Kevin Bacon Meets Wikipedia With New Pathfinding Program 50
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?'"
/.'ed (Score:1)
Haw can I post a more useful post than "First Post!" if the site shown is already slashdotted?
I was gonna Godwin the thread, but then... (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
Save Jesus instead (Score:2)
Save Jesus instead. It's not a good idea to save Oracle after the Google clash (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120516083919975).
Re: (Score:2)
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
Oracle of Slashdot (Score:1)
Taking any two random pages on the Internet and making both inaccessible.
I'll wait till Slashdot goes away.
Re: (Score:1)
Next (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"?
Re:Next (Score:5, Funny)
You'd start by cancelling your account.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreak [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexually_transmitted_disease [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_intercourse [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_virgin [wikipedia.org]
Technical virgin redirects to Virginity, so that's four steps, no assistance from the Oracle...
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Like this [oracleofwikipedia.com]? Granted, "lose one's virginity" isn't an actual page name, so I had to adapt...
“Philosophy” is the Kevin Bacon of Wik (Score:1)
obligatory (Score:3)
Obligatory XCKD ... errr, SMBC... [smbc-comics.com]
Re:obligatory XKCD (Score:2)
Self-defeating list! (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!
Online game (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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).
All Roades Lead to Philosophy (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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 co
Re: (Score:1)
Six Degrees of Wikipedia (Score:2)
Source code for site - should I make available? (Score:1)
Such a blast (Score:1)
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.
The Oracle is a whiz (Score:2)
From -Rick Santorum- to -sanity : WTF is "Kaqf", and how is that linked to sanity?
Clearly the Oracle is also a Fudgemaster.
12 clicks (Score:1)