The Wikipedia Game

The Wikipedia Game

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Updated Dec 25, 2019 at 02:25AM EST by Y F.

Added Jun 20, 2012 at 02:20PM EDT by amanda b..

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礻 WIKIRACE The free racetrack

About

The Wikipedia Game (also known as WikiRace or WikiWars) is a competitive game in which two or more players must navigate through Wikipedia from a randomly assigned page to another page of destination by using the fewest number of links in the shortest amount of time. Usually, the first player to reach the targeted article or the player that reaches the destination with the fewest number of links, wins the race.

Origin

On April 9th, 2005, Wikipedia editor Deceased submitted an article titled "Wikirace" to the site, which provided a brief description of the gameplay and the rules. Some of the main rules included requiring attendance of all players in the same room, prohibiting the use of hub articles such as disambiguation pages from the game, as well as the use of search function or "find" command to isolate relevant links.

First select a page off the top of your head. Using "Random page" works well, as well as the featured article of the day. This will be your beginning page. Next chose a destination page. Generally, this destination page is something very unrelated to the beginning page. … Once you have selected a beginning page and an destination page, the race begins and the first person to reach the destination page wins.

According to the page, the game was originally conceived by an unlisted group of high school students in 2005.

Precursor

The concept behind the game is similar to the idea of the Six Degrees of Separation[6], which posits that "every person on earth is connected by approximately six other people." Popularized in the 1990s by a play and movie with the same name, this social networking concept eventually led to the birth of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon[5], a trivia game which requires a group of players to connect any individual to American actor Kevin Bacon using the fewest number of links in the shortest amount of time. In this vein, a Wikipedia entry for the Six Degrees of Wikipedia[7] was created on April 18th, 2003. The page lists the longest chains of contextual association between two entries as well as the shortest "unnatural" chains for two seemingly unrelated entries connected by less than six pages.


3 4 5 6B dw 2010 starred in wild, Wld West (1898) who was in Bad loys (1306) with who was in Family Man (2000) with who was in Honeymoon in Vegas (1882) who was in Footloose (198) wit the shining star KEVIN KLINE BA70 will Smith Nicolas Cage KEVIN BACON IU School of Medicine's LAWRENCE H. EINHORN, BA65 headed the who was in the Psycho (1998) remake with who was in who was in olcano (1997) with JFK (1991) treatment (2004) with Lance Armstrong Anne Heche KEVIN BACON who was in The Contender (2000) with who was in The Boune who was in JOHN MELLENCAMP DM HON 00 Falling From Grace (1992) with Flatiners (1990) with the one, true 2004) with Matt Damon KEVIN BACON was in Music of the Heart who was in Wonder Boys (2000) who was in OSHUA BELL ArtD 89 who was in The Game (1997) with Mystic River (2003) with the chanming (1888) wth Rules (1999) Kieran Culkin Michael Douglas KEVIN BACON guest starred on the TV series who was in who was on the NYPD Blue (1390) TV series who waas in Star Wars Attack of the who was in TAVIS SMILEY Men (1982) with Dreams (2004) (1) with (202) with Natalie Portmarn ilO'Grady wth KEVIN BACON IUB Slavic Languages faculty member LAURENCE RICHTER who was in Dr. T and the Women (2000) who was in First Knight (1995) with who was in The Rock (1s8) with who was in Apollo 13 (185) with the center of the universe father of Andy Richter Sean Connery KEVIN BACON

Spread

The earliest known definition of Wikiracing can be found in an Urban Dictionary entry for "Wikipedia Game" submitted by Danstu on January 7th, 2007. Later that year, similar definitions of the game were submitted to the site under various names such as "Wiki Racing" and "WikiWar." The game was also mentioned in a graduate student's personal blog post[23] on September 18th, 2007, which described a session that lasted for nearly 20 minutes between two students.

The game continued to spread through words of mouth under more generic names like "The Wikipedia Game," as mentioned in a YouTube video about the game uploaded by video blogger NDTitanLady on July 12th, 2008. Several additional videos explaining the game of Wikirace were uploaded onto YouTube between 2008 and 2009.



