Monday, November 19, 2007

Six Degrees of Wikipedia is On Line

Last month I posted an entry called Six Degrees of Wikipedia, where in I started playing a game in which people try to find the shortest path between two given Wikipedia pages. My friend Colin made a random node generation script and yesterday we created a new web site where we will administer the game. Periodically a new challenge to connect two Wikipedia pages (by Wikipedia-internal links) will be issued. The first one is already up, so get cracking. The winners will be announced when the next challenge is release. Enjoy! Oh and hey, no editing the pages so that your path works.

Extra credit for people who write solvers or know how to use Google to find such things. :) I mean the Kevin Bacon game is still fun despite the existence of solvers, right?

Go to: http://sixdegreesofwikipedia.blogspot.com/ to play.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Like many great things, Wikipedia people like this sort of thing too. I know that there's a Six Degrees of Wikipedia tool on the Wikimedia toolserver (tools.wikimedia.de), but it was down as of this post - it might be back up later. This will find the shortest route between two pages, and it allows the option of excluding year references, which make for uninteresting, if short, paths.

You might also be interested in some of the other Wikipedia tools available for those who want them.

abstract said...

You bastards!

I just thought up this idea then did a quick google search and bang, up comes your site. Even though I am missing out on the millions that you're probably getting, I still got a kick out it. Thanks, you did a nice job.

Mike Machenry said...

I feel your pain. This happens to me all the time. Unfortunately there are just not that many original ideas in my head. This one's been done before, that's for sure. They play this game in various web forums. We may, however, be the first to make a website that auto generates challenges though. I didn't see any others when I did my search.