The subject of my data table is female comic artists who have citizenship in the United States. I chose this topic because my comic artist is a female who lives in the United States, Hilda Terry. So, her name showed up on my table. I wanted to make a table that she was included in. It is important to recognize female comic artists because there are nowhere near as many as men. It relates to my comic artist because she was the first woman inducted into the National Cartoonist Society and she recommended her friends for membership furthering the total number of women in the society. She was a trailblazer. This visualization shows a table that lists each name. While a table is basic, they are super easy to read. You can easily find a name and then look them up further on Wikidata. The grid-like formation makes it very legible and simple. It can make super complicated information manageable.
I found that making the occupation “cartoonist” and “comics artist” makes a difference. Although they are often used interchangeably, when I did “cartoonist” Hilda Terry did not show up. She only showed up when the occupation was “comics artist.” I found this to be very interesting. I am not sure if this is because Wikidata is limited in this way, or if maybe Hilda did not refer to herself as a cartoonist. In addition, “comic creator” is different. I would like to know why this is. I wanted to add a few more filters to make the table even more specific but was having trouble after country of citizenship. With more time and experience I would try and figure this out, because my table had over 200 names. I think the broad filters are interesting because you can see how many people they contain. It is also interesting to watch the names lessen as you add more filters. I wanted to add the filter of “National Cartoonist Society” but I could not figure out how. I think this would be interesting to see which of the women had been inducted throughout time. I also really like the bubble graphs. I think they are unique and also easy to read so if given more time I would want to make a bubble graph. I love how they are colorful and the bubbles are different sizes given the frequency of the information. I think the different colors makes it easy to read.
I learned a lot about Wikidata. First and foremost, I had never even heard of it. I’ve used Wikipedia a ton, but never Wikidata. So, now being able to make a data visualization table is awesome. I have enjoyed learning about the differences in the level of information of people. For example, Beyonce had hundreds of items on her Wikidata page because she is one of the most famous people on the planet. Hilda Terry, however, is nowhere near as well-known and she had only a few items on her page. I find it interesting that it is people’s job, like Will Kent, to edit and add to Wikidata. I guess I never really thought about it being a full time job to edit websites. However, Wikidata has tons and tons of pages. It takes a lot of people to sort, file, and edit the information included on each page. I inserted a photo of Hilda’s name within my table to make it easier to find. I also included a photo of the code and the link.
