aizk
bazmattaz
This is awesome. I can imagine you likely are not interested in building one but this site could hugely benefit from a recommendations algorithm.
For example an algorithm could understand how much a user really enjoys a certain article and then starts sending the users down a rabbit hole of similar and tangential content. Designing, building and maintaining an algorithm like this though is no small feat.
larodi
Kudos for the anthropological experiment. Indeed makes you wonder what's there about the sliding that makes it so entertaining.
I suggest you add some sort of summary that flows, so to add certain level of animation. Some articles have actual sound and animations to them.
Great inspiration!
piloto_ciego
This is freaking really cool, I’m at work browsing HN instead of doing actual work, but I’ll look into it more later, but the “killer feature” I think would be to add audio narration do this, or a quick summary, I would scroll that all day…
Awesome job!
preciousoo
I remember seeing that tweet, I thought it was the craziest coincidence ever when I saw this on the front page. I guess it’s not haha
aizk
As soon as I saw the tweet, I realized the opportunity was there waiting for me. And also, twitter's algorithm is REALLY good at pairing the right tweets to one another, so many people saw those two tweets side by side, which added to the humor.
mostertoaster
Wow this is surprisingly addictive :)
Nice job whipping up something so simple, yet elegant, so fast.
This is what I love about LLM tools like cursor, it makes the effort to just try and build something so low, you can just try it one night, and can make cool things that might not have been built otherwise.
varjag
This is great! Thanks for sharing it.
tomieinlove
Congrats! Tomie here, this is absolutely great!
xhrpost
Wonder what it would take to add a simple algorithm to this. Part of what makes short media apps (dangerously) addictive is that they eventually learn what you like and feed you more of that. An app like this with such an algo could help with the stickiness (and presumably get us away from the other apps at least for a little bit). "Oh this person likes science stuff, let's feed them more, oh they specifically like stuff related to quantum mechanics, let's place a summary paragraph from a related page topic in there."
TZubiri
The relatedness of articles is already baked in with blue wiki links too. So it shouldn't be too hard to make something that just looks for neighbors.
Now, something that learns that if you like X you might like Y, even if they are disconnected. Is closer to the dystopic ad maximizing algorithm of TikTok et al.
aizk
On one hand I am thinking about what a very basic algorithm would like (maybe even just categories I might do) and maybe how it would make people happy.
On the other hand, I'm not sure exactly the details of wikipedia's api TOS. Also as it stands this website is entirely in the frontend at the moment, and I'm enjoying just scaffolding out what I can with limited a more limited set of tools to speak.
I realize now the suffix "tok" implies a crazy ML algo that is trained every single movement, click, tap, and pause you make, but I don't think I really want that.
codingdave
It should be possible to keep this all front-end, even with some basic algorithm for the searches - just use localStorage. That keep things simple and resolve privacy concerns, as people own their data and can delete them any time.
easterncalculus
That's what I was thinking this might have already. Maybe this could get insights from the articles linked from the ones you like too? Sort of like https://www.sixdegreesofwikipedia.com/
marci
RHAAS
Rabbit-holing as a service
zavg
I think that the project has a potential.
I am a big fun of Wikipedia and sometimes TikTok (a "guilty pleasure"). I would be happy to have an app/web site like this but with
- more smart feed based on your activity/attention (was mentioned in other comments);
- maybe more fancy way to present information (not sure if it is feasible to implement). Currently just a text snippet and image do not seem like super engaging.
srameshc
I just admire how some people can build simple things. I see so many from simple games to visualizations to many other kinds on HN here. Hopefully someday I will be able to think of something simple and showcase here.
doctoboggan
This, plus an AI generated voice reading a TikTok-creator style catchy summary, plus TikTok's actual algorithm for surfacing content would actually make a decent app I believe.
EDIT: Also the name should be WikTok instead of WikiTok.
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ptojr
I second this! A voice-over would be very nice
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arrowsmith
How is this different from Wikipedia’s own “random article” feature?
f1shy
Good question: i had that thought for a second. But the I realized that for me, Incan imagine killing time here, but not in the random page. It is an image and a short text which allows to decide fast if it is interesting or not.
