Wikipedia talk:Six degrees of Wikipedia

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[edit] Miscellaneous old, unsorted comments

Interesting, but should be meta, I think. Tuf-Kat

Definitely meta. If someone else--e.g. Wired--wrote about it, then we could report on it, but wikipedia is not the place for original research. Koyaanis Qatsi

As a warning to anybody currently working on this page: I'm going to move it to meta in about half an hour. --Camembert

Post challenges here and move them to the main SDOW page when you solve them.

I found two pages randomly and tried to link them in the shortest chain possible. My results so far: Pecatonica, Illinois to F. Matthias Alexander

Alexander was born in Tasmania, which is why I went in that direction. But perhaps there's a shorter route.

MatrixFrog

Should backlinking be allowed? In other words, can the "What links here" of any page be allowed in the chain? If so the Pecatonica to Alexander challenge above is solved with only two more steps (... to "What links to Tasmania" [how do you link to that page?] to F. Matthias Alexander)

MatrixFrog

Probably should be on meta but it is an interesting read. FearÉIREANN 01:36 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I was going to move it to meta (per my comment above), but Erik's got in before me and moved it here. I suppose it'll do, mumble grumble. --Camembert

I'd be equally interested in whether this works for contributors. For example, JTD has mentioned before that he knows Charles Haughey, and I used to work with Haughey's niece. Deb 12:38 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I used to live next to Tia and Tamara Mowry. And my father used to be a John Schneider's mechanic. :) --mav

On the challenge front; I got these random pages: Bloom Township, Pennsylvania and Philosophy of science. Shouldn't be too hard, maybe via Ben Franklin or someone. But I've got to go, a couple of brewskies are waiting for me. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 15:13 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Indeed, you can go from Bloom Township, Pennsylvania to Clearfield County, Pennsylvania to Pennsylvania to Benjamin Franklin to Scientist to Scientific method to Philosophy of science. 6 degrees exactly ;)

Perhaps there should be a ban on using the links from one year page to another, as this would make some links incredibly easy...

Here's a challenge, then - two random pages came up with Ship of Fools (website) to Nakiri bocho -- ALargeElk | Talk 13:19, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

And done, though only with the use of lists, which may be cheating: Ship of Fools (website) to April Fool's Day to China to Japan to List of Japan-related topics to List of Japan-related topics L-Z to Nakiri bocho. -- ALargeElk | Talk 15:45, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Another random challenge - Statistical arbitrage to Local churches. The sites actually came up the other way round, but it seemed too tough as only one article links to statistical arbitrage. -- ALargeElk | Talk 15:58, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

On the project page, one of the sample chains gives cloaca to Robin Williams. There is no link to Robin Williams on the cloaca page currently, and I find it difficult to iamgine how this was ever the case! --bodnotbod 16:07, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC)

Time for Litefantastic to justify himself again. I saw on Inside the Actors' Studio, that Williams said 'cloaca' was his favorite word. Really. Somebody must have seen the footnote I made on the 'cloaca' page and thought I was off my rocker. I am, but that's not the point. The point is that there is a bona fide link between Cloaca and Robin Williams. Of course, if you still think it's utter nonsense to make a Six Degrees link on that kind of logic, I really can't blame you. -Litefantastic 00:57, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Fair enough. --bodnotbod 14:27, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Source code for six-degrees tool

The link given for the source code of the six-degrees tool does not actually do the search for links. It is merely a cgi wrapper that gives a Web interface to another script called "linksc". --Patrick D 04:45, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Linksc is the links client and talks to linksd, the server. You can find the source for both at [1]. The front-end part (degree.cgi) has been replaced with something else now, the source of which isn't available yet, but I am working on it (honest...) — Kate Turner | Talk 04:50, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)
The six degres tool doesn't work. What am I missing? -Litefantastic 15:37, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Could you be more specific than "doesn't work"? :-) — Kate Turner | Talk 01:06, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)
http://kohl.wikipedia.org/kates-tools/sixdeg.action gives
Wiki does not exist
From Meta, a wiki about Wikimedia
This wiki does not exist yet. Perhaps you are looking for one of our other projects:...
-- Chris Q 11:20, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hmm, looks like someone (not me of course. ahem.) put the wrong URL in. Try the new fixed version ;-) — Kate Turner | Talk 22:38, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)
Still no good. -Litefantastic 12:07, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] This should be removed

  1. The category would be infinite
  2. It's ludicrous- I could easily come up with United States and World War II, which have only one degree of separation obviously.

