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Kevin Bacon Meets Wikipedia With New Pathfinding Program

Posted by Unknown on from the computers-are-ruining-everything dept.

New submitter BLT2112 writes "Inspired by the Oracle of Bacon, the Oracle of Wikipedia finds the shortest path between two Wikipedia articles, as in Wikipedia Golf. As explained in the site, 'One selects one article as the tee and another article as the hole and then completes the course between them clicking as few links as possible. No typing is allowed. . . . The Oracle also allows you to search for the most challenging potential Wikipedia Golf courses. Can you find a longer course and merit a place in the "records" section?'"

27 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. /.'ed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Haw can I post a more useful post than "First Post!" if the site shown is already slashdotted?

  2. I was gonna Godwin the thread, but then... by bmo · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... after seeing that Godwinning was too easy, I asked the Oracle of Bacon how many links to Jesus Christ.

    The Oracle cannot find "Jesus Christ."

    Won't someone Save this Oracle?

    --
    BMO

    1. Re:I was gonna Godwin the thread, but then... by SomePgmr · · Score: 1

      I did, "the pope". It did Pope Pius XII to Bacon in 3. So to some people, I guess, Jesus would get a Bacon number of 4.

      Pope Pius XII
      was in
      Nostradamus Says So! (1953)
      with
      Queen Elizabeth II
      was in
      Le cerveau (1969)
      with
      Eli Wallach
      was in
      Mystic River (2003)
      with
      Kevin Bacon

  3. Oracle of Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Taking any two random pages on the Internet and making both inaccessible.

    I'll wait till Slashdot goes away.

    1. Re:Oracle of Slashdot by tomnysetvold · · Score: 1

      Back up now - I'm the owner, and a bit of mod_wsgi setup optimization got it running again.

  4. Next by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 5, Funny

    There have to be islands that never touch each other unless you cheat by going to the main page and hitting "random page".

    How would you get, for example, from "World of Warcraft" to "Lose one's virginity"?

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    1. Re:Next by John+Napkintosh · · Score: 5, Funny

      You'd start by cancelling your account.

      --

      Long signatures suck.
    2. Re:Next by Lev13than · · Score: 2

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreak
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexually_transmitted_disease
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_intercourse
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_virgin

      Technical virgin redirects to Virginity, so that's four steps, no assistance from the Oracle...

      --
      When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
    3. Re:Next by ABoerma · · Score: 1

      Taking only the obvious steps:
      World of Warcraft > Role-playing game > Role-playing > Roleplay (disambiguation) > Sexual roleplay > Human sexual behaviour > Human sexuality > Virginity ("Losing one's virginity" redirects to that page.)

    4. Re:Next by KhabaLox · · Score: 1

      by Impy the Impiuos Imp (442658) Alter Relationship on Wednesday May 16, @06:04PM
      by Lev13than (581686) Alter Relationship on Wednesday May 16, @06:22PM

      18 minutes. I'm not sure you should be proud that you found (knew?) the route that fast.

      --
      Ceci n'est pas un sig.
    5. Re:Next by fluffythedestroyer · · Score: 1

      I wont link it here but with google you will find it. theres a video about that exact same situation. Some dude is playing wow while her girlfriend (friend ??? idk) is screwing another guy behind him. you can clearly see it's wow that he's playing.

    6. Re:Next by emag · · Score: 1

      Like this? Granted, "lose one's virginity" isn't an actual page name, so I had to adapt...

      --
      "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
  5. Save Jesus instead by G3ckoG33k · · Score: 1

    Save Jesus instead. It's not a good idea to save Oracle after the Google clash (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120516083919975).

  6. “Philosophy” is the Kevin Bacon of Wik by P1h3r1e3d13 · · Score: 1

    I'd love to figure out a way to visualize the paths to the universal attractor that is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy.

  7. obligatory by thegreatemu · · Score: 2

    Obligatory XCKD ... errr, SMBC...

