A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident (opens in new tab)

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 reasonably reliable source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P19

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 John Cena, who was born in a far-out suburb.

Curious. Why are they almost all men?

And, what's with all the wrestlers!?!

Expected Lansing would be Magic Johnson but instead its Larry Page. Magic comes back often and is active in local charities, even leading efforts to raise money for college scholarships.

On the other hand Larry Page has to my knowledge never returned or given a dime to local charities. So perhaps that makes people ever more curious about him.

Ah fuck, what a good idea and fun project this must have been.

How do people come up with awesome ideas like this? Whenever I have time for a personal project it'll be like... "guess I'll uh.... make this LED on a raspberry pi blink... wheee"

Doesn't work for me in Firefox.

If web developers aren't going to bother with cross-browser compatibility it'd be nice if they at least went back to telling visitors which browsers they do support.

Interesting.. I've literally never heard of Anna Kendrick before.

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.

So it's not "this is the person most wikipediaed in this city" but rather, "this is the person amongst those who are affiliated with this city, who is the most wikipediaed"

Interesting to see Elon Musk as LA.

I'm surprised that George R R Martin doesn't show up for Santa Fe. Surely he's more-googled / wikipediaed than Murray Gell-Mann?

How do I zoom?

> 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.

This is awesome. Fun to zoom in/out and see the names fade in and out.

I'm not opposed to renaming Minneapolis, "Prince Town"...

They've got an interesting definition of city... Seattle is all one city, but DC has Georgetown, Capitol Hill, and Dupont Circle in addition to a label for the entire city.

"Those connected to and victims of criminal acts" are supposed to be excluded, so Ted Bundy should probably be removed from Burlington and Salt Lake City.

edit: and while I'm looking at Lake Champlain, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are in Plattsburgh, NY, though the link doesn't work.

edit 2: Oops, I read "including" as "excluding" because that's what I expected, never mind!

Why isn't Linus used for Portland?! Steve Jobs. Pfft.

I wonder why James Earl Jones isn't listed for Jackson, MI. His page contains a link to Jackson, and Jackson's page contains a link to him. His page has more views than than Paula Faris'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Earl_Jones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Michigan

https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.or...

Nitpick: Allen Iverson is from Hampton, Va. Hampton Roads is a name for the region that includes 5+ cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Roads

Using Wikipedia leads to some weird results. I checked my hometown in NC and would have expected Michael Jordan to be listed as the most famous associated person, but he doesn’t appear on the main Wikipedia entry so we instead got James Taylor.

Hm, I would also be interested in how cities look if your measure is "highest lookup rate relative to national average".

That is, sure, Dwayne Johnson is looked up a lot in some city, but who is looked up most compared to everywhere else?

I'm from Utah....I love how Ted Bundy is #1 for not just Salt lake but looks like the whole state.

Edit: I'm living in utah, from Ohio, I do not claim Utah citizenship. I'm also not Mormon (ex-mormon/agnostic). Cheers!

Muhammad Ali was born in Louisville, KY and not Paradise Valley (CA?). Wikipedia says this. Noticed this right off the bat.

Very cool, but...Murray Gell-Man for Santa Fe? Not George R.R. Martin? Drew Goddard for Los Alamos, not Richard Feynman?

question : why do WWE-related queries account for so much Wikipedia traffic?

That was surprisingly interesting; especially when you zoom in to the small towns.

I think it would be interesting if they filtered out any entertainment & sports celebrities to see who remained.

This is really cool! Something that would be nice would be an option to toggle "born in/native" vs. "any association." My hometown, La Quinta, California, has Phil Knight simply because he has a home there. No one I know associates him with La Quinta.

This is interesting as an example of how a person can be well-known yet their biographical details unknown.

Andy Warhol is a good example. Almost everyone in America knows his name and yet (in my experience) almost no one knows that he grew up in Pittsburgh (outside of Pittsburgh, of course.)

This was really cool to look at. This was really educational having grown up in a rural area where (I thought) no one of consequence came from. Thanks for sharing!

This is a super cool project. Spot checking WA state (where I was born and still live), the results are accurate and interesting! There are some comments about wanting to resolve duplicates (though duplicates are intentional), would be neat to include a "Born in this city" setting. I believe if the person was born in X city, they would show up in the "List of people from X" page - so not many changes needed.

Bravo!

we sure do love our entertainers!

a little interest makes sense but i've never understood the intense interest that most people have with entertainers and celebrities in general. i'm more interested in people who have, and can, impact my life, like historical figures, friends, family, scientists, and local/regional leaders (political or otherwise).

I was kinda surprised by the Los Alamos result. I was expecting Oppenheimer, instead it was some guy named Drew Goddard.

Ok, that was way more interesting than I expected...

A few bits that are interesting to me (and probably no one else).

The two towns I've lived in are both renamed Grover Cleveland (he was born in one, and spent most of his childhood in the other).

Megyn Kelly attended elementary school in the next town over from where I live currently.

This got me to update Edward Norton's wikipedia entry. He's most likely the most famous person from Columbia, Maryland, he just wasn't categorized as from the town. Though it was interesting seeing Randy Pausch (computer scientist) listed as the town's rep.

Funny how a porn star is the #1 for Miami Beach. I would have expected some other kind of celebrity.

What tools are used to create this?

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

It would be cool to see the same map for people worldwide, not just in the US.

TIL Samuel L. Jackson is the most wikipedia'd person who's ever lived in Washington DC. That's kind of wild considering the competition includes every US president ever, among many others.

The controls are terrible. I can't figure out how to zoom, and if I right click I get into some sort of "tilt" mode that can't be escaped from without reloading the page.

Doesn't seem to work in Firefox/Linux/Privacy mode.

(Ahh, WebGL)

Well, you did miss Jimmy Wales, who grew up in Huntsville, AL, and attended Randolph School there. How did you select your data?

Louisville, KY: Tom Cruise (born in Syracuse, NY, but parents born there) replaces Muhammed Ali (by far most famous native).

Seems a bit unfair.

Danny DeVito upsets The Boss in Asbury Park! Did not see that one coming. Any other notable upsets?

It seems to be the person has lived there at any point in their life?

Southwest Florida is an interesting one...

I love this! Thanks for sharing!

I think I'd go with largest Wikipedia article, probably in most cases the same.

Interesting, it should be fun to extend this to the rest of the world

Weird that they have Kurt Cobain in Montesano, not Aberdeen.

This is very cool! Maybe you could add Puerto Rico as well.

No fair, Ted Bundy gets Tallahassee AND Salt Lake City?

Marilyn Monroe -> Compton was unexpected…

aah I always knew Sarah Palin was famous for something...didn't know until now she is from Alaska.

Vienna, VA >> Robert Hanssen

Good job, Oak Harbor, WA.

I don't think Lynyrd Skynyrd from Jacksonville FL is a person.

Why US only?

Really was expecting this to be an XKCD thing.

Elon Musk has LA? hahahaha

I'm a bit disappointing that Mr Hands, the guy that died from getting penetrated by a horse, isn't the most Wikipedia'ed resident of Enumclaw

Story for anyone interested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumclaw_horse_sex_case