Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Data Visualization

This is the talk page for discussing WikiProject Data Visualization and anything related to its purposes and tasks.

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Prior discussion of this project?

Please see the thread I've started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#Wikipedia:WikiProject Data Visualization concerning the apparent lack of a formal proposal, or indeed any obvious prior discussion of this project at all, before its creation. AndyTheGrump (talk) 10:47, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pattern of data visualizations by country

This is a big question, but I have been wondering what standard data visualizations apply to Wikipedia articles of many, most, or all countries.

Is there a popular data visualization which would be a welcome addition to any Wikipedia article on a country? Bluerasberry (talk) 21:36, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In order to visualise data, you need the data first. And beyond some very basic demographic data (if even that is available), I doubt you'd find anything standard worth visualising. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:53, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@AndyTheGrump: At Wikidata there already are WikiProjects for countries. They all are trying to coordinate queries for national data in all kinds of fields. I do not think there is a strong connection between the data curation at Wikidata and data visualization here in Wikipedia. There must be something there. Economics? Tourism? Energy use? Education? Trade? Pop culture?

Steve Balmer former CEO of Microsoft has this project USAFacts where he presents all sorts of data visualizations at the national level for the United States. https://usafacts.org/ I am not sure where Wikidata and Wikipedia align for such things but if we found just one visualization model which was generally interesting, then we could mass post that in many articles in many languages. Bluerasberry (talk) 17:03, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding Wikidata, as I'm sure you are aware, it isn't WP:RS. As for mass-posting, that would appear to be grossly inappropriate, given that this is a draft English-language Wikiproject, with no mandate whatsoever to add content elsewhere.

While I can see real merit in this draft proposal, I have some reservations about its implementation: not least of which is its potential to encourage 'looking for data to visualise', rather than serving the interests of good article creation and maintenance as a whole. In my opinion, rather than looking for new data to 'visualise', the project should instead be looking at individual articles, and asking whether data already present (appropriate, due, reliably sourced data, that is) can usefully be presented visually. If, as a result of this, we conclude that such visualisations could be used more generally, we can then consider doing so. But we need to start from the premise that it is the data that matters, and that good 'visualisation' comes later, where is appropriate. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:30, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]