Wikipedia philosophy phenomenon
The Wikipedia philosophy phenomenon, sometimes called the "Philosophy Game", is a tendency where 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]
Other languages
[edit]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.[2] As of 2017, the concepts with highest centrality to first link networks in European language Wikipedias are sciences, such as "Psychology" for Italian Wikipedia,[2] while East Asian languages are connected by concepts such as humans or Earth.[3]
History
[edit]The phenomenon was discovered in 2008 by a teenage Wikipedian named Mark J.[4][5]
The phenomenon received widespread attention from a "fun fact" in the xkcd webcomic on 25 May 2011,[6] 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.[7]
In February 2016, the phenomenon was true for 97% of all articles on Wikipedia,[2] an increase from 94.52% in 2011.[8]
See also
[edit]- Wiki rabbit hole – Navigating between topics while browsing wikis
- Wikiracing – Game of traversing Wikipedia pages
- Six degrees of separation – Concept of social inter-connectedness
- Small world network – Graph where most nodes are reachable in a small number of steps
References
[edit]- 1 2 Collins, Nathan (9 May 2016). "All Wikipedia Roads Lead to Philosophy, but Some of Them Go Through Southeast Europe First". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 29 June 2025.
- 1 2 3 Lamprecht, Daniel; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Helic, Denis; Strohmaier, Markus (17 August 2016). Evaluating and Improving Navigability of Wikipedia: A Comparative Study of Eight Language Editions (PDF). OpenSym, Berlin, Germany: Association for Computing Machinery. doi:10.1145/2957792.2957813. ISBN 978-1-4503-4451-7. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 September 2023. Retrieved 17 March 2021.
- ↑ Gabella, Maxime (17 August 2017). "Cultural Structures of Knowledge from Wikipedia Networks of First Links". Institute for Advanced Study: 5. arXiv:1708.05368.
- ↑ Fry, Hannah (12 July 2016). "The Joy of Data, Marmalade, socks and One Direction". BBC Four. Retrieved 30 June 2025.
- ↑ Lee, Amy (14 November 2011). "All Wikipedia Ends In Philosophy, Literally". The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on 2 April 2019.
- ↑ West, Bob [at Wikidata] (26 May 2011). "Wikipedia's fixed point". dlab @ EPFL. Lausanne, Switzerland: Data Science Lab, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Archived from the original on 23 May 2022. Retrieved 4 September 2023.
- ↑ Ibrahim, Mark; Danforth, Christopher M.; Dodds, Peter Sheridan (1 March 2017). "Connecting every bit of knowledge: The structure of Wikipedia's First Link Network". Journal of Computational Science. 19: 21–30. arXiv:1605.00309. doi:10.1016/j.jocs.2016.12.001. ISSN 1877-7503.
- ↑ Ball, James (10 July 2011). "The Only Way Is Essex + Wikipedia = philosophy". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 June 2025.
External links
[edit]
- Extended Mind, 2011 xkcd webcomic where the tooltip notes the Wikipedia philosophy phenomenon
- What happens if you click the first link on every Wikipedia article?, video about the phenomenon on the official Wikipedia YouTube channel (10 June 2026)
