Wikiverse Project: Visualization of the Wikipedia Information Universe
Wikipedia is a huge information resource, where there are answers to many questions. Here you can start by searching for an answer to the question about how to colonize Mars and end up studying the article on cephalopods of the Gulf of Mexico. Articles are related to each other, the definition of an unfamiliar term encountered in the article can be found simply by clicking on the term itself. In most cases, proper names, terms, names of animal and plant species are linked to articles that tell what it is.
Authors of the project Wikiversedecided to visually show the links between sections, subsections and individual articles of Wikipedia. For this, a visual model of the Wikipedia information universe was created. The entire online encyclopedia (English version) is presented in the form of a ball, inside which are constellations and clusters of constellations - articles of similar subjects. It can be materials about a specific time history of mankind, the visual arts, technology, or any other topics.
The author of the project is French programmer Owen Cornec (Owen Cornec). He began the formation of the “Wiki Universe” with 50 thousand articles, gradually increasing their number to 250,000. Kornek says the following about his project: “In this universe, articles are physically linked through a software simulation. Millions of linked pages, created by thousands of resource editors, form “constellations”. Articles of similar subjects are shown in the form of clusters. ” For example, around the "stars" of William Shakespeare are articles about his work, life, theater "Globus". Nearby is the material on the TV series MTV "Falsification". The more individual articles are linked, the closer they are to each other.
The rendering of a three-dimensional sphere built on the basis of all the materials of Wikipedia would take too much time. Therefore, the creator of the project is limited to 5% of the information contained in the English-language wiki. In addition to this model, you can choose less complex - small (1% of all articles) and medium (2%). Wikiverse, according to the idea of its creator, can be used not only as entertainment, but also as an analytical tool.
In the comments on Reddit, some users mentioned their own attempts to trace the links between different Wikipedia articles. True, such tracking is not a scientific, but a game goal. The task is simple - you need to find material about a particular person, starting with any random article in the online encyclopedia in the minimum number of steps. As it turned outIn just 4-5 clicks you can walk from an article about cakes or cakes to the material about Christ or Hitler.