Wikipedia talk:Getting to Philosophy

XKCD

Nice little mention of this on today's XKCD hover text: http://xkcd.com/903/ Maszanchi (talk) 09:44, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Criticism

Criticism What does this have to do with Wikipedia's goal of being an encyclopedia? Should this really be hosted by Wikipedia? Chillum 02:00, 23 February 2009 (UTC) It's part of WP:DoF, I think. Kayau Don't be too CNN I'LL DO MY JOB uprising! uprising! 14:20, 12 February 2010 (UTC) Has anyone notice that this is absurd? Let's try "Get to Salad" theory. Any article of Wikipedia, following the rules as stated here, a) leads to "Salad" or b) gets stuck in a loop. Why? Because, using Logics (a part of Philosphy), there are only two possibilities on where an article can lead: I) to any other article or II) to a loop. Well, the articles "Philosophy" and "Salad" are within the category I, as well as any other article whatsoever. [ Sorry for my English, I am not a native speaker ] 155.185.114.76 (talk) 22:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC) Excellent point. Maybe a more interesting hypothesis to investigate is whether the Philosophy page is 'closer' to all pages than any other page is? framed0000 01:06, 26 May 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Framed0000 (talk • contribs) The interesting thing is that so many articles get to Philosophy and so few get to Salad. Guy Macon (talk) 16:58, 26 May 2011 (UTC) How come there are seven in the "top five"? Shouldn't there only be five in the top five? (Unless there's a tie for fifth, of course, or three-way for fourth, for four-way for third, etc.) What we really have, then, is 1st, tie for 2nd, tie for 4th, 6th, 7th. OneWeirdDude (talk) 22:44, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia weekly discussion

Wikipedia weekly discussion Just thought I'd let you know that I raised this essay/game in the most recent recording of Wikipedia Weekly podcast. It will be at the end of episode 50. The others on the panel hadn't seen it before and we spend some time testing it on air. Good times, good times.... Witty Lama 08:28, 29 May 2008 (UTC) I just listened to that - thanks for the awesome publicity. Being 16, it's probably the most publicised thing I've ever done! The funny thing is you managed to get quite a few chains wrong! The rule about non-trivial links seems to have led to a few problems, as evidenced by the different threads you went to after Manga! If you ignore the non-trivial links, as far as I can see the chances of getting to Philosophy are quite a bit lower; so I reckon we should keep them in. Anyway, the important thing is not whether the chains you tried were actually right... hopefully it will inspire some people to make chains of their own and have fun putting them here Cheers again Mark J (talk) 13:17, 29 May 2008 (UTC) That's sorta' the fun of it really - ignoring the trivial links. I think it loses a lot of interest if ever single person or event goes directly to Latin via Calendar because of the birthdate. Yes, we did get it a bit confused in the show, but it proved it was possible to get there by two ways. The point of the game is that it doesn't really matter which article you go to, you'll still end up at the right place! :-) Relatedly, I reckon that when indeed there are loops (such as with transport) then this doesn't mean there's a flaw in the "philosophy game" but rather that means there's a flaw with the article in question not following proper WP:MoS for the lead paragraph. Therefore, this game is actually a good way of testing out the adherence of articles to that particular MoS requirement! Witty Lama 16:36, 29 May 2008 (UTC) The strategy section is an attempt at that PhD analysis you mentioned! (please expand it.) Mark J (talk) 17:35, 29 May 2008 (UTC) I see some of my tips listed in there :). Only #2 now, I should have checked SMB3 myself, one of my favorite games :). Chris M. (talk) 05:58, 31 May 2008 (UTC) I do wonder what will happen when these flaws are corrected, though... We'll end up with chain decay. :-) Any ideas for updates, or at least an encouragement to people to give dates with their chains? Waltham, The Duke of 09:52, 31 May 2008 (UTC) I guess just occasionally testing out the "Top 5" ones to make sure they are still legit. Having people sign them is always nice though. What a fun time-waster. Chris M. (talk) 21:11, 1 June 2008 (UTC) I tried this with "pong" and it appeared to take 30 steps. Could someone else give this a try to make sure I followed the rules correctly? If I did, then it's a tie for the longest chain. Cancilla (talk) 18:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC) Wiki has a length of 27, by my count. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.251.131.185 (talk) 06:50, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Comments improperly posted to main page

