Tag Archives: Wikipedia

03. Shirley Li – WikiGalaxy: A Visualization of Wikipedia Rabbit Holes

The name WikiGalaxy is beautifully given to the site and that is very true. I always end up clicking one of those blue highlighted words/links and like many of us I become dependent of the Rabbit Holes. The latest that I was captivated by the Rabbit Hole was when I was reading about Vinegar Hill and Brooklyn. I kept clicking on the highlighted words and it took me by surprise somewhere completely different from what I was supposed to be focused on. So that’s the funny part, that for that first assignment it took me a lot more time then the two preceding assignments combined. The time was longer but worth it since I got to learn stuff that I never heard before or stuff that I always wanted to read about. So my conclusion is that if you have a deadline you should force yourself not to be prey of Rabbit Hole, otherwise open your horizon by clicking those links that interest you.

Reflection #3: A visualization of Wikipedia Rabbit Holes

Visualization technology is great, and this is another example. Getting a much different perspective and representation of data such that articles represent stars and showing relevance to other articles based on length makes the model easy to digest. It’s a great way to understand the connectedness of topics and ultimately what the editors believe is relevant to link to, this was only done with one hundred thousand articles, it’d certainly be interesting to see the visualization of the whole of Wikipedia and it’s potential rabbit holes. After using the visualization myself you can get lost in the rabbit hole of the model itself, fun to play around with.