WikiLoopr
Learning and science
wikipedia link exploration
SHOW HN2012
295points
161comments
#39of 1,677 in 2012
Top 3%of 2012 by points
How HN took it
CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments
14 positive, 55 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 30 critical, out of 100 comments about the project. Thread score -0.13.
Execution: 2 for, 23 againstIdea: 6 for, 3 againstPerformance: 3 for, 3 againstDesign: 2 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Fun way to explore Wikipedia loops
From 3 comments
This is beautiful. I've always thought sites like IMDB and Wikipedia are hypertext expressions of the purest form. As a nerdy kid, over a few years I read my way through a…
encoderer on HNI love wiki. I spend hours following links. Having loops is a feature or else I might never stop. Greek City States -> ``` Polis City Human settlement Statistics Data Level of…
njharman on HNPuts me in mind of Translation Party[1] (which is back up, kudos to WillC and Rick!). There's a lot to be entertained via this sort of vertex-following algorithm. [1]…
hoprocker on HN
Mathematical explanation of why chains loop
From 1 comment
From a mathematical perspective, this is actually not that surprising. Think of the act of clicking the first link in the Wikipedia article as a function that takes in the page…
lbarrow on HN
Objections
Results change as Wikipedia articles are edited
From 3 comments
Unless the articles are edited before you come back!
justincormack on HNyesterday, the loop was always the same. since this made it to the top of hacker news, the loop has been changing. look at the revision history of some of those pages and you'll…
seangransee on HNGuys :) This is always fun when it crops up - especially the musing on how deeply rooted the topic of philosophy is. But please don't go editing articles to improve the loops or…
ErrantX on HN
First-link rule fails on images, coordinates and bolded links
From 3 comments
When images appear first in the page's source, the wrong link is chosen. I assume you are trying to go for the first link, as a human reader would see it. For example, the page…
joelverhagen on HNYou have a bug. Pages like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc. (note the dot at the end) have a "geographic coordinate system" link at the top, that isn't part of the…
pooriaazimi on HNThis behaves erratically. Sometimes it considers the coordinates link, above the entire article the "first link" (in the "Michael Phelps" chain), sometimes not (Chicago).…
JohnsonB on HN
Requests
Cache Wikipedia requests
From 2 comments
Seems like it would be nice to cache some of these requests, instead of repeatedly hammering the Wikipedia API. And why is it grabbing images? http://i.imgur.com/KSju9.png…
pavel_lishin on HNYou could optimize this a bit by caching the loops, I noticed some pauses between Fact and Truth, seeing as how that loop always comes up it would be nice to cache it.
wkral on HN
Questions
Which loops exist and how many
From 1 comment
Agreed. I'd love to know how many different cycles the wikipedia article graph contains. If most articles lead to 1 out of 20 possible cycles, it's much less interesting than if…
klawed on HN
Alternatives named
XKCD and mrphlip Wikipedia philosophy writeups
From 2 comments
As far as I know, this was noticed in May last year on the xkcd forums. http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=71309 There's a writeup of it with a gigantic picture over…
sp332 on HNNobody linked xkcd yet? Relevant Alt-Text: http://xkcd.com/903/
zyb09 on HN
TheWikiGame
From 1 comment
I have a site: http://TheWikiGame.com that makes a game out of a related idea (finding the connection between Wikipedia articles). Recently, I've been giving access to the game…
clemesha on HN
Wikipedia Get to Philosophy page
From 1 comment
Wikipedia is aware of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Get_to_Philosophy
anvandare on HN