--naryathegreat | (talk) 05:38, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

  • Not removed but cut down. We are tending a bit towards list cruft here. Further, does not this page render all the special cases irrelavant as they all now have only two degrees of seperation (via this page). --Salix alba (talk) 08:36, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
    • This page is irrelevant, as the links are all in the article namespace. Thryduulf 10:26, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Thats a shame ;-(. There is quite an interesting logical problem of how to list such occurences without breaking the condition. See Googlewhacking. --Salix alba (talk) 18:09, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anagrams anyone?

e.g. Rats to Chinese Zodiac to Orion (constellation) to Star.

Strictly speaking, that's not a palindrome; a true palindrome would be very, very difficult, as if

Rats to Noiro to Orion to Star...! Bill 00:55, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oops, Now finding a true palindrome chain would be awesome, but I guess this is just an anagram. -- pcrtalk 01:48, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Kevin Bacon

How is Kevin Bacon not mentioned on this page at all? -- Hugh 17:45, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I second a motion for his adition. Binerman 06:21, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Status of tools

  • The six degrees tool has not worked for some time. Its response to any query is invariably "error:Could not connect to links server".
  • The Omnipelagos tool sometimes produces weird results if you choose articles that didn't exist when the database was updated (in December 2005). For example, if you type "musical improvisation" (which was created in May 2006) it assumes that you meant to type "Michel Colombier". Very strange! Emails to the bug and feedback addresses at Omnipelagos both bounced (user unknown).

Zerrakhi 03:53, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shortest Unnatural Chains

Pants to Bill Gates and LSD to Shakespeare don't work as its written here... --Akov 01:06, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Late Night Thoughts on Articles Encountered on Wikipedia

As I random-walked through Wikipedia, ready to call it a night, I stumbled on Wikipedia:Six degrees of Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Wiki Game, Wikipedia:Wiki-Link Game, Wikipedia:Wikington Crescent and Wikipedia:Wikirace. What an amazing cluster!

Wikipedia:Six degrees of Wikipedia is a good example of something that verges on nearly meaningless pop Wiki-culture. Why meaningless? It would be easy enough to go into these chains & intentionally reduce the degrees of separation by creating a few additional relevant links; I’m sure someone must already have yielded to this temptation at least once. So one ponders what merit any of the chains listed in this article might have…

Which leaves one pondering the notability of this article. Notability criteria suggest that:

“A topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that are reliable and independent of the subject itself and each other. All topics must meet a minimum threshold of notability in order for an article on that topic to be included in Wikipedia. This requirement ensures that there exists enough source material to write a verifiable, encyclopedic article about the topic.”

This article cluster certainly lacks external reference and verges on serious cruftiness—unimportant details. Appears to be an artifact of the early Wikipedia days when something like this was considered notable enough; today this article would be prodded and gone in a week…

Perhaps it is an example of a new category of notability: pioneer material. Old material which has “stood the test of time”—3 years in this case—accretes merit by virtue of extended existence.

Ah well, not going to resolve this tonight (or anytime soon); time to get some sleep. In the morning light I’ll no doubt dismiss this as just another of my curmudgeonish rants. May all your Wiki-contributions have at least as much merit as “Six degrees of Wikipedia”.

Skål - Williamborg (Bill) 18:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] disambiguation pages allowed?

As per the mars to mars example. Simply going through the mars disamb page seems trivial, whereas tracing a series of "real" links from the planet to the candy bar is, well, as amusing as anything on this page is capable of being. human 23:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] speedy

This game seems to get re-invented about once a week! Here are some AfDs which can be cited to justify speedy deletion:

-- RHaworth 23:40, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

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