Wikipedia: 97% of all articles lead to Philosophy
The "Getting to Philosophy" phenomenon on Wikipedia involves navigating articles by clicking the first non-parenthesized, non-italicized link, often leading to the Philosophy article. This trend, starting around 2008, saw a decrease in success rates in May 2024 due to a loop between Awareness and Psychology.
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The Wikipedia phenomenon known as "Getting to Philosophy" involves following the first link in the main text of an English Wikipedia article, which typically leads to the Philosophy article. In February 2016, this was true for 97% of Wikipedia articles. However, after an edit in May 2024, the number of articles leading to Philosophy decreased due to a loop between Awareness and Psychology. The method involves clicking on the first non-parenthesized, non-italicized link and stopping when reaching Philosophy or encountering a loop. The phenomenon is attributed to Wikipedia's Manual of Style guidelines and the tendency for pages to move up a "classification chain." The origin of this phenomenon dates back to at least 2008. Various theories exist to explain this trend, with one suggesting that articles typically start with a definitional statement, leading them towards Philosophy. Mathematician Hannah Fry demonstrated this method in a BBC documentary. Several tools and studies have been developed to analyze and explore this phenomenon further.
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10 commentsI've not heard people talk about it, but it seems like there's a model of information in the Dewey classification system, where 000 includes information systems and general reference itself, then 100 is philosophy, all the way up to 900, which is history. It's something like abstract ("information" to concrete ("real, specific things that happened"). By this theory, it makes sense that moving up the classification chain would take you to Philosophy, if you go far enough. But if that's what was happening, I'd expect it to keep going beyond Philosophy into the 000s.
Maybe, maybe not. Rather than admit my theory is wrong, I'll just pretend that the substrate on which Philosophy articles are built is Wikipedia, the internet, and other information organizing systems. Thus, all Philosophy articles on Wikipedia have an implied link above them in the classification chain. Phew, crisis averted.
> After an edit to the Awareness article in May of 2024, among others switching the order of Philosophy and Psychology, the amount of articles that lead to Philosophy this way has been greatly reduced, as Awareness and Psychology form a loop of their own.
The title of the actual linked page is "Getting to Philosophy", which should have been the title as submitted.
Edit: someone from this HN thread found a way to break the cycle, so 97% is back for now!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thought&action=...
Today's top in the news link, Iberian lynx, leads off site (to Wiktionary) on the first link.
I've tried getting to philosophy years ago and it was reliable--but what's up now?