The Wikipedia Game

[Farmer]

This is apparently stolen from the alt-text of an xkcd comic, but I had it brought to my attention today in my website's IRC channel, and it's pretty damned cool if you ask me.

1) Choose any Wikipedia page, at random.
2) Click the first link on the page that isn't in brackets or italics.
3) Repeat on the next page, and so on. If you get stuck in an infinite loop, click the second link.
4) You will always finish on the article for philosophy.

Mindblown.

[Sniffnoy]

Note that "brackets" here is in the British sense, i.e. parentheses.

But, I can't say I like rule #3. Not because the original didn't have it, but because it's silly. Consider: If we exclude it, what's going on is that we have a map from Wikipedia pages to Wikipedia pages, and we turn this into a directed graph, and we look at the cycles. The claim then is that most articles will end up in the "philosophy" cycle (which is actually a 2-cycle, btw - philosophy -> metaphysics -> philosophy - though last time I checked it had been a 3-cycle). And then a fun game is to find counterexamples, i.e., other cycles.

But suppose now we include this rule. What is this saying now? You've got some weird second-order loop-escaping thing going on. This is a new weird graph, and... when do you go to the second link, anyway? At which point in the cycle? At your first repeat, I would assume, that's the natural way, but the rule fails to even specify. But look - it's still almost certainly the case that you won't *always* reach philosophy. This is just increasing the mixing to make it more likely. But it's doing it in a very unnatural way! Because you see, you could still get stuck in a cycle of cycles, and then what? Click the third link? The rules don't say to do that! And if you were to do that, you can't just keep pushing this arbitrarily far. (Where would philosophy lead, for instance?) Eventually you'll be at n'th order cycles, where n is bigger than the number of links on the pages you're encountering!

In short rule 3 is very unnatural. If you exclude it, you're doing the obvious first-order thing. If you include it, you're doing some weird second-order thing. And if you include it but try to make it natural by going third-order, fourth-order, etc., it doesn't even work.

(Note that under rule 3 philosophy gets stuck in a 2-cycle of 2-cycles - philosophy -> metaphysics -> philosophy -> epistemology -> philosophy).

[FlashTHD]

Not to suck the fun out of this, but I seem to recall Holic threatening bloody murder if anyone ever linked XKCD on this board again... :p

[Ritz]

Not that we aren't impressed, mind.

[G.Silver]

If you look at the context of the first link in every wikipedia article, it really becomes sort of obvious that they're all going to end up taking you to the same place eventually, since nearly every article begins with "a type of (blank)." There's got to be something at the root of that tree!

[Delphine]

There's got to be something at the root of that tree!

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.

i.e. philosophy is the study of everything. I'd be surprised to find something that didn't, however tangentially, link back to it.

[Sniffnoy]

Nonetheless, there are counterexamples! (Assuming we get rid of rule 3; presumably there still are if we don't, but I haven't yet looked for any.) Examples include "Paleolithic" -> "Prehistory" -> "Recorded history" -> "History of the world" -> "Paleolithic" and "Soviet Union" -> "Constitution of the Soviet Union" -> "Soviet Union". (And the latter is nice since, being of length 2, it's minimal unless an article links to itself, which they aren't supposed to.)

[Delphine]

Your second example is incorrect -- the first link on "Constitution of the Soviet Union" goes to "Constitution", which continues on to end at Philosophy.

[(No Imagination)]

You will always finish on the article for philosophy.

To insure better understanding, beginnings of Wiki articles always deal with common nominators (Like...Bismuth is a chemical element..Chemical element is a pure chemical substance...Chemical substance is etc.). You're bound to end up at Aristotle's Organon (Categories or Metaphysics) when you go research stuff like this - Wikipedia or not - , because both of those works deal with workings of words on the lowest possible levels. And since Aristotle is considered a (somewhat founding) philosopher, well, there you go.

Incidentally, it took a freaking lot of pages to reach "philosophy" from "bismuth".

[Dr. BUGMAN]

I'm sure glad there aren't any nerds here!

[Zeta]

Platypus to Philosophy - 25 clicks.

[Isuka]

Err... Sonic the Hedgehog (series) to Philosophy - 23 clicks.

Sorry, I don't feel especially creative now.

[Delphine]

I'm sure glad there aren't any nerds here!

This is the best game this forum has talked about in ages.

[Isuka]

Booger to Philosophy - 22 clicks.

... Fascinating.

[Neo]

Reggie Fils-Aime to Philosophy - 11 clicks.

Hmm...

[Ritz]

Space disco - 17 clicks.
Prostate - 17 clicks?!
USS Goliah (SP-1494) - 29 clicks. I'm in the lead, right?