4 ms·

Show HN: Weekend project – StumbleUpon For Wikipedia

21 points by negamax 14y ago

petercooper 14y ago
Building a Chrome extension is a good learning process so congratulations for that. I love going through random Wikipedia pages. More generally though, if "in your bookmarks bar" is good enough rather than next to the address bar, one could drag this link in and rename it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
- negamax 14y ago
  That's pretty cool. I built a backend with titles list etc. It seems in vain now. Hehe :). Any suggestions to make stumbling Wikipedia more meaningful?
  - lrm 14y ago
    I think your extension could provide value if people could choose a field of interest. Like if I could stumble through articles about China or about animals or even about broad things like people or places, that would be neat.
    - negamax 14y ago
      Great idea. I will add broad categories selection.
      - petercooper 14y ago
        That might be handy for people who want to study a certain subject one day. For example, if I could keep hitting a button to get random articles from a certain category, such as computer science or math.
    - Turing_Machine 14y ago
      Maybe a Bayesian filter (or some analogous technique) that found "interesting" articles?
      - negamax 14y ago
        This didn't crossed my mind at all. I wonder if extension should add an upvote button to Wiki page and use that for interesting?
        petercooper 14y ago
        Ah yes, didn't see this comment before I wrote my last one. But exactly, that would certainly be interesting if you got enough users to make the results meaningful (or perhaps curated a large bunch yourself initially). Another thing that might be handy for something like this long term is making sure I don't see the same page more than once. But that would be a lot more data for you to store.
        Turing_Machine 14y ago
        I'd rather have it tailored to my personal taste instead of a community thing, myself.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
  - petercooper 14y ago
    Yes. Like StumbleUpon I'd rather "stumble" across pages that are actually interesting. When you use Wikipedia's own system you get some really inane pages with statistics about minor towns or the like.. but I'd rather hit a button and get something that's either curated and known to be good OR that other users of your extension have voted up in some way.
Hupo 14y ago
Nothing against building Chrome extensions here either (hell, I started learning JavaScript with userscripts myself), but Wikipedia has indeed had a "Random article" feature for the longest time, and it's right there in the main navigation too: http://puu.sh/1BQ3O http://puu.sh/1BQ3O
maxmcd 14y ago
Not to be too critical, but wouldn't the helpful StumbleUpon component here, (especially to differentiate it from the random Wikipedia page bookmark) be the ability for the extension to show random articles based on your personal preferences?
- negamax 14y ago
  Hey. Thanks for the feedback. I think ability to select interests be a great addition. Working towards that.
  - colinwinter 14y ago
    I don't think its so much about adding interests as it is offering random but related articles to what someone views. Not everyone always checks the related articles section- and that section is not always very comprehensive. It'd be a good start to use that section though, and compensate by eliminating pages you've already visited. I really like your idea, although the implementation still needs the actual recommendation engine. Wikipedia could really benefit from more related articles being listed/organized.
zerop 14y ago
I would like to see it for Quora.
- codezero 14y ago
  Already exists: http://www.quora.com/shuffle http://www.quora.com/shuffle
ZeroGravitas 14y ago
There's several resources, both internal and external to Wikipedia, that could be used to jump start a collection of "interesting" rather than random pages e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:FA-Class_articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:FA-Class_articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles http://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/top/?sort=top&t=all http://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/top/?sort=top&t=all http://www.samdowning.com/interesting-wikipedia-articles/ http://www.samdowning.com/interesting-wikipedia-articles/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles
- negamax 14y ago
  Thanks. Very helpful links. Some really great feedback for the tiny project. I be adding more functionality. Specially the "Interesting" and "Category Selection" for now. If you have some ideas about navigation. Please do share those.
seanp2k2 14y ago
Is this more than just (OSX-only) open 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random' ? I haven't installed it yet, but the above should get you a random Wikipedia page.

21 points by negamax 14y ago

Building a Chrome extension is a good learning process so congratulations for that. I love going through random Wikipedia pages. More generally though, if "in your bookmarks bar" is good enough rather than next to the address bar, one could drag this link in and rename it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

negamax 14y ago
That's pretty cool. I built a backend with titles list etc. It seems in vain now. Hehe :). Any suggestions to make stumbling Wikipedia more meaningful?
- lrm 14y ago
  I think your extension could provide value if people could choose a field of interest. Like if I could stumble through articles about China or about animals or even about broad things like people or places, that would be neat.
  - negamax 14y ago
    Great idea. I will add broad categories selection.
    - petercooper 14y ago
      That might be handy for people who want to study a certain subject one day. For example, if I could keep hitting a button to get random articles from a certain category, such as computer science or math.
  - Turing_Machine 14y ago
    Maybe a Bayesian filter (or some analogous technique) that found "interesting" articles?
    - negamax 14y ago
      This didn't crossed my mind at all. I wonder if extension should add an upvote button to Wiki page and use that for interesting?
      - petercooper 14y ago
        Ah yes, didn't see this comment before I wrote my last one. But exactly, that would certainly be interesting if you got enough users to make the results meaningful (or perhaps curated a large bunch yourself initially). Another thing that might be handy for something like this long term is making sure I don't see the same page more than once. But that would be a lot more data for you to store.
        Turing_Machine 14y ago
        I'd rather have it tailored to my personal taste instead of a community thing, myself.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
- petercooper 14y ago
  Yes. Like StumbleUpon I'd rather "stumble" across pages that are actually interesting. When you use Wikipedia's own system you get some really inane pages with statistics about minor towns or the like.. but I'd rather hit a button and get something that's either curated and known to be good OR that other users of your extension have voted up in some way.

Hupo 14y ago

Nothing against building Chrome extensions here either (hell, I started learning JavaScript with userscripts myself), but Wikipedia has indeed had a "Random article" feature for the longest time, and it's right there in the main navigation too: http://puu.sh/1BQ3O http://puu.sh/1BQ3O

maxmcd 14y ago

Not to be too critical, but wouldn't the helpful StumbleUpon component here, (especially to differentiate it from the random Wikipedia page bookmark) be the ability for the extension to show random articles based on your personal preferences?

negamax 14y ago
Hey. Thanks for the feedback. I think ability to select interests be a great addition. Working towards that.
- colinwinter 14y ago
  I don't think its so much about adding interests as it is offering random but related articles to what someone views. Not everyone always checks the related articles section- and that section is not always very comprehensive. It'd be a good start to use that section though, and compensate by eliminating pages you've already visited. I really like your idea, although the implementation still needs the actual recommendation engine. Wikipedia could really benefit from more related articles being listed/organized.

zerop 14y ago

I would like to see it for Quora.

codezero 14y ago
Already exists: http://www.quora.com/shuffle http://www.quora.com/shuffle

ZeroGravitas 14y ago

There's several resources, both internal and external to Wikipedia, that could be used to jump start a collection of "interesting" rather than random pages e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:FA-Class_articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:FA-Class_articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles http://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/top/?sort=top&t=all http://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/top/?sort=top&t=all http://www.samdowning.com/interesting-wikipedia-articles/ http://www.samdowning.com/interesting-wikipedia-articles/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles

negamax 14y ago
Thanks. Very helpful links. Some really great feedback for the tiny project. I be adding more functionality. Specially the "Interesting" and "Category Selection" for now. If you have some ideas about navigation. Please do share those.

seanp2k2 14y ago

Is this more than just (OSX-only) open 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random' ? I haven't installed it yet, but the above should get you a random Wikipedia page.