User:Iopensa/Visualising Wikipedia 2026

Visualising Wikipedia is a proposal for Wikimania 2026 Paris, related to the research.

Application: https://wikimedia.eventyay.com/wm/wikimania2026/cfp

Track

research

Title

Visualising Wikipedia

Theme

Reliability. How can we measure content NPOV / content reliability at scale (at the editor or article level, but also for the broader web)?

We are looking for contributions around the technical and social detection of disinformation or bias.  We are also  interested in perspectives around coordinated manipulation (or editor tracking) detection on wiki at scale.  

Short description of your topic or perspective

Including clear articulation of why the topic matters for the Wikimedia movement. This includes explaining:

how the work relates to Wikimedia projects or communities,

what challenges, opportunities, or questions it helps address, and

why the findings or insights are relevant for contributors, organizers, developers, or readers.

Your name, affiliation, and Wikimedia community or project involvement

Iolanda Pensa, SUPSI, national coordinator GLAM for Wikimedia Italia / member of Wikimedia CH

Language

English

Abstract

Visualising Wikipedia is a visual analytics tool developed within the research project “Visual Analytics for Sustainability and Climate Change: Assessing Online Open Content and Supporting Community Engagement. The Case of Wikipedia” (2025–2029).

The tool enables the exploration, analysis, and monitoring of groups of Wikipedia articles through interactive visualisations, supporting the work of Wikimedia volunteers, researchers, and institutions. Its goal is to provide evidence-based insights into content coverage, quality, gaps, and dynamics, facilitating informed interventions and community engagement.

The current prototype focuses on Wikipedia articles in English, Spanish, French, and Italian related to climate change and sustainability. It is designed to assess the current state of coverage of these topics and to test targeted interventions. The tool is topic-agnostic by design: once fully developed, it will be adaptable to any subject area by leveraging Wikidata and Wikipedia categories, with the possibility to extend it to additional languages. Developed in collaboration with the Wiki Education Impact Visualizer, it will be released as an interactive dashboard comparable to the existing Wikimedia event dashboard.

This presentation and live demo invite the Wikimania community to contribute to the co-design, testing, and future development of the tool.

The research project is led by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland in collaboration with the Wiki Education Foundation, Wikimedistas de Uruguay, Wiki in Africa, and Open Climate Campaign, with the endorsement of Wikimedia Italia, the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF, grant 10.003.183), and the active involvement of Wikipedia and Wikidata volunteers. The research team includes Iolanda Pensa (principal investigator and concept), Giovanni Profeta (coordinator and designer), Chiara Somajni, Florence Devouard, Sage Ross, Nicole Schwitter, Cristian Scapozza, Florian Maximilian Meier, and Ahmed Amine Hassou.

How does the session relate to the event theme

Reliability. The tool contributes to measuring and assessing content reliability at scale by aggregating and visualising multiple proxy indicators of reliability and neutrality at the article, topic, and editor-community levels. These include article quality assessments, presence and type of maintenance templates (e.g. neutrality disputes, missing references), reference density and diversity, edit and revert patterns, page protection status, and cross-language asymmetries. By comparing how the same topic is covered across different language editions, the tool helps surface potential systemic bias, gaps, or unbalanced perspectives that are difficult to detect through single-article analysis.

The tool is designed to support human interpretation and community governance by making reliability-related signals visible and comparable at scale, with the aim of bridging technical indicators and social processes, to empower volunteers, researchers, and institutions.

Audience

The tool supports multiple audiences and use cases:

* Wikimedia volunteers can identify highly edited or viewed articles, evaluate their quality assessments, check whether higher-quality versions exist in other languages, and detect issues such as missing references or images, controversial topics, access restrictions, or maintenance templates.

* Researchers can analyse how specific topics are represented on Wikipedia through multiple visualisations, including article evolution over time, editing and viewing patterns, inter-article links, and the identification of relevant Wikidata items that currently lack corresponding Wikipedia articles.

