Article published In:
Information VisualizationEdited by Isabel Meirelles and Katherine Gillieson
[Information Design Journal 23:1] 2017
► pp. 65–79
Edited by Isabel Meirelles and Katherine Gillieson
[Information Design Journal 23:1] 2017
► pp. 65–79
Designing diagrams for Wikipedia
Despite the high usage of diagrams and images in Wikipedia, as well as across all Wikimedia projects, few studies have been conducted on the role of visual contents within the online encyclopedia and on the collaborative creation of diagrams. This article describes research that brought a group of designers into Wikipedia, with the goal of exploring how information designers act on this platform and how other users react to their involvement. Inspired by the WikiEdu Program, we engaged postgraduate design students in the creation of diagrams for Wikipedia and then followed the reactions of both users and designers to their work. The results of the experiment have been evaluated using built-in Wikipedia functions (e.g., page history and discussion pages) and through an anonymous survey among the students involved. This experience brought to light the different consideration granted to images and diagrams with respect to texts on the online encyclopedia. It also allowed a reflection on the role of designers in the knowledge production process, as well as on the meaning of producing “open” contents, which are meant to be improved by other people.
Keywords: collaborative project, design education, Information visualization, diagrams, image contribution, Wikipedia
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].
References (16)
Alexa Internet Inc. (2016). The top 500 sites on the web. Retrieved October 5, 2016, from [URL]
Bao, P., Hecht, B., Carton, S., Quaderi, M., Horn, M. & Gergle, D. (2012). Omnipedia: bridging the Wikipedia language gap. In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems—CHI ‘12 (p. 1075). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. 
Borra, E., Laniado, D., Weltevrede, E., Mauri, M., Magni, G., Venturini, T., Ciuccarelli, P., Rogers, R. & Kaltenbrunner, A. (2015). A platform for visually exploring the development of Wikipedia articles. Proceedings of the 9th International AAAI Conference of Web and Social Media.
Chacon, S. & Straub, B. (2014). Pro Git (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: Apress. 
List of Wikipedias. (2016). Retrieved October 5, 2016, from [URL]
Massa, P. & Scrinzi, F. (2013). Manypedia: Comparing language points of view Wikipedia communities. First Monday, 18(1).
Mauri, M. (2011). Share your knowledge: Mapping project’s influences on the web. Retrieved September 30, 2016, from [URL]
Raymond, E. (1999). The cathedral and the bazaar. Knowledge, Technology {&} Policy, 12(3), 23–49. article.
Ricci, D. (2010). Seeing what they are saying: Diagrams for socio-technical controversies. In D. Durling, R. Bousbaci, L.-L. Chen, P. Gauthier, T. Poldma, S. Rowoth-Stokes & E. Stolterman (Eds.), DRS2010—Design & Complexity. Montréal.
Ricci, D., Ciuccarelli, P. & Valsecchi, F. (2008). Handling changes through diagrams: Scale and grain in the visual representation of complex systems. In C. Cipolla & P.P. Peruccio (Eds.). Turin: Allemandi.
State of the Commons. (2015). Retrieved October 5, 2016, from [URL]
Viegas, F. (2007). The visual side of Wikipedia. In 2007 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’07) (pp. 85–85). IEEE.
Wattenberg, M., Viégas, F.B. & Hollenbach, K. (2007). Visualizing activity on Wikipedia with chromograms. Methods, 4663/2010, 272–287.
WikiEdu Website. (n.d.). Retrieved October 5, 2016, from [URL]
Wikipedia: No original research. (2016). Retrieved October 5, 2016, from [URL]
Wikipedia: Policies and guidelines. (2016). Retrieved October 5, 2016, from [URL]