Xikipedia

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SHOW HN2026

441points
142comments
#66of 4,366 in 2026
Top 2%of 2026 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

18 positive, 29 neutral or asking, 10 mixed, 29 critical, out of 86 comments about the project. Thread score -0.15.

Performance: 1 for, 13 againstIdea: 7 for, 6 againstDesign: 2 for, 5 againstExecution: 1 for, 0 againstDocs: 1 for, 0 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

  • Original and fun concept; interesting random articles.

    From 3 comments
    • This is a very neat idea. I am not sure why the page needs to load 40mb of data and make me wait 5 mins before the first view. I'd probably also add some ranking criteria to…
      abhinai on HN
    • You know, I enjoyed this, it's nice to get some random, interesting stuff to browse on occasion.
      upstreamutopia on HN
    • Man, this is the greatest thing I have seen on the internet.
      gkoenig on HN
  • Lightweight code, impressive for its size.

    From 2 comments
    • This is really cool. And in only 500 lines of code is really impressive. I would have thought this was much more.
      orionfollett on HN
    • Presumably the 40mb of data is not from Wikipedia, but the Javascript tracking code bundle needed to turn it into a doomscrollable social media feed. ;) By those standards, I…
      rwl on HN

Objections

  • Initial 40MB load takes minutes and is too slow.

    From 4 comments
    • > Xikipedia is loading... (3% of 40MB loaded) I gave up after about a minute.
      esperent on HN
    • Took several minutes to load for me, and when my download got to 100%, the browser (safari on ios) refreshed the page and started at 0% again.
      hamburglar on HN
    • I was genuinely excited to try this and it sounded in theory like a lot of fun! Unfortunately yeah too slow to load.
      strich on HN
    • It took forever to load
      kurtis_reed on HN
  • Page crashes or refreshes on mobile Safari and Firefox iOS.

    From 3 comments
    • Took several minutes to load for me, and when my download got to 100%, the browser (safari on ios) refreshed the page and started at 0% again.
      hamburglar on HN
    • Page crashed after downloading and extracting. On safari iPhone that’s a few years old. I was really interested in trying / why I waited
      icameron on HN
    • I have been waiting for a project like this since last year when someone on Twitter mentioned it. I can finally doomscroll without my brain rotting. Update, it does not run…
      Alifatisk on HN
  • Feed is not really doomscrollable; cards are unclickable or lead away from feed.

    From 2 comments
    • I don't get it. It shows the intro paragraph of some articles in card list and that's it? Clicking the card takes you away from the feed, instead of creating e.g. some kind of a…
      stck on HN
    • Everything is unclickable on the first page for me, the word "Estonia" is typed in grey font on the dark-gray layout, I can not do anything except of selecting text.
      eimrine on HN

Requests

  • Lazy-load data instead of downloading everything upfront.

    From 2 comments
    • Please fix the loading issue and I’ll return! I think you don’t need to pull all the data at initialization, you could lazily grab a couple from each category and just keep doing…
      pinkmuffinere on HN
    • Yeah. Should be able to load in the background once you start scrolling
      sampli on HN
  • Support languages other than English.

    From 1 comment
    • How cool is that! Feature request: Let the user select another language than English.
      fowlie on HN
  • Add undo for likes and a negative feedback signal.

    From 2 comments
    • Is there a technical reason that you can't click on the filled heart icon again to undo your like? Is it just not implemented, or would it be too much effort to undo the effect…
      extraduder_ire on HN
    • I've been waiting for someone to implement this well! I think in the future we might even have tiktok-style influencer videos generated from wikipedia content, who knows. I've…
      sebastiennight on HN

Questions

  • How does the algorithm work?

    From 1 comment
    • How does it actually work? Can you add an "about" page that goes into the algo? Or can you add more info on the readme on github? I'd love to learn more.
      ryan_j_naughton on HN
  • Will the code be open source?

    From 2 comments
    • I've been waiting for someone to implement this well! I think in the future we might even have tiktok-style influencer videos generated from wikipedia content, who knows. I've…
      sebastiennight on HN
    • Yeah I plan on putting the code for that on GitHub soon too.
      rebane2001 on HN

Alternatives named

  • WikiTok

    From 2 comments
    • Love the concept. Wikitok also exists [1] but the recommendation aspect that you're bringing you the table is a very intriguing original spin on it. I would be fascinated to see…
      glenstein on HN
    • See also: https://www.wikitok.io/ And a plug for my own (fiendishly difficult) Wikipedia-based game: https://studiowgx.willgrant.org/wikipedia-golf/
      wgx on HN
  • Wikispeedruns and Six Degrees of Wikipedia

    From 1 comment
    • - https://wikispeedruns.com/ - https://sixdegreesofwikipedia.com/ - https://www.wikitok.io/
      renegat0x0 on HN
  • Egghead Scroll Learn

    From 1 comment
    • Cool concept. I built something very similar [1] but as a native iOS app in an attempt to cut down on my doomscrolling, but it turns out it’s hard to get my brain to read plain…
      DCAlmond on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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