Down The Wikihole
A wikihole, or a wiki rabbit hole, is defined by the bastion of wholesome and ethical content known as UrbanDictionary as “… a term used to describe the phenomenon in which one opens a wiki article about something cool, clicks on a link to another article about something ever cooler, and eventually comes up for air 6 hours or so later after having clicked on all manner of related cool wiki links.” In fact, Wikipedia themselves has a page entitled ‘Wiki rabbit hole’ where they explain “ The wiki rabbit hole is the learning pathway which a reader travels by navigating from topic to topic while browsing Wikipedia and other wikis.”
In just those simple definitions, you can get an idea of what sort of strange places a wikihole can lead you. It is seldom that I, personally, intend to fall down one such spiral of tangentially-connected knowledge; it just seems to happen.
It starts off innocently enough: I will be sitting at my computer- playing a game or watching a video- when I am suddenly struck with a curious question. I casually browse over to Wikipedia, where I find the answer to my question. However, while reading the page, I find an interesting topic or link I want to read about, so I open it in a new tab. Then I find another. Before long, I have upwards of five or more additional tabs open, each full of something that has piqued my curiosity. This process is repeated on each page until I find myself finally satiated or, more often, something interrupts me and brings me back to reality and out of the wikihole.
As an anecdote, a few days ago, I was doing some writing for my D&D campaign and came across a spell that did ‘acid damage’. Now, this isn’t unique by any stretch, but a thought crossed my mind: ‘what makes an acid an acid?’. Thus, I unknowingly signed away the next hour of my life.
Page 1, ‘Acid’. A lot of the specific terms went over my head (such as the specific chemicals), but after a ten-minute read, I found myself more enlightened. I also found myself with several more open tabs. Page 2, ‘Hydron’, “ is the general name for a cationic form of atomic hydrogen”. This is apparently what causes (Page 3) “Brønsted acids” to react with other substances.
Page 4, ‘Hydrochloric Acid’, caught my attention because I recognized the name. A quick skim over the article about the infamously dangerous chemical caused me to raise my eyebrow. Apparently, it is “ used as a food additive and in the production of gelatin.” It seemed so strange to me that I clicked and continued my dive.
By the time I received the phone call that interrupted my dive, I was surprisingly deep. I started with a simple search for acid and found myself, 19 clicks later, looking at the page for “The House of Normandy”.
The incredible ease with which one can fall down a wikihole is a testament to the incalculable amount of time and effort that thousands of people have put in to make Wikipedia the unparalleled repository of free knowledge that it is today. The number of links on a typical page is astonishing and it paints an impressive web of how knowledge and society is interconnected.
The picture above paints a strange picture of the path I took from chemistry to early medieval kings of England, but each step was logical and related. We live in a society unlike any that came before it, for we have access to knowledge that our ancestors could only dream of having. Once more, even fifty years ago- functionally no time at all in the grand scheme of history- this information being so readily and cheaply available to anyone with an internet connection would be incomprehensible.
For what it’s worth, I recommend that everybody should take the time to dive down the wikihole from time to time and discover new things they may have never heard of before. Take advantage of the wide world that is at your fingertips.