Comments improperly posted to main page The following comments were improperly posted to the main page, so O moved them here. Guy Macon (talk) 12:18, 30 May 2011 (UTC) Stricter variant: skip Latin. It's nice to think that the articles tend to proceed up to higher and higher levels of generality and abstraction. Unfortunately, a lot of it is simply seems to be going through the Latin article via that little bracketed etymology blurb at the start of many articles. Kindof takes some of the magic out of it if it's just an artifact of the particular way we structure ledes. Either way though, I'd like to see a vector-ish visualization of the lede link structure. I don't doubt it would funnel somewhat, and philosophy does seem like an apt attractor. Nonplus (talk) 02:40, 1 June 2008 (UTC) If you do that, the top 5 get stuck in a loop at Sociology (if not before).--HereToHelp (talk to me) 02:43, 1 June 2008 (UTC) Right. Sociology > Social contact > Social actions > Sociology.Nonplus (talk) 02:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Links to sections

Links to sections Christianity links to Monotheistic_religion#Christian_view a section in another article. Do we take the first link in the section Special revelation or the article Theology. Zginder 2008-09-10T18:13Z (UTC) Shamrock links to # ireland geographic_coordinate_system %ce%a6 modern_greek_language cappadocian_greek_language hellenic_languages indo-european_language_family language_family language human precambrian history_of_earth planet ancient_greek greek_language albania balkans europe list_of_continents_by_population landmass landform earth_sciences science mathematics quantity property_(philosophy) modern_philosophy philosophy# ireland geographic_coordinate_system %ce%a6 modern_greek_language cappadocian_greek_language hellenic_languages indo-european_language_family language_family language human precambrian history_of_earth planet ancient_greek greek_language albania balkans europe list_of_continents_by_population landmass landform earth_sciences science mathematics quantity property_(philosophy) modern_philosophy philosophy 29 links — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.82.9.75 (talk) 04:29, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

93%?

93%? I always get the loops. Kayau Don't be too CNN I'LL DO MY JOB uprising! uprising! 14:19, 12 February 2010 (UTC) I'm guessing 93% is a 'fun' statistic, since I don't see a claim here that it was ever actually researched. When I first heard about this in 2008 from Wikipedia Weekly, getting to 'philosophy' usually worked, but now I always get loops too. Why has this changed? I suspect some crucial first links have been changed to articles that don't lead to philosophy. I have tried many random articles (using the Wikipedia Weekly method of skipping 'trivial' links) and they never go to philosophy, but they always end up in this loop:

Minimizing Harm to Wikipedia

Minimizing Harm to Wikipedia While this is an interesting effect and a fun game, it is also a source of a lot of editing activity that is for reasons other than improving Wikipedia. In particular, listing "Articles likely to loop instead of going to Philosophy" tends to lead to those articles being edited so that they do lead to Philosophy, often using links that would otherwise not be included. This sort of gaming the system harms Wikipedia. For this reason, it could be argued that this article should not list such loops. An alternative argument is that eliminating such loops is itself good for Wikipedia, in that many such loops are caused by using two words to define each other. If this is a valid argument, we should encourage listing loops, but also encourage making them non-loops using high quality links that to more general topics that follow Wikipedia policies, and discourage links that are only added to remove loops. Comments? Guy Macon (talk) 12:49, 26 May 2011 (UTC) OK, let me put it this way. Does anyone have any objections to the section being deleted? Object to deleting and replacing with a section explaining about not adding links unless they improve the page? Object to just adding the explanation? As is is now something gets listed and a few minutes later someone "fixes" it. Guy Macon (talk) 00:39, 27 May 2011 (UTC) I am deleting the section for the reasons listed above, Please discuss before putting it back in. Guy Macon (talk) 10:38, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

XXXX in Film

XXXX in Film I haven't found a single film article that follows the alleged pattern of looping back to itself. Does this trick really work? If not, it should be stricken from the list of articles likely to end in a loop. At the very least, an example that works should be provided. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.6.170.10 (talk) 05:07, 27 May 2011 (UTC) All such specific examples get changed shortly after someone lists them. Because of this, listing specific articles is a waste of effort. I have removed the specific examples and left in more general strategy advice. Guy Macon (talk) 13:01, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Delete Strategy Section?

