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A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

pudding.cool

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Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#61
post #52
post #46

It's too bad there are so many duplicates. I think it would be more interesting if it was based on birthplace, since big cities that attract lots of businesspeople/celebrities just get tagged with someone really famous who doesn't have any particular connection with the city (e.g. Elon Musk on Los Angeles, Steve Jobs on basically everywhere in the Bay Area). The Wikidata "place of birth" field would probably be a rea…

Birthplace would be interesting, but there’s plenty of famous/important people who are connected to a location other than their birthplace. Think sports stars who were on a team far away from their home.

Maybe, but it's still lame that Denver is represented by Peyton Manning. He was there a few years, but he isn't even the first person that the phrase "Denver quarterback" calls to mind.

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#63
post #31

The connection seems to be "a link to this city's Wikipedia page appears in the named person's Wikipedia page". It does not look like the contents of the city's page have any bearing, only the person's page.

That can't be right, or at leats not the whole story. For example, "Joaquin Pheonix" is the most searched person from Gainesville. But there's no mention of Gainesville, or even the state of Florida, on his Wikipedia page. But it does appear to be true that he was a "resident" (more or less) during his teenage years [0]. [0] https://www.gainesville.com/article/LK/20040526/News/6041599... EDIT: However, he is on Wikip…

They explicitly say that in their "data and methods" blurb:

> Person/city associations were based on the thousands of “People from X city” pages on Wikipedia. The top person from each city was determined by using median pageviews (with a minimum of 1 year of traffic). We chose to include multiple occurrences for a single person because there is both no way to determine which is more accurate and people can “be from” multiple places.

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#64
> Data and Methods

> Data for this story were collected and processed using the Wikipedia API. The period of collection was from July, 2015–May, 2019, from English Wikipedia. It was inspired in part by this map.

> Person/city associations were based on the thousands of “People from X city” pages on Wikipedia. The top person from each city was determined by using median pageviews (with a minimum of 1 year of traffic). We chose to include multiple occurrences for a single person because there is both no way to determine which is more accurate and people can “be from” multiple places.

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#65

This is interesting in large part as a demonstration of how bizarre/indefinite the idea of being "from" a place is. For instance, Cambridge, MA isn't headlined by a famous MIT/Harvard academic, or local political figure, or even Neil Gaiman- but instead by Bhumibol Adulyadej, the previous king of Thailand, who was born there while his father was studying at Harvard, and left at the age of 2. Meanwhile, Boston gets Jo…

[deleted]

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#67
Some surprising holes, of towns with famous people but aren't showing at all. For example

* Jayson Williams, NBA player and murderer, Alexandria NJ

* Malcolm Baldridge, US Secretary of Commerce, Woodbury CT

Ninja edit: but I'm glad to see Dennis Ritchie in Summit, NJ

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#68

This is interesting in large part as a demonstration of how bizarre/indefinite the idea of being "from" a place is. For instance, Cambridge, MA isn't headlined by a famous MIT/Harvard academic, or local political figure, or even Neil Gaiman- but instead by Bhumibol Adulyadej, the previous king of Thailand, who was born there while his father was studying at Harvard, and left at the age of 2. Meanwhile, Boston gets Jo…

No mention of Bruce Springsteen along the entire Jersey shore too.

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#70
post #64

> Data and Methods > Data for this story were collected and processed using the Wikipedia API. The period of collection was from July, 2015–May, 2019, from English Wikipedia. It was inspired in part by this map. > Person/city associations were based on the thousands of “People from X city” pages on Wikipedia. The top person from each city was determined by using median pageviews (with a minimum of 1 year of traffic).…

There is a flaw in their method.

Take for example Santa Fe, New Mexico. I expected the most Wikipediaed person would be George R. R. Martin.

Instead, it's Murray Gell-Mann.

Odd. I mean, yes, famous physicist, coiner of 'quark', etc. But, c'mon, compared to George R. R. Martin?

Then go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Santa_Fe,... . While Gell-Mann is on that page, there are also seven subcategories.

  - Actors from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (2 C, 16 P)
  - Archbishops of Santa Fe‎ (12 P)
  - Artists from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (78 P)
  - Musicians from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (16 P)
  - Politicians from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (1 C, 26 P)
  - Sportspeople from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (11 P)
  - Writers from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎
GRRM is in that last subcategory.

However, it appears to be an uncommon pattern. I tried another 15 or so cities and none of them used subcategories.

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