Wikipedia philosophy phenomenon
Wikipedia linking tendency
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Wikipedia philosophy phenomenon, sometimes called the "Philosophy Game", is the tendency that clicking the first hyperlink in the main text of an English Wikipedia article, and then repeating the process for subsequent articles, usually leads to the "Philosophy" article.[1]
History
The phenomenon was discovered in 2008 by a teenage Wikipedian named Mark J.[2][3]
The phenomenon received widespread attention from a "fun fact" in the xkcd webcomic on 25 May 2011, which led University of Vermont researchers Mark Ibrahim, Christopher Danforth, and Peter Sheridan Dodds to publish a paper on the matter.[1] The research found that the first link generalises the topic and eventually leads to "Philosophy":
So while a great many [First Link Network] paths flow to "Philosophy" [...], the accumulation is not the result of many articles directly referencing "Philosophy." Instead, first links flow towards "Philosophy" as the ultimate anchor, by generalizing from specific to broad.[4]
In February 2016, the phenomenon was true for 97% of all articles on Wikipedia,[5] an increase from 94.52% in 2011.[6] Tools have been developed which map links between articles to find where loops end.[3]
Other languages
Some other language Wikipedias, like the German, French and Russian editions, also led to "Philosophy" like the English Wikipedia. Others, like the Dutch and Japanese editions, did not.[5] As of 2017, the concepts with highest centrality to first link networks in European language Wikipedias are sciences, such as "Psychology" for Italian Wikipedia,[5] while East Asian languages are connected by concepts such as humans or Earth.[7]
See also
- Wiki rabbit hole – Navigating between topics while browsing wikis
- Wikiracing – Racing game of traversing Wikipedia pages via hyperlinks
- Six degrees of separation – Concept of social inter-connectedness
- Small world network – Graph where most nodes are reachable in a small number of steps