Delete Strategy Section? The Strategy section lists a bunch of specific cases that temps those who want to game the system to edit those specific pages and make the listed strategy obsolete. Please discuss whether we want to make the strategy section more generic instead of listing particular loops / chains. We can still discuss specific loops and chains here on the talk page. Guy Macon (talk) 12:22, 30 May 2011 (UTC) I decided to just go ahead and do it. Please discuss if you think I should undo that change. Guy Macon (talk) 13:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

The rest get stuck in two-article loops?

The rest get stuck in two-article loops? The lead of this article says "About 93%[citation needed] of all articles seem to lead eventually to the article Philosophy. The rest get stuck in two-article loops.[citation needed]". So nowhere on Wikipedia is there a three article loop that does not include Philosophy? I doubt that. Guy Macon (talk) 12:59, 30 May 2011 (UTC) Mathematics, as of this post, is an example of a three-article loop. Even if "study" was to be hyperlinked to Research, the loop would persist. 107.4.97.141 (talk) 05:41, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

special cases

Special cases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_leaders_in_2011 Well... This. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.32.173.10 (talk) 14:03, 4 June 2011 (UTC) Except that I think it does lead to Philosophy? At least the first link in the Religions Leaders 2011 is to 2010. It looks like this goes all the way back to 1810 at which point the first link (leaders in 1809) is red so the first link is to Events in 1810. Which rapidly goes to Calendar and thus I understand to Philosophy in the same way that articles about famous people having their date of birth at the start also do. You may however have found a new long chain though, although we'll need someone with time or a bot to go through the articles on religions leaders 2011 back to 1810 to confirm ...--62.172.72.131 (talk) 11:45, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Strategy

