User talk:Infografica

Hi, I'd be interested in participating in projects that would improve Wikipedia's material on information graphics. If you know of any where I can help, please drop me a line on this page. Infografica (talk) 22:38, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome!

Hello, Infografica, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 07:11, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, on the Template talk:Visualization you stated:

"Of course, it might be that the whole visualization cluster of articles needs to be reorganized, although that seems to have been tried a few times already! --Infografica (talk) 04:58, 9 August 2008 (UTC)"

I would like to respond, but I would first like to ask you have if you have any experience in Wikipedia? -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 07:21, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Marcel! I have relatively little experience editing Wikipedia :-) So I'm happy for any tips and would like to learn more about the proper way to do it. Reading your comments, I realize my rearrangement of visualization subtopics wasn't the best.

For the overall organization of visualization articles, I have a couple of thoughts. It's tough, because "visualization" is used in so many ways. At a high level, it seems like there are three distinct general meanings: 1. Mental imagery used to improve performance (sports or creativity). 2. Winamp-style animations to accompany music. 3. Data-related visualization. These seem quite distinct to me in purpose and in the community of people who are experts in the field.

I am familiar with #3, but not so much on the others. So on to #3: organizing subfields in this area is messy (here the goals and the experts do overlap a bit) but one broad distinction is that made by Tamara Munzner at U. British Columbia: "scientific" visualization applies to situations where the coordinate system is given (e.g. visualizing fluid flow) while "information visualization" applies to situations where coordinates must be derived (e.g. in graph drawing or multidimensional scaling). Here is a link to an article she wrote

on this topic: http://graphics.stanford.edu/~munzner/cga02/gei.html

Then, within scientific and information visualization, one can find natural subfields. For example, software visualization is a subfield of information visualization, while flow visualization is a subfield of scientific visualization.

Of course, this leaves unanswered questions about geographic information systems, hand-drawn charts, artistic visualization, etc...

In any case, my proposal for the visualization disambiguation page, and for arranging articles would be along these lines: (a) make a high-level split between mental-imagery visualization, music visualization, and data-related visualization. then (b) we could focus on the data-related visualiizations, with broad articles on the main areas, and then some detailed articles on subfields such as software visualization.

Also, I'm realizing my user page may not be the best place to discuss this, so let me know if there's another page where I should be writing. Thanks for your guidance! --Infografica (talk) 13:45, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, so you are active on Wikipedia with other usernames? Why did you create this new account? -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 23:44, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, I'm not active on Wikipedia with other usernames. In the past year I have made occasional anonymous edits, and recently did make a test account whose name I quickly decided I didn't like. This, however, is now my home and I'm planning to make my edits from this username. I decided to make an identity for myself rather than be an IP address because I felt it was important to be able to discuss article changes at length.

Speaking of which, I'd love to get your thoughts on the organization of the visualization articles. I'm happy to spend some time writing, editing, and reorganizing. That said, I certainly don't want to get in the way of existing efforts. If you're deep in the middle of a rewrite and having additional people complicates things, I completely understand and can spend my time on other sections. --Infografica (talk) 04:36, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, good luck. My userpage here on Wikipedia and on WikiCommons gives an overview of the things I am doing. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 08:18, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I noticed you have the same ideas a User:Timeshifter and I keep wondering if you are one and the same person? -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 00:15, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, that is not me. And looking at the user page I don't think we have the same ideas, actually. --Infografica (talk) 02:52, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]