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WikiTok
- bennettnate5 2y agoNow all it needs is to have that robotic female voice (the one everyone on TikTok uses) read out the main prompt while trendy music is playing in the background
- sram1337 2y agoCan you have it link to en.m.wikipedia.com for mobile apps?
- aizk 2y agoFixed!
- duxup 2y agoI like the idea, but one thing about Wikipedia is that with technical or granular topics it approaches things in a focused way. A specific molecular biology term's page isn't there to explain exactly how it fits into a larger biology topic. It makes random pages difficult to glean information from. Even wikipedia articles I understand, more on computer topics, fall into the category of "the only people who understand this page are people who ... already understand it / don't need to read this". Granted sometimes the social media context is kinda opaque, but usually "man fall down it funny" is pretty universal.
- myself248 2y agoMath articles are excruciatingly bad on this. I find myself setting the language to "simple english" and it helps.
- duxup 2y agoWikipedia math articles all remind me of what i learned in High School, that math is absolutely the worst to learn from someone who "just gets it" as often those folks have no concept how someone else might not "just get it". I suspect the wikipiedia articles are written by folks who "just get it".
- wwweb 2y agoA wiki (or any encyclopedia, for that matter) is not meant to be an introduction or a HOWTO.
- duxup 2y agoI can understand that. Having said that some topics (history) are surprisingly easy to pick up articles with lots of background and etc. If you look up a battle you'll get a short history of the war, days before the battle, explanations why say a given soldier might struggle and etc. Other topics are almost dictionary level simplistic.
- hnuser123456 2y agoI'm around calc 2 level, and spent some time learning ANN architectures, but it's taken a very long time to increase my ability to parse the more arcane topics since graduating. For example, this[1] is something I'd like to be able to just glance over and know all the applications and appreciate the beauty... but it's very hard to prevent my eyes from glossing over. Maybe someone has a youtube video on the topic that makes it easier to catch up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp_space
- layman51 2y agoSome other commenters have offered the idea of an algorithm to steer the randomness of the articles. I wonder if an algorithm would help with this issue of having random articles be too technical for you even though you are interested in the larger topic.
- TZubiri 2y ago>"the only people who understand this page are people who ... already understand it / don't need to read this". That is provably false
- duxup 2y agoI like to think of it as amusingly “dramatic” rather than false. ;) Way back when I was in college and the internet was new-ish. There were a few places you could ask math questions. A classmate of mine found that if he just asked a question online he would never get any responses. So what he would do is add some false generalizations in his question. In doing that he would be inundated with people answering his question, even if just to prove him wrong.
- TZubiri 2y agoI don't think it's relevant in this case. But it's a well known internet law https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
- duxup 2y agoThat's a fun law. I've bumped into it a few times asking an AI related question and part of my understanding was a bit off. Even being slightly off rather than completely seems to bring out more enthusiastic responses.
- joshuahedlund 2y agoMaybe pairing this with an LLM could be useful here?
- Matthyze 2y agoWikipedia is useful for reference, but not education. Not sure whether that's intentional.
- arrowsmith 2y agoHow is this different from Wikipedia’s own “random article” feature?
- j3s 2y agoit looks and feels completely different, for one thing
- guessmyname 2y agoYour question doesn’t quite make sense. It sounds like you’re suggesting the two web pages are identical, just on different domains, but they’re obviously completely different. A better way to phrase your question would be: "Why would a TikTok-style (infinite scrolling) website for browsing Wikipedia articles appeal to today’s internet users?"
- pockmarked19 2y ago> Your question doesn’t quite make sense. Agreed, yet it is the standard question most people throw out for any unfamiliar idea. God forbid they have to form a single thought to grok something…although more charitably it is a form of “why should I care?”. Your rephrasing is a bit different, it discards the selfish aspect of the question which I think is not correct. Funnily though, anyone asking why they should care probably shouldn’t care yet.
- pockmarked19 2y agoNice to know HNers don’t read past the first word. Can’t say I am surprised.
- dangrape123 2y ago[flagged]
- LVB 2y agoIt’s a reasonable question, and one I had myself. Of course the UX is different, but that is self evident and we don’t need to be pedantic. What’s not obvious is whether this is wrapping the existing RandomPage API, filtering it, doing some sort of prediction/recommendation, etc.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cynicalsecurity 2y agoGreat idea, but it's too random and not one really liked reading about people. This app needs likes, comments and algorithm.
- pimlottc 2y agoPlenty of people like reading about other people…
- rpastuszak 2y agoI don't use TikTok, but I can easily spend an hour or two playing with the Random button on Wikipedia. Thanks!
