Wikipedia:Interactivity

While all of Wikipedia is interactive, in that it is editable by anyone, there are also interactive elements within articles that help readers to learn more about the subject. This page is an essay about the importance of interactive learning on Wikipedia and an effort to keep track of where on the project we already include interactive elements. (I'm starting with the latter).

The case for interactive content

Users want it

For years, Wikipedia readers have noticed Wikipedia looking less and less like the rest of the web. Part of that is due to genre and style: wikis have been around since the early days of the web and encyclopedias are text-first publications, which is less common on the web these days (but not something we intend to change). But there are forms of media that Wikipedia lacks that could benefit reader experience, which is good for both retaining readers and educating them. The Wikimedia Foundation found an 8% decline in human traffic between 2024 and 2025, attributing it to generative AI and social media changing how people seek information (for example, by answering queries directly, without sending users to the source of the information), but also the changing information-seeking habits of young people. The Future Audiences WMF project studies these changes directly, finding a demand among young people for rich media content. One big part of that is video, which is a separate topic; the other is interactivity. Demand for this sort of content has been consistent for a long time.

Educational value

For subjects that are themselves dynamic, procedural, or counterintuitive, letting readers engage with them directly provides an experiential kind of learning that static text and images can't.

Learning from the New York Times

The New York Times has grown while most of its peers have struggled in part because it has become more of a technology company, using the techniques of large social platforms to create an ecosystem that keeps readers engaged. Unable to rely on network effects like Facebook or TikTok, the quality of the content has to be consistent, making it more like Wikipedia. NYT readers might check headlines in the morning, listen to a podcast on the way to work, do a crossword after lunch, look up dinner recipes in the afternoon, read articles in the evening, and do a Wordle at night. Wikipedia is currently articles-only. As first-and-foremost an encyclopedia, unrelated games and activities are out of scope, but we can do much more to keep readers engaged with interactivity, including games that rely on our content. The New York Times's recommendation systems are structurally similar to those used by other social media, but manage to avoid the prioritization over clickbait, sensationalism, and promoted content that the other platforms fall into. Since Wikipedia has no profit motives at all, it should be able to do the same in an even more reader-focused way.

[I've been meaning to write an essay about what Wikipedia can learn from NYT -- this seems like a place for the basic idea that I've tried to be succinct about above, but I'd be curious if folks think it's too off-topic]

Why isn't there more?

Many of the reasons for a lack of interactive content are technical. For security reasons, Wikipedia does not allow inserting JavaScript at the article level. Getting a JavaScript-based gadget approved takes a lot of time and process, leading to gadgets and extensions. Ideally, each of those projects enables a wide range of interactivity rather than needing to be created for each particular application. The {{calculator}} template is a good example of a flexible tool that can do more than one might expect of a calculator, but it's still new. Sometimes tools that had been implemented are discontinued, like the Graphs extension, which was used in thousands of articles until it was turned off in 2023.

There is also a degree of interface conservatism in the community, whereby major interface changes or experiments receive non-trivial resistance. As a result, only a subset of possible tools actually make it to readers.

Types of interactivity

[not sure this taxonomizing is worth doing, but it may help for brainstorming possible projects -- currently only barely started]

Self-demonstrating subjects / playable subjects
- Conway's Game of Life including the game itself
- playable crossword in the crossword article
- playable solitaire (card game)
- virtual Enigma machine you can type into
- optical illusions with a reveal toggle
- moving a picture frame across a photo to illustrate rule of thirds
- simulating thousands of trials at the Monty Hall problem
- set angle, power, and connection point for a virtual billiards break
Replay interface for a recorded event
- a chess board to play through a game in the World Chess Championship 2026)
Maps
- Interactive points of interest (like in Central Park)
- Shading changes to show gains and losses in a border war
- A slider to show demographic changes over time
Object-focused or environmental navigation
- Rotating or zooming in on an object
- Navigating a space, as in Piccadilly Arcade
Calculators
- Calculating body mass index
- Conversation, such as from inches to other units
Other interactive models
- Drawing district lines on a fictional state to explain gerrymandering
- Running the same voting ballots through different systems to explain e.g. ranked-choice voting

Articles with interactive elements

This is a partial list to highlight a broad range of applications. There are many more articles that use calculators or image viewers, for example, in ways similar to those below.

