[HN Gopher] Wikipedia Recent Changes Map
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       Wikipedia Recent Changes Map
        
       Author : vinnyglennon
       Score  : 148 points
       Date   : 2022-08-30 11:37 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (rcmap.hatnote.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (rcmap.hatnote.com)
        
       | EGreg wrote:
       | We have a visualization like this for our own project. It
       | actually involves a 3D globe you can rotate and explore and it is
       | mobile friendly. You can see it here:
       | 
       | https://qbix.com/ecosystem
       | 
       | Click on the globe and explore different countries. You see those
       | circles? They represent people using our apps around the world!
       | The Wikipedia example gave me a lot more ideas though.
       | 
       | It hit me, any project could use this. We could make it a widget
       | that people install on their own sites, and feed it with pings.
       | The location is determined from the IP or fuzzed location from
       | what people voluntarily enter in their app for other reasons.
       | 
       | Would love feedback and if anyone wants this on THEIR site for
       | whatever app or site you currently own, I'll give it to you. Just
       | comment here and tell me how to reach out.
        
       | slugiscool99 wrote:
       | It's pretty crazy how much of these edits are low quality, false,
       | or just vandalism. Very impressive how the organization has been
       | able to maintain such high quality information despite the
       | general public.
        
       | Cd00d wrote:
       | In the couple minutes I watched I was surprised that almost every
       | edit I saw was either a sporting event or popular media (bands,
       | albums, celebrities). I would have expected more diversity in
       | changes especially considering that current state of the world
       | and politics. The only update I noticed from the Ukraine site was
       | from Kyiv and was a pop-band.
        
         | gzer0 wrote:
         | Could be users farming reputation. Interesting observation.
        
           | hombre_fatal wrote:
           | I'd wager it just reflects the most approachable, easy edits.
           | 
           | Imagine tweaking the page of your favorite Netflix show vs.
           | making an edit to Covid-19 or Ukraine/Russia pages.
        
       | lrpe wrote:
       | This website doesn't let me use my browsers back button.
        
         | mrweasel wrote:
         | Works extremely well in Firefox.
        
       | stelonix wrote:
       | I'd really like to see the edits from american, ukrainian,
       | russian and pretty much any balkan country from 1 february to
       | today. Now that would be very interesting.
        
       | kemayo wrote:
       | Although cool, this is something with a limited lifespan --
       | Wikipedia actually plans to break the ability to do this by
       | masking IPs even for anonymous users. See:
       | https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IP_Editing:_Privacy_Enhancem...
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | Thomashuet wrote:
       | The title is misleading, I expected to see a map of the changes
       | from the last hour/day/week/month but you just get a blank map at
       | first. And then dots appear but they disappear after just a few
       | dozen seconds which is not enough time to visualize any trend.
        
         | Cthulhu_ wrote:
         | Misleading is a bit of a harsh judgment to pass when it's
         | simply not what you expected; is that down to the title, or
         | down to your own expectations?
        
           | vehementi wrote:
           | I'd describe this as a "live map" not a "recent map"
           | 
           | Certainly not worthy of being called "misleading" but I would
           | say it's misnamed
        
         | netsharc wrote:
         | I was wondering if they meant a map of topics and recent edits.
         | E.g. recent edits of US politicians' pages. I came, I saw the
         | slow updates, and I didn't even stay long enough to see that
         | those entries disappear.
         | 
         | Trivia: Just before Sarah Palin was named John McCain's running
         | mate, there were plenty of edits to her Wikipedia page...
        
         | guywithahat wrote:
         | It seems weird to me that the dot disappears; wouldn't you want
         | to see a heat map over time? It's a cool site which clearly
         | just exists for the novelty of it but still, it seems weird to
         | add a feature that makes the product worse
        
           | pr0zac wrote:
           | Dunno if I'd call it a product really.
           | 
           | It is an open source project though so feel free to fork it
           | and make the change you're suggesting! Pretty sure doing so
           | would just involve removing the call to .animate() that
           | starts on line 238 in https://github.com/hatnote/rcmap/blob/m
           | aster/static/main.js#...
        
       | wlkr wrote:
       | This is very cool! I've spotted some edge cases after watching
       | edits for a while. If the IP lookup fails the user's location is
       | 'undefined' and they get placed in the top left of the map,
       | presumably at (0, 0). There's also a mismatch between supported
       | location.                   Could not highlight country:
       | undefined main.js:259:41         Could not highlight country:
       | Guernsey
        
       | burkesquires wrote:
       | There used to be a project that could track all the changes made
       | to a wiki page...great tool...wish it still existed... Was and
       | would be very telling who is making changes to an article! Here
       | is a Wired article about it: https://www.wired.com/2007/08/wiki-
       | tracker/
        
       | ISL wrote:
       | The edit-rate is perhaps lower than I expected? Feels like
       | ~7-15/minute at 8-ish am Eastern time.
        
         | TimGremalm wrote:
         | "When an unregistered user edits Wikipedia, he or she is
         | identified by his or her IP address. These IP addresses are
         | translated to users' approximate geographic location.
         | Unregistered users only make a fraction of total edits -- only
         | 15% of the contributions to English Wikipedia are from
         | unregistered users. Edits by registered users do not have
         | associated IP information, so the map actually represents only
         | a small portion of the total edit activity on Wikipedia."
        
           | kubanczyk wrote:
           | s/unregistered/not logged in/
           | 
           | Registered users often don't bother with logging in.
        
             | howenterprisey wrote:
             | I wouldn't say that's a common practice.
        
             | 3pt14159 wrote:
             | I log in. Mostly for nostalgia, (I started the resilience
             | wikipedia page and still regret doing it without an
             | account!) but also for skipping the annoying pledge
             | banners.
        
             | prolyxis wrote:
             | I log in mostly for the custom CSS.
        
             | petee wrote:
             | I'm not sure thats true since it's a policy violation
             | (without proper disclosure) that is fairly regularly
             | enforced when found
        
               | archon1410 wrote:
               | not really. logging out to do certain things is a
               | violation, but simply editing logged out by itself is not
               | a violation. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:
               | Sockpuppetry#Legitim...
        
             | remram wrote:
             | I log in, mostly so my IP doesn't get put on blast in the
             | log.
        
             | chronogram wrote:
             | I always log in to edit, then log out.
        
       | vr000m wrote:
       | Reminds me if the work from @lkozma in 2007,
       | http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/
        
       | humanistbot wrote:
       | This is just for people who edit without logging in, which
       | publicly saves the edit as your IP address. The overwhelming
       | majority of people edit Wikipedia from an account.
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-30 23:01 UTC)