4 ms·

Show HN: Random Wikipedia Article by Category

12 points by ohgodmarvin 5y ago

ohgodmarvin 5y ago
Hi HN, I built this mini-project to scratch my own itch. I love wikiroulette but found that it almost always returned articles that were too short/specific. This is not surprising as more than ~78% of the articles on wikipedia are short articles that have less than 10K words. I am mostly interested in history and could not find a convenient way to get quality articles that are history related and decided to build wikistroll. The articles are based on wikipedia's Level 5 Vital article list[0] and currently contains around 45K articles. Hope you find it useful as well. Any suggestions/feedback welcome. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level/5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level...
chrisma0 5y ago
Definitely a good idea to be able to specify the kind of topic areas that one would be interested in. Also good to restrict it to more "quality" articles. I can see spending a few hours reading articles :) Anyone know how Wikipedia's own "Random article" function (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random) selects articles? Truly completely random with no quality aspect?
- ohgodmarvin 5y ago
  Hi, thanks for the feedback! Currently the topics are picked from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level/5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level... which are all curated articles and most of them should be interesting. But I am planning to expand by adding more articles that have greater than 10K words. I am using word count as a rudimentary metric to qualify articles initially. But I will probably require something a bit more nuanced eventually if I have to include all of wikipedia's articles.
- capableweb 5y ago
  > Anyone know how Wikipedia's own "Random article" function (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random) selects articles? Truly completely random with no quality aspect? Here's how it works: - https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/addb6649503c45f06a94930e90cae4f8c0d258f7/includes/specials/SpecialRandomPage.php#L122 https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/addb6649503c45f0... - https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/addb6649503c45f06a94930e90cae4f8c0d258f7/includes/GlobalFunctions.php#L239 https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/addb6649503c45f0... TLDR: random, no quality aspect
  - chrisma0 5y ago
    Thanks for those links! From the code comments: "it won't cause any more bias than what the page_random scheme causes anyway. Trust me, I'm a mathematician. :)" Git blame says the author was "Ilmari Karonen" (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ilmari_Karonen https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ilmari_Karonen), 15 years ago!

12 points by ohgodmarvin 5y ago

Hi HN, I built this mini-project to scratch my own itch. I love wikiroulette but found that it almost always returned articles that were too short/specific. This is not surprising as more than ~78% of the articles on wikipedia are short articles that have less than 10K words. I am mostly interested in history and could not find a convenient way to get quality articles that are history related and decided to build wikistroll. The articles are based on wikipedia's Level 5 Vital article list[0] and currently contains around 45K articles. Hope you find it useful as well. Any suggestions/feedback welcome. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level/5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level...

chrisma0 5y ago

Definitely a good idea to be able to specify the kind of topic areas that one would be interested in. Also good to restrict it to more "quality" articles. I can see spending a few hours reading articles :) Anyone know how Wikipedia's own "Random article" function (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random) selects articles? Truly completely random with no quality aspect?

ohgodmarvin 5y ago
Hi, thanks for the feedback! Currently the topics are picked from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level/5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level... which are all curated articles and most of them should be interesting. But I am planning to expand by adding more articles that have greater than 10K words. I am using word count as a rudimentary metric to qualify articles initially. But I will probably require something a bit more nuanced eventually if I have to include all of wikipedia's articles.
capableweb 5y ago
> Anyone know how Wikipedia's own "Random article" function (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random) selects articles? Truly completely random with no quality aspect? Here's how it works: - https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/addb6649503c45f06a94930e90cae4f8c0d258f7/includes/specials/SpecialRandomPage.php#L122 https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/addb6649503c45f0... - https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/addb6649503c45f06a94930e90cae4f8c0d258f7/includes/GlobalFunctions.php#L239 https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/addb6649503c45f0... TLDR: random, no quality aspect
- chrisma0 5y ago
  Thanks for those links! From the code comments: "it won't cause any more bias than what the page_random scheme causes anyway. Trust me, I'm a mathematician. :)" Git blame says the author was "Ilmari Karonen" (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ilmari_Karonen https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ilmari_Karonen), 15 years ago!