- aizk 2y agoHi! I'm the dev here! I built this on a whim at after seeing someone ask for it on twitter. It was 12:30 at night but I couldn't pass down the opportunity to build it. The code is very simple, there's no backend at all actually, I believe because wikipedia's api is very permissive and you can just make the requests in the frontend. So you just simply request random articles, get some snippets, and the image attached! I used Claude and cursor do 90% of the heavy lifting, so I am positive there's plenty of room for optimizations. But right now as it stands, it's quite fun to play with, even without anything very sophisticated. Here is the source code. https://github.com/IsaacGemal/wikitok https://github.com/IsaacGemal/wikitok
- tomieinlove 2y agoCongrats! Tomie here, this is absolutely great!
- preciousoo 2y agoI remember seeing that tweet, I thought it was the craziest coincidence ever when I saw this on the front page. I guess it’s not haha
- aizk 2y agoAs soon as I saw the tweet, I realized the opportunity was there waiting for me. And also, twitter's algorithm is REALLY good at pairing the right tweets to one another, so many people saw those two tweets side by side, which added to the humor.
- blast 2y agoWhat was the tweet?
- aizk 2y agohttps://x.com/rauchg/status/1886807959340245137 https://x.com/rauchg/status/1886807959340245137
- varjag 2y ago
- xhrpost 2y agoWonder what it would take to add a simple algorithm to this. Part of what makes short media apps (dangerously) addictive is that they eventually learn what you like and feed you more of that. An app like this with such an algo could help with the stickiness (and presumably get us away from the other apps at least for a little bit). "Oh this person likes science stuff, let's feed them more, oh they specifically like stuff related to quantum mechanics, let's place a summary paragraph from a related page topic in there."
- aizk 2y agoOn one hand I am thinking about what a very basic algorithm would like (maybe even just categories I might do) and maybe how it would make people happy. On the other hand, I'm not sure exactly the details of wikipedia's api TOS. Also as it stands this website is entirely in the frontend at the moment, and I'm enjoying just scaffolding out what I can with limited a more limited set of tools to speak. I realize now the suffix "tok" implies a crazy ML algo that is trained every single movement, click, tap, and pause you make, but I don't think I really want that.
- codingdave 2y agoIt should be possible to keep this all front-end, even with some basic algorithm for the searches - just use localStorage. That keep things simple and resolve privacy concerns, as people own their data and can delete them any time.
- keerthiko 2y agobrowser-store and cookies, among other tools, provide nice front-end-only persistent storage for holding things like recommendation weights/scoring matrices. maybe a simple algorithm that can evaluate down from a few bytes stored in weights might be all the more elegant.
- layman51 2y agoAbout the “Tok” suffix, I also think that while it has the algorithm connotations, it also has been used a lot to describe communities that have formed on TikTok. For example, BookTok (where some bookstores have started to pay attention to how people on TikTok can make some books popular again seemingly on a whim) or WitchTok.
- pjs_ 2y agoThis is awesome but it needs to autoscroll the full page. It needs to have the same completely instant dopamine hit that TikTok gives.
- amelius 2y agoMaybe use AI to turn a wiki topic into something explained by an influencer in 30 seconds.
- delilahevans83 2y ago[dead]
- doctoboggan 2y agoThis, plus an AI generated voice reading a TikTok-creator style catchy summary, plus TikTok's actual algorithm for surfacing content would actually make a decent app I believe. EDIT: Also the name should be WikTok instead of WikiTok.
- CaptainFever 2y agoAlso, the voiceover should be over some Minecraft parkour or Subway Surfers. Like this: https://pdftobrainrot.org/ https://pdftobrainrot.org/
- ptojr 2y agoI second this! A voice-over would be very nice
- tbossanova 2y agoI personally would hate it, but I can just turn sound off so no reason not to do it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mikedelfino 2y agoAt this point, you could create short videos with relevant images and accompanying audio, post them on TikTok, and profit.
- ailef 2y agoI've built something similar a few years ago, combining Wikipedia content and open domain pictures/videos to create long form videos automatically. Uploaded a bunch on YouTube as well. Wrote a blog post in case anyone is interested: http://ailef.tech/2020/04/29/turn-any-wikipedia-article-into-a-video-automatically/ http://ailef.tech/2020/04/29/turn-any-wikipedia-article-into...
- qwertox 2y agoI consume the internet mainly on an old-school monitor, not on a tablet. When the browser is maximized, all the images are pixelated.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lovegrenoble 2y agoRandomWiki maybe?
- a1o 2y agoThis is awesome, great work!