* Institutions involved in Wikimedia initiatives can evaluate and monitor the quality and evolution of topic areas, using visualisations both for strategic assessment and as communication tools to demonstrate the relevance and impact of their contributions.

* GLAM institutions can explore how topics aligned with their missions are documented on Wikipedia, contribute data and expertise to improve coverage, and monitor the impact of their engagement in terms of knowledge production and visibility.

This presentation and live demo invite the Wikimania community to contribute to the co-design, testing, and future development of the tool.

Replication potential of the project presented

The project has high replication potential. While the prototype focuses on climate change and sustainability on Wikipedia, the methodology can be applied to any topic, language, or regional context. It relies on open data – Wikipedia APIs and Wikidata – making it adaptable without changing the technical infrastructure, which is free and open source software published online. All the documentation is accessible online (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Visualizing_sustainability_and_climate_change_on_Wikipedia), and the tool has been discussed already with international partners and communities.

The proposal builds on research into systemic bias, NPOV, and content gaps on Wikipedia, as well as prior visual analytics and Wikimedia dashboard projects. A prototype was already developed by Wikimedia Italia in 2020 about the Italian school syllabus (https://itwiki-scuola-italiana.toolforge.org/) and replicated in Uruguay (https://wikicurricula.wikimedistas.uy). Current first release https://impact-visualizer.wmcloud.org/topics/23#bubble

Yourself and experience

I am the principal investigator of the research project “Visual Analytics for Sustainability and Climate Change: Assessing Online Open Content and Supporting Community Engagement. The Case of Wikipedia” (2025–2029)". As a volunteer, I am a Wikipedian and Wikimedian since 2006, I promoted WikiAfrica, I organised Wikimania Esino Lario, I chaired Wikimania steering committee for 8 years and Wikimedia Italia for 4  year, and I am active in engaging GLAM, questioning the concept of centre and periphery, and contributing to Wikipedia coverage and outreach. It is very difficult to explore Wikipedia topics and content: we visualise one page at the time, and we get lists of articles. I wanted landscapes. I have conceived the Visualising Wikipedia tool to support the work of volunteers, researchers and institutions who want to see how specific topics are covered on Wikipedia: I strongly believe this can help their contribution. This is the first presentation of the tool (first release) and we trust Wikimania is an excellent venue to get feedback and improve the tool to really serve the Wikimedia communities.

Yes, I have experience in public speaking, leading workshops and training, participating on a panel and delivering sessions.

Unique value of your presentation

This presentation is original and created specifically for Wikimania 2026, introducing the first release of the Visualising Wikipedia tool to the Wikimedia communities and to researchers.  The session will include a live demo, allowing participants to see how the tool identifies content gaps, reliability signals, cross-language differences, and emerging topics. Volunteers can prioritise contributions, researchers can study knowledge production, and institutions can assess impact.

By combining live interaction, research insights, and participatory design, this presentation actively engages the participants in shaping the tool, creating a session that is both informative and actionable.

The Visualising Wikipedia tool is designed to be fully open and freely accessible, offering its features to anyone interested in exploring, analysing, and improving Wikipedia content, during Wikimania and beyond.

Bio

I am a researcher and wikipedian. I am head of the research area “Culture and Territory” at the Institute of Design of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI); I am the principal investigator of the project “Visual Analytics for Sustainability and Climate Change”. I am an active volunteer of Wikipedia: former chair of Wikimedia Italia (2020-2024), national coordinator GLAM for Wikimedia Italia and organiser of the Wikipedia world gathering Wikimania in 2016 in Esino Lario, a mountain village of 700 inhabitants. I also like open data (I am co-chair of the sounding board researcher for the Swiss open research data strategy).

Picture source

Iolanda Pensa. Photo by Adam Novak / Wikimedia Foundation, CC BY-SA.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iolanda_Pensa-229.jpg