It's 2:00 AM. Who wants infinite scrolling wikipedia!!

February 9, 2025 2:41 PM

WikiTok is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike TikTok.

It's a feed. It's not even a little bit algorithm-driven. It gives you Wikipedia articles. If you want to read them, you can click and it will take you there. If you don't, scroll on down. No autoplay. No sound.

All the scrolling you can eat with zero net grams of brain rot!

Ars Technica article presenting the concept to the world.

Tweet releasing WikiTok an hour and a half after Isaac Gemal went to work on it. He used AI tools to get the code written so quickly, and I for one think this is exactly the rare kind of use-case where AI is making the world a little nicer.

Works best on mobile!

posted by cabbage raccoon (13 comments total)

thank you for this
posted by Going To Maine at 2:50 PM on February 9 [2 favorites]

My Wikipedia bookmark is set to its random page. Usually it brings up something like a minor league soccer team in Vitebsk. But once it brought up Natalie Schafer (an almost 7 million-to-1 shot!) , whereby I learned that she bequeathed more than 1 million dollars to the Lillian Booth Actors Home - and that the latter was the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary short film.

So yeah, I'm all over this idea.
posted by Lemkin at 2:53 PM on February 9 [1 favorite]

God, if he'd make this into a phone app I might never go to reddit again.
posted by mittens at 3:10 PM on February 9 [1 favorite]

> Ars Technica article presenting the concept to the world.
actually,
posted by alex_skazat at 3:18 PM on February 9 [2 favorites]

Is there any tea on this website?
posted by Reverend John at 4:08 PM on February 9 [2 favorites]

Beginning in childhood, I've always enjoyed opening any reference (encyclopedia, dictionary, cookbook, etc) to a random page and beginning to aimlessly read. This will be a nice addition...
posted by jim in austin at 5:47 PM on February 9 [2 favorites]

Wikipedia as visual novel
posted by one for the books at 9:12 PM on February 9 [2 favorites]

Random Wikipedia is it? There's a N-degrees-of-separation game to play here. First pick your destination - Vitebsk for instance. Then start at random and see how many clicks it takes to get home. I suspect N = ~4.
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:32 AM on February 10

It’s already A Thing called Wikiracing.
posted by Lemkin at 6:05 AM on February 10 [1 favorite]

This is much more fun than I'd expect it to be. I tried TikTok once and it simply had nothing for me. Uninstalled in minutes. Instagram likewise is boring. Filled with ads. Repetitive. This however I like.
posted by UN at 6:58 AM on February 10

I like the idea, but too often I’m getting white text on a background image that renders reading the white text impossible.
posted by itesser at 7:27 AM on February 10

Oops, should have posted a sign!
Unavoidable Rabbit Hole Ahead
posted by BlueHorse at 10:57 AM on February 10

"Ellen Fairclough Building is an 18-storey (94 m) high-rise office building built in 1981. It is the 5th tallest building in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.”

Things I didn't know I needed in my life.
posted by meech at 2:59 PM on February 10