  8. Re:obligatory XKCD by Disallowed · · Score: 2

    http://xkcd.com/214/

  9. Self-defeating list! by Overunderrated · · Score: 2

    Of course, as soon as any two articles get identified as being far apart in this game of golf, someone will edit the articles to mention this fact, thereby reducing their distance to 1. Quite the paradox!

  10. Online game by MDMurphy · · Score: 1

    Can't get to the Slashdotted page, but this does sound like it could have been an interesting online phone game. Two people each pick a Wikipedia entry. Then both search for the path between them ( with some agreement on origin/destination ). The game itself keeping track of the number of steps.

    Of course a site that automatically traces the path ruins this. It would probably also result in people salting pages with links to more generic ones.

  11. Re:Poor Use of Resources by wandazulu · · Score: 2

    I don't know what these folks are doing, but I wrote a sort-of-similar-but-not-really system that uses Wikipedia data and all you need is the "pages" and "pagelinks" tables, which you then load into your own mysql database; no touching of the actual site is necessary (and allowed; they have some strict rules about spiders and you can get your IP banned for abuse).

  12. All Roades Lead to Philosophy by Relic+of+the+Future · · Score: 1

    Meh, wikigolf involves too much effort. I think it's more interesting that, if you just click the first link in each article, you'll eventually get to philosophy. (Go ahead and try; random page, and click the first (non-namespaced/non-disambiguation/non-external) link.)

    --
    Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
    1. Re:All Roades Lead to Philosophy by Intropy · · Score: 1

      That failed on the very first page I tried:
      Defenestrations of Prague
      Bohemia
      Czech language
      West Slavic languages
      Slavic languages
      Language
      Human
      Taxonomy
      Ancient Greek
      Greek language
      Indo-European languages
      Language family
      Language
      Language was already seen so we'll loop forever without reaching philosophy.

      On a side note I was about to check the recursion article assuming it would link to itself at the very top when I noticed this comment:
      Making the Recursion article link to itself will not display correctly, and is considered to break [[WP:ASTONISH]]. The joke itself is already featured in the "Recursive humor" section. See discussion on the talk page.

    2. Re:All Roades Lead to Philosophy by tomnysetvold · · Score: 1

      Yeah, there are plenty of counterexamples. Many articles end you up in the following closed loop: Ancient Greek, Greek Language, Indo-European Languages, Language Family. From "Language Family" there are sort of two possibilities: 1. You go to "List of language families", if you count the italicized disambiguation type text as the first link, in which case you're then sent back to "Language Family" and start looping. 2. You ignore the italicized text and click Language, which leads to Human, Taxonomy, Ancient Greek.

      Either way, no philosophy.

  13. Six Degrees of Wikipedia by pgn674 · · Score: 1

    This reminds me of a 2008 Slashdot article covering a web application made by a Trinity College Dublin student: Six Degrees of Wikipedia - Slashdot

  14. Source code for site - should I make available? by tomnysetvold · · Score: 1

    I'm the creator of the site. (I apologize that it was down for so long today - I had to do some tweaking to handle the Slashdot effect. Hopefully we're out of the woods now, but we'll see.) Would people be interested in the source code? I'd be willing to clean it up and post most or all of it under a permissive license if there's interest.

  15. Such a blast by Vaixe · · Score: 1

    Wow... This proved to be the time-waster-of-the-week so far here.

    From Astrophysics to Mosquitoes
    From Mongol Empire to Benzine
    From Love to Planck Constant

    Thanks to this (and a couple of beers at lunch), I'm highhandedly responsible to a couple of percentage points of productivity lost this afternoon.

  16. The Oracle is a whiz by yusing · · Score: 1

    From -Rick Santorum- to -sanity : WTF is "Kaqf", and how is that linked to sanity?

    Clearly the Oracle is also a Fudgemaster.

    --

    "You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson

  17. 12 clicks by BLT2112 · · Score: 1

    Longest one I've found so far is hilum to Angkor Borei and Phnom da. Definitely a great time-waster.