Wikipedia in the UK

After a lot of data cleaning and number crunching, here are three maps of the geographies of Wikipedia in the UK using brand new November 2010 data. Looking at the first map (total number of articles in each district), we see some interesting patterns. With a few exceptions, it is rural districts in Scotland, Wales and the North of England that are characterised by the highest density of articles.


What we're likely picking up on is that fact that large districts simply have more potential stuff to write about. If we normalise the map by area we see an entirely different pattern. The map below displays the number of articles per square KM.


We see that most of the large urban conurbations in the UK are covered by a dense layer of articles. Most sparsely populated areas in contrast have a much thinner layer of virtual representation in Wikipedia. There are, however, some notable exceptions. Parts of Cornwall, Somerset and the Isle of Wight all have a denser layer of content than might be expected for such relatively rural parts of the country. One might expect a higher density in the districts surrounding Belfast (in fact almost all of Northern Ireland is characterised by very low levels of content per square KM).

Finally, we can look a the number of articles per person in each district:


Here some more surprising results are visible. All major urban areas have relatively low counts of article per person (with the exception of central London). In contrast, many rural areas (particularly areas containing national parks) have high counts per person.

There are obviously a range of ways to measure the geographies of Wikipedia in the UK. We see that some areas are blanketed by a highly dense layer of virtual content (e.g. central London and many of the UK's other major conurbations). These maps also highlight the fact that some parts of the UK are characterised by a paucity of content irrespective of the ways in which the data are normalised. Northern Ireland in particular stands out in this respect.

I'll attempt to upload similar analyses of other countries in the next few months. In the meantime, however, please offer thoughts on these maps either below or on the cross post at the Floatingsheep blog.



p.s. many thanks to Adham Tamer for his help with the data extraction.

Map of Wikileaks US Embassy Cables

The release of over a quarter of a million US embassy cables by Wikileaks has raised a lot of important questions, and journalists and researchers will undoubtedly spend the next few weeks closely analysing the dataset. In the meantime, here is a quick map that I put together using data from the Guardian's data store.


It is important to point out that the dataset released by Wikileaks does not contain all cables sent by all US embassies and consulates. It is unclear whether the data in the release were selected according to any specific criteria or if they are a random sample (all of the cables were sent between 1966 and 2010).

In either case, and as one might expect, we see that there are a relatively large number of cables originating in the Middle East. We should therefore expect to hear much more about controversies from the region over the next few days.

Cognitive Surplus and the Levelling Effects of the Internet in the Connected Kingdom

I just got back from a meeting at Google, London on "Expanding the Connected Kingdom: policies and strategies for stimulating the UK Internet economy." The meeting aimed to draw on the recent Connected Kingdom report in order to come up with useful policy recommendations.

My short position paper is titled "Cognitive Surplus and the Levelling Effects of the Internet in the Connected Kingdom" and is available at the following link.

Internet access as a human right

Five countries have now declared internet access as a fundamental human right. Four of these countries are in Europe (Estonia, Finland, France and Greece) and one is in Central America (Costa Rica). Interestingly, there is quite a range of internet penetration rates between these countries:

Costa Rica: 43%
Estonia: 75%
Finland: 85%
France: 69%
Greece: 46%

It is likely that there will soon be other additions to this list. There is actually a strong push for universal internet access by major international organisations. The secretary-general of the ITU, for example, stated that governments should "regard the internet as basic infrastructure - just like roads, waste, and water." A recent BBC World Service poll found that 79% of people, in a poll of 27,000 people conducted across 26 countries, consider internet access to be a fundamental right. It will therefore be interesting to see how this map changes over the next few years. Please provide feedback on any changes that should be made to this list.

Want to use Web 2.0 to make the world better?

Thanks to a grant recently awarded by UnLTd and Nominet Trust and to the collaboration of the Universidad Internacional de Andalucía (UNIA),Wikichains.com will redesign its site interface and introduce some new features.

In order to select people to develop and implement the redesign, we are launching a competition that will allow designers and programmers to submit bids to work on these changes. We are looking for proposals that will provide us with an approximate image of the final product. Feel free to suggest improvements with regard to any aspect of Wikichains.com. In addition to innovation and visual attractiveness, the jury will also positively value proposals by the following criteria:

• access to the site by means of mobile devices,
• connections with UPC codes and bar codes,
• integration of other external services that may be useful for the aims of the project,
• facilitating visualization of commodity chains (for example through use of maps).

Submissions will be judged by an international panel and the selected proposal will be awarded a prize of €3000. Our official flyer can be accessed here. Please spread this call as widely as possible!