News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Retrieve a random Wikipedia page by rideontime on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @08:56PM (#29008411)
This has been a link on the Wikipedia sidebar for as long as I can remember.
Re:Retrieve a random Wikipedia page by dang on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @08:36PM (#29008274)
I thought there had been more past threads but these are all I can find. Others?

Wikipedia Random Article (has gotten weird) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23273917 - May 2020 (3 comments)

Experiment HN: If you end up with anything interesting, post the link - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7758508 - May 2014 (73 comments)

Edit: I did find this:

Microscale – turn random Wikipedia articles into music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15958625 - Dec 2017 (25 comments)

Re:Retrieve a random Wikipedia page by novia on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @10:49PM (#29009049)
Re:Retrieve a random Wikipedia page by evil-olive on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @10:58PM (#29009097)
you can also do a random featured article, which is a higher standard than the "good articles" category:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RandomInCategory/Featu...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles

> Featured articles are considered to be some of the best articles Wikipedia has to offer, as determined by Wikipedia's editors. They are used by editors as examples for writing other articles. Before being listed here, articles are reviewed as featured article candidates for accuracy, neutrality, completeness, and style according to our featured article criteria. Most featured articles were previously good articles (which are reviewed with a less restrictive set of criteria). There are 6,023 featured articles out of 6,400,532 articles on the English Wikipedia (about 0.09% or one out of every 1,060 articles). Articles that no longer meet the criteria can be proposed for improvement or removal at featured article review.

Re:Retrieve a random Wikipedia page by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on Thursday November 04, 2021 @05:16AM (#29104914)
Re:Retrieve a random Wikipedia page by cyberbanjo on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @09:45AM (#29013204)
I'm also a fan of using Wikipedia for a quick look at international news. Feels much less sensationalized than news papers do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

Re:Retrieve a random Wikipedia page by paulcole on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @08:45PM (#29008349)
A fun exercise I did every day for a month was to take a (longish) random article and summarize 2 or 3 paragraphs of it (usually around 180 words), trying to make it as short as I could without losing the true meaning/purpose of those paragraphs.
Re:Retrieve a random Wikipedia page by kyleee on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @12:22AM (#29009524)
Very good exercise to attempt in new language that one is learning too

Doing the random page in a different language as a strategy for language learning is fun method itself to improve reading comprehension

Re:Retrieve a random Wikipedia page by richardatlarge on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @01:03AM (#29009730)
Consider writing for Wikipedia
Re:Retrieve a random Wikipedia page by Orionos on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @11:18AM (#29014456)
A fun game you can do using this is picking two random pages, and get from one to the other in the least steps possible / as fast as possible.

Hard rules:

Lists (like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_advertising_c...) can't be navigated to

Back button can't be used (click wisely)

Additional rule:

Ctrl+F banned

Re:Retrieve a random Wikipedia page by richardatlarge on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @01:02AM (#29009723)
A tiny bit off topic... but I semi-randomly look up W articles on a topic that comes to mind out of the blue. I’ve found great stuff this way. One that comes to mind is the page on the band Bachman Turner Overdrive. Insanely random luck led to their success. Often there’s a back story to so much that affects our lives

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachman–Turner_Overdrive

Re:Retrieve a random Wikipedia page by kamilman0 on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @01:51AM (#29009982)
Ok, who's spying on me here?

I opened the link for the very first time and I kid you not, I land on a Polish municipality: Lipiny, Ciechanów County

I'm Polish.

That thing scares me...

Re:Retrieve a random Wikipedia page by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @06:49PM (#29007391)
Credit: @jfengel