

Show HN: Visualize the locations of Wikipedia contributors on a world map - grepper
https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikipedia-contributor-locations/

======
grepper
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/#!...](https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikipedia-contributor-
locations/#!/map/en.wikipedia.org/Jesus%26%26Muhammad%26%26Vishnu)

\- Major cities: San Francisco vs New York City vs Chicago
[https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikipedia-contributor-
locations/#!...](https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikipedia-contributor-
locations/#!/map/en.wikipedia.org/New%20York%20City%26%26Chicago%26%26San%20Francisco)

\- World leaders: Barack Obama vs Elizabeth II vs Pranab Mukherjee
[https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikipedia-contributor-
locations/#!...](https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikipedia-contributor-
locations/#!/map/en.wikipedia.org/Barack%20Obama%26%26Elizabeth%20II%26%26Pranab%20Mukherjee)

Here's an album of screenshots
[http://imgur.com/a/wmsLX](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...](https://github.com/theopolisme/wikipedia-contributor-locations).
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.