- thomasreggi 2y ago"tok" as a suffix for short form video is unhinged
- aizk 2y agoPersonally I see it as implying two things - Infinite scrolling - Heavily curated algorithms Although in this instance, it's just selecting from wikipedia randomly
- tgv 2y agoLike -gate as a suffix for a scandal? Anyway, it beats all the other names mentioned and suggested here. It rhymes with tiktok, and it even has “ik” in the first part. It’s immediately understandable. Don’t try to apply logic.
- reustle 2y agoGreat job on on the quick execution! Could you detect when on mobile and link to the mobile wiki page?
- rickcarlino 2y agoCan you please add Korean? This looks like such a great tool for discovering language learning reading material. Great work!
- srameshc 2y agoI just admire how some people can build simple things. I see so many from simple games to visualizations to many other kinds on HN here. Hopefully someday I will be able to think of something simple and showcase here.
- brianstrimp 2y agoExtra bonus for just putting it out there with a Github link. Instead of landing page, login, "just $4/month or $20/year" with a "Show HN" and everybody patting them on the back for a "successful launch".
- rchaud 2y agoDon't forget the growth hacker clasic "sign up for the wait list to access the private beta" and "join the community on Discord".
- odirf 2y agoThese simple ideas can be implemented by AI (like this) Unfortunately, this makes it lose some of its charm.
- vunderba 2y agoThe author is refreshingly transparent about the inspiration for the project saying, "I built this on a whim at after seeing someone ask for it on twitter." Who knows, maybe you'll stumble upon sth to build in the same way.
- aizk 2y agoThank you! I've built a lot of apps, and I've gone viral a fair number of times, but I haven't done both at the same time. I can pinpoint to you the exact tweet (well it's technically a retweet) and you can see what gave me the inspiration. For quite a lot of people the two tweets showed up side by side, which is even funnier. https://x.com/rauchg/status/1886807959340245137 https://x.com/rauchg/status/1886807959340245137
- CafeRacer 2y agoMe: what a stupid idea Also me after 30 minutes of doom scrolling: cool
- barrenko 2y agoIt would work maybe if connected to an AI that would just start spouting the article immediately, or the summary.
- roegerle 2y agoI love it.
- 65 2y agoI've been meaning to write a content algorithm where a random Wikipedia article is fetched, then calls the YouTube API to serve a video about the subject, and the algorithm learns based on how much you watch the video. But if anyone wants to tackle that, it'd be really cool.
- zavg 2y agoI think that the project has a potential. I am a big fun of Wikipedia and sometimes TikTok (a "guilty pleasure"). I would be happy to have an app/web site like this but with - more smart feed based on your activity/attention (was mentioned in other comments); - maybe more fancy way to present information (not sure if it is feasible to implement). Currently just a text snippet and image do not seem like super engaging.
- matthest 2y agoBrilliant. Someone should do this same concept but for short-form essays. So like Twitter, but with 3-4 paragraph essays.
- ya1sec 2y agoAwesome. I have a project with a similar tik-tok-esque philosophy for serving all sorts of noncommercial content from the web. The interface is one button and a random page is embedded in an iframe. I use random wikipedia pages as a fallback in case my algorithm returns a dead page. I call it moonjump: https://moonjump.app/ https://moonjump.app/
- sgt 2y agoI tried that and I was immediately taken to "the best place in the world to have herpes". I didn't click.
- ya1sec 2y agohahahha. try the search engine - it uses the marginalia API and will select a random result to embed. maybe don't search for herpes though.
- Tijdreiziger 2y agoPretty nice! Reminds me of StumbleUpon.
- ya1sec 2y agoYeah, pretty similar to StumbleUpon. Right now the links are sourced from a handful of are.na channels and some other collections of content. I plan on warehousing this data and tagging it such that users can configure categories of sites that they'd like to stumble upon. HN submissions are mixed into the algorithm as well.
- extraduder_ire 2y agoCool. I immediately recognized the melonking loading gif.
- aizk 2y agoNo way, StumbleUpon? I remember that site when I was a kid. Good memories.
- 2y ago
- russian_bot 2y agoFeature request to be able to like different pages so i can bookmark and return to them later
- OracB7 2y agoGreat site! The only improvement I would ask for is automatically opening the articles with the Wikipedia app, if installed.
- whiteborb 2y agoIn the same vein, Wikijumps (https://wikijumps.com/ https://wikijumps.com/) lets you browse based on article connections.
- beardyw 2y agoThis is just great. A real keeper. Only criticism is I get a poor presentation of the Wikipedia page on my phone if I follow the link. Haven't worked out why yet. Even selecting desktop gives me something better!
