The Guidebook Rewriting Itself Screensaver
The The Guidebook Rewriting Itself screensaver shows live edits to Wikivoyage, key-less from the MediaWiki API. A travel guide's facts expire in a way an encyclopaedia's do not — hours change, a museum closes, a bus route is renumbered — so the edits are mostly small corrections to listings, which the byte deltas show plainly. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
Live preview
Press ESC to leave fullscreen. Settings are saved in your browser only.
How the The Guidebook Rewriting Itself screensaver works
The saver reads the source described above and draws it on a canvas — no account, no tracking.
Live edits to Wikivoyage, key-less from the MediaWiki API. A travel guide's facts expire in a way an encyclopaedia's do not — hours change, a museum closes, a bus route is renumbered — so the edits are mostly small corrections to listings, which the byte deltas show plainly.
It refreshes on a schedule, so what you see stays current.
Colours can be changed in settings; nothing is stored beyond your own browser.
How a travel guide gets edited
Wikivoyage is a Wikimedia project that builds a free, collaboratively written travel guide, with articles organised by destination and written in a practical register: where to eat, how to get around, what to watch out for. Like Wikipedia it runs on MediaWiki, whose recent-changes API reports each edit as it is saved.
Each entry in this display represents one edit: the page that was changed, the editor, and the size change in bytes. A positive delta means text was added and a negative one means text was removed. Wikivoyage articles use standard listing formats for attractions, shops, restaurants, bars and lodgings under headings such as See, Do, Buy, Eat, Drink and Sleep, with fields such as price and contact details, so a small change is often a corrected detail in one listing.
Because travel facts go stale quickly, activity is a mix of many small corrections. The stream shows edits rather than quality, and it can include reverts and edits by automated accounts. It does not tell you whether a listing is currently accurate.
A worked example
Live edits to Wikivoyage, key-less from the MediaWiki API. A travel guide's facts expire in a way an encyclopaedia's do not — hours change, a museum closes, a bus route is renumbered — so the edits are mostly small corrections to listings, which the byte deltas show plainly.
Settings & tips
- Accent and Background recolour the display.
- Every value on screen comes from the live source — nothing is simulated.
- Press ESC to leave fullscreen.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this real data?
- Yes — it comes from the source named on this page and is refreshed on a schedule.
- Is a key needed?
- No. This source is fully key-less.
- Is it free?
- Yes, and it runs entirely in your browser.
- What does the byte change mean?
- It is the difference in page size caused by the edit. Positive numbers add content, negative numbers remove it, and values near zero are usually small changes.
- Is Wikivoyage the same as Wikipedia?
- No. It is a separate Wikimedia project focused on travel guides. Both run on MediaWiki software.
- What are the See, Eat and Sleep sections?
- Wikivoyage uses standard listing formats for attractions, activities, shops, restaurants, bars and lodgings under the See, Do, Buy, Eat, Drink and Sleep headings.