An article on WIkipedia Racing[26] appeared in the October 14th, 2008 newsletter for Michigan's Gamma Tau Beta Pi fraternity. In 2010, Designer Christopher de Beer created his own WikiRace site[25] where users could track their game history and keep score with friends. Later that same year, another single serving site[30] that redirects the players to a randomly assigned Wikipedia article was launched on October 10th, 2010.


Like ·129 people like this. Be the first of your friends. WIKIRACE Welcome to WikiRace The Encyclopedia Race Created by Christopher de Beer © 2010 Top 10 racers ahwitz 1/2 mowglie 9/26 Mariusz 1/3 Jaxsun 13 bam2403 1/3 silent death 6/19 acebla 5/19 fabbyrob 16/70 sisaac 2/9 modog 8/37 STARTRACE VIEW LEADERBOARD LOG IN /CREATE ACCOUNT About The point of the game, is to try get from one wikipedia article to another in as few steps as possible. See the rules for I first came across the concept of Wiki Racing while listening to James Bridle's dConstruct talk with friends, and it sour it would be an easy game/application to put together, so I gave it a go. This is an experimental version and was done c an application similar to this, but I thought I was til I finished it and did some research. oh well I'd appreciate it if you signed up for a an account to record your score, and more so if you'd click on the Facebook Lik Rules Current rules are No going back - No using history . No editing pages No searching No typing of anything - You may only use the mouse - If you get stuck - grow a pair and sort it out ew Race Wikipedia Racee Start at Loudspeaker , end at Bicycle 区(hard mode) 。(psychedelic mode) | Rat Try to get from one wikipedia article to another in as few stops as possiblo. With hard mode on, the links will disappear while you read the page.


On June 15th, 2012, the Gregory Brothers uploaded a video[11] showing Evan and Michael completing three rounds of Wikiraces, which they called "WIkiWars," with the rest of their team providing commentary about their movements in the style of e-Sports casters. The Gregory Brothers' participation brought on a resurgence of interest in the game, receiving coverage from various tech news sites like Geekosystem[9], Reddit[10] Blame it on the Voices[17], Neatorama[18], Mashable[19], Yahoo! News[20] and The Blaze[21] among others.

Search Interest

External References

[1] Urban Dictionary – Wikipedia Game

[2] The Wiki Game

[3] Wikipedia – Wiki Games

[4] Broken Airplane – Play the Wikipedia Game: Get to Philosophy!

[5] Wikipedia – Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

[6] Wikipedia – Six degrees of separation

[7] Wikipedia – Six degrees of Wikipedia

[8] Wikipedia – Wikirace

[9] Geekosystem – Competitive Wikipedia Searching Makes For An Oddly Compelling Sport

[10] Reddit – Wiki-Wars: Racing through Wikipedia Links

[11] YouTube – WikiWars – Evan vs. Michael

[12] The Chronicle of Higher Education – 6 Degrees of Wikipedia

[13] Wikipedia – Wikington Crescent

[14] Wikipedia – Wiki-Link Game

[15] LA Times – WikiWars turns Wikipedia searches into a competitive sport

[16] WikiHow – How to Play Wiki Wars

[17] Blame it on the Voices – Wiki-Wars

[18] Neatorama – WikiWars

[19] Mashable – Wiki Wars: The Ultimate Web Scavenger Hunt

[20] Yahoo! News – WikiWars turns Wikipedia searching into a competitive sport

[21] The Blaze – 'WikiWars': Did you know there's a thing such as competitive Wikipedia searching? (and there's video)

[22] WIkipedia – Wikiracing

[23] Losing Sleep – From Pickles to Airplanes…Wikiracing

[24] Urban Dictionary – Wiki-Racing

[25] Christopher DeBeer – Welcome to WikiRace

[26] Cornerstone – Wikipedia Racing

[27] University of Hamburg – The Breaking of the Circle.
Playing with, through, against medial
boundaries

[28] Urban Dictionary – Wikiwar

[29] XKCD Forum – Wikirace

[30] Wikipedia Race – The Wiki Race Game

Recent Videos 1 total

Recent Images 8 total


Top Comments

Papa Coolface
Papa Coolface

There's a game called seven clicks to Hitler, for it is said that no matter which wikipedia page you start on, you can get to the Adolf Hitler page in under seven clicks.

+23

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