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Wikipedia:Getting to Philosophy

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For the Wikipedia article about this topic, see Wikipedia philosophy phenomenon.
Graph created with the xefer tool.[1] (c. April 2015)
2013 crawl on Wikipedia, from the randomly chosen article "J/22" to "Philosophy"

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.[2] The remaining articles that do not lead to philosophy either lead to articles without any outgoing wikilinks, to pages that do not exist, or get stuck in loops between pages.

Algorithm summarized

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Following the chain consists of:

  1. Clicking on the first non-parenthesized, non-italicized link within the article body.[3]
    • Italics (or hatnotes) would cause uninteresting loops such as World Trade Organization linking to WTO (disambiguation) which links back to World Trade Organization
    • Parentheses would pick up language links that quickly railroad the subject, such as Txorierri line linking to Basque language instead of Narrow-gauge railway
    • Infobox links should be ignored, with the first infobox link (if applicable) generally being dictated by the structure of the infobox rather than the choices actively made by the authors of the article.
  2. Ignoring external links or red links (links to non-existent pages)
  3. Stopping when reaching "Philosophy", or a page with no links, or when a loop occurs

Theories

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There have been some theories on this phenomenon, with the most prevalent being the tendency for Wikipedia pages to move up a "classification chain". According to this theory, the Wikipedia Manual of Style guidelines on how to write the lead section of an article recommend that articles begin by defining the topic of the article. A consequence of this style is that the first sentence of an article is almost always a definitional statement, a direct answer to the question "what is [the subject]?".

Other languages

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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.[4] As of 2017, the concepts with highest centrality to first link networks in European language Wikipedias are sciences, such as "Psychology" for Italian Wikipedia,[4] while East Asian languages are connected by concepts such as humans or Earth.[5]

History

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Recognition

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The phenomenon has been known since at least 26 May 2008, when an earlier version[6] of this page was created by Wikipedian Mark J.[7][8] Two days later, it was mentioned in episode 50 of the Wikipedia Weekly podcast, which may have been its first public mention.[9]

The phenomenon received widespread attention from a "fun fact" in the xkcd webcomic on 25 May 2011,[10] which led University of Vermont researchers Mark Ibrahim, Christopher Danforth, and Peter Sheridan Dodds to publish a paper on the matter.[2] 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.[11]

Mathematician Hannah Fry demonstrated the phenomenon and algorithm in the 'Marmalade', 'Socks' and 'One Direction' section of the 2016 BBC documentary The Joy of Data.[8]

Permanence

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In February 2016, the phenomenon was true for 97% of all articles on Wikipedia,[4] an increase from 94.52% in 2011.[12]

After an edit to the Awareness article in April of 2024, switching the order of Philosophy and Psychology, the number of articles that lead to Philosophy this way had been greatly reduced, as Awareness and Psychology formed a loop of their own. In the months after the edit, there were numerous attempts to switch the order of the links leading to a discussion on the Awareness talk page.[13] Following another discussion, the order was changed back in July 2026.[14]

Following discussions like Talk:Mathematics#Hyperlinks missed in the first paragraph about over-linking in the first paragraph of articles, some first links were changed or removed in July 2026. As a result, almost no articles continue to lead to "Philosophy" as of July 2026.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Xefer Wikipedia Radial Graph".
  2. ^ a b Collins, Nathan (2016-05-09). "All Wikipedia Roads Lead to Philosophy, but Some of Them Go Through Southeast Europe First". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 2025-06-29.
  3. ^ Lee, Amy (2011-11-14). "All Wikipedia Ends In Philosophy, Literally". The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on 2019-04-02.
  4. ^ a b c Lamprecht, Daniel; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Helic, Denis; Strohmaier, Markus (2016-08-17). 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 2023-09-04. Retrieved 2021-03-17.
  5. ^ Gabella, Maxime (2017-08-17). "Cultural Structures of Knowledge from Wikipedia Networks of First Links". Institute for Advanced Study: 5. arXiv:1708.05368.
  6. ^ "Wikipedia:Getting to Philosophy". 2008-05-26 – via Wikipedia.
  7. ^ "Wikipedia:Getting to Philosophy". wikipedia.org.
  8. ^ a b Fry, Hannah (2016-07-12). "The Joy of Data, Marmalade, socks and One Direction". BBC Four. Retrieved 2025-06-30.
  9. ^ "Wikipedia Weekly — Episode 50: Wikipedia Story". huffduffer.com. 2011-05-25. Retrieved 2026-07-19.
  10. ^ West, Bob [at Wikidata] (2011-05-26). "Wikipedia's fixed point". dlab @ EPFL. Lausanne, Switzerland: Data Science Lab, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Archived from the original on 2022-05-23. Retrieved 2023-09-04.
  11. ^ Ibrahim, Mark; Danforth, Christopher M.; Dodds, Peter Sheridan (2017-03-01). "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.
  12. ^ Ball, James (2011-07-10). "The Only Way Is Essex + Wikipedia = philosophy". The Guardian. Retrieved 2025-06-30.
  13. ^ "Talk:Awareness". Wikipedia. 2024-06-19. Retrieved 2024-06-29.
  14. ^ Awareness, retrieved 2026-07-03
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