Dario,

 

As I said earlier “Looks like you found yourself another worthy and inspiring 
endeavour. The project is huge in ambition, resources and time scale. BTW this 
is the first mission statement I’ve seen that sets its targets for 2100 😉“  

 

Your first post to our mailing lists was almost (to the month) 10 years ago, 
about this project of yours: WikiTracer. I remember being much impressed about 
this project, which aimed to expand analytics to the wider wikiverse. 
WikiTracer brought a uniform scheme and layout, somehow overcoming the 
countless discrepancies between the wikis under study. Not the least of those 
challenges being babylonical confusion (on syntax, that is). Not long 
thereafter we spoke at length about your project, and mine, and how we shared 
other interests, among those Leiden and photography. The domain name wikitracer 
has since been reoccupied. You must have been too ‘distracted’ by this new 
mission of yours 😉 

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-February/041747.html

 

Your first visualization that focussed on Wikipedia solely (that I know of) was 
Notabilia. This was published roughly a year later, in 2010, and still exists, 
is still relevant, is still visually stunning, and represents my first 
introduction to d3, which I also came to love over the years. 

http://notabilia.net/

With this piece, you and you co-creators received a gold prize at the Kanta 
‘Information is Beautiful’ contest. Well done.

https://www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/showcase/443-notabilia

 

You‘ve been a visually oriented person all along. I mentioned your photography 
already. Your Flickr expo with 566 followers speaks to that. 
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dartar/albums/with/72057594056207061

 

When my wife Carolina and I started our new project, an OSM based tree map of 
Leidens park Groenesteeg, I remembered ‘Dead Letters’, your detailed 
photo-study of typography, showing graves in that very park. Your expo is now 
featured as one more layer of  awesomeness in our tribute to urban nature [1]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dartar/sets/72057594056207061 

 

BTW typographically you came a long way 😉. Your own site only mentions you love 
to write about TeX and digital typography. Which is also cool, don’t get me 
wrong.

http://nitens.org/taraborelli/home

 

Further proof of your visual keenness is the neat layout of the landing page 
for Wikimedia Research Team (in B&W, which by itself lends it a ‘pro’ 
appearance already)

https://research.wikimedia.org/index.html 

 

I came to know you as (expanding on your own bio here) a [+very caring and 
sociable] ‘social computing researcher’ and [+very knowledgeable] ‘open 
knowledge advocate’ and just an overall very friendly guy. So once more: THANK 
YOU for the years we worked together, which I found most pleasant and 
constructive. I hope we meet again.

http://nitens.org/taraborelli/bio


Congratulations to Leila for her new role. You’re the best successor I could 
have wished for.  😊

Erik Zachte

 

PM I did not yet mention Darios sense of humor. Today’s notes on Twitter reveal 
all: 
https://twitter.com/readermeter?lang=en

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[1] Now we’re at the Groenesteeg anyway, please pardon the click bait. 
This copper beech may well be the largest beech the reader has ever seen:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leiden-Groenesteeg-11.jpg 

( featured on http://j.mp/groenesteeg )

 

 

 

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