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Anecdotally I know several people who "get lost" reading Wikipedia after looking up something on a whim, myself included. I find this comment a bit odd on a sit

by bitzun 8y ago

Anecdotally I know several people who "get lost" reading Wikipedia after looking up something on a whim, myself included. I find this comment a bit odd on a site people browse to stay informed on tech or tech-near subjects, which is not just movies and videogames and the like.

hombre_fatal 8y ago
Compare HN to a 1TB SD card data dump. I don't see the parallels. HN is basically current events social media where people even admit they read the comments instead of TFA. And I think that getting lost on Wikipedia every few weeks is a far cry from browsing old shit on a 1TB SD card for fun in your ramshackle hovel with the family Android tablet. To me it kinda comes off as the hilarious "wow, those poor people must be so bored watching their paint dry. Maybe I can interest them in something nobody does" wrapped up in some feel good idea about sharing knowledge.
- vidarh 8y ago
  Lot's of people still go to the library, and many of them still check out books a century or more old. A 1TB dump is not about expecting people to read all of it, it would be about getting a broad enough section of knowledge that the chances of a decent subset of it being of interest to a decent number of people. And if the purpose is to "spark the next Einstein" as the comment suggested, it doesn't matter if 99% of them ends up being used for games, or sold, or used for all kinds of other things, if a tiny portion triggers an interest in learning and provides a good starting point.
Ultramanoid 8y ago
Agreed. I thought it was common knowledge ( from commenting with others around me ) that Wikipedia is a rabbit hole hard to escape sometimes.
logfromblammo 8y ago
I call them "wikiwalks". And I call an excessively tangential session a "wikiwalkabout", after the Australian walkabout tradition introduced to Americans by "Crocodile Dundee", or, more recently--the Locke character from "Lost". And boy, did that show have a letdown denoument. But I did like the colossus foot in the later episodes, because it reminded me of "Ozymandias", by P.B. Shelley. And did you know that he wrote that as his shot in a poetry duel with another poet--Horace Smith? (I guess he won, right?) Anyway, they picked that as a topic to honor a new museum exhibit of the Younger Memnon statue of Rameses II. Those British museum-goers were just mad for importing cultural artifacts from distant lands and never sending them back. Like the Elgin Marbles, from Greece. And when I think about Britain and Greece, I can't help thinking about their palace guards--Greece with their poofy-footed Evzones and Britain with their Beefeaters. And one of those Beefeaters is the Ravenmaster of the Tower of London--literally in charge of the welfare of the tower ravens. One of whom is apparently named Merlina, and is allowed additional latitude in how far she may fly, because she always comes back. And speaking of ravens and 19th-century poets, boy was Edgar Allen Poe a gothy li'l guy. He had a lot of inspirational company, though. Including Mary Shelley, wife of the aforementioned P.B., who won a 3-way ghost story duel between herself, her husband, and Lord Byron, who only managed to invent the vampire romance genre. So between the two of them and ol' Rameses II, we're almost all primed to scare the crap out of Laurel and Hardy with Universal Pictures monster movie staples: Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, and the Mummy. But we still need the Wolfman.... And hopefully you see how it works now. Before wikis existed, there was "Connections", by James Burke.
- magduf 8y ago
  >the Locke character from "Lost". And boy, did that show have a letdown denoument. Yep, that show was a poster-child for the phenomenon called "jumping the shark".
- HeWhoLurksLate 8y ago
  "Connections" is one of the best TV shows I've ever seen (I have it on DVD) and I'm barely even an adult.
noir_lord 8y ago
If you added it up I reckon Wikipedia accounts maybe 10% of my total screen usage time. Whenever I see or hear something I don't know about I go look it up on Wikipedia.
magduf 8y ago
Agreed, I've done this too. It's not something I do every day by any means, but I certainly have gone down Wikipedia rabbit-holes from time to time.

by bitzun 8y ago

hombre_fatal 8y ago

Compare HN to a 1TB SD card data dump. I don't see the parallels. HN is basically current events social media where people even admit they read the comments instead of TFA. And I think that getting lost on Wikipedia every few weeks is a far cry from browsing old shit on a 1TB SD card for fun in your ramshackle hovel with the family Android tablet. To me it kinda comes off as the hilarious "wow, those poor people must be so bored watching their paint dry. Maybe I can interest them in something nobody does" wrapped up in some feel good idea about sharing knowledge.

vidarh 8y ago
Lot's of people still go to the library, and many of them still check out books a century or more old. A 1TB dump is not about expecting people to read all of it, it would be about getting a broad enough section of knowledge that the chances of a decent subset of it being of interest to a decent number of people. And if the purpose is to "spark the next Einstein" as the comment suggested, it doesn't matter if 99% of them ends up being used for games, or sold, or used for all kinds of other things, if a tiny portion triggers an interest in learning and provides a good starting point.

Ultramanoid 8y ago

Agreed. I thought it was common knowledge ( from commenting with others around me ) that Wikipedia is a rabbit hole hard to escape sometimes.

logfromblammo 8y ago

I call them "wikiwalks". And I call an excessively tangential session a "wikiwalkabout", after the Australian walkabout tradition introduced to Americans by "Crocodile Dundee", or, more recently--the Locke character from "Lost". And boy, did that show have a letdown denoument. But I did like the colossus foot in the later episodes, because it reminded me of "Ozymandias", by P.B. Shelley. And did you know that he wrote that as his shot in a poetry duel with another poet--Horace Smith? (I guess he won, right?) Anyway, they picked that as a topic to honor a new museum exhibit of the Younger Memnon statue of Rameses II. Those British museum-goers were just mad for importing cultural artifacts from distant lands and never sending them back. Like the Elgin Marbles, from Greece. And when I think about Britain and Greece, I can't help thinking about their palace guards--Greece with their poofy-footed Evzones and Britain with their Beefeaters. And one of those Beefeaters is the Ravenmaster of the Tower of London--literally in charge of the welfare of the tower ravens. One of whom is apparently named Merlina, and is allowed additional latitude in how far she may fly, because she always comes back. And speaking of ravens and 19th-century poets, boy was Edgar Allen Poe a gothy li'l guy. He had a lot of inspirational company, though. Including Mary Shelley, wife of the aforementioned P.B., who won a 3-way ghost story duel between herself, her husband, and Lord Byron, who only managed to invent the vampire romance genre. So between the two of them and ol' Rameses II, we're almost all primed to scare the crap out of Laurel and Hardy with Universal Pictures monster movie staples: Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, and the Mummy. But we still need the Wolfman.... And hopefully you see how it works now. Before wikis existed, there was "Connections", by James Burke.

magduf 8y ago
>the Locke character from "Lost". And boy, did that show have a letdown denoument. Yep, that show was a poster-child for the phenomenon called "jumping the shark".
HeWhoLurksLate 8y ago
"Connections" is one of the best TV shows I've ever seen (I have it on DVD) and I'm barely even an adult.

noir_lord 8y ago

If you added it up I reckon Wikipedia accounts maybe 10% of my total screen usage time. Whenever I see or hear something I don't know about I go look it up on Wikipedia.

magduf 8y ago

Agreed, I've done this too. It's not something I do every day by any means, but I certainly have gone down Wikipedia rabbit-holes from time to time.