Listen to Wikipedia

Last updated

Listen to Wikipedia
Developer(s) Stephen LaPorte, Mahmoud Hashemi
Repository github.com/hatnote/listen-to-wikipedia
Written in JavaScript and HTML
License 3-clause BSD license
Website Official website OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Listen to Wikipedia, also known as L2W or Hatnote: Listen To Wikipedia, is a multimedia visualizer developed by Mahmoud Hashemi and Stephen LaPorte which translates recent Wikipedia edits into a display of visuals and sounds. The open source software application creates a real-time statistical graphic with sound from contributions to Wikipedia from around the world. To accomplish this, L2W uses the graphics library D3.js. [1]

Contents

The concept of Listen to Wikipedia is based on BitListen, originally known as Listen to Bitcoin, by Maximillian Laumeister. [2] [3]

Presentation

Listen to Wikipedia exhibited at the University of Virginia Listen to Wikipedia display in Data Science Institute at the University of Virginia.jpg
Listen to Wikipedia exhibited at the University of Virginia

Audio

Each edit produces a note in the pentatonic scale. [4] The bell-like sounds of a celesta correspond to edits with a net addition of content to Wikipedia, and the strums of a clavichord correspond to net subtractions of content. The pitch is inversely proportional to the size of the edit (lower pitched notes are produced by larger edits). [5] Newly registered Wikipedia users are welcomed by a string chord. [6] [3]

Visuals

Each edit creates a circle of one of three colors: white for registered users, green for unregistered users, and violet for Wikipedia bots. The size of a circle is proportional to the magnitude of change executed by the edit; larger circles are produced by larger edits. [3] The name of the article edited is displayed in the center of the circle. Clicking on the text opens a Wikipedia page in a new tab in the user's browser, showing the revision. A blue bar at the top of the screen will appear whenever a new Wikipedia user is registered, listing their username. At the bottom left corner, there is a bar showing the amount of edits per minute.

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wiki</span> Type of website that visitors can edit

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">MediaWiki</span> Free and open-source wiki software

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A series of incidents in 2009 led to Church of Scientology–owned networks being blocked from making edits to Wikipedia articles relating to Scientology. The Church of Scientology has long had a controversial history on the Internet and had initiated campaigns to manipulate material and remove information critical of itself from the web. From early in Wikipedia's history, conflict arose regarding the website's coverage of Scientology. Disputes began in earnest in 2005, with users disagreeing about whether or not to describe Scientology as an abusive cult or religion, and continued through the decade.

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VisualEditor (VE) is an online rich-text editor for MediaWiki-powered wikis that provides a direct visual way to edit pages based on the "what you see is what you get" principle. It was developed by the Wikimedia Foundation in partnership with Fandom. In July 2013, it was enabled by default on several of the largest Wikipedia projects.

A nightcore (also known as sped-up song, sped-up version, sped-up remix, or, simply, sped-up) edit is a version of a music track that increases the pitch and speeds up its source material by approximately 35%. This gives an effect almost identical to playing a 33⅓-RPM vinyl record at 45 RPM. This 35% increase in RPM causes the note C4 to become slightly lower in pitch than the note F#4 (261.63 Hz becomes 353.19 Hz) which is an increase of approximately 5 and a half semitones. Playing 33⅓-RPM Vinyl Trance records at 45RPM was common in the Happy Hardcore scene of the 90s and 2000s, which most likely inspired the genre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First Wikipedia edit</span> First Wikipedia edit on its homepage in 2001

The first edit in Wikipedia's database, to HomePage, was made on January 15, 2001, and states in its entirety "This is the new WikiPedia!". In December 2021, co-founder Jimmy Wales announced that he would sell a website containing a re-creation of an earlier edit that he said he made and then later deleted, which contained the text "Hello, World!", to the highest bidder as a non-fungible token (NFT).

References

  1. "Listen to Wikipedia". Hatnote. August 30, 2013. Archived from the original on August 30, 2013. Retrieved August 27, 2013.
  2. "Listen to Wikipedia – Wikimedia blog". July 30, 2013. Archived from the original on June 24, 2016. Retrieved June 23, 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 Hashemi, Stephen LaPorte and Mahmoud. "Hatnote Listen to Wikipedia". listen.hatnote.com. Archived from the original on January 11, 2017. Retrieved June 23, 2016.
  4. Wilson, Mark (August 23, 2013). "Listen To The Orchestra Of Users Updating Wikipedia". Fast Company . Archived from the original on August 10, 2016. Retrieved December 23, 2019.
  5. "Listen To Wikipedia: Engineers Translate Edits Into Sound". NPR . Archived from the original on June 11, 2016. Retrieved June 15, 2016.
  6. Seifert, Dan (August 9, 2013). "Fall asleep to the sound of Wikipedia". The Verge . Archived from the original on December 24, 2019. Retrieved December 23, 2019.
Listen to this article (2 minutes)
Sound-icon.svg
This audio file was created from a revision of this article dated 18 September 2023 (2023-09-18), and does not reflect subsequent edits.