Strategy Please read the section titled "Gaming The System" for tips on strategies that do not involve cheating or harming Wikipedia. That is really clever! And it just goes to show that deep down all pursuits of human thought can be brought to a philosophical basis. There's a PhD in this... Witty Lama 01:53, 27 May 2008 (UTC) This makes me laugh. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 03:38, 27 May 2008 (UTC) Science → Knowledge → Plato → Classical Greece → Culture → Alfred L. Kroeber → United States → Federalism → Politics → Group decision making → Synergy → Relationship → Interpersonal relationship → Limerence → Cognition → Science Most articles probably relate to science, culture, or politics. Maybe 'philosophy' used to be in this loop (or a similar one). While 'Get to Philosophy' seems dead, the appealing idea behind it remains: human concepts are all derived from a foundation of common assumptions and logical constructs. ——Rich jj (talk) 19:52, 9 February 2011 (UTC) You can start at List of state leaders in 2009, continue to previous year upon previous year until List of state leaders in 110 BC, then go to 110 BC, Jugurtha, Ancient Libya, Nile Valley, Nile, Arabic language, and then sail down the language route. Does this qualify for a chain above 50 links, or as worst abuse of the rules? AGrimm (talk) 00:03, 3 May 2009 (UTC) Actually, Science does lead to philosophy, knowledge leads to [facts] and not [plato] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.65.39.47 (talk) 14:13, 27 May 2011 (UTC) Matter -> atoms -> Matter —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.225.198.201 (talk) 00:35, 22 May 2011 (UTC) That doesn't work - Matter -> physical objects -> ... -> Philosophy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.1.243.145 (talk) 12:29, 27 May 2011 (UTC) If entries in boxouts at the top of the page count then I got number 0 to loop after 12 steps - Soviet films of 1958 - 1958 in film - In the Money - Comedy film - Film - Wikipedia:Citing sources - Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources - Category:Wikipedia content guidelines - Help:Category - MediaWiki - Wikipedia:Article size - Category:Wikipedia editing guidelines - Help:Category Sazzer (talk) 17:57, 25 May 2011 (UTC) Wow, even this one works: Avril Lavigne -> September 27 -> Leap year -> Lunisolar calendar -> Calendar -> Time -> Religion -> Reality -> Being -> Ontology -> philosophy! Think outside the box 11:25, 27 May 2008 (UTC) Does this sort of thing work on other websites? I tried it a few times on Everything2, and one of the places I ended up on was good/ethical. — DanielLC 15:45, 27 May 2008 (UTC) Do Wikipedia links count (eg WP:BOLD) ? Think outside the box 17:24, 27 May 2008 (UTC) Nah, in the unlikely event that that's the first link in an article (in which case you are looking at a weird article). Mark J (talk) 18:07, 28 May 2008 (UTC) The first link in most language articles is Help:IPA. Think outside the box 09:48, 29 May 2008 (UTC) Ah, good thinking, yes, I was discounting those. Mark J (talk) 12:03, 29 May 2008 (UTC) It looks like one main reason why many articles end up linking to Philosophy is because they start with etymologies that link to a language, probably all of which link to language eventually (at least Latin and Greek do), which links to philosophy. 67.70.149.182 (talk) 20:21, 27 May 2008 (UTC) Almost all biographies link to dates which link to leap year and then quickly to philosophy. Most places get to Social Contract quickly, which goes right to philosophy. So if you start or get to a place or a person, or language, it'll end soon. Chris M. (talk) 06:40, 28 May 2008 (UTC) I think you can discount "non significant" links such as birth dates and latin pronunciations etc. Rather, what should be clicked on is the first link of the first descriptive sentence. The sentence that would generally say "X is a Y" where X = the subject in question and Y = the descriptive category it falls into. This test should be clicking on those "Y" links. Witty Lama Yeah, I think links to Latin should be skipped. Too easy. 134.153.12.58 (talk) 14:36, 28 May 2008 (UTC) Maybe you should delete all the links then! But the proposal is one worth considering. Thanks for all the input and talk guys. Mark J (talk) 18:06, 28 May 2008 (UTC) I tried it about 15 times from Random Article and didn't get to philosophy once. However I did get into a loop with Indo-European Languages about 80% of the time. --Anonymaus (talk) 20:37, 28 May 2008 (UTC) How's that? Indo-European is part of this chain: Indo-European languages Language family Language Symbol Object Object (philosophy) Philosophy Ethics Philosophy The reason for Anonymaus's confusion is valid; someone changed the first link in the Symbol article. I hope this doesn't cause problems! Mark J (talk) 12:03, 29 May 2008 (UTC) I only found a handful of loops (vehicles, and some computer related articles go towards loops usually. Chris M. (talk) 07:34, 29 May 2008 (UTC) Other loops involve landforms, and any film article. Mark J (talk) 12:03, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Exhaustive list of cycles

Being interested in how many articles actually lead to Philosophy, I downloaded a database dump and played with it. The results are here. Oh, and the actual number, as of May 26, is 94.5%, not 93%. Pretty close, though. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:41, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Other Languages

Anyone done a quick survey of the other big Wikipedias? I've only tried a couple, and it's interesting! the game works very well in German (though it's sometimes TOO organized and has useful links to other parts of the same page, which scuppers the game of course). Spanish has worked every time so far, following some of the same patterns as English Wikipedia. French Wikipedia keeps bringing me SO close, then veering off when some article departs from the classic "X is a kind of Y" structure. Chinese didn't work well at all - got stuck in a loop between 'Sun' and 'Solar System', and on another attempt got all the way to "Classical German Philosophy" but it looped with Kant. So far my theory is: the smaller the Wikipedia, the less the game works. Scots, for instance, is a no-hoper! Longboat Girl (talk) 08:16, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

We never really thought out the rules

I don't think anyone ever really thought out the rules for what links to skip. In particular, following the "latin" and "greek" links found on so many pages really seems to go against the spirit of the Get to Philosophy effect, which is that the first non-trivial link tends to be to a more general topic, and that Philosophy seems to be the most general topic of all.

I would liken to propose a simpler set of rules. Let's start with the XKCD Version: "Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at Philosophy." What is the simplest set of rules that skips links that aren't really about the topic. Is the XKCD version good enough? Maybe we need to add "or in a box"? Ideas? Comments? Guy Macon (talk) 15:40, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Munroe's a darn smart guy, and I think his description is spot on. I think the "in the article text" bit implies you need to look at the article body, and not an infobox or picture caption, though it wouldn't hurt to make that explicit. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 15:55, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree that we should start with the XKCD rules, but we need something a bit better than "in the article text" to exclude infoboxes. Ultraviolet Has an infobox in the middle of the article (see "Skin" section). Monty Hall problem has one at the top but still within the article text. The XKCD rule alone would have Wikipedia:Neutral point of view be the first link in Monty Hall problem instead of the more-correct Probability.