Appendicitis includes a popup with a slider to scroll through CT scan slices
Bertrand's box paradox includes a simulator to test the probability
Birthday problem has a widget to create random groups of people to check for overlapping birthdays
Body mass index has a BMI calculator
Central Park includes an interactive map of notable buildings and structures in the park
Charlemagne chessmen allows a rotational view of the various pieces
Color picker includes Template:RGB slider, which allows readers to adjust the amount of red, green, and blue, and see the resulting color.
Conway's Game of Life includes the game itself (see also Template:Conway's Game of Life gadget)
- Also included in various articles on cellular automata: Breeder, Methuselah, Spaceship
Dr. No (film) includes a map of locations in the film
Euclidian algorithm includes the ability to go through it step by step
Homogeneous coordinates#Use in computer graphics and computer vision Contains a demonstration of using Homogeneous coordinates to transform an image.
Hydropower includes a calculator for the amount of available power
Inch converts any number of inches to a variety of other measurements
Julio Bolbochán#Games includes a chess game where you can step through the moves.
List of countries and dependencies by population is one of many pages with a sortable table
Metabolic pathway#Major_metabolic_pathways represents complex biochemistry with a clickable, metro-style map.
Monty Hall problem allows playing or automating the game.
Piccadilly Arcade includes a user-navigable 360-degree view from inside the space.
Tic-tac-toe includes the ability to play the game against an opponent playing either random or optimal moves
Trajan's Column#Spiral stair includes an interactive image where if you click on parts it shows a cut-away view of that part including wireframes.
Utah teapot includes a 3D render that can be rotated via an STL viewer on Commons.

Tools for interactivity

Template:Calculator is used in a variety of articles. Combined with CSS, it has can be used for a wide range of applications beyond straightforward calculators. See this Signpost article for more and this page for other examples.
Template:Cubemap viewer creates a 360-degree image viewer out of a cubemap image file.
- Template:PanoViewer does something similar, but relies on a user leaving the article to go to panoviewer.toolforge.org (e.g. Flight simulator and its 360)
- https://wikipano.toolforge.org/ is a prototype for interactive 360-degree views which can be linked together
Template:Signpost/Crossword, a template for creating crosswords in the Wikipedia Signpost, such as here
Template:Spatial image viewer allows rotating an object via multiple static images.
Template:Switcher allows for switching images.
Several options for interactive chess boards at various degrees of implementation
Kartographer is a MediaWiki extension enabled here that allows the creation of interactive maps in articles
Template:ImageStackPopup provides a slider to scroll through images
SVGs can use SMIL for interactivity, but only work if directly viewed, e.g. media:Playable_Fox_Chook_Corn_puzzle.svg

Enabled on other projects

Quiz extension, built for Wikiversity. See, for example, a quiz about Wikipedia or the quizzes category on enwv.
Dynamic maps on Wikivoyage, automatically generated from listings
Hiruwiki, interactive geometric and mathematical widgets. Used on Basque Wikipedia e.g. eu:Pi (zenbakia)#Monte Carlo metodoa

Games outside of articles

[not sure how much to develop this section - waiting for responses at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia games ]

In addition to the interactive games listed above, which are built directly into articles, many developers have built games for Wikipedia or using Wikipedia data. Some are played without any additional software, like Wikiracing (which began as Wikipedia:Wiki Game), whereby people compete to try to get from one page to another via links, or the Wikipedia Adventure, which teaches people how to edit Wikipedia. Others are built off-wiki, like Wikitrivia, which presents players with a series of events to slot into a timeline.

Some of these games may merit better integration into Wikipedia. While some games may help to understand a specific article topic, others could be incorporated as site-wide features, incorporated into the main page, projectspace, or one of the mobile apps.

The page Wikipedia:Wikipedia games was created in 2012 to index games people made with a presence on-wiki, and has expanded to include a variety of off-wiki games. The website playwiki.games was set up by User:SuperHamster to showcase such games, including those created at wiki-themed game jams.

WMF game experiments

In 2025, the WMF tested a Roblox game called Wikispeedia. According to its closing analysis, Roblox is a relatively effective platform for engaging with Gen Alpha audiences in short-term periods, but will require more integration with its ecosystem for long-term engagement and retention. As a platform, Roblox encourages player-vs-player games, constant updates, and monetization, which are not elements that necessarily naturally mesh with Wikipedia's mission.

This page was redesigned at the edge.

A page that knows where it met you.