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Ask HN:How many of you nerds "read" wikipedia?
18 points by rick_2047 on June 26, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 30 comments
It is my understanding that reading the encyclopaedia cover to cover is a long standing tradition in the nerd culture. These days the hardbound 22 volume encyclopaedia has become somewhat obsolete.Wikipedia is the wave of the future.

So how many of you read, I mean actually "read" wikipedia? As in just open the website and just start reading. I have been doing it for quite some time.(I started with superheroes and still reading about them, I knew there was a lot to know but didn't know there was this much. I usually skip things which don't really interest me in the title but even then its a long long read.)



I do this quite a bit, but unlike with a paper encyclopedia, it leads to exponential explosion of my "TO-READ" stack, as I keep middle-click-opening new tabs throughout the process of reading an article. Often I then eventually get to one of the tabs and have no idea what it is or how I got to an article on such a bizarre subject. Eventually I have to give up and close 40 unread tabs.

edit: http://xkcd.com/214/


Using a tab grouping plugin could help you. Recently I have installed tab kit (which groups tabs and show them in vertical layout) and it made browsing much easier - it automatically puts new opened tabs in correct groups so I know where each tab came from; also it shows unread tabs and allows you to regroup them and fold a group.

If you are a FF user I would strongly recommend you this plugin (Tab Kit). However it seems that it doesn't work with new firefox versions; but there is another called Tree Style Tab with similar features.


FireFox has an add-on Tab History: "links opened in a new tab retain their history". Although it doesn't tell you which link on the previous page you clicked, it does help.


I do the exact same thing (as do countless other geeks). It would be interesting to have an extension that just displays your reading pattern on Wikipedia (e.g. "A->K->E->S").


I too agree can wikipedia can be overwhelming. That is why I reject any link that does not sound 100% interesting and related to where I am right now. But the sad thing is, i have to close 20 unread tabs


It's pretty rare that I head over to Wikipedia so I can read any random article, but I'll use it to satisfy the mildest curiosity about nearly any noun I interact with. For instance, I used BART for the first time on Thursday, and now I kind of want to know all about it. So off to Wikipedia.


My girlfriend is amazed that I have the patience to read a 10-page wikipedia article from start to finish. I think I got that because I started reading newspaper articles when I was very young (strongly recommended to all parents).

It seems I'm a bit different than most other people here that I open and read new tabs as they come up, rather than opening them in the background and coming back to them (like a call stack instead of a queue), which helps for maintaining context. The articles that I tend to get large stacks on are math articles. I think my stack-based approach came from starting on math articles, because you need to understand underlying referenced concepts before you can continue with the rest of the article. Most other subjects aren't so linear, not even historical subjects, because an individual tends to participate in several events, an an event impacts several individuals, and you get all sorts of back- and forward-references.

On a related note, I have read references books cover-to-cover, including a selective dictionary (one that only includes difficult words, not "the" and "door"). Textbooks with excercizes are far better for retention, but I always stop instead of doing the excercizes.


For awhile I had a bookmarklet as my homepage which would load a random page. Then it brought up a VERY inappropriate page (some weird Japanese fetish article) in front of inappropriate people.

Since then, no more random Wikipedia for me.


Can I have the link of the bookmarklet. And for the record I didn't ask for it for the fetish article.


I think the front page has an article per day that's more, um, curated:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Todays_featured_artic...

They also have a way to get random articles from the list of those rated as "featured" of which the front page featured articles are a subset:

http://toolserver.org/~erwin85/randomarticle.php?lang=en&...


I'll bet it was this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random


If you start on their home page and search for the word random, you will find it. For english, it is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMD-3


I don't have it anymore however the ones below function similar enough.


Unfortunately the weird Japanese fetish was a sexual attraction to having bookmarklets that open random pages on Wikipedia.


Studying Wikipedia is the best way to get up to speed on a subject quickly. It lacks scholarly depth but

It was simply assumed on my high school quiz bowl team that one read Wikipedia in his spare time. I've got around ten tabs open while I crash through data structures. Will it give the same depth as Knuth? Nope. But it dos give me a 80% understanding for 20% effort.


But it dos give me a 80% understanding for 20% effort.

That's the sort of knowledge that's most valuable for the average person to have nowadays. Enough knowledge to know what questions to be asking and what queries to be making, not necessary enough to answer every question accurately!


I read http://rosettacode.org/ from time to time, to get a feel for the various programming languages.


my colleague reads math entries in wikipedia at least 4 hours a day. obscure optimization and nonlinear fitting methods.

it blows my mind. in the last 6 months he has learned a TON of material and I am very envious of the knowledge he's gained.

i want to learn what he has learned, and more importantly i want to WANT to pore over wikipedia math articles and try out the techniques, but its just not in me.

i learn when i have to and i force myself to. he does it because its fun. he'd do it even if it didn't help him or have any application to his work (frequently it doesn't). reading, testing, confirming new algorithms is his "guilty pleasure" in the same way some people can't stop playing starcraft.

kind of awesome really.


http://reddit.com/r/wikipedia is my nighttime reading


I start with one tab and continue with only one tab. Going previous page is permitted but openning a new tab is not. For instance yesterday I started with google's wikipedia entry and spend approximately 2 hours. Now i know who wrote lex


I read Wikipedia. I follow links as I please. I sometimes visit the main page for the featured article or the "Do you know?" or the news articles. Now I am also a Wikipedia editor (as of April 2010).


I do. Honestly, how many of us don't? I use it to get a starting place on learning about anything I don't already know and sometimes as a place to look for sources of more information.


This is not what I was talking about. This is retrieving information on wiki, I talking about reading just for the sake of its aesthetic value


I'm not sure what you mean by "aesthetic value"?

What I do is to wander it somewhat randomly in search of information, only to click on anything that looks interesting, often reading things far in excess of my original query. Heck, I just closed a couple of Wikipedia tabs a few seconds ago.

But my goals are information seeking and have nothing to do with aesthetics.


I was doing this earlier today -- pulled up some article on the French Directory and went through maybe 15 related pages.


I've read many articles, but don't do it for the sake of reading. It usually accompanies other reading on said subject.


When I move, I am downgrading my internet connection at home because I spend too much time reading wikipedia.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerd


All of us.


This thread prompted me to subscribe to the Daily article mailing list. I'll give it a try for 30 days. I like getting information by e-mail because it lets me read it on my phone (oldschool Blackberry 8510c, $25 shipped via eBay) when I don't have access to a computer.

https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/daily-article-l




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