- danhds 2y agoSomeone built something similar using Lovable: https://preview--wiktok.lovable.app/ https://preview--wiktok.lovable.app/
- mehh 2y agoNice site @aikz Hope you don't mind, but as others are pointing at wiki type sites, I'll plug my own (also using Vercel and cursor)... https://ont.fyi https://ont.fyi it's a work in progress ... feedback wanted (no matter how painful), focusing on enabling adding in your own data at present, lots of ideas and work to be done
- ranger_danger 2y agoI have no idea what this is or if I should even click on it. Can we please have a description somewhere first?
- tbossanova 2y agoGood point! It’s random wikipedia pages, in a tiktok-ish style i.e. main article image and short summary on a page plus scrolling UX so you can easily flick through to the next one.
- tolerance 2y agoI don’t know how to feel about the visceral reaction that I have to the action of swiping my thumb in a movement that I can trace from where I guess is a team of tendons somewhere parallel to my wrist and the little fat part of my palm I like to refer to as “my drumstick”, from the bottom of my phone’s screen until the tip of my thumb is just at my general line of sight, all of this in one natural motion. No sooner is this action complete am I met when an entire block of information above my thumb, square in my line of sight. In one stroke the location of a place, the type of place it is, its size, its distance from somewhere else, its history, read more, or swipe again. And another block. And another. And there’s something about this process that is visually disruptive and kinetically unsettling.
- tbossanova 2y agoInteresting! I tend to use right hand index finger to swipe up so didn’t have that issue. Just tried it with left hand thumb and I kinda see what you mean.
- lucaslazarus 2y agoThis is great! Now all that's left is plugging this into some text-to-speech and a subway surfers/minecraft parkour background
- brokensegue 2y agojust leave this here https://www.tiktok.com/@wikipedia https://www.tiktok.com/@wikipedia
- zoklet-enjoyer 2y agoIs this some sort of location based thing? First thing I saw when I opened it was Thompson, ND. It's a small town like 70 miles north of me
- aizk 2y agoNot that I'm aware of, it just queries Wikipedia's random api. But unless there's something going on behind the scenes that I don't know about then maybe?
- tgv 2y agoGreat idea. My only suggestion would be a less random article. I got a ton of US place names, which can be a downer. The avg tiktokker expects something funny or interesting within 30s. NO recommendations. That would remove the charm.
- aizk 2y agoLooking into it more, the random isn't exactly random https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical#random https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical#random
- CameronBanga 2y agoIf you like this, check out Information Superhighway on a variety of Apple devices. Same concept, with a nice UI. I like widget support too, to get random articles on my Home Screen. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/information-superhighway/id1494503555 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/information-superhighway/id149...
- juancaruiz 2y agoCool
- corruptio 2y agoI need it to loop subway surfers on the side. To keep my attention.
- novaomnidev 2y agoThis is such a good idea. Kind of reminds me of the spirit of the old site stumbleupon
- mannycalavera42 2y agobring back stumbleupon!!!! crying in walled garden
- aizk 2y agoOh wow maybe I should think about that
- aeropasta 2y agoFeatureReq: use THAT{tiktok gal] voice to automatically transcribe audio
- dredmorbius 2y ago<https://www.meme-arsenal.com/en/create/meme/467690 https://www.meme-arsenal.com/en/create/meme/467690>
- ConanRus 2y agoSorry, but I don't see any dancing girls, so this app is not for me I guess
- jonny_eh 2y agoFun idea, but TikTok works because you don't need to leave the feed. Try to find a way to provide the wiki's content in the feed itself.
- dvdbloc 2y agoThis would be an awesome way to get more breadth of knowledge during downtime. For example, many times there are interesting algorithms or some technology I would benefit from knowing I just wouldn’t know to search for it. Or you could make infinite scrolling randomized hacker news front page articles from the past.
- arvindrajnaidu 2y agoMy version built using Burning Idea: https://www.burningidea.com/app/96f30f/index.html https://www.burningidea.com/app/96f30f/index.html
- aizk 2y agoWhat's burning idea?
- arvindrajnaidu 2y agoAn app I built :) Just talk and have it build a backend or front end. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/burning-idea/id6478471924 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/burning-idea/id6478471924
- golergka 2y agoThe fist one I got was Foreskin piercing. With a penis photo all across the screen. Is it too much to ask to flag this as NSFW?
- oneeyedpigeon 2y agoI hope the dev sees this, it really should be addressed. Hopefully, the wikipedia api has considered this.
