A naïve interface for viewing versions of Wikipedia's 2022 Russian invasion in Ukraine map.
rysiek. Here's my blog. Here's my fedi account.Standard mode: you can control which version is displayed by clicking on a particular version timestamp, or by using arrow keys. Each SVG map is about 500KiB gzipped, so depending on your Internet connection speed it might take a moment to load.
Compare mode: by default, currently selected version is compared to the directly preceeding version; you can use the "pin" button to pin a particular version as the base of a comparison (so as to compare two versions days apart, for example).
The war in Ukraine is on-going, and thus subject to Fog of War: clear and factual information is difficult to come by, and situation changes rapidly. Additionally, drawing maps of control and military movements is notoriously difficult and prone to error. Finally, while Wikipedians do their best to present information unambiguously and have clear rules on when to add or modify it, this is a complicated, emotionally loaded subject.
People will make mistakes, versions will get reverted, discussions will be had. This is not a primary source.I am not the author of these maps, this project uses them semi-automatically. I have no control over the content: if Wikipedians decide to change map colors, move the map key (which is embedded in the SVG), the only thing I can do is hope they'll revert.
An effort is made to notice reverts and ignore versions between the revert and the version it reverts to, so as to avoid showing confusing results of edit wars. Certain versions are also blacklisted when they are particularly egregious (like blinking explosions, dramatic color changes) while not caught by the revert filter.
It is also almost certain that at some point this tool will break in unpredictable ways. Use at your own risk, and mix with other sources, like the Institute for the Study of War.
This tool does not use a single line of JavaScript. That was part of the challenge: to design an interactive interface without using any JS whatsoever. I hope this project shows that quite a lot of interactivity can be implemented using only HTML and CSS, in a way that provides good user experience.
The code is hosted here, and is licensed under the Affero GPL v3.0 or later license. More information in the README.md. Yes, it should be pretty easy to make it work for any Wikipedia-hosted SVG (or other image format) resource.
You can find the relevant privacy notice here.