I used to take a technical dictionary, and read random articles when bored. So I tried with random wiki, but just didn’t work. I will try this and I can already say, it will work.
guessmyname
Your question doesn’t quite make sense.
It sounds like you’re suggesting the two web pages are identical, just on different domains, but they’re obviously completely different.
A better way to phrase your question would be: "Why would a TikTok-style (infinite scrolling) website for browsing Wikipedia articles appeal to today’s internet users?"
LVB
It’s a reasonable question, and one I had myself. Of course the UX is different, but that is self evident and we don’t need to be pedantic. What’s not obvious is whether this is wrapping the existing RandomPage API, filtering it, doing some sort of prediction/recommendation, etc.
arrowsmith
> we don’t need to be pedantic
You must be new to HN
redcobra762
The question is fine; once you stop interpreting the words literally, you can clearly infer the question to be about substance rather than numerical identity.
> How is this (meaningfully) different from Wikipedia’s own “random article” feature?
dangrape123
[flagged]
pockmarked19
> Your question doesn’t quite make sense.
Agreed, yet it is the standard question most people throw out for any unfamiliar idea. God forbid they have to form a single thought to grok something…although more charitably it is a form of “why should I care?”.
Your rephrasing is a bit different, it discards the selfish aspect of the question which I think is not correct.
Funnily though, anyone asking why they should care probably shouldn’t care yet.
j3s
it looks and feels completely different, for one thing
duxup
I like the idea, but one thing about Wikipedia is that with technical or granular topics it approaches things in a focused way. A specific molecular biology term's page isn't there to explain exactly how it fits into a larger biology topic. It makes random pages difficult to glean information from.
Even wikipedia articles I understand, more on computer topics, fall into the category of "the only people who understand this page are people who ... already understand it / don't need to read this".
Granted sometimes the social media context is kinda opaque, but usually "man fall down it funny" is pretty universal.
myself248
Math articles are excruciatingly bad on this. I find myself setting the language to "simple english" and it helps.
duxup
Wikipedia math articles all remind me of what i learned in High School, that math is absolutely the worst to learn from someone who "just gets it" as often those folks have no concept how someone else might not "just get it". I suspect the wikipiedia articles are written by folks who "just get it".
wwweb
A wiki (or any encyclopedia, for that matter) is not meant to be an introduction or a HOWTO.
layman51
Some other commenters have offered the idea of an algorithm to steer the randomness of the articles. I wonder if an algorithm would help with this issue of having random articles be too technical for you even though you are interested in the larger topic.
TZubiri
>"the only people who understand this page are people who ... already understand it / don't need to read this".
That is provably false
qwertox
I consume the internet mainly on an old-school monitor, not on a tablet. When the browser is maximized, all the images are pixelated.
aizk
Right now it's 85% usage on mobile. Also, I don't really find the pixelated images to be that detracting on desktop (though, I'm a small macbook, ymmv on a giant 4k display). I haven't tested on a screen that large.
MitPitt
Text could also be more compact
rickcarlino
Can you please add Korean? This looks like such a great tool for discovering language learning reading material. Great work!
TZubiri
Sounds like the sort of thing you could add yourself if there were some source
CafeRacer
Me: what a stupid idea Also me after 30 minutes of doom scrolling: cool
matthest
Brilliant. Someone should do this same concept but for short-form essays.
So like Twitter, but with 3-4 paragraph essays.
Hi! I'm the dev here! I built this on a whim at after seeing someone ask for it on twitter. It was 12:30 at night but I couldn't pass down the opportunity to build it.
The code is very simple, there's no backend at all actually, I believe because wikipedia's api is very permissive and you can just make the requests in the frontend. So you just simply request random articles, get some snippets, and the image attached!
I used Claude and cursor do 90% of the heavy lifting, so I am positive there's plenty of room for optimizations. But right now as it stands, it's quite fun to play with, even without anything very sophisticated.
Here is the source code. https://github.com/IsaacGemal/wikitok