I have two motivations for wanting to re-think the rules. My secondary purpose is to make the game more fun (having half the top ten chains go through Latin or Greek is boring) and to make it easy to write computer programs that follow the rules. My primary purpose is explained in the article (See "Gaming the System" section): it is trivially easy to add an infobox at the top, and not much harder to add a Greek or Latin definition. I want any changes made while playing the GtP game to be real improvements to Wikipedia. Right now the GtP game is a bit of a vandalism magnet. Guy Macon (talk) 21:19, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

OK, I am going to be WP:BOLD and make the rules a slightly expanded form of the XKCD rules. Feel free to discuss if you think more changes are needed. Guy Macon (talk) 16:08, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL CHAINS NEED TO BE RECHECKED TO MAKE SURE THE ARE ACCURATE UNDER THE NEW RULES! (done) Guy Macon (talk) 16:20, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

OK, I just checked and corrected the entire top ten list according top the new rules. Interestingly, everything got to philosophy much quicker. Please feel free to check my work and correct as needed. It would be interesting to repeat the experiment that gave us the percentages Guy Macon (talk) 22:06, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Reason

If you click on the first link in Philosophy you reach Reason. It follows that links to Reason exceed links to Philosophy by one, which is only reasonable.— Philogos (talk) 00:58, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Top 10 List

I think I found a new #1, but I'm new to Wikipedia editing, so I wasn't sure what to do. The page is "1709 in Piracy" and has 36 pages in the chain. I used Xefer.com/wikipedia to find it, but I also found numerous others that are more than the 23 link chain that is currently in #1. The program I used includes "See Also:" links, and I wasn't sure if those are legitimate or not, such as in the case of "1709 in Piracy" the first link is "1708 in Piracy". Should mention of Xefer.com be put in the article, and should I replace all of the top 10? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.37.3.244 (talk) 15:28, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to editing Wikipedia! If you need specific help with figuring something out, feel free to post a question on my talk page. (it may take several day for me to reply, so be patient).

Be aware that listing a page here tends to attract attention by editors who quickly fix anything that is obviously wrong with it (1709 in Piracy has the see also section in the wrong place and had two empty sections, which is now fixed). As you gain experience, you will learn how to correct such obvious flaws yourself as you run into them, thus making Wikipedia better. This may change the number of links, but improving Wikipedia comes first, playing this game second.

In general, it is good to check any top net candidates with the tools at http://www.xefer.com/wikipedia and at http://ryanelmquist.com/cgi-bin/xkcdwiki but you really need to verify everything yourself. For example, ryanelmquist.com incorrectly lists the first link at Geographic ass Geography while ryanelmquist.com correctly lists it as Earth. (It can be wrong as well, though). Only when you have personally confirmed the links should you add it to the top ten. You should also double check the bottom page that you are bumping off the list to make sure that it currently has fewer links that your new entry.

If in doubt, this is the place to ask. Guy Macon (talk) 17:45, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

A plea to the authors of the tools at ryanelmquist.com and xefer.com

References: http://ryanelmquist.com/cgi-bin/xkcdwiki http://www.xefer.com/wikipedia

Please review your programs and make sure they follow the current rules at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Get_to_Philosophy#Rules

If you find a rule difficult to program for, please suggest a better rule here.

ryanelmquist.com, if your program encounters an error, please display the chain up to the link where the error occurred, and please gives us a helpful error message ("404 page not found error when following link from Foo to Bar" is good). It would also be useful to display the title displayed on the page instead of the lower-case-with-underscores version grabbed from the URL.

xefer.com, it would be useful to enable right-click functionality such as drawing a box and copying the contents to the clipboard and the right click menu that has options such as "open link in a new tab."

But the important thing is that your programs follow the current rules. Thanks! Guy Macon (talk) 18:03, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Red links are not demarcated as such in the text returned by the Wikipedia API which is what is used by http://www.xefer.com/wikipedia