildly interesting...<p>- Religious figures: Muhammad vs Jesus vs Vishnu <a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikipedia-contributor-locations/#!/map/en.wikipedia.org/Jesus%26%26Muhammad%26%26Vishnu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tools.wmflabs.org&#x2F;wikipedia-contributor-locations&#x2F;#!...</a><p>- Major cities: San Francisco vs New York City vs Chicago <a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikipedia-contributor-locations/#!/map/en.wikipedia.org/New%20York%20City%26%26Chicago%26%26San%20Francisco" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tools.wmflabs.org&#x2F;wikipedia-contributor-locations&#x2F;#!...</a><p>- World leaders: Barack Obama vs Elizabeth II vs Pranab Mukherjee <a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikipedia-contributor-locations/#!/map/en.wikipedia.org/Barack%20Obama%26%26Elizabeth%20II%26%26Pranab%20Mukherjee" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tools.wmflabs.org&#x2F;wikipedia-contributor-locations&#x2F;#!...</a><p>Here&#x27;s an album of screenshots <a href="http://imgur.com/a/wmsLX" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;wmsLX</a>, if you don&#x27;t mind losing the ability to zoom in and look around :)<p>All the code is open source and available on GitHub <a href="https://github.com/theopolisme/wikipedia-contributor-locations" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;theopolisme&#x2F;wikipedia-contributor-locatio...</a>. 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&#x27;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.