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A game of exploring and racing through Wikipedia articles! Fun and surprise await as you go down the "Wikipedia rabbit hole" and find the "degrees of separation" of sometimes wildly different topics in this addictive and educational game.
- Research Data
Computing Semantic Relatedness from Human Navigational...
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A game of exploring and racing through Wikipedia articles!...
- Research Data
Safe Games. Wiki for Kids a search engine that provides the Wikipedia alternative for homes and schools. It provides a simple wiki kids version with filtered search.
- The Basic Wiki Game
- More Variations
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There are many different games based on the idea of browsing Wikipedia, but all of them generally involve navigating from one article to another in the shortest amount of time or clicks possible, using only the links in the article -- no searching. Sometimes the starting article is randomly selected and the destination is fixed, sometimes it's the opposite, and sometimes both the start and end are randomly selected.
To get started with the most basic version, visit Wikipedia in your language of choice and click the "Random article" link in the sidebar (here's the English random article link). Now that you have your first random article, which can serve as your starting point, click the random article link again to set your destination. As a side note, Wikipedia has many articles about not-safe-for-work topics, so playing this game in a public setting on a large screen with completely randomized pages might be risky.
Clicking the random link twice gave me Daniela Calzetti, an astronomer, and Melanocorypha, a genus of birds. I couldn't immediately think of a common link between the scientist and a type of bird, so I backed up enough to reach articles about taxonomic ranks, and then simply went down the tree until I hit Melanocorypha.
Daniela Calzetti ➔ National Academy of Sciences ➔ Series (botany) ➔ Genus ➔ Species ➔ Dairy cattle ➔ Cattle ➔ Chordate ➔ List of chordate orders ➔ Bird ➔ Passerine ➔ Lark ➔ Melanocorypha
That attempt required 12 clicks, which isn't great. I tried again, this time with the goal of reaching the page for birds more quickly.
Daniela Calzetti ➔ National Academy of Sciences ➔ Abraham Lincoln ➔ Kentucky ➔ Northern cardinal ➔ Passerine ➔ Lark ➔ Melanocorypha
Even though that's the simplest version of the Wikipedia game, it might be the most frustrating -- with two randomized points, you're more likely to get stuck somewhere, or have a stub article as the start. Thankfully, there are more versions with different rules that add some fun. Here are some popular variations:
•Two-Player Challenge: One person picks two topics, and the other person must navigate from one to the other. Then, the person who played first gives their own two topics (different from the first pair) for the first player to complete. The person with the fewest clicks wins!
•Time Trials/Speed Wiki: A start and end article is set, and multiple people race to see who can get to the end article first. Time (and reading speed) is the most important factor here, rather than clicks.
•5-Clicks-to-Jesus: Starting on a random article, your goal is to reach the article for Jesus in as few clicks as possible. There are other versions of this that replace Jesus with other major historical figures.
Some of these versions are available to play online. The Wiki Game is one popular version, which automatically selects a start and end article and tracks your clicks. Your score is then displayed next to other people in the same round, like a Wikipedia Battle Royale. The site also allows account creation to record wins.
No matter which version you play, the Wiki Game is a fun way to turn an encyclopedia into a game that tests your general knowledge. After all, the best way to find the quickest path between two articles is to already know the link between them. Too bad I can't play it on my Switch -- thanks Nintendo, for not giving the Switch a web browser.
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Mar 4, 2020 · Variations of the Wiki Game. The two main ways to play the Wiki Game are Speed Wiki and Click Wiki. In Speed Wiki, the first player to home base wins. In Click Wiki, the player who reaches home base in the fewest number of clicks wins. Speed Wiki is better suited for larger groups of people were monitoring the number of clicks could become too ...
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Wikipedia:Wiki Game. The Wiki Game, also known as the Wikipedia race, Wikirace, Wikispeedia, WikiLadders, WikiClick, or WikiWhack, is a race between any number of participants, using wikilinks to travel from one Wikipedia page to another. The first person to reach the destination page, or the person that reaches the destination using the fewest ...
The Department of Fun is dedicated to providing the community of Wikipedians, both young and old editors, with things to make them stay at Wikipedia, indirectly improving the encyclopedia. Below, you can find a fun and simple game to play.
daily challenge submissions about. A game where you traverse Wikipedia from point A to point B as fast and in as few moves as possible.
