Proposal:A Visual Representation of the Worlds Knowledge

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  1. Achieve continued growth in readership
  2. Focus on quality content
  3. Increase Participation
  4. Stabilize and improve the infrastructure
  5. Encourage Innovation


A better way of organizing all knowledge using interactive, multi-scale graphical representation.


The Web today contains almost all the Human knowledge. This knowledge is already too big to comprehend and it gets bigger every day. How do we make sense of all the past knowledge and keep track of the new Knowledge?

The solution according to me is to create a "Tree of Knowledge" which represents all knowledge as an interactive 2D/3D graphics. All knowledge is represented by branching points, broad areas like Physics, Biology etc would represent the thicker trunks, sub-topics by branches above continuing till the basic source of knowledge is represented by the last twig. The graphic representation will much be like the "Google Earth" wherein each level of zooming will show the knowledge stubs of greater resolution.Each knowledge stub will have a text general article about that topic along with links to other text and multimedia content related to the topic on other websites.

This representation will make navigation easier, give users an overall view of knowledge, and will enable placing new knowledge easily within the existing classification of knowledge. Wikipedia articles currently forms such a tree by hyper-linking pages, but it does not give the overall perspective as to where one is relative to the other topics of interest. Wikipedia if thus organized would act as the core body of knowledge, which could be further enriched by linking to knowledge sources like journal articles, videos, databases outside Wikipedia.

This type of visually organized knowledge could usher in a new era in Education,complimenting formal education, promoting life long learning and with further innovation could even supplant the present educational system. Researchers would manage to keep up with the latest developments in their fields more easily.


Difficulty in navigating all the knowledge and data present on the Wikipedia.

Key Questions

1. What is the best way to visually represent data: a tree, a factral, or any other structure. 2. The degree to which the project will require dedicated administrators. (is it possible to do it by the Wiki way of doing things)

Potential Costs

  • Volunteer Time


Community Discussion

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