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This “Chromogram” made in 2007 by Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg investigates how participants in Wikipedia allocate their time. The visualization technique can display very long textual sequences through a color coding scheme. The first 3 letters of a string determine the color in the Chromogram. The fist letter determines the hue, the second the saturation, and the third the brightness. Numbers become shades of gray. This system seems arbitrary but reveals some subtle patterns in Wikipedia editing. Wikipedians tend to engage in systematic activities by preserving a sustained related sequence of edits. Some editors concentrate on particular topic areas – which reveals a relatively constant color throughout the Chromogram. In other cases, users have completing a task that spans a variety of Wikipedia articles, such as categorizing and alphabetizing. This shows up as various colors or rainbows on the Chromogram. Chromogram reveals an organized systematic activities that help us understand the self-allocation of effort in Wikipedia.

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