- aizk 2y agoHi there. I have had some somewhat nsfw content pop up but nothing quite that extreme. If there isn't a clearcut way to solve this via the api, I'll talk to Wikimedia about this, as I actually have a chat with them soon! Thanks for letting me know.
- jona777than 2y agoI’ve been thinking recently about how to use the addictive properties of applications like TikTok to the advantage of the user. This is definitely in that direction. Instead of trying to tame the pull of these apps by cold turkey quitting, replacing them with something useful seems to be more effective.
- owenpalmer 2y agoI could imagine this with automatic TTS and a slideshow. Basically you'd have procedurally generated mini documentaries in a tiktok like format.
- pentagrama 2y agoThis is incredible! Wikipedia has abundance of interesting stuff and this is a great way to discover it, using a popular UX at the moment. Great idea. A bug report: When open the Wikipedia links on mobile, it shows the desktop view. I guess because the links are like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=5635437 https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=5635437 This deserves a proper domain! I will be glad to gift you the $ to buy one for a year. Let me know! https://wikitok.app/ https://wikitok.app/ seems available.
- bawolff 2y agoCurid urls also have mildly worse caching behaviour, so they will be a bit slower and create a tiny bit more load on the servers.
- aizk 2y agoHi there! Thank you for the kind words. The URL bug has been fixed - I was querying the wrong urls. You can find me at aizk.sh - I'd be happy to talk more about a domain, I think that's the last piece of this puzzle :)
- gessha 2y agoThis reminds me tangentially of the Wiki Game - getting to an unknown target wiki article https://www.thewikigame.com https://www.thewikigame.com
- 1832 2y agoThis is similar to a popular game we used to play in recess (or sometimes during class) in high school, when IT rooms first started to become a thing. The idea was to start on a random article and try to reach pages of famous historical political figures by clicking as few links as possible, or by being the fastest.
- pg5 2y agoThe swiping mechanic is super smooth! I often find that website based swiping UIs are either too sensitive, not sensitive enough, or have weird acceleration. Not the case here.
- AzariaK 2y agoNice site! I wanted to show a similar site I made a few years ago. Might update it now: https://wikisurfer.pages.dev/ https://wikisurfer.pages.dev/
- asdf6969 2y agoThe best project I’ve seen in months and exactly what I need
- KrishnaAnaril 2y agoSomething similar for hackernews: https://hn-shorts.vercel.app https://hn-shorts.vercel.app
- aizk 2y agoThis is great! Thanks for sharing that with me :)
- rices 2y agoI dig it lol. It reminds me of a t-shirt site a few friends and I made https://wearwiki.com https://wearwiki.com It's cool that wikipedia shared so much data! Nice to donate to them if we got some extra funds.
- DCAlmond 2y agoThis is super neat @aizk! I built a similar app for iOS [1] with a simple recommendation algorithm powering the feed. [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/egghead-scroll-learn/id6630364935 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/egghead-scroll-learn/id6630364...
- rvba 2y agoIt could have more featured articles first / mixed
- Llamamoe 2y agoNow add an option to exclude people and places from showing up ^^`
- trklausss 2y agoWhy though? It is part of culture, not everyone is interested in STEM, and the life of some could be interesting. Or who knows, you might discover your new holiday destination... I would agree however, that to fully imitate TikTok, you would need a FYP that shows you more content about what you are interested, but as the author say, it was an overnight project :)
- flavaz 2y agoLove this, thanks for sharing
- Liquidor 2y agoI like it a lot :-) It scrolls a bit too far though. I move my fingers fast and it skips articles because of the momentum. Also when at the top, scrolling up it should maybe refresh? And it would be nice with a visual indicator that new articles are being loaded when at the bottom. Kudos!
- chigmma 2y agoHi
- dustypotato 2y agohttps://wiktok.org/ https://wiktok.org/ Related
- lyzml_AF 2y ago[dead]
- sirobg 2y agoAfter seeing this, I (or rather, v0) created https://hnhell.com https://hnhell.com for the joke. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42946932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42946932
- coffeecantcode 2y agoThis is very nice, I adore the simplicity. Sometimes the summary gets cut off which is a bit frustrating,I think you should be able to finish reading the summary without click the read more link, but other than that, bravo.
- api 2y agoI wonder just how much infinite scroll could be used for good, e.g. in education. It clearly engages the mind but we only use it to shovel slop.
- lazycode1 2y agoAwesome idea
- sebastiansc 2y agoGreat minds think alike - we built wiktok.lovable.app a few months ago in Lovable as a fun experiment
- hao1300 2y agoAwesome idea. You inspired me to build something similar for Steam: https://steamtok.com/ https://steamtok.com/