The mouseover for today’s XKCD claims that if you start on any Wikipedia page, click the first non-parenthetical, non-italic link in the body of the article, and repeat, eventually you’ll get to “Philosophy”. Of course, being a Doper, I tried it. My first attempt started with the Sloan Great Wall, but that eventually led to Science -> Knowledge -> Fact -> Information -> Sequence -> Mathematics -> Research -> Knowledge , a loop. Then I tried again with Battlestar Galactica, and again ended up at Science, at which point of course I’d end up in the same loop. In fact, it seems like “Science” would be a pretty common destination, not to mention any of the other entries into that loop. Did Randall even bother checking this one? And are there any other loops folks have found?
Game Room thread discussing this.
The mathematics path lead to philosophy this morning - it loops now because of a series of edits. There are several articles currently involved in something of an edit war, one side breaking the path to philosophy, the other side making it. As I said in the other thread about today’s xkcd [edit - that’d be the one in MPSIMS, not the one in the Game Room], I don’t know which side started it, but I wish they’d both knock it off.
I sometimes think Randall has done more damage to Wikipedia than people who hate it by doing jokes on stupid wiki-tricks, since that prompts editing slap-fights like this one.
I’m sure he was kidding. I tried with the featured article on the first page and shortly got caught in a loop.
Worked for me starting at “No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded” which I got to by using Wiki’s random link.
I think it took 14 steps.
Ah, OK, I checked the first page of Cafe Society for “xkcd” and didn’t see anything. Mods, you can merge this in with one of the other threads if you want.
And the loop I found has since been broken (and now leads to “philosophy”) by a change to the Mathematics page.
Does ‘body’ mean not counting the introductory portion of the article above the contents box, if there is one?
I started from the first wikipedia page in my browser history, going below the contents box, and wandered over about 40-50 articles before ending up in this loop:
Latin
Philology
Greek Language
Balkans
Adriatic Sea
Latin
It’s probably too much to expect any looping behavior to remain long in a dynamic cyberspace like wikipedia.
The first non-italic, non-parenthetical link will likely come before the contents box (if it’s substantial and written to the proper style) - the italics will be to the disambig and/or other similarly named articles, and/or any housekeeping stuff (‘needs cleanup/cites’ ‘may not meet notability requirements’), and the parenthetical will be the pronunciation guide (which will include links to appropriate IPA and language articles).
Actually, XKCD is wrong - everything on wiki leads to Natural Law.
I picked something to try.
English language
West Germanic languages
Germanic languages
Indo-European languages
Language family
Language
Human
Taxonomy
Science
Knowledge
Fact
Information
Finite set
Mathematics
Quantity
Property (philosophy)
Modern philosophy
Philosophy <---------------------------- Here there be filosofizin’
Reason
Sense
Physiology
Organ (anatomy)
Biology
Natural science
Science <---- loop here
I thought it led to Kevin Bacon.
No, everything on wiki leads to spending too much time reading wikipedia articles.
Scientology
Scientology beliefs and practices
L. Ron Hubbard
Pulp magazine
Fiction
Narrative
Latin
Italic languages
Indo-European languages <— I got this one in my last post, and it loops with Philosophy in the loop.
<link in with prior post traversal>
Language family
Language
Human
Taxonomy
Science
Knowledge
Fact
Information
Finite set
Mathematics
Quantity
Property (philosophy)
Modern philosophy
Philosophy <---------------------------- Here there be filosofizin’
Reason
Sense
Physiology
Organ (anatomy)
Biology
Natural science
Science <---- loop here
I got from stink bugs (Pentatomoidea) to Philosophy in 12 steps. Tried it again and it took 14. Some busy little editin’ beavers out there.
I tried my home town and came close, but never got the prize. Eventually I got caught in a loop of “Greek” and “Greeks”. But it took probably 20 clicks to get there.
I started at xkcd and got to Philosophy 19 links later, via Science so the loop must have been edited out. I noticed a page at about 3/4 of the way had been partially locked until 1 June 2011 with an explanation about edit warring.
You shouldn’t have - the first non-italic, non-parenthetical link in ‘Greeks’ is ‘nation’. (Although the first non-italic, non-parenthetical link is ‘Greek Language’ is ‘Greeks’. For ‘Greek’, which is the disambig, it’s ‘Greece’.)
I started off with Comic Science Fiction and eventually wound up in Philosophy. That’d be “genre”, “literature”, “fiction”, “narrative”, “Latin”, “Italic language”, “Indo-European”, “family”, “language”, “human”, “taxonomy”, “science”, “knowledge”, “fact”, “information”, “finite set”, “mathematics”, “quantity”, “property (philosophy)”, “modern philosophy”, and finally “philosophy”.
It worked for witch-hunt (which I coincidentally was looking up for another thread).
Witch-hunt > Witchcraft > Anthropology > Humanities > List of academic disciplines > Academia > Community > Interaction > Action theory (philosophy) > Philosophy