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 Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

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 D3.js (also known as D3, short for Data-Driven Documents) is a JavaScript library for producing dynamic, interactive data visualizations in web browsers. It makes use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), HTML5, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) sta ...

. The concept of Listen to Wikipedia is based on BitListen, originally known as Listen to Bitcoin, an application by Maximillian Laumeister.

Presentation

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

Audio

Each edit produces a note in the

pentatonic scale A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to the heptatonic scale, which has seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale). Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many an ...

. The bell-like sounds of a celesta correspond to edits with a net addition of content to Wikipedia, and the strums of a

clavichord The clavichord is a stringed rectangular keyboard instrument that was used largely in the Late Middle Ages, through the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras. Historically, it was mostly used as a practice instrument and as an aid to compositi ...

correspond to net subtractions of content. The pitch is

inversely proportional In mathematics, two sequences of numbers, often experimental data, are proportional or directly proportional if their corresponding elements have a constant ratio, which is called the coefficient of proportionality or proportionality constan ...

to the size of the edit (lower pitched notes are produced by larger edits). Newly registered Wikipedia users are welcomed by a

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

chord.

Visuals

Each edit creates a circle of one of three colors: white for registered users, green for unregistered users, and violet for

Wikipedia bots Wikipedia bots are Internet bots (computer programs) that perform simple, repetitive tasks in Wikipedia. One prominent example of an internet bot used in Wikipedia is Lsjbot, which generated millions of short articles across various language edit ...

. The size of a circle is proportional to the magnitude of change executed by the edit (larger circles are produced by larger edits). 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.

References

External links

* * Stephen LaPorte, Mahmoud Hashemi, '' Listen to Wikipedia'',

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...

blog, 30 July 2013 {{Wikipedia Wikipedia Data visualization software